EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE – The child born in 2022 will be 78 years old in 2100. Many of the children of that generation will have had kids during that time who will range from teens to mid-life during the coming 78 years. These are today’s parents’ children and grandchildren.
These kids will be living in the future that we are shaping NOW, right here. That’s no small responsibility for the current generation.
Economic development in Peterborough/Kawartha must be planning for this.
Today’s rich and connected class advise and run the capitalist “extract everything” economy that is the origin of the climate crisis. They seem to be trying to maintain the “business-as-usual” that props up only increased profit-taking at Earth’s and the future’s expense.
Look at the sidebar for what today’s youth can expect in the coming years if we take no urgent action on the climate crisis by how we design the economy.
No time to waste! No time for economic “business-as-usual”
No time for the likes of Doug Ford’s plan for more natural gas (fossil fuel) production, just when we MUST bring down our fossil fuel emissions.
Local municipal Councils, economic development bodies and business organizations are not small players in shaping our communities’ future. Our youth and our Earth need them to give up the premise that more freedom to make more money, developer-friendly urban sprawl, more tourism based on cars and privatization of shorelines is good for our children’s future.
Provincial government must give local municipalities more support and local democratic authority over what happens to life-supporting Nature in their local environs (like more not less power to Conservation Authorities.)
We need a “nature-centered and people-positive local economy” that favours local small enterprise and farming, is geared to the many employment-generating, nature-protecting jobs related to ramping up our climate adaptation and mitigation actions and lowering CO2 emissions. Economic Development & Planning must be based on a whole new goal of climate crisis preparation, not attracting Tourists in cars staying at private resorts, powering gas-guzzling jet skis across dying lakes.
The next generation of our kids deserve more than that!
IF NO URGENT CLIMATE ACTION
The 2030s
- Arctic and Antarctic ice melt raises sea levels by 20 cm.
- 90% of coral reefs and fish stocks may collapse.
- Dwindling crop yields can push 100 million people into extreme poverty.
- Climate-related illnesses are killing an extra 250,000 people annually.
The 2040s
- the world will have shot past the 1.5 C Paris Accord temperature rise limit.
- 8% of the world will experience severe water shortages
The 2050s
- 2B people face 60 ⁰F temperatures for more than 36 days
- Widespread use of face masks, not for disease prevention but for protection from smog
- North America sees 25 major floods per year, up from 1 in 2020
By 2100
- Average global temperature has soared by more than 4⁰C, even more in northern countries
- Florida has largely disappeared
- Insects are almost unknown, causing crop failures due to lack of pollinators
- 40% of the planet is in drought
- Forest fires burn over huge areas yearly
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