TORONTO —
Efforts by the Trump administration to undo fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles are a setback to the battle against climate change, former U.S. president Barack Obama said on Thursday.
Speaking at a sold-out forum about the future of work, Obama said it’s clear not everyone is on his page when it comes to the enormous global challenge.
“I instituted higher fuel-efficiency standards on cars, and the subsequent administration has now tried to actively reverse them,” Obama said of U.S. President Donald Trump. “If we can’t even do that, where we’re going to say, ‘We’re not going to drive gas guzzlers’ when other countries don’t even have cars, then it’s going to be almost impossible to solve the problem.”
It will require a “surge of energy” from citizens to put pressure on large institutions to tackle greenhouse gas emissions that exacerbate global warming, Obama said. It’s a cause, he said, that younger people increasingly understand and are willing to take on.
“Which is why you have somebody like a Greta Thunberg who gets so much traction,” he said. “Because she speaks for a generation that is going to have to deal with this mess in a way that somebody like me, who’s 58, is not going to have to deal with it.”
Simply hectoring individual citizens or blaming developing countries for not doing more to rein in harmful emissions, he said, won’t fix the problem. He described a situation in which a man has to drive 50 miles every day in an old pickup truck to his job so he can support his family. He can’t afford an electric or hybrid vehicle and there’s no mass transit.
“You can lecture about climate change but he’s just trying to get to work,” Obama said. “And if you are dismissive of his legitimate specific concerns about supporting his family, then he is going to tune you out, regardless of the science of climate change.”
Similarly, he said, millions of people in the Third World live without basics, so it would be unreasonable to expect them to reject coal-fired electricity that could transform their lives.
At the same time, Obama said, citizens in places like China or India to press their governments to do better. One reason he was able to persuade the Beijing government to sign on to the Paris Accords was because the growing middle class in China, faced with nasty pediatric cancer rates or unbreathable air, views environmental degradation as their most important political concern, he said.
“The Chinese government, even though it’s not a democracy, became sensitive enough to the potential political instability of this environmental crisis that they said, ‘It makes sense for us to sign up.”
Obama said the U.S. and other industrial nations spent decades spewing pollution as they developed their economies and built infrastructure until they locked in a high carbon economy. It’s simply unreasonable to tell developing countries they need to stop, he argued.
What the West needs to do is help the Third World “leapfrog our development models” and come up with systems where they can get electricity and produce enough food without destroying the planet.
“We have to figure out how do we give them the opportunity to enjoy a reasonable standard of living while still preserving the environment,” Obama said.
The thousands of people attending the event put on by the Economic Club and Global Institute for Conscious Economics also heard the former president talk about his favourite thing about Canada.
“You’re just so reasonable,” he said. “Canadians are super reasonable.”
This story was first published by The Canadian Press on Jan. 23, 2020.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
