In February I penned an article arguing that fear-based climate messaging often drives people to despondency and apathy rather than climate action. In this post, I’d like to offer a counter example of how positive, thoughtful climate messaging can inspire people to want to do better. I am grateful to the students and teachers at St. Margaret’s school, Minister George Heyman and the students in my EOS 365 (Climate and Society) class for participating and contributing to an intergenerational conversation on climate change on Monday, March 4, 2024.

EOS 365 (Climate and Society) is a course I developed at UVic and first offered in 2009. The lectures follow the chapters in the book Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World that I first published in 2008. In the course I survey the climate system and its interaction with past, present, and future societies, including the onset of agriculture/domestication of animals in the Holocene, the rise and fall of early civilizations, the Anthropocene and global warming. Early in the course I teach a module on science communication. I emphasize that if one wants to advance lasting climate solutions, then one must bring people with you rather than alienating those who may not wish to prioritize climate action.  I point out that politicians are elected to represent everyone, not just their support base, and so policy makers need to listen and respond to the views of all stakeholders.  

I also suggest to the students that whether or not society wants to deal with global warming really boils down to one question:

Do we the present generation owe anything to future generations in terms of the quality of the environment we leave behind. Yes? or No?

Science can’t answer that question. But science tells us why this is ultimately the question that needs to be asked. If the answer is yes, then we have no choice but to immediately take steps to decarbonize energy systems for the consequences of unchecked emission growth are profound (widespread species extinction and unparalleled geopolitical instability). If the answer is no, then who cares about global warming?

In class I also note that formulating climate policy is often inconsistent with a four year political cycle as the effects of the policy decisions made today will not be felt in the political lifetime of those making the decisions. Yet these same politicians will not be around in the future to be held accountable for the decisions they did or did not make. And so policies with demonstrable short-term outcomes often take precedence over climate policy. Allocating resources to advance short term “wins” will allow you to point to your political successes in a few years and proclaim “I was responsive to your needs; please re-elect me and I will do more”.  It’s next to impossible to do the same with climate policy. But I would argue that there is a moral and ethical imperative to advance climate solutions now if society believes in the importance of intergenerational equity.

Building on the themes of effective climate communication and intergenerational equity, I hosted an event in EOS 365 on March 4 inspired by the Grade 7 (and 8) students at St. Margaret’s School, Victoria BC. Four generations were involved in the conversation: 1) the St. Margaret’s students; 2) the UVic students; 3) the teachers from St. Margaret’s; 4) the Honourable George Heyman (Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy) and me.

On February 1 2024,  I attended St. Margaret’s Grade 7 Environmental Summit and was blown away by the insight and creativity of the students. The Grade 7 class had been learning about the socioeconomic and environmental ramifications of global warming. Students took on the role of an affected party (e.g. firefighter, fisher, pilot, business owner etc.) and researched how global warming was going to affect them.  I listened to numerous testimonies from the Grade 7 students who role-played their chosen characters and was taken aback by their insight and how effectively, and articulately they were able to communicate their stories.

The highlight of the event for me was was when the Grade 7/8 St. Margaret’s choir sang a rendition of an SOS from the kids in front of all those in attendance.

My March 4 class began with the St. Margaret’s grade 7/8 choir, led by Mike Keddy, setting the tone for the rest of our conversation by once more singing an SOS from the kids. At the end of the song, and as the final words “you can do better than this” were sung, Mike Keddy held up a Montreal Canadians pennant (indeed one can do better than that).

We were keeping things light and continuing the playful banter that had started at St. Margaret’s School when I noticed middle years teacher Michael Jones had decorated his classroom with some Edmonton Oilers swag. Michael arrived at my class wearing his Oilers jersey, while the TA for the class Katherine Martin proudly sported a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater. She was joined by  middle years teacher and fellow Leaf’s fan Meaghan Thompson who showed up with a Leaf’s cap.

And of course, while noting the obvious irony, I adorned my Oilers jersey.

We were honoured to have Minister Heyman attend the class. He had just announced that he was not seeking reelection in the next provincial election moments before we started, and EOS 365 was his first public appearance following that announcement. Once the choir had finished, Minister Heyman spoke about CleanBC and how is government was responding to the challenge of global warming and capitalizing on the opportunity it provides for innovation and creativity in addressing the challenge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Minister Heyman kindly agreed to allow the EOS 365 and St. Margaret’s students to quiz him in a “kinder and gentler” version of Question Period. First, a St. Margaret’s student read out their prepared script. Unfortunately, in the time available I could only select six students to speak: SO was the CEO of the world’s largest oil company; SW was the heiress to Lululemon; DS was a climate scientist; AM owned a Victoria-based construction contracting company; LA was a young cosmetic designer and owner of an eco-friendly company; TA was a Victoria-based frefighter.

In advance of the class I had given six EOS 365 students copies of the scripts that were going to be read out (see the instagram reel at the end of this post). All six of these students were from the first cohort enrolled in UVic’s new BSc in Climate Science degree program. Each of these students asked the Minister a thoughtful yet probing question that they had prepared in advance and based on the script they were given. The Minister responded in an equally thoughtful way. I role-played the Speaker, and offered the class a supplementary question which was subsequently posed to the Minister. And so we proceeded to explore how the BC government was responding to climate change in six unique sectors.

This particular class was perhaps the most enriching and rewarding experience I’ve ever had while teaching at the university level. And I started teaching in 1986! My sincere thanks to the students and teachers at St. Margaret’s School, the Minister and his staff, and the BSc in Climate Science and other students in EOS 365 for making this event so successful.

My hope in organizing this event was to demonstrate to my class how positive, hopeful, constructive and solutions-focused climate communication can inspire others to want to take climate action. Too often, activists use fear-based messaging, or outrageous acts of civil disobedience, like throwing soup on a priceless Van Gogh or disrupting traffic and creating chaos on local streets in an attempt to raise awareness as to the seriousness of climate change. As I have argued before, more often than not, such behaviour does little more than drive people to despondency and apathy rather than climate action.

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by UVic Science (@uvicscience)

On May 31, 2023 and in what can only be described as a textbook example of ideological decision-based evidence-making, Trustees voted unanimously to cancel the school liaison officer (SLO) program in all School District 61 (SD61) schools (the only school district in BC to do so). The Vancouver School Board, which had previously eliminated school liaison officers in 2021, reinstated them in September 2023.

Remarkably, the SD61 decision was reached without consultation with any Police Board in the region or the leadership of either the Esquimalt or Songhees First Nations. In support of their decision, School Board Chair, and former BC Green candidate for Oak Bay-Gordon Head, Nicole Duncan demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of SLOs and the community policing model (ironically in a community she wanted to represent in the BC Legislature) by stating “Police are being asked to fill in gaps in student support and to take on roles that should be filled by individuals with specialized expertise, such as youth and family counsellors and social workers“.

The SD61 decision built on a bizarre press release issued by the BC Office of the Human Rights Commissioner on November 22, 2022: Letter to school trustees on human rights concerns with the use of School Liaison Officers in B.C. schools. While obviously an overreach of the mandate of the unelected BC Human Rights Commissioner, she stated “I strongly recommend that all school districts end the use of SLOs until the impact of these programs can be established empirically. ” I was serving on the the Oak Bay Police Board at the time and was very familiar with Oak Bay’s community policing model and the important preventative role that school liaison officers play in such a model. I had hoped the Human Rights Commissioner letter was supported by extensive research on SLOs in BC Schools. Sadly, all that I could find was a single report commissioned by her office known as the Samuels-Wortley report.

I thoroughly reviewed the Samuels-Wortley report. It provides a literature review of studies pertaining to SLO programs in Canada and the United States. First, it’s important to note that the author states on page 3 of her report “an extensive review of the literature reveals no peer-reviewed studies that explore the impacts of Canadian SLO programs on marginalized students.” In fact, one of the five peer-reviewed Canadian studies the author found pertaining to Canadian SLOs suggested positive outcomes when introduced as a component of a community policing model (Broll and Howells, 2019).

The US-based research reviewed in the Samuels-Wrotley report focussed on the “school-to-prison” pipeline, violence, US-based SLO training protocol etc. and cannot be generalized to Canada. Even the Toronto Police internal evaluation reviewed in the Samuels-Wortley report is not generalizable to Greater Victoria as they were assessing a targetted SLO program introduced after the fatal shooting of a student at a Toronto high school, not as a key component of a community-policing framework.

The SD61 decision was also supported by a thoroughly debunked letter from the Greater Victoria Teacher’s Association who had apparently not surveyed their members before coming up with their supposedly (but clearly not) researched ideological position. On the other hand, the Victoria Principals’ and Vice Principals’ Association, whose members are in charge of individual school management wrote a strong letter of support for SLOs to the Board of Trustees that was apparently ignored.

What’s most odd about the GVTA letter is that in April 2018, when I was serving in the BC Legislature as the MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head, Victoria Police cut their SLO program after not being given the resources to maintain their frontline services. By December 2018, the Greater Victoria Teacher’s Association began a campaign to get police liaison officer’s back in Victoria Schools that continued into 2019 as school-based incidents started to rise. The GVTA’s dramatic policy lurch strikes me as a textbook example of what happens when one or two idealogues start ramming through their agenda while claiming to speak on behalf of the collective.

Rather than choosing to consult with those delivering or providing oversight into the SLO program, School Board Trustees seemed to be swayed by those purporting to have uncovered gotcha evidence from FOI information they received. The egregious misinformation brought forward in this regard provided the “evidence” to support the ideological narrative needed to justify a predetermined decision (so-called decision-based evidence-making) to eliminate SLOs from SD61 schools. For example, on X (formerly known as Twitter), one activist offered gotcha ‘proof’ that VicPD were targeting members of the BIPOC community. They pointed out that 19% of all “youth suspects” arrested by VicPD were indigenous whereas only 5% of the population was indigenous. What they failed to point out was that the data they were looking at was aggregate rather than individual data. To illustrate this, suppose there were 100 arrests & one BIPOC individual committed 19 of them. Suppose the other 81 were committed by 81 different other folk. Then the statistic is only 1.2% of people VicPD labeled as “youth suspects” were BIPOC. Perhaps the activists would have served our community better if they educated themselves on the data before making incorrect assertions.

In another example, a powerpoint presentation to a School District committee on SLOs seemed to have been particularly influential even though none of the purported “gotcha” statistics were checked with VicPD and most were misinterpreted. Sadly with gangs now having increased access to schools, vulnerable youth become easy victims for grooming into gang life. But that’s not the only consequence of the irresponsible School Board decision. Here’s an incomplete list of what the Board has identified as services the SLOs used to provide that now fall into the responsibility of already overburdened principals and vice-principals, along with the District’s lone Safe Schools Coordinator. This list also illustrates the challenges faced by schools and students since the removal of the SLOs.

• Longer wait times accessing crisis support for students.
• Loss of student support as staff are pulled to support the critical student.
• Additional training cost for Non-Violent Crisis Intervention (CPI).
• Support for staff dealing with the crisis.
• Delays in receiving supports from police departments nonemergency calls.
• District Youth and Family Counsellor (YFC) and School-Based-Team (SBT) increased caseload.
• Alternatives are not available for a majority of activities.
• Additional program, training, and equipment costs.
• Information around community safety is not being shared in a timely manner.
• Reduction in pro-active and collaborative work around internet/social/media/cyber bullying.
• No longer an opportunity to build a positive relationship on a regular basis.
• Increase in vandalism and graffiti on school grounds.
• Students no longer have an opportunity to learn through a police focused lens.
• There is no longer an opportunity to build positive relationships between police and students on a regular basis.

The following programs or presentations are missing from this list that the District provided:

• Gangs in (BC)
• Personal Safety
• Female Personal Safety
• Halloween Safety
• Healthy/unhealthy Relationships
• Human Trafficking
• LGBTQ Presentations
• PARTY program
• Property & Vehicle Crime
• Shoplifting
• Stranger Danger
• Street Drugs
• WITS program
• Mentor individual students

While at present, the Board of Education is certainly within its right to ban SLOs from their schools, community safety falls within provincial and local government jurisdiction. My hope is that the province will step in to rectify what has happened in SD61 through the introduction of legislation or regulation to ensure that such ill informed decisions cannot occur in the future without either provincial approval or consultation with the affected police boards (charged with oversight of policing). Nobody’s interests are served when our collective safety is undermined by poorly thought through decisions that are grounded in nothing more than ideology and virtue signalling.

I wish to offer my sincere thanks to all police officers in our region for their continued service to our community. I can only imagine how decisions like this, based on nonsensical rhetoric and misleading information, affect your morale. Yet the same activists undermining our region’s policing would almost certainly be the first ones to call for your help when a problem arises. Finally, I can’t imagine how police officers feel as they go to pick their children up at school while dressed in uniform knowing that new school district policy requires schools to log when officers are on school property.

Shame on the Greater Victoria School Board.

Today was an historic day in the legislature as Bill 41: Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act passed third reading with unanimous support of all members of the house. The passage of this bill was a foundational piece of the Confidence and Supply Agreement that enabled us to support the BC NDP minority government. My colleagues ans I are thrilled to have played a part in ensuring that British Columbia is the first jurisdiction in North America to pass this legislation that implements the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into law.

Below is the press release my office issued upon the passage of the bill.

---

Media Release

---

Declaration Act passes unanimously, a crucial step forward for reconciliation efforts
For immediate release
Nov. 26, 2019

VICTORIA, B.C. – The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act passed unanimously today and marks a historic moment for British Columbia.

“Passing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act today is a significant milestone on our path to reconciliation,” said B.C. Green MLA Adam Olsen for Saanich-North and the Islands and a member of Tsartlip First Nation. “This act represents a foundational change in approach to how government interacts with Indigenous people in the future, and I look forward to the work ahead.

“Generations of Indigenous people in Canada have fought to reverse the discriminatory laws and actions of successive governments. Today, for the first time in our province, we are using the powers of the Assembly to take a step towards reconciliation. I raise my hands to all who have come before and laid the foundation for this Act.

“The legislation does not immediately solve all conflict in our province, but it is my sincere belief and the belief of the B.C. Green Caucus that it puts British Columbia on a path of greater certainty. Our province has been limited by the uncertainty of litigation, and now, rather than conflict there is an opportunity of increased collaboration and of economic prosperity that is fairer for everyone.”

Bill 41 acknowledges the basic human rights that generations of Indigenous people have fought to have recognized and that have existed in Canada’s constitution for decades. This bill affirms these existing rights and is a concrete step to undo the colonial legacy imposed on Indigenous people for generations. Implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into legislation was a key recommendation from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

“Social justice and respect of diversity are more than core principles for the B.C. Greens, they are values that every British Columbian can embrace. And, today, MLAs stood united in support of those core values,” said B.C. Green Party Leader Dr. Andrew Weaver, MLA from Oak Bay- Gordon Head. “The passage of this bill was a foundational piece of the Confidence and Supply Agreement that enables us to support this NDP minority government.”

British Columbia is the first jurisdiction in North America to pass legislation that implements the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into law. BC is home to the second largest population of First Nations in Canada, according to Stats Canada.

“In my riding, I regularly see firsthand how a discriminatory and dysfunctional approach from governments over the last hundred years has led to sustained intergenerational trauma that continues today and will take many years of hard work to overcome,” said MLA Sonia Furstenau for Cowichan Valley. “The passage of this bill is a step forward that leaves me optimistic for the future – one that doesn’t ignore basic human rights but treats all people with respect and aims for collaboration rather than conflict.”

A commitment to adopting the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in B.C. is a component of the Confidence and Supply Agreement between the B.C. Green Caucus and the BC NDP government. In 2017, every Cabinet minister in the provincial government was tasked with a mandate to implement the UN Declaration and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.

-30-

Media contact
Macon L.C. McGinley
Communications Director and Press Secretary
B.C. Green Caucus
+1 250-882-6187 |macon.mcginley@leg.bc.ca

The Federal Court of Appeal ruled today to allow six of the twelve legal challenges against the Trans Mountain pipeline to proceed. These challenges are limited to the adequacy of the consultation with Indigenous Peoples and related issues. Below I reproduce our media statement in response to the ruling from the Federal Court of Appeal.

---

Media Statement

---

Trans Mountain pipeline faces six legal challenges; court rejects all environmental appeals
For immediate release
September 4, 2019

VICTORIA, B.C. – The Federal Court of Appeal ruled today to allow six of the twelve legal challenges against the Trans Mountain pipeline to proceed. These challenges are limited to the adequacy of the consultation with Indigenous Peoples and related issues.

“It is significant that that the courts will once again hear from First Nations about the consultation process,” said said Dr. Andrew Weaver, leader of the B.C. Greens. “Honouring the reconciliation process in Canada must require more than after the-fact engagement about a project the government always intends to approve. I am disappointed that the significant environmental risks that this project poses will not be taken up by the courts.

“The B.C. Green Caucus will continue its campaign to pressure government and engage the public as well. Because we know that continuing to invest in fossil fuel infrastructure is not just fiscally irresponsible, it is an economic liability. The Bank of Canada recently warned about future stranded assets in the oil and gas sector due to climate-related risk. This means TMX will only turn a profit if all global efforts to combat climate change by transitioning away from fossil fuels to clean alternatives fail.

“So is the federal government wishing for a failed global climate change strategy? The Liberals say they will use any profits from the TMX to fund Canada’s transition to a cleaner-energy economy. That  is like saying profit from the Titanic’s maiden voyage will be used to fund remodeling the ship. They are actively working to undermine the very thing they say they are working to improve.

“We can do better than banking on a future that continues to rely on fossil fuels decades into a climate disaster. And we can fund a clean energy economy without sacrificing our children’s environmental future.”

-30-

Media contact
Macon L.C.  McGinley | Press Secretary
B.C. Green Caucus
+1 250-882-6187 |macon.mcginley@leg.bc.ca

Yesterday in the legislature I rose during Members’ statements to give an impromptu statement on global warming and intergenerational equity. The BC Liberals, as part of their petulant shenanigans during the last day of sitting of the BC Legislature, decided that they would boycott the two minute statements that occur everyday. As a consequence, several members scrambled to fill their normal speaking slots.

Below I reproduce the video and text of this statement.

---

Video of Statement

---

---

Text of Statement

---

A. Weaver: It gives me a great pleasure to rise, on this, the last day of the session, to deliver a two-minute statement.

Prior to coming up to the Legislature today, I did what I often do. I took a look at the seasonal climate forecast for this part of the world. The seasonal climate forecast for the summer of 2019 in British Columbia is this: extraordinarily high probabilities of higher than normal temperatures and dryer than normal conditions. What does that lead to? That leads to yet another suite of conditions that will lead to forest fires in British Columbia.

I remind members that back in 2004, Nathan Gillett, Mike Flannigan, Francis Zwiers and I published a paper in Geophysical Research Letters where we identified the fact that we could detect and attribute the increased area burnt in Canada of forest fires directly to human activity. Since that time, similar papers have come out for Siberia, for the eastern U.S., for Europe and elsewhere. We know that the increasing forest fires in our country is a direct consequence of global warming.

In fact, the science of global warming goes back to 1824, when Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier was the first to recognize that the atmosphere was transparent to incoming solar radiation but was effective at blocking outgoing longwave radiation and kept the surface area of the planet warmer to allow life to flourish.

In 1861, John Tyndall, best known for his incredible sideburns, actually developed an amazing instrument that allowed us to detect the different radiative absorption properties of a diverse array of greenhouse gases.

In 1896, Svante Arrhenius, a famous Swedish Nobel laureate was the first to actually directly calculate the increasing warming associated with increasing carbon dioxide levels.

And in 1936, George Calendar was the first to make multi-century predictions as to what would happen as a direct consequence of increasing carbon dioxide.

In fact, the very first national assessment was done in 1979 — the year they graduated from high school — where Jule Charney from MIT was tasked with assessing what human contribution to climate change was. At that time, the best scientific estimate of the warming associated with increasing greenhouse gases was between 1½ and 4½ for a doubling of carbon dioxide. That number has not changed for 35 years of scientific research.

As we leave to the summer, I ask members to consider this. The question of global warming boils down to a single question. Do we the present generation owe it to future generations, in terms of leaving behind to them the quality environment that we were blessed with inheriting?

Intergenerational equity is the question — for those who make the decisions today don’t have to live the consequences of the decisions they made if the next generation will. I suspect those in the gallery, those children in the gallery looking down upon us today, would suggest that indeed it behooves us to put intergenerational equity front and centre in our decision-making.