Beyond a certain temperature humans overheat and die, we are essentially fragile. Despite this, those in government continue fuelling the climate crisis. Research has found that even the slightest leaks can make natural gas as bad as coal for the climate. “It takes as little as 0.2 per cent of gas to leak to make natural gas as big a driver of climate change as coal,” reports The New York Times. “That’s a tiny margin of error for a gas that is notorious for leaking from drill sites, processing plants and the pipes that transport it into power stations or homes and kitchens.” Despite this, in Saskatchewan, Methane Moe is building big new methane gas power plants. 

Earth just had its hottest day, week, and month in recorded history. Canada has been on fire for months, there is a megadrought in East Africa, in Brazil, 11 are dead and thousands have been displaced after floods and landslides in the Rio Grande, and four continents are under extreme heat warnings. This is just the start of massive destructive forces in our shared world.

At my family farm this summer where we grow haskaps, a boreal forest fruit, the trees are showing us visible signs of the changing state of the climate. Between the hot, dry spring and the huge amount of smoke in the air, all 5 varieties of haskap we grow, ripened three weeks early, and all at once. The orchard was purposefully planted with 5 varieties of haskap that would ripen one after another. This spring, everything became ripe and needed to be picked in mid-June. To say that is unusual is downplaying how strange it all was. 

The signs are here. We need to believe our own eyes and look to the natural world. We need to listen to the experts and be prepared to move forward cooperatively and with an “all hands on deck” approach.

That requires diverse voices in the Legislature. We need to mobilize now to ensure we elect the representatives willing to stand up for the solutions needed to mitigate the climate crisis.

I have been reading the book “Fire Weather” by John Vaillant about the Fort McMurray wildfire and how the climate crisis and the century of fire has now begun. This book should be mandatory reading for every elected official. It clearly lays out the relationship between the oil and gas industry’s ever-accelerating consumption of fossil fuel and our ever-increasing vulnerability to a new kind of “super wildfire.”

This is the moment to harness public attention and force radical action. All our work mobilizing and organizing towards the 2024 October Saskatchewan election is literally a battle for the future. We need Climate voices in the Legislature in this province.

It will take many volunteers but we must elect politicians who are ready to get us to net zero by 2035. We need at least one strong, Green voice in the Legislature in Saskatchewan. We need many skills to accomplish this. Some are able to campaign, some can write for candidates, and some can be financial agents (*** This IS critical, every candidate MUST HAVE a financial agent and we no longer have one volunteer willing to take on half the candidates single-handedly.) Please volunteer at https://www.saskgreen.ca/volunteer

Thank you for being here with us during this critical turning point in human history.

Naomi Hunter

Leader, Saskatchewan Green Party 

1-396-561-8880

[email protected]