The Minister of the Environment and the Fight against Climate Change, Benoit Charette, will not participate in one of the demonstrations organized this Friday in various cities of Quebec as part of a global mobilization in favor of greater “Climate justice”.
Two years later the imposing demonstration for the climate organized in Montreal, and in which young activist Greta Thunberg participated, several student organizations and youth groups have planned demonstrations in ten cities in the province, including Montreal and Quebec.
In order to participate in this “day of global mobilization for climate justice”, some 105,000 students have also voted in favor of a day of strike, according to data available Thursday early evening.
Minister Benoit Charette, who took part in the Montreal demonstration in September 2019, like several other politicians, will not be present this time. “The minister has other commitments during the event,” his cabinet confirmed Thursday, in a written response to To have to. The parliamentary assistant to the minister “for the fight against climate change”, Richard Campeau, will however be present, it was specified.
The head of Quebec Liberal Party, Dominique Anglade, will take part in the event which will start from the Monument to Sir George-Étienne Cartier, at the foot of Mount Royal, in the early afternoon. She will be accompanied in particular by Member of Parliament Isabelle Melançon, former Minister of the Environment and official opposition critic for the environment. Other deputies will be present at the march which will take place in Quebec.
the Quebec Party has also planned to participate in some of the demonstrations. Chief Paul St-Pierre Plamondon “will be in Quebec with activists,” said the PQ formation. Solidarity Quebec also plans to participate in marches in four cities.
These demonstrations constitute the first major climate mobilization in Quebec since the start of the pandemic. In September 2019, in the streets of Montreal, about 500,000 people took part in a massive demonstration.
Dangerous heating
For two years, climate science has clarified its prognosis for decades to come, if humanity fails to substantially reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
In a report published in August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds that even if GHG emissions stabilize and then decline over the next few decades, the average rise in temperatures is likely to reach + 2 ° C in the next 20 years or so. years, then almost + 3 ° C by the end of the century, compared to the pre-industrial era.
If this last scenario were to be confirmed, the IPCC warns that the world as we know it would become “unrecognizable”, with a “decline in life expectancy” and “a decline in the quality of life” in several regions of the country. the planet. The “state of health and well-being” of the population would thus be “substantially reduced” and this state would continue to deteriorate over the following decades.
The IPCC also warns against a “major” increase in food prices, conflicts and climatic migrations. According to a report released last week by the World Bank, the climate crisis is expected to force more than 200 million people to leave their region or country by 2050.
However, six years after the signing of the Paris Agreement, states are still far from doing what is necessary to reduce GHG emissions. In fact, there is no question of stabilizing emissions at present, and even less of a decline, but of an increase for the next few years. By calculating the voluntary commitments of States, the UN estimated last week that emissions are on track to increase by 16% by 2030, compared to their 2010 level, when they are expected to decline by at least 50%. This leads us to a warming of at least 2.7 ° C, whereas we have already reached + 1.1 ° C.
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Reference-feedproxy.google.com