Addressing climate change is a matter of will, not lack of means

By Terri Chu

Addressing climate change is a matter of will, not lack of means

Political leadership is rare these days. I want to give a shout out to the mayor of Paris for doing what those of us in Toronto can only daydream about. 

In the 10 years since holding power, Mayor Anne Hidalgo has closed over 100 streets to motor vehicles. In a move sure to enrage car manufacturers, the parking fees for oversized murder machines such as SUVs have tripled. Torontonians can only salivate at the idea of removing 50,000 parking spots. The concessions we give to car drivers are unbelievable in this city. 

Paris has also constructed more than 1300 kilometres of bike lanes since Mayor Hidalgo has held office. Meanwhile Toronto boasts less than 300 kilometres of on-street cycling paths as of the end of 2022. Those changes in Paris have contributed to a 40 per cent decline in air pollution—something Toronto desperately needs. 

Toronto has its own challenges, starting with the car culture that sees residents whining loudly at the prospect of losing a single street parking spot. There’s the privilege of taking up public space with their vehicles for a song, meanwhile homeless encampments regularly get cleared by police. The use of public space has always been for the wealthy it seems…at least wealthy enough to own a car. Despite having extremely low capacity (rarely do cars have more than two people and usually only one), cars are rarely asked to give up space for public transit. Most of our major streetcar and bus routes see cars intermingled with public transit vehicles. A vehicle carrying dozens of people only has designated road usage on a small handful of lines. 

Drivers were up in arms over parking ticket rates going up to $70, meanwhile skipping a $3.50 TTC fare can land you a fine of $400. 

The concessions that we give to car and car drivers are part of a system of oppression that favours the rich. Now that we have enslaved the bulk of the population to cars, giving them no choice but to use them for mundane tasks to simply live, keeping those car concessions has turned into a rallying cry for advocates of the poor because public transit is so horrible in poor areas that they really have no choice. We are stuck in a horrible cycle that I do not see our political leadership having half the gall of Mayor Hidalgo to deal with. Both sides of our political spectrum favour continued car ownership. On the right, those who shill for the billionaire oil barons of course want us to keep driving. On the left, the unions have a huge number of auto and oil industry jobs they are keen to protect. This leaves people like you and me suffering the consequences of a system designed to take away our quality of life but too economically important to get out of. 

The answer? We can’t just keep paying lip service to climate targets. We have no idea how many people in India have died in the latest heat wave. Just declaring a climate emergency while doing diddly squat does not cut it. Transition means some people will get hurt. The ones hurt most will be the poor oil barons who may need to scale down their mega yacht plans. The humanity!! 

Next are the jobs dependent on the oil industry. We can have complicated schemes to ensure there is a just transition or we can do something simple like implement a universal basic income (UBI) scheme so that nobody is beholden to work that they hate or has no escape from a planet-frying job. Again, the ones hurt the most will be the billionaires. The injustice! 

The city can’t implement these schemes alone, but if governments were serious about preventing mass death events from climate change, they would start with removing car-centric policies and a UBI plan. It’s simple policy, but hard politics. 

READ MORE BY TERRI CHU:

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• GREENINGS: Our trees are in crisis (Feb. 2023)
• GREENINGS: It’s time for climate truth not trinkets (Dec. 2022)
• GREENINGS: Vote this election (Provincial Election 2022)
• GREENINGS: The disproportionate impact of inflation (Jan. 2022)
• GREENINGS: Avoid the stress of stuff at Xmas (Dec. 2021)
• GREENINGS: More greenspace, fewer cars (Apr. 2021)
• GREENINGS: Urban agriculture has many environmental dividends(Mar. 2021)
• GREENINGS: May you find your xingfu in 2021 (Jan. 2021)
• GREENINGS: What happens if we don’t want to go back to the “before” times? (July 2020)
• GREENINGS: Capitalist truths exposed (May 2020)
• GREENINGS: Reflecting on who actually matters (Mar. 2020)
• GREENINGS: Short-term gains lead to long-term losses (Feb. 2020)
• GREENINGS: Emergency climate calls to city met with busy signal (Jan. 2020)
• GREENINGS: Moral cowardice fuels our failures (Dec. 2019)
• GREENINGS: Unpacking the winning bling (Nov. 2019)
• GREENINGS: Another election, another round of disappointing platforms(Oct. 2019)
• GREENINGS: Addiction to capitalism will lead to overdose (Sept. 2019)
• GREENINGS: Sing the same tune, PLEASE (August 2019)
• GREENINGS: Not sure what’s worse, climate crisis or denying it? (Summer 2019)
• GREENINGS: Plastic ban born of necessity (May 2019)
• GREENINGS: Confronting consumption (Spring 2019)
• GREENINGS: Preventing chaos, mass starvation (Dec. 2018)