Open letter to Premier Darrell Pasloski:
Today is Global Divestment Day. This event calls attention to a movement that started last year and is picking up steam.
Major investors like the Rockefellers and the Norwegian sovereign wealth (oil) fund, and major universities have joined this movement and begun to remove their investments from oil and gas stocks. UBC just announced this week that they are pulling out all of their investments in fossil fuel stocks.
Their reason? Fossil fuels are destroying the environment that we depend on for our survival and wellbeing.
Before Christmas I sent you and all of the elected members an email with links to two very important presentations at the last UN climate change conference in Lima, Peru, December.
The two scientists in the first presentation were very clear: we are facing a climate crisis and that we must act now to reduce our fossil fuel dependency. (To see the video, search online for “UNFCCC Arctic methane emergency.”)
The reality is: the Yukon must leave our fossil fuels in the ground. This vision of developing our economy around oil and gas in the Yukon is not a dream, it is a nightmare. It cannot happen if we are to save our children’s future.
The next link is a presentation by John Kerry, the US secretary of state, who spoke six days later at the same climate conference. (Search “John Kerry remarks COP-20”)
He stated that the U.S. now gets climate change and they have now found common ground with China to act to drastically reduce their carbon emissions.
But they can’t do it alone. They are calling on everyone else on the planet to step up to the plate, and that includes all of us here in the Yukon.
For us, this means we must stop wasting our tax dollars on developing oil and gas, and start putting our investments towards renewable energy research and development.
The Yukon has the expertise and is full of great potential for developing renewable energy to eliminate our fossil fuel addiction. Working together we will achieve independence from fossil fuels.
We need to start now. We need your help.
Please show us leadership and help us build our renewable energy future.
As the rocker Sam Roberts sings: “We’re all in this together.”
JP Pinard, PhD, PEng,
Whitehorse