Students to elders against fossil fuels
The Fridays for Future student climate strike on October 22 included some civil disobedience and saw about fifty people rally outside city hall in the first of several local actions. The key local student demand is for Hamilton city council to endorse the Fossil Free Non-Proliferation Treaty that is gaining widespread global support.
High school and university students addressed the rally on the urgency of the climate crisis. They also revealed that Nrinder Nann has agreed to ask council to embrace the treaty that demands an end to all new fossil fuel exploration and production and a phase-out of existing production to meet the global objective of limiting warming to a 1.5 Celsius increase from pre-industrial levels.
The treaty also requires a just transition for every fossil fuel worker, community and country. It has won support from cities around the world including Los Angeles, Barcelona and Sydney Australia as well as 800 civil society organizations and more than 2000 scientists, academics and researchers. In Canada it has been backed by both Vancouver and Toronto as well as many organizations and individuals.
The Toronto resolution approved last month by 22-2 vote urged “the Federal Government to negotiate a global treaty for the non-proliferation of fossil fuels. It also reaffirmed the city’s “commitment to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and the greenhouse gas reduction targets and aspires to meet its proportionate greenhouse gas reductions.”
Vancouver was the first city to act on the treaty a year ago. It also directed city staff “to consider actions in the Climate Emergency Action Plan to reduce fossil fuel supply within Vancouver’s jurisdiction, such as supporting conversion of the energy supplied by gas/diesel stations and the fossil (natural) gas distribution system to low carbon alternatives.”
To underline their demands many of the rally attendees briefly blocked Main Street traffic three times. With assistance from Extinction Rebellion activists, this gave many of the students their first taste of civil disobedience.
The Divest McMaster group announced it will conduct a 24-hour occupation of the campus student centre starting at 8:30 am on Wednesday October 27 to pressure the university’s Board of Governors (BOG) meeting the next day to actually follow through on last winter’s promise to eliminate fossil fuel companies from McMaster’s endowment funds. The occupation is dubbed “Drain the BOG”.
The student group notes that as of 2019 McMaster had $37.6 million invested into fossil fuel companies such as Suncor Energy Inc., Husky Energy Inc. and Imperial Oil Ltd and that these represent 3.3% of McMaster total investments.”
Another Hamilton climate action is set for Friday October 29 at 1 pm starting outside the Bank of Montreal branch at Main and Bay. Elders for Climate Sanity have been regularly highlighting the heavy financial involvement of Canada’s five big banks in funding the fossil fuel sector, including the tar sands, and will take participants on a parade of “climate crimes scenes”.
BMO was the founding funder of the Coastal Gas Link fracked gas pipeline being pushed through the unceded territories of the Wet’suwet’en. The elders will visit all the “bankster” branches in downtown Hamilton, with special attention at the Royal Bank which is the fifth largest fossil fuel funder in the world.
