{"id":24856,"date":"2019-10-03T19:07:24","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T23:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24856"},"modified":"2019-10-10T18:01:19","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T22:01:19","slug":"we-stand-with-greta-local-activists-lawmakers-send-climate-change-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/we-stand-with-greta-local-activists-lawmakers-send-climate-change-message\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe stand with Greta\u201d \u2013 Local activists, lawmakers send climate change message"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just a few days ago,\nYvonne Kelly\u2019s son took her aside and said he wasn\u2019t going to have children. It\nwasn\u2019t a statement of ability or even, necessarily, desire. To him, it was a\nreasoned statement of fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018It just\nmakes no sense,\u2019\u201d she recalls. \u201cThat really hurt my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it is spurring\naction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason it didn\u2019t\nmake sense, she says, is what kind of world would her son be welcoming a child\nof his own to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That weighed heavily\non the minds of about a dozen or so Aurora residents who gathered\nintermittently at Fleury Park on Friday afternoon to stand with the thousands\nmarching in Toronto, Montreal, and in cities around the world for the Global\nClimate Strike, a movement led by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg\nin her fight against climate change, a movement in which her voice has captured\nthe world\u2019s attention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aurora\u2019s efforts did\nnot have the numbers they had hoped for, but what they lacked in numbers,\nparticipants \u2013 including Councillor Rachel Gilliland \u2013 made up for in passion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Ms. Kelly is\ncurrently standing as Newmarket-Aurora\u2019s NDP candidate in this month\u2019s Federal\nelection, she said the fight against climate change \u2013 and, indeed, Greta\u2019s\nmessage \u2013 is one that transcends partisan boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe changes that\nneed to be made are astronomical and they are at a much bigger level,\u201d she\nsaid. \u201cWe need to hold our governments, who are our spokespeople, accountable\nto make sure that they don\u2019t just stand up strongly to emitters and those who\nare benefiting from climate change. This doesn\u2019t just happen. This is something\nthat was done to the earth and it was done to all of us. This is an issue we\ncan\u2019t be divided on. This one crosses all those lines and there is a power in\nthat.\u201d
\nThis was a view shared by members of the group, who\nwere organized by local activist Heidi Stoecklin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of us are here\nfor reasons and we realize climate change is very real and we want to support\nthe work of Greta and the youth,\u201d said Ms. Stocklin. \u201cWe are just really\nwishing to keep this movement going within our Town. I feel Aurora really cares\nand we can come together to show that. I wish to say I\u2019m with Greta, we\u2019re with\nGreta, and maybe one day we can all say \u2018Aurora is with Greta\u2019 loud and proud.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greta Thunberg\u2019s\nefforts to highlight the immediacy of climate change captured the public\u2019s\nattention almost immediately, but hit fever pitch over the week leading up to\nthe Global Climate Strike with her passionate and provocative plea for action\nat the United Nations and her challenge to U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her remarks won\nlegions of new supporters, but also emboldened her detractors, an issue which\ncaught the attention of Heather Lambert who attended Friday\u2019s rally in Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have heard some\ndiscouraging remarks about Greta from different individuals, even in the media.\nI think that it is going to require the passion of youth and idealism in order\nto make the changes that need to be changed and need to happen in this world,\u201d\nsaid Ms. Lambert. \u201cI don\u2019t know if we can even turn back the damage we have done already and if we\u2019re going to start, we have to start\nright now and hope that we can make things better for our children, our\ngrandchildren, their children and so on because it is not just about us and it\nis certainly not just about the corporate world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe corporate world\nhas money and they will take care of themselves when they need to, but the\ncommon individual is the one that is going to suffer here and that is why it is\nso important to get behind that passion and idealism of youth and bring in the\nyouth for something that is going to benefit us all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The words were not\ntaken lightly by Councillor Rachel Gilliland, who was told by activist Teresa\nPorter that Aurora should declare a climate emergency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI agree with the\nstrike and I am here supporting not just my family, my community and the\nworld,\u201d said Councillor Gilliland. \u201cThis is so important. Governments really\nneed to step up. We are the loud voices and I stand with you guys and our\ncommunity. My daughter is in Queen\u2019s doing the same thing, I have another\ndaughter at McMaster doing the same thing, and they are so super-concerned\nabout their future and this next Federal election is really important to them\nbecause they look at their future like, \u2018Am I going to be able to have a\nfamily? Are we going to be able to survive?\u2019 They are really paying attention\nand we need to pay attention too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing on Council\nand being a part of the community and being with you guys right now, I am\nstanding here and saying with a strong voice that we need to pay attention, we\nneed to wake up. Climate change is real and we need to do something about it\nnow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Councillor added\nshe is currently preparing a notice of motion which will call on Council to\ndeclare a climate emergency in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The purpose of this declaration, she says, is\nto “allow informed decision making around the Council table to help weigh\nin on the carbon impact along with other considerations in its decisions,\npublic education, and publicly reporting on the progress of our Town’s climate\naction.”<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Councillor bringing forward motion declaring “climate change emergency” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/2019-10-03-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6sU","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-21 03:31:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}