NewmarketToday welcomes your letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication).
I am a citizen who is interested in global warming, and in the way that policymakers respond to the evidence reported by world scientists who study the climate.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an excellent resource, and for non-scientists like me, the 32-page Summary for Policymakers is extremely helpful in understanding how climate change will affect us all soon.
I hope that our policymakers have read this. It is important to pay attention to what the world’s climate scientists are reporting, and we have a right to expect that those leading our country, our provinces, and our municipalities are taking notice of the science, and that they act accordingly.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) – an agency of the United Nations – has reported that temperatures will exceed, temporarily, 1.5C of warming by 2027, with an especially strong El Nino expected to arrive this year.
The past eight years have been the warmest ever recorded, and this has meant more record-breaking heatwaves, wildfires, flooding and severe storms. Repercussions for human health, food security, water management and the environment cannot be ignored.
Here in Ontario, we have so far been spared the worst outcomes of global warming, but we do not live in a bubble, and prudent policy-making requires planning ahead. We must be placing climate-resilient development at the forefront of all policy decisions.
The Ontario Greenbelt of protected land is vital for our food security, our water resources and biodiversity. We are currently losing about 130 hectares of prime farmland every day. That is unsustainable.
More than 60 river systems flow north and south out of the Oak Ridges Moraine, part of the Greenbelt. A myriad of often interconnected wetlands sustains wildlife and provides flood control. There can be no justification for subjecting the Greenbelt to urban sprawl.
In Ontario, we desperately need intelligent, well-informed leadership if we are to confront the climate crisis with measures to adapt and build resilience.
It is not too late for our MPPs and premier to get up to speed on all matters pertaining to climate change, and a good place to start would be by immediately reinstating the provincial office of Chief Science Advisor here in Ontario, which was so carelessly set aside by the Premier Doug Ford in 2018.
Teresa Ganna Porter
Newmarket
