NDP's Avi Lewis wants to put climate back on the table |
NDP leadership hopeful Avi Lewis earlier this month released his shoot-for-the stars climate policy, titled A Green New Deal for Canada.
It’s a retooled shopping list of laudable ideas, starting with a complete ban on new fossil fuel extraction projects, which we know are the single biggest contributor to global warming. Lewis proposes investing billions in “clean energy, building retrofits, green and public transport, and community and nature resilience projects.”
Projects would be run by public corporations that would manufacture everything from heat pumps and balcony solar units to electric vans, buses and farm equipment.
Workers hired to carry out this agenda would be plucked first and foremost from the shrinking fossil fuel industry and paid union wages to transition to a new clean economy. Others would include legions of young people hired as part of a massively expanded federal Youth Climate Corps recently kickstarted by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government in its inaugural budget.
If this all sounds familiar, you’re right. The “Green New Deal” concept is not that new — Lewis and his wife, environmental activist and author Naomi Klein, have been beating the drum about it for at least a decade. And Lewis’ latest version reads very much like the Green New Deal supported by left Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez south of the border.
But by making climate a........