 Okay, hello everybody. We're going to get started. Some people trickle into the event. Welcome. Thank you for joining us. My name is Leila. I'm a community experience librarian at the West Vancouver Memorial Library. And I'll be hosting the event tonight. Before we get started with the event. As you know, we're, this is happening in the virtual realm that I want to take a moment to situate us. Terrestrial beings as we are and acknowledge that I'm hosting this physically today on the unceded traditional territories of the Squamish, the Musqueam peoples. And I think especially whenever we talk about the environment and climate justice, it's really important to acknowledge Indigenous peoples who have been stewards of these lands and water. Since time immemorial and who continue to be on the forefront of climate activism. So as settlers, we must think it's important to look to Indigenous leadership and see how we can support their efforts and do our part to help protect these lands for now and for generations to come. So as part of that effort, West Vancouver Memorial Library at the start of this year launched our climate future initiative. And we did this as a way of engaging and supporting the community to learn together and act together to tackle the current climate crisis. So we started with some community cafes. We started with some community cafes in March where we invited the community to come and talk to us about climate and climate change. And that happened sort of right before COVID struck and then we had to shut everything down. So we've transitioned to virtual climate future through a book challenge and programming. And we're really excited to have this event tonight sort of tap off our first year of climate future programming, which will continue next year. So tonight we have with us Seth Klein to talk about his book, A Good War and Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. Really excited. And with us also today as moderator we have intersectional climate justice advocate and strategist, Jessica Toronto. So she'll be moderating the discussion and the Q&A. So I'm going to pass things over now to Jessica. Jessica, if you want to pop up your video. Absolutely. Thanks so much, Lila and Lynn and the Westman Memorial Library for hosting us in this incredible series on climate futures. Hi everyone, my name is Jessica Trong. I also go by Zhang Zhiyin, and that's because I've got Vietnamese, Chinese and Canadian roots. And as Lila mentioned, I have been a long term climate justice advocate starting from my high school days. But, you know, and I've really dedicated my life to really advancing the necessary environmental and climate work that we need. But for tonight, I'll be your moderator and I'm so excited to welcome you to Western's climate futures series with Seth Klein. And to chat more about his new book, A Good War, Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. This is such an important and critical conversation and thank you so much for joining us tonight. Tonight is about dreaming more boldly than ever, about a more just, a more sustainable, a more resilient and connected future. One that's not only possible, but that is also necessary. And as illustrated in Seth's book, A Good War, we faced unprecedented challenges in the past. And we can do that this again. So tonight we'll get a chance to hear firsthand from Seth about why he wrote this book, The Urgency of the Climate Emergency that we face and also how we can mobilize on the climate crisis as we've done during the Second World War and the lessons that we can learn from that. And then the second part of the evening is actually all about you and your questions. You'll have a chance to engage in dialogue with Seth about the good war that we have ahead in the fight. And what you each and we can each do to get collectively. So as we go along and as we listen to Seth, I'd invite you to participate to share your questions with us in the Q&A box. And for those of you who aren't as familiar with Zoom, that's right at the bottom to the right. You can type your questions into there. And you can also share your comments in the chat. I'd love to hear from you and actually to kick things off if folks are tuning in from the computers. Feel free to say hi and to share your name and where you're calling in from. For me, I'm also calling in from the Unceded Territories, the Musqueam Squamish and the Sleil-Waututh peoples. And as we talk about the climate emergency and climate leadership, we cannot forget the land defenders, the water protectors, the long time stewards of this land, long before it was known as Canada. So we must really center and uplift the voices of indigenous people who have and will be disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis, but who have also long been warning us about the impending crisis and also to hold some of the keys to imagining and to creating a different and a better world for all of us. And so I think we really need to walk this path forward together. So feel free to share in the chat your name, where you're calling in from, the Unceded Lands, if you know them, and to engage with us in this dialogue tonight. I really want to welcome, you know, I have some questions that I want to ask Seth myself, but I'm also most curious to hear from all of you. And just a bit of housekeeping just to note that this event is being recorded. But as you probably have realized, it's just Seth and I and Layla who are on the call. And yeah, before, before I introduce Seth, I just wanted to thank you, Seth. I think reading this book really gave me so much hope that, you know, while the climate crisis feels, you know, it feels there's so much despair and it's, it's, you know, a really grave issue. They gave me so much hope to believe that, you know, we have mobilized for unprecedented crisis is before here in Canada and within like living memory as well. And so, you know, I think there's so many lessons for what was what happened in the second world war and lessons that can be applied to frame and to act on the current moment here. So it is my distinct pleasure to introduce Seth, who is a mentor, a friend, and in my, my opinion, a policy visionary. As some of you know, Seth has served for 22 years as the founding British Columbia director of the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives also known as the CCPA. He's a public policy research, he's a public policy research institute committed to social economic and environmental justice. And he's now freelance writer, a speaker, and policy consultant and an adjunct prof with Simon favorite sir universities urban studies program. He is the founder and served for eight years as a co chair of the BC poverty reduction coalition, a co founder of Metro Vancouver's living wage for families campaign and an advisory board member for the Columbia Institute Center for Civic Governance. He also serves on the board of dogwood. He's a global change activist for over 30 years. Seth lives in East Van with his partner and his two kids. He's been listed on Vancouver magazines as one of the 50 most powerful people in the city, and by home makers magazines, among the 60 men we love. And so, I think we all. Yeah, we can all set thank you so much for all the work and the leadership that you've you've given the hope that you've given me and so many others here in Metro Vancouver but I think across the country as well. Friends are all in for a treat tonight, Seth, please take it away. Well, thanks, Jessica. That was a lovely introduction good evening everyone and thank you all for your interest in joining joining us for this event. I thank the West Van library for this invitation and I'm really happy to be doing this with my friend, Jessica. I too am joining you with gratitude from the unceded territories of the Squamish and Musqueam and slave to nations. I'm, I'm across the water from those of you in West Van in in East Vancouver. So, format wise I've been asked to offer some opening comments about the book for those of you who haven't already read it and then we're going to have a lot of time for discussion this is the way a good war, mobilizing Canada for the climate emergency. I, I, I hope and believe that the book calls on us to adopt an entirely new and different approach to the climate crisis than the one we pursued to date. And I while I've endeavored to tell the truth about the severity of the crisis that we face. I also hope and I'm gratified to hear Jessica say that you will find it an unusually hopeful book given the subject matter. And as Jessica already said, its original twist, if you will, is that as the title suggests the book is entirely structured around lessons from the Second World War. There is no small irony in me having written a war story. And like many of you I'm, I'm sure I too wrestle with the war analogy I actually my own political activism started as a teenager in the peace and disarmament movement in the 1980s. Before I cut my political teeth. And moreover, I am the child of Vietnam War resistors. That is in fact how I happen to be Canadian. But I am now strongly of the view that climate breakdown requires a new mindset to mobilize all of society and galvanize our politics and to fundamentally remake our economy. And this is the reason why I think we need a new approach because what we have been doing in response to the climate crisis thus far simply isn't working. If I were to show you a chart of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions going back over the last 20 years, what you would, you know, you'd see some ups and downs but what you basically see is a flat line, meaning emissions are no longer climbing to the good news, but neither are they in decline. Despite decades of calls to action our emissions are not on a path to stave off a horrific future for our children and future generations. We have run out the clock with distracting debates about incremental changes but where it matters most actual GHG emissions. We have accomplished precious little, but nature doesn't care that our emissions are no longer climbing. The great climate change warrior Bill McKibbin has said, winning slowly on climate change is just another way of losing. So, here we all are confronting this harrowing gap between what the science says we must do and what our politics seems prepared to entertain. I should mention off the top that I didn't actually start off planning to write a book all structured around the war. My book project began as an exploration of how we can align our politics and economy in Canada on the one hand with what the science says we must urgently do to address the climate emergency and the book is that. But I had originally intended only to have a single chapter on lessons from the Second World War because I'd long I'd long been intrigued by the war as an example of rapid economic transformation. But as I delved into that work, I began to see more and more parallels between our wartime experience and the current crisis, and then ultimately decided to structure the whole book around lessons from Canada's World War two experience. Again, not because I get all weirdly animated about war. Rather, it is because I see in the history of our wartime experience a helpful and indeed hopeful reminder that we have done this before. We have mobilizing common cause across society to confront an existential threat, and in doing so we have retooled our entire economy, twice in fact wants to ramp up military production. Again, to reconvert to peacetime all in the space of a few short years. And so the book explores what wartime scale climate mobilization could actually mean and look like in each chapter jumps back and forth in time between stories of what we did during the war and what we now face. And in those comparisons that answers questions like how was public opinion rally to support mobilization during the war. How might it be galvanized again. What was the role of government of news media of arts and culture. How was social solidarity secured across class and race and gender. How can we do so again. How was national unity forged across Canada's provinces with all of their varying interest and can we successfully do that again. Again, as we move off fossil fuels. How did we marshal all of our resources to produce what was needed. How do we do that again. How did we pay for that transformation. And can we mobilize the finances once again. What supports were offered to returning soldiers. And is there a model there for just transition for fossil fuel workers today. What was the role of indigenous people in the war. What is it in today's transformation. What was role of youth and social movements then and now, importantly, what are the war's cautionary tales. There are a couple of chapters there around the warnings of things that brought us shame, the squashing of civil rights, the poisoning of indigenous lands, perhaps most apt to the current crisis, the response to refugees, those things that we do not wish to repeat. And running through it all. What sort of political leadership do we require to see us through challenges like this. And I'll start with one important comparison that I make right near the beginning because it gives me some hope and it's this. Which is that despite Canada's war declaration in September of 1939. It's worth recalling that even as the winds of war gathered in the late 1930s, our leaders were actually reluctant to recognize what would ultimately be necessary. A lot like today. Canada was on the cusp of being completely transformed by a second World War experience, yet right up to the 11th hour, our government and most of the public still hoped to avoid getting dragged into that fight. Does that sound familiar. This is where I think we find ourselves again today in this awkward period where, you know, the summer before last the Justin Trudeau's government passed a climate emergency motion in the House of Commons one day, and then proceeded to re approve the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion the very next day. That is, to my mind, the new what I call the new climate denialism that play it's a concept that I unpack in the book. But as with the Second World War. I'm convinced that this phony war period will not last in fact that it is about to end. Since releasing my book in September. You know, I've done a lot of interviews and I frequently been asked, how do you know when a government gets the emergency. And I've developed four markers for when you know that a government has shifted into emergency mode. It spends what it takes to win creates new economic institutions to get the job done. It shifts from voluntary and incentive based policies to mandatory measures as needed. And it tells the truth tells the truth about the severity of the crisis and communicates a sense of urgency about the measures necessary to combat it now. During the war, the Canadian government did all of those things. And likewise, I would actually say that in response to the pandemic the Trudeau government also passes all four of those markers. But with respect to the climate emergency. That's far at least. None of our current federal or provincial governments are actually hitting any of those four points. I just want to explore each of those indicators with you for a bit, along with a few other lessons from our second World War experience in the book I group all of these lessons into what I call the battle plan for climate mobilization it's a 14 point plan, outlining what it looks like to adopt an emergency mindset and do what it takes to win now. Don't worry. Yeah, it's it's evening and I'm not going to walk you through all 14 points that would take too long but I want to highlight a few. The second lesson is just adopt an emergency mindset. I think in this pandemic in recent months we've all witnessed that something powerful happens when we approach a crisis by naming the emergency and the need for wartime scale action it creates a new sense of shared purpose, renewed unity across confederation it liberates a level of political and economic action that seems previously impossible. Is that shift from voluntary and incentive based policies to mandatory measures. The Second World War saw the rationing of core goods all manner of other edicts under the War Measures Act. The pandemic has seen our governments issue health orders and take strong action to shut down non essential parts of the economy when needed. But for the climate emergency. We've seen virtually nothing of the support of the of the sword. So like I explained earlier how for 20 years, Canada's greenhouse gas emissions have just flatline now why is that. I think a major reason for that is that when you when you survey the federal and provincial actions on climate that we've seen today, almost all of them are voluntary. We encourage change we incentivize change we offer rebates we send price signals but what we decidedly don't do is require change. If we're going to meet the GHG targets that we must now meet as set out by the intergovernmental panel on climate change, we need to set clear near term dates by which certain things will be required. For example, we would say that you will no longer be able to purchase a fossil fuel vehicle as of 2025. We would mandate that all new buildings will not be permitted to use natural gas or other fossil fuels for heating as of next year. We would ban the advertising of fossil fuel vehicles and gas stations. That's how we would make clear that this is serious. Third lesson is around rallying the public at every turn. You know a lot of us assume that at the outbreak of the Second World War, everyone understood the threat and was ready to rally. And turns out that's not true. It took leadership to mobilize the public to get them to understand the nature of the threat in frequency and in tone in words and in action, the climate mobilization needs to look and sound and feel like an emergency. And we need our leaders to tell the truth about the severity of the crisis, the leaders we most remember from the Second World War like Churchill and Roosevelt. These were outstanding communicators who walked a very careful line. They were forthright about the gravity of the crisis and yet still managed to impart hope. And their messages were amplified by a news media that knew what side of history it wanted to be on and by arts and entertainment sector that was keen to rally the public. Similarly, when you look at our governments in this pandemic, they have communicated emergency. The messages are ubiquitous we get daily press briefings we hear regularly from public health officials. The media has taken seriously its duty to provide necessary information on a daily basis. Government leaders in the media have listened to scientists and have acted accordingly. None of that consistency and coherence however is present with respect to the climate emergency. When our governments don't act as if the situation is an emergency, or when they send worse contradictory messages by approving new fossil fuel infrastructure projects be at pipelines or LNG. They are effectively communicating to the public that it's not an emergency. We are the regular media briefings on the climate emergency and the response to it. Where's the public advertising to boost our level of public climate literacy and explain their policies with where the daily media climate reports, telling us how this fight for our lives is unfolding at home and abroad. And most importantly, where are the federal and provincial political leaders who should be forthrightly telling us the truth. And certainly that for the sake of all of us and our economy and the planet, the fossil fuel industry is going to have to be wound down in a carefully managed way over the next two decades. For current leaders believe we face a climate emergency. They need to act and speak like it's an emergency. And they need them to name it and speak about it at every turn because that's what you do in a crisis. Another lesson is that inequality is toxic to social solidarity and mass mobilization. There are many climate policy wonks out there and purists who say, you know, don't link the struggle on climate change to inequality or other social justice issues. Don't don't make this more complicated. It's, it's complicated enough as it is. And I respectfully think they're wrong. Much of the book deals with the connections between climate and inequality. And of course the richer you are, the higher your emissions, the poorer you are as a household or a community or a country, the more vulnerable you are to climate change. But also we need to link these issues. This is a key point in the book, because that's how we win. Successful mobilization requires that people make common cause across class and race and gender, and that the public have confidence that sacrifices are being made by the rich as well as middle and modest income people. Just to go further back in history, during the First World War, inequality and rampant profiteering undermined such efforts. So as a result of the outset of the Second World War, the government undertook bold steps to lessen inequality and to limit excess profits, the kind of profiteering that we have seen in this pandemic was illegal in the Second World War. We're going to need measures like that again today. Moreover, in polling I write about in the book and that I commissioned for the book from Abacus Research, what you find is that when ambitious climate action is linked to tackling inequality and social justice issues, and just transition for workers, support for that bold climate action doesn't go down. It goes through the roof. The lesson is that we need to embrace economic planning and create new economic institutions needed to get the job done. During the Second World War, starting from a base of virtually nothing, the Canadian economy and its labor force pumped out a volume of military equipment that is simply jaw dropping. During those six years Canada, with a population less than a third what it is today, produced 800,000 military vehicles more than Germany, Italy and Japan combined 16,000 military aircraft ultimately building the fourth largest Air Force in the world at the time. Here in our province, you know where we seem unable to build a single BC ferry anymore, we produced about 350 ships, again from a base of virtually nothing. The Canadian government under the leadership of CD how established 28 crown corporations during the war to meet the supply and munitions requirements. How became minister of munitions and supply he he was the most powerful minister in the McKenzie King government overseeing all of this military production, and he was seized with the task, happy to give contracts to the private sector but he was a he was an engineer as well as an ally described and in any time the private sector couldn't quickly do what was needed he created another crown corporation to get the job done. Similarly in this pandemic, I think we've witnessed the federal government create audacious new economic programs like the serve and the and the wage subsidy with a speed that few of us would have predicted I wouldn't have predicted it. In response to the climate emergency we've seen nothing of this in contrast to CD house wartime creations the Trudeau government has established two new crown corporations during its time in office, the Canada infrastructure bank which is basically a vehicle for privatizing infrastructure that's so far accomplished very little. And you know what the other one is, is the trans mountain pipeline corporation the, the one that makes us all the proud owners of a 60 year old oil pipeline from Alberta to our problems. If our governments really saw the climate emergency as an emergency, it would like CD how did quickly conduct an inventory of all of our conversion needs and determine how many heat pumps and solar arrays and wind farms and electric buses that we need to electrify virtually everything and and our reliance on fossil fuels. And then it would establish a new generation of crown corporations to ensure that those items are manufactured and deployed at the requisite scale. And in the book I have a three page list of what those new crown corporations might be the sixth lesson, spend what it takes to win. This is the benefit of an emergency mentality is that it forces governments out of an austerity mindset. This year in response to the pandemic, Canada's debt to GDP ratio is going to rise to about 50% up from 35%. But at the end of the war, it was near it was more than double that. CD how was pressed about government spending he famously replied, if we lose the war, nothing will matter. And in order to finance the war effort the government issued new victory bonds and brought in new progressive forms of taxation. And as we confront the climate emergency, we're going to need to finance the transformation, and that's going to require similar tools. So far, the federal spending on the climate emergency and provincial hasn't been anything close to what happened in the war or in response to COVID. The Trudeau government has talked about spending $2 billion per year on climate infrastructure. In contrast, in response to COVID, the Bank of Canada has been buying up $5 billion in government securities a week. We're not just spending a little less than we should in the face of the climate emergency we're spending less by a massive order of magnitude, a seventh lesson. And it's one that was alluded to off the top is that indigenous leadership title and rights are central to winning. Let me offer a story about a World War two vet. One morning as I was writing last year, a news item came across the radio about the death of Louis Levi Oaks, the last of the Mohawk code talkers in the community of aquasocene. So much, it had much like it had been important to the Canadian government to independently declare war separate from Britain in 1939. Interestingly, the Iraq Confederacy, of which the Mohawk are members, also independently declared war on Germany, which resulted in many Iraq men enlisting. Oaks died at the age of 94 last year. The code talkers were indigenous soldiers who were tasked with using their own languages to communicate secret military information among allied forces. In news reports after Oaks's death his daughter revealed that, astonishingly, Oaks hadn't told this family what he did during the war for seven decades. He had a great democracy and only in his late 80s when stories of the code talkers were made public, did he finally reveal what he had done. Then he got a congressional silver medal and a special honor from the Assembly of First Nations and the Canadian House of Commons. Oaks was one of 17 code talkers from the Mohawk community of aquasocene. There were hundreds of others from indigenous nations across North America. As the war was unfolding, the secret codes employed by the allies to communicate military plans kept getting broken by Nazi and Japanese forces. The Marines then discovered that enemy forces were unable to crack Navajo. And ultimately 33 indigenous languages were used by various branches of the allied forces, including a number from indigenous nations in Canada, such as Mohawk and Cree and Plingid and Ojibwe. But as I learned of this, it struck me that there is in this piece of wartime history a tragic irony. Our two countries have spent generations trying to erase indigenous languages from the earth, literally beating them out of children in residential schools, only to then uncover that these languages were the unbreakable code. That's what they were called in the war, credited as having been vital to victory in certain battles, particularly in the Pacific. And then if we fast forward to the present, the same can be said about indigenous rights and title which similarly are two countries have spent generations systematically abusing and violating. And yet as our mainstream politics dithers and dodges on meaningful and coherent climate action over and over again. It is the assertion of indigenous rights and title, that is buying us time, slowing and blocking new fossil fuel projects until our larger politics comes into compliance with what the science says we have to do. And my final lesson that I'll offer this evening is, is this lesson eight, leave no one behind. Whenever we talk about climate action and the need for the issue of jobs comes up. Now there are about 300,000 jobs in Canada that are directly employed in the fossil fuel industry, but consider this. In the Second World War, Canada had a population a little over 11 million. Out of that over 1 million Canadians enlisted into military service, and more than that were directly employed in munitions production far far more than are employed in fossil fuel industries today. All of those people had to be trained up, and then they all had to be reintegrated into a peacetime economy. And we did that, we did that with audacious new programs around income support and housing support and, and post secondary training programs that change the face of the post secondary sector in Canada for a generation and change the lives of thousands of people. The ambition of those initiatives should be a model for what just transition can look like today for all those workers whose employment and economic security is tied to the fossil fuel industry because really the task today is smaller than what we did that. A final thought, and it speaks to something Jessica said in the introduction. Many of you as I read the latest scientific warnings I'm afraid, in particular I feel deep anxiety about the state of the world that we're leaving our kids and those who will live through most of this century and beyond all of us. We take seriously these scientific realities, wrestle with despair that is the ambiguous time in which we live. The truth is, we don't know if we're going to win this fight if we're going to do what we need to do in time. Consider this. In the Second World War, as I said, from a population of 11 million people over 1 million Canadians enlisted it's, it's remarkable. But it's worth appreciating that all of those people who rallied in the face of fascism 80 years ago, likewise, didn't know if they would win. We often forget there was a good chunk of the war's early years, during which the outcome was far from certain. We know how that story ended. We did not. And yet that generation rallied regardless. And in the process they surprised themselves by what they were capable of achieving. And that is the spirit I think we need today. And I'll stop there and look forward to having some Q&A time with Tessica and hear your questions. Well, thank you so much, Seth, for outlining such a clear path. I think really expanding on that metaphor that this book so I think, and that you so skillfully weave in terms of what was done here in Canada and remembering the lessons because I think there's often such a focus on innovation and looking forward and creating new solutions. But I think this is such a beautiful reminder for us that you know a lot of the solutions lie in the past and line remembering what we have done and what we've accomplished together. One of the things that really struck me was just around how we have, you know, we have the science, we have the technological solutions or many of the technological solutions. And as you explained, the public support is there and it's growing, right, and you outline one of the key pieces being a lack of political bill. Our political leaders are so reluctant to act on the climate crisis and to act like it's truly an emergency. Yeah, that's the big mystery. I mean, I think there's a few reasons. So one is the curse of climate change relative to the war relative to COVID is that it moves in slow motion. And that allows both politicians and all of us to kind of kick the can down the road. And that's what we've been doing. Secondly, I think, I think our political leaders in every politician I interviewed for the book under sells the public they assume incorrectly that the public isn't ready. And that's why, you know, there's this polling that I did that I outlined in the book that I think shows the opposite to be true that that the public is ahead of our politicians. It's simply the capture of public policy by the fossil fuel industry itself, which is delayed action. And that we keep trying to appease fossil fuel industry, like even while you've spent some time there, we create these government advisory boards to guide our climate policy. And, and then we appoint fossil fuel representatives to be on them now. I'm sure they're nice people. I know, I know one of them very nice guy. I'm not going to be there because at this late hour. You know, these bodies tend to function by consensus. And what I'm arguing in the book is that any, any climate plan with which the fossil fuel industry can find comfort isn't a isn't a plan worth having. The biggest thing that holds us back is what I call the new climate denialism, which is different from traditional denialism, you know, Donald Trump denialism of just saying it's some hoax. The new climate denialism and all of our politicians across the political spectrum practice it is to say that you get the science and accept it, but continue to practice a policy agenda that doesn't align with what the government says, we have to do. And so in BC, the doubling down on LNG and fracking is the most obvious example of of that. But I also think, you know, just to come back to the first point that you made all of our politicians as well, still have their thinking constrained by all of these neoliberal assumptions that have dominated our way of thinking for the last 40 years. So why isn't the government spending what they should. Why aren't they creating new economic Crown corporations. Why aren't they using the regulatory power of the state, because they accept a bunch of false assumptions about what is and isn't allowed. And it's only in the face of an emergency that like COVID or the war that all that stuff gets thrown out the window, but the most insidious legacy of 40 years of neoliberalism isn't the spending cuts or the tax cuts or the deregulation or the privatization that stuff all that. The worst thing is the sapping of our imagination. That's what you talked about right off the top. It's the sapping of our, of our sense of our own ability to do grand things together. And that's what that's what the point of the historic excavation of the book is to remind ourselves, look what we do. Yeah, and I want you to share I know you spoke a little bit about this already but just to help us elucidate like really the scale of this you talked about 28 different court Crown corporations that were created to meet the supply and virtually overnight virtually from zero. Can you talk a little bit about what are these types of crown corporations or organizations or departments governmental departments that we need that can just to help color imagination for what's possible, and to really feel us ahead. Well, so first of all back to the war piece. I realized you know I'm like everyone's weird uncle now was like back in the war. How I start every sentence now. So in addition to these 28 crown corporations that how created he he was also carefully coordinating all the supply chains this is something we talk about in the pandemic again everyone's interested in supply chains again, all of the key inputs. The machine tools rubber silk oil timber, he was coordinating all of them to prioritize what actually had to happen. And he began it all by conducting an inventory. What was our production capacity what was the production need. And then you either send out contracts to the private sector or create a new crown corporation to get it done. And that's what I think we need to do today. Start with the inventory. How much do we actually need to electrify everything. Then look and see what capacity is already there, and where there's a gap, you either contract with the private sector to do it, or you do it yourself and the reason I'm so keen about, you know I keep coming back to the crown corporations is because, in the absence of creating new crown corporations. The best a government can do is try to incentivize somebody else to do what has to be done, instead of just doing it ourselves. So, you asked what would they be like. I think we need new new crown corporate so let me give you a personal example. So we were talking about this before we went live. This year I went through the process of getting the natural gas out of my own home and switching over to electric heat pump. It wasn't easy, and it was expensive. Even with the government rebates, it was still expensive. It was complicated. I had it all these engineers and contractors in my living room. And to a lay guy like me, I just wanted to run away screaming, even though I'm highly motivated to do it. I eventually did it, but I came out of the experience thinking, you know, it ain't going to work like this. If we're counting on thousands and thousands of people doing it with this model is not going to work. But what if we had a new crown corporation, provincially maybe a subsidy or a VC hydro that was mass producing HFC free electric heat pumps with an army of contractors who would make this super easy for us, take the profit margin out of it, take the economies of scale, then the price would come down to match the rebates, and it would just make it so much easier, combined with a regulatory approach that says hey everybody, by this date, you don't have a choice. It's going to have to happen. So it's the combination of the regulatory approach, the coordination, the visioning of new crowns like that. But I can imagine a whole slew of potential new crown subsidy areas of BC hydro, whether it's mass producing heat pumps or solar panels or wind turbines and installers. And so, you know, as we wind down natural gas, all of these workers at Fortis to move over to these new crowns. Yeah, and I've noticed that there's some questions that are coming in from Q&A, I think some that are linked to this topic. I think Nathan, Nathan asks about the transportation sector that accounts for 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. And he sends that government controlled public transit has, you know, very little has been done over the past 10 years to improve public transit. And we need major improvements to bus services and electrification. So who will advocate for that. And I think that that really speaks to. Absolutely. I mean we do, we do need to, to put the infrastructure in place for people who switch to electric vehicles but electric vehicles can't be the main driver here to no pun intended. And that's really about the mass build out of public transit and electric public transit. But again, my point is, it's going to take big spending big public sector sector investments. Look at how, as Metro Vancouver, we have, you know, twisted ourselves into knots, every time we try to engage in a modest expansion of our transit capacity. Because, you know, we have made the funding of these things unnecessarily complicated, we made it complicated by making them public private partnerships, and we keep saying the money isn't there. Let me come back to this point about how the money is there. And what I mean about the magnitude of under spending. And this is really thanks to the sunshine movement and all these incredible climate activists in the States who, who told Biden's climate plan from something that was very uninspired to something visionary. He was proposing to spend is proposing us to get it through the Senate but his, his platform was $2 trillion over four years. So just to do some quick math here, that's half a trillion a year. Now convert that to Canadian because we're about a tenth of the size so divided by 10. It's still $50 billion a year. Trudeau's talking about $2 billion a year. Right. But as I was alluding to in my talk, the incredible thing in this COVID experience is that after all of us being told for years there's no money for housing there's no money for homelessness and poverty and transit and the opioid crisis. And the climate emergency, the Bank of Canada is buying up $5 billion a week in government securities. Suddenly, the cats out of the bag, we could, they have shown us what was possible all along. Absolutely. And I think that that's really the silver lining that I was taking from the COVID crisis but I think also outlined in your book, like reimagining what is possible. I have a question from Reza about how Canada fits itself within the global picture of the world, you know, of different countries and corporations. And I think for me that question really links to, you know, the idea that often people think that Canada is just, you know, a small country with a small population. And even if we, you know, we do all of this, it doesn't, you know, the feeling that won't really matter in the grand grand scheme of things. So I'm curious what your responses to that. I do. I'm really glad it came up. And I think it's important that it came up because I think actually, whenever any of us try to engage with our family and co workers and friends about climate, this is the thing that comes up all the time. Oh, but we're small, even if Canada did all of these things, it wouldn't make a difference. And the Americans are going backwards under Trump, which mercifully now seems to be coming to an end. And I think it's actually a voice in the back of our own heads, slowing us down. So I have a few responses to it. First of all, while it's true that overall emissions in the US and Europe and China and India are more than Canada because they're much bigger places. So per capita emissions are the worst in the world. Secondly, that doesn't count our role as extractors and exporters of fossil fuels. We are the fourth largest oil producer and the six largest oil producer and the fourth largest gas producer in the world. So we got a lot to clean up in our own house. But we also have to do it. Knowing that our responsibility is for our own country and our own government. And we have to do it knowing that millions of other people of goodwill are doing the same thing in their countries and pressuring their own governments because wars aren't one alone, wars are run with allies. And we have a lot of them. But part of what I also love about our World War Two story is that here I am being that uncle again is that we didn't wait on the Americans. We entered World War Two, two years earlier, and for much of those two years we were the only country in the Western Hemisphere engaged in the war. And we were an even smaller country then we were a third the size less than a third, what we are today. And at the end of it, nobody questioned value and importance of Canada's contributions. I think going to that World War Two metaphor, one of the main differences when you talk about this in the book is that there was a very clear enemy, there's a very clear like bad, right. It's something that we could fight against and rally against and there's a challenge of pinpointing what that might be specifically so this question comes from Dominica. What is the current climate enemy, and how can we compel people to really support this and to see this as a war. I think this is that's a tricky one and it's one I wrestled with in the book as well. So in the in the war there was a clear enemy. And often when I told people I was going I was writing this book with this framework. It was this was often the question I would encounter. Although that was before the pandemic right it's interesting that we've been able to rally in a similar way in the face of the pandemic when it's this invisible, you know, virus. So I think it's still possible. You know who is the enemy in this one. Obviously, I mean, I don't call the fossil fuel industry the enemy but they are certainly collaborators and slowing us down. But mainly, I land in this place of saying that the enemy is the new climate denialism. The main barrier that we now have to scale is naming it and casting it aside so that we can so that we can move on. But I do think, you know, often people say oh well, you know everyone understood the threat in World War two. And that's just not true, right that the threat was not clear and present to most Canadians it was on the other side of two oceans. In Europe or or parts of Asia the war was was clear and present but not in Canada. It took leadership to get the public there. And we need that kind of leadership again. And one of the things that I recommend in the book is that we actually think about these extreme weather events as a tax on our soil. And we need the media to do a much better job of connecting the dots between climate and these extreme weather events. But, you know, I want to see a climate emergency report on the news every day. And I want to know how this battle is unfolding and show us those attacks on our soil show them in our own country show them internationally show us what's happening on the front report back to us from the front. And tell us how the counter battle is going at home and abroad as well. And speaking of home and abroad. Harry had a question around which country is decarbonizing the best so far. You know, and who are the leaders that we should look to and that we should be modeling ourselves afterwards. That's a good question because, you know, there's so often you know we accuse the Americans of being kind of American exceptionalists and all this stuff. We tend to conduct ourselves thinking well, we must be the best. Like surely there's no one out there who's doing any better than we are. And that is just flat out wrong. There are a bunch of countries that are kicking our butt. There are countries that like us have fossil fuel resources, and yet are choosing not to exploit them. So, you know, New Zealand and, and even Norway and Sweden and Finland and Denmark. You know, they also mentioned Costa Rica as well Costa Rica. Yes. Today is an interesting one, because you know we like to compare ourselves back to the UK. I, you know, I mentioned how 20 if you look at Canada's emissions over the last 20 years we've just flat line the UK with a population more than double ours started that 20 year period with emissions, quite a lot higher than ours. And now their emissions are quite a lot lower than ours. Like, they have followed a steep downward track that we have not. So, yeah, we've got stuff to learn from the ambition of all of these places. Yeah, there's a question around just the current social economic climate. He asks, is nationalizing industry and infrastructure like America in Canada. Is that feasible in the current social economic economic climate. And also I think that connects to what you talked about in the book around a new generation of climate leaders and politicians as well. Anything's possible. So first of all I wasn't so much proposing to nationalize although there are a few places where I would be happy to recommend that. I'm actually talking about creating stuff that's new. Where the industries don't exist. You know a whole bunch of why, whether it's heat pumps or solar panels costs too much in Canada still is because it's all important. Rather than us manufacturing it ourselves. And you know my point is simply if the price and I'm trying to apply the same logic as how if the private sector sector is proving uninterested or unwilling to do it. And we should just do it. And it's not like, and I distinguish between I'm saying we have to spend a lot of money on the one hand for infrastructure. But this actually could mostly be a moneymaker right this all you know people pay monthly utilities people pay transit fairs people there's a whole bunch of things. That could be a revenue stream for a lot of these things. So I think it's possible. But we have to break out of the straight jacket of the neoliberal assumptions about what is and isn't possible but I guess I'll say this in response to that. So we all harbor this feeling like our politicians today just aren't up for it. And they just, you know they they're stuck and then never beyond stuck. And I guess I would just say this to that. If you had asked Canadians in 1938. This gang in McKenzie King's cabinet. Are they up. Are they able to oversee the wholesale transformation of our society and the economy. Most Canadians I'm pretty sure what I said no. And similarly if you had asked me 11 months ago, if I thought there were people in finance Canada and the Bank of Canada, who would audaciously quickly pivot and create things like the serve and the wage subsidy. I had to say it but I think I would have said no I think I would have said no there's no one home who thinks that way, and I would have been wrong. You never know. Indeed, indeed. I want to ask about maybe some of the cautionary lessons from the wartime experience so things that we've learned and things that we don't want to repeat. I know you are you you outline that more in detail in the book but specific to the climate context what should we avoid. I just wanted to few off the top but I guess the one that I would emphasize reemphasize now is around the response to refugees. So, the response to refugees during the Second World War was was shameful. You know we slammed the door shut before during and after the war. And I remember I mentioned this in the book but some years ago I heard a speech by Cindy Blackstock, you know, a lot of us have heard her speak before the amazing child indigenous child welfare advocate. And she was giving a speech in which she was she was offering a very simple definition of reconciliation, and it always stuck with me. She said reconciliation means not having to say your story twice. It's very simple, which is to say where you you learn from your mistakes and you resolve not to repeat them. And when I think about that and I think about what we did in World War two and response to refugees and then I think, you know, you can't not look at the trajectory we are on and not realize that the global migration of climate people is going to be one of the defining issues of the next 50 to 100 years, and we're going to have to decide if we're going to repeat that. Yeah, it's going to be a huge a moral question I think it really defining, you know, what our country and what our society stands for. Not to get, I don't want to kind of end on the downer on that point. For the most part as a country, our responses to people kind of showing up on our doorstep, our track record is terrible. There are rare exceptions. And I recount the example. Well, I know you. Well, of when the when the Vietnamese boat people as they were called were were a global crisis in the in the latter part of the 1970s. And there was this whole international call that went out from the UN about what how many people would each of the wealthier countries take and the initial response from the Trudeau senior government was that Trudeau would take 5000. And the mayor of Ottawa and this speaks to your point about political leadership as well. The mayor of Ottawa at the time was a woman named Mary endure she was a really wonderful woman. And she was horrified by Trudeau's response. And she said, Well, we'll take 5000 in Ottawa, and challenge other Canadian cities to match them. In the case of a few months that that figure became 60,000. And it kind of became this whole big kind of national competition to out better everyone. You know, so that it's the point being with the right kind of leadership that calls upon our best selves, we can tell a different story. I love that story and that that really connects for me because that's a huge part of why I'm here in Canada is my, my father is refugee and what's one of those both. I was curious about that. I mean, I didn't know your own personal background, but I wondered. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And, and I think that's one of the driving motivators for me around climate work is really drawing the linkage and I really love the chapter that you have in the book about, you know, and not seeing climate action as separate to challenges around inequality and social justice and that actually being a way to, you know, really to rally support for for climate solutions is to not necessarily always just frame them. Say another thing about that actually, of course, in the war. Like, this is my point about why it's so important to link these just in straight strategic terms in terms of what we're up against. So in the recruitment efforts in the war, the propaganda at the time was sort of like kind of simplistic go get Hitler, right, and that worked to a point, but only to a point. As of 1931 the government realized that if they were actually going to hit the enlistment numbers that they needed. They were going to have to do a different approach. And instead, it couldn't just be about go get those guys across the ocean. They wanted to have a conversation with the public about the society that they would come back to. And we saw the introduction of Canada's first major social programs unemployment insurance comes in 1940, the family allowance in 1944. The Marsh report which is this incredible government report that that was the kind of the architecture for the whole post war welfare states was written during the war, and was offered up to Canadians as a pledge that the number of these people would come back to would look different than the one and would be more just than the one that they were leaving behind. That's how you get everyone on the bus. That's when you get the enlistment numbers. That's when mobilization starts to really happen across the country and I'm convinced the same is true today and that is the appeal of the Green New Deal right to marry these issues and get everyone on the bus. But we'll talk tell us a little bit more about that because I think one of the questions I had was, you know, often folks are like saying, you know, we have to prioritize the housing affordability crisis or COVID over climate, like and really pitting one issue against the other where whereas I think the framing is that we need to think about these issues all connectedly. So what is, you know, there's a cabinet swearing in NBC today. If you could give advice to this new cabinet in BC and to other politicians across Canada. What would you say about this moment and the decisions that are going to be made in the restart and the recovery from COVID. Well, I mean the first part is we have to link as you say we have to link all of these issues. We have to spend boldly and we have to create new economic institutions boldly. And we have to tell the truth boldly. But one of the things I like about the Green New Deal is it lends itself to kind of reimagining a whole bunch of sectors right. What's the Green New Deal for transportation. What's the Green New Deal for housing. What's the Green New Deal for food. What's the Green New Deal of thinking creatively and ambitiously about all of these sectors in ways that both and homelessness with zero emission affordable housing that both tackle affordability around transportation in ways that also end our use of fossil fuels. And I think that's one of the things that's really good. You know the good news is is that concern about climate ranks very high. The only thing that ranks higher is stresses around affordability. But the answer to that reality isn't to prioritize one or the other. It's to tackle them together. Don't make people choose. Make a one. I'm curious about just the role of the public and I think I'm seeing a couple of questions about this. JT Joe talks about us the study the rethink X study that concludes that fossil fuels will be placed replaced by solar power and. And I think one like asking a question about about doing this without any government action. And there's another question also in the chat but yeah about what can citizens do. I think there's often that people understand that there's a challenge but the invitation to act is often sign this petition or you know talk or call your MPs or MLA's and there seems to be this you know this dissonance between the scale of the challenge and what people can actually do. Two somewhat different questions on the first one. I'm not familiar with the particular study but I certainly am familiar with the argument that says we don't need government intervention like that. The great transition off fossil fuels is is like just at some tipping point where it's all going to now start happening at this incredible rate without government needing to do much at all. I hope that's true. I wish that was true. But what if it's not like this is it man. These are our next 10 years doesn't make or break. And I'm not prepared to roll the dice anymore because we can't afford 10 more years of that flat line. So and you know during the war. If we had waited for the private sector to do what needed to be done. Well, we would have lost all those private sector leaders understood in the war that while they wanted to be involved that the solutions would have to be state led. I like to give the example of how you know in Pearl Harbor happened in December of 1941 that's when the US entered the war in February of 1942 so two months later. The last civilian automobile rolled off the assembly line in Detroit. And for the next four years, the production and sale of civilian automobiles was illegal. And that didn't happen because the owners of the big three auto companies decided to through some patriotic fervor that they were just going to do this. They were ordered to do it. They had no choice. They still made lots of money, but they weren't given a choice. The second question around the role of citizens is this part of why we've had the flat line for 20 years is because all of the solutions have been individualized. It's all been about what are you personally willing to do or willing to pay for or change in your own home and that kind of thing. And I think much of the public inherently gets that this is too big. The war like the climate emergency is an inherently collective enterprise, which means that while you do need to do all of those things in your personal life as fast as you can. This is ultimately a political project. This is in fact indeed about you, not as a consumer, but as a citizen. It's about putting pressure on all of our governments at every level to get into emergency mode and hit those markers. It's about financially supporting and backing those true climate emergency champions who are actually running for office. That's why I supported you, Jessica, when you ran for office. I thought there's a climate emergency champion who gets it. So get behind those people. And they're, they're not all from the same political party, right? They're, they're in a number of political parties. Not all of them, but a number of them. And I think we need to support them. And for some people, this is going to we've reached the point at this 11th hour that it's going to be direct action. It's going to be physically, but peacefully demanding these changes for others. We give expression to it through divestment efforts, tackling all of the institutions in our lives, our faith institutions remain civil governments for pension funds or, or anywhere that has some of your money invested to buy us time. Those are all things beyond a street protest that we can all do to signal and just to pause for a moment here. Let's appreciate that prior to the pandemic, the momentum was really building like just over a year ago, there were a million Canadians on the street because the students and youth call this out. That is, to my, as far as I can tell the largest single day of protest in Canadian history. A couple months later, we saw these incredible solidarity actions and supporter that would so attend and indigenous land defenders in a way that I don't think we've ever seen other country. So the train was shifting. And now we need to recapture some of that momentum. I would be remiss to not ask about the role of youth and the climate mobilization. I think you mentioned already the mobilization of here locally the sustainability teams but you know Greta Thunberg and all these youth climate activists. But I think there's also this narrative that like the youth are here younger generations are here and I want I wanted to hear more about I think intergenerational leadership, right like how do we actually walk this in partnership with, you know, folks who have you know so and of the institutions why they were created the history of this and I think how we need to transform in the lessons that we can learn from the past. Yeah, I like the way you put that. Well, first of all, just to acknowledge how much the youth leadership has mattered in terms of the momentum that was building and the leadership of people like Greta and again, it's like the war again. It's youth are mobilizing and our collective defense, even though they shouldn't have to. But I do think there's an intergenerational element to it you know when I was I started as a kid as a teenager activists in the peace movement during a period before the end of the Cold War when when when the threat of nuclear annihilation was our existential there was lots of that intergenerational sharing. I mean I actually got a mentorship at that time in my life from veterans against nuclear arms these World War two vets, who had become these activists in the face of another threat to our civilization well being. But I do want to say, when one of my favorite stories on this youth activist question and there's an intergenerational element. I do know this story Jessica but maybe not others don't. And now I'm very biased in the story. So, my wife is Vancouver City Councilor Christine Boyle, who a little over a year and a half ago, introduced the climate emergency motion in Vancouver, which was the first in English Canada Quebec has done more of this. There's now dozens and dozens of these climate emergency resolutions that have been passed. Vancouver one is not just symbolic. As of last week in fact. I would say, I know I'm biased but it is my objective sense that Vancouver has the most ambitious municipal level climate emergency plan in North America, like real substantive stuff. The interesting thing though is the politics. The people on this caller in West Van and follow Vancouver politics you might know Vancouver City Council is very politically mixed all over the spectrum. Nobody has a majority. You never know how this gang is going to vote. But these climate emergency measures and motions have all passed near unanimously. Now why is that. Well, one part of it is that my wife is really good at her job, but another but she would say she is, but her answer to that question is that it was, it was near unanimous because dozens of high school students skip school, rallied outside, spoke before council, filled the galleries on these votes in the days before COVID when they could and last week did the same thing virtually. Watching online watching online and creatively may in this really in this charge these charge moments of intergenerational reckoning. They made it politically impossible to vote no. And as a consequence not only does Vancouver have the most ambitious plan, but it also has a plan with support across the political spectrum. Vancouver is not a political wedge issue the way it's been weaponized in so many other jurisdictions across Canada. And there's a lesson there, but that was about a partnership, really between some climate champions elected leaders, working with with a bunch of teenagers. Absolutely. Yeah, it's been really inspiring to see the work that's been happening in the city of Vancouver. I think the leadership on climate but also I think on reconciliation as well and you talk a little bit about this in the book about how deeply interconnected assertion of Indigenous rights and title is linked to climate mobilization for folks who see those as linked pieces. Can you talk a little bit more about the connections and tell stories I know that you shared one about the code talkers and that's such a fascinating kind of connection from the wartime mobilization but I think in terms of the climate crisis. Tell us about the leadership that's been happening on the ground and what more can governments and civil societies do to work with work in partnership with indigenous peoples and communities. Well, first of all, some of the most inspiring all renewable energy projects in the country are happening under indigenous leadership in fact I can't remember the figure off the top of my head but something around 20% of the renewable energy projects in Canada are indigenous. And so, you know, those need to be supported and and however possible. But the, the critical role is the one that I described in my talk earlier. And I alluded to again recently with the wood so it's in like, it's just striking to me that, you know, the great disconnect that we're now experiencing the greatest manifestation of the new climate denialism are governments that say they get climate, and yet are still doubling down because of real infrastructure. And in every corner of the country that that is being blocked and called out. And in virtually every example of that that I can think of its indigenous lead. So, the assertion of indigenous rights and title that is saving our bacon right now buying us time. Absolutely. I'm just noticing the time and there's just a comment here, saying that they agree very much with you by actually it's an anonymous comment by an attendee saying that they agree with you. It's kind of putting the climate challenge under a world war lens it's both useful and relevant. And you're right to draw a focus to the collective and common nature of the global warming problem or the climate crisis, and away from the individual individual focus of it. I think, in terms of, there are some questions just around the way how can we actually the power of media and the power of communications. There's a lot of books in the book and how, you know, governments were actually ahead of the public at first, and then some of some of that information that was coming from government then started to be mocked and to be parodied. And government realized they needed to really adapt their communications so how can we actually tap into the role of media and the role of science based communications to really make sure that we have a very climate literate, you know, community. You desperately need to boost the level of public climate literacy. On the one hand, people say they're ready for action. On the other hand, only about half of Canadians correctly get that the main source of global warming is the combusting of fossil fuels. So that means that both governments the media haven't done some basic work. So, in the war, we had something called the wartime information board that engaged in all of this public education. I want to see that again. I think every province in the federal government should have climate emergency wartime information boards, providing factual science based information but resource and and and fun to watch. Because it's invisible now. We have no idea right what what what the plans actually are or why they have to happen. And then there's the role of the media itself and, you know, I tell a couple of stories in the book one is that, thankfully, speaking of new crown corporations. The CBC had been created three years before World War two. And by the time the war came it had it reached about its radio service reached about 85% of the of the population. That was huge, because it meant that every night Canadians gathered around the radio and they got this, they got the news from the front. And the, you know, depending on the age of people on the call. If I say the word Lauren the name Lauren green. So some if you're my parents age and you hear Lauren green you think of bonanza is that awful Western. He was my age for a child of the 70s like me. He played the original commander of Dama in the 1970s version of Battlestar Galactica, but, but in the war, he started before he went to Hollywood. As as the CBC's original news reader, and right through the war, Canadians affectionately referred to him as the voice of doom. And, and that's, that's what rallied us in the US. It was the CBS News team on private radio of Edward R. Murrow, this guy we hold up as a beacon of 20th century journalism and his team who are accredited appreciate this for a moment. When the war broke, the majority of Americans opposed entry into the war. By the time Pearl Harbor happened, but before it happened, a majority of Americans supported it. That CBS News team is credited with being a key force behind a 20 percentage point shift in US public opinion in those two years. So, we need that again, and that's a conversation that has to be had with the media about what their role is, and we need as we have in this pandemic we need to dispense with this ridiculous compulsion about being balanced and having equal time to those who deny the need for this stuff like, you know, in the face of a civilizational threat, you pick a side. And I think we need our media to to embrace that. Absolutely. Let's talk about after the war, and what Canada did for soldiers that were returning from world war two, and how that offers a model. And when we talk about the just transition and for fossil fuel workers here today, you know, you have acknowledged that a lot of folks are working in certain provinces are much more dependent on fossil fuel linked jobs. So how do you say, yeah, what do you have to say? Well, here's what I recommend in the book. I mean, so I gave you a flavor of the kinds of programs that were put in place after the Second World War. What would that look like today? So speaking of creating new economic institutions. I think the federal government should let me take a step back. For a lot of workers, they hear the term just transition and it rings very hollow and for good reason, because it's always just been notional. So that we have to make a real offer with real money on the table. And in particular, we have to make it in those parts of the country that are most reliant on the fossil fuel industry now. And that's Alberta Saskatchewan and Newfoundland. So I would recommend that the federal government create a new federal transfer program called the Climate Emergency Just Transition Program. And it would be big, like 20 to 40 billion dollars a year for the next 10 years. So big. But unlike most trans federal transfer programs, which divvy the money up based on population, we would divvy the money up for this one based on GHG emissions. So Alberta currently is responsible for about 38% of Canada's GHG emissions. It's a lot, far more than their share of the population. But we would freeze that in time and give them 38% of the money. So 38% of 40 billion dollars, that's a lot of money. But we wouldn't send it to Jason Kenny because he's not to be trusted. Instead, we would create new just transition agencies in every province jointly governed by the all levels of government and indigenous nations and with climate experts on their business and labor. So if the province can determine what does this look like, what do we need to invest in based on our GHG profile, and what kind of retraining do we need in our province. But it would be a real substantive offer, not a hollow promise. So that people could see that we meant it. They need to see, I think, what does it mean to be a just transition because I think it sounds lovely. But, but to see the change on the ground and to see the money on the ground to I think is what really makes a difference in matters. Unfortunately, I think we'll have to wrap up the questions for now I wanted to leave some space for you Seth to share some, some final remarks. Yeah, some final thoughts to folks. Yeah. All right, well, well I think I've sort of alluded to the hope around the student protests and the solid indigenous solidarity stuff and the changing public opinion, terrain of public opinion. I'll leave you with this I'll come back to whoever the question was about us as citizens. And, and I'll, and I'll, I'll say this, especially because this is a library crowd. But, you know, there's probably a lot of people here for this a library crowd there's there's this burgeoning resurgence of World War two books, seems like half the books on a bookshelf these days or like World War two history. And if you're the kind of person who reads those books. You know you put it down when you go to bed. And there's a there's a thought in your head, a question. And that is, it's this I think, what would I have done if I had lived, then there. And the answer that question, actually I don't think is a mystery, because here we are again with the future of our children cast into doubt and the civilizational threat at our doorstep. So the answer that question is whatever we're each ready to do now. Thank you so much for that stuff and thank you for all all your work. I know you've been in this fight for a lot longer than than I have and you've certainly inspired me and many, many others. And thank you for this, your latest book a roadmap for us as a as a country to remember what we've done in the past and to inspire us to create the change that we need to, and to take climate action in a meaningful way with a war time mentality and the urgency that that was there in World War two and and has left lasting legacies as well that we continue to benefit from today. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight. It's been such a pleasure to have the evening to chat with you set. I just wanted to share in the chat where you can get the book. There's also an audio book if you're interested in listening to it instead. And, and yet to thank Leela and Lynn and the West Vancouver Memorial Library for hosting us tonight and for hosting this this series on climate futures it's so important and necessary. Thanks so much Leela for for hosting us tonight. Welcome. Thank you both so much for coming for that really just well articulated informative and important discussion. Thank you everyone for coming and attending and for all of your really thoughtful questions in the q amp a that was such a great discussion. I really appreciate set the way frame this, not just in terms of what needs to be done but what can be done what we're capable of doing that we need to, you know fight climate change collectively, inclusively and urgently, in order to get it done. So what sticks out to me is your need your call to boost climate literacy and that has me thinking of our role as a library and supporting our community and doing that so that context is so grateful to have you come tonight. Thank you so much for the week with everybody that attended and for just writing this book. And so, Jessica, thank you also so much for moderating and you just alluded to in the chat there is a link to sets website for getting the book. I'll let you know a few different ways that you can get it. Of course, we do have some copies of the library. We have some print copies on order and an ebook and an e audio book. Sure, 32 books in Edgemont Village North Vancouver has some print copies available. And if you are in Vancouver you want to support some indigenous owned bookstores. There is iron dog books and Massey books in Vancouver in Chinatown and sunrise, Hastings sunrise, and then they have print copies available in right now as well. And of course to order a copy. You can go to Seth's website which is in the chat and order through the publisher. There's a book, audio book or the ebook. And just one final thing before I let everybody go. We do actually have one more climate future than coming up next week. It's on December 1 from 7 to 8pm. It's another virtual free virtual zoom program and it's heat pumps 101 so Seth alluded to some of the challenges and benefits of his transition to heat pumps recently in the last year. So you can find out more about that in this interactive webinar that talks about what a heat pump is what the benefits are and talks about what rebates are available are available right now to help upgrade. So we hope to see you at that event and just before we go just one more huge thank you to Seth and Jessica and everybody for coming and joining us tonight. It makes me feel that the collective spirit to fight this and that's really inspiring. So it's always awkward to leave without everyone here and applauding applauding so I'm just going to do a little wave before I end everything. Have a good night.