HALIFAX—Dozens of people took their turns to tell Nova Scotia legislators that a new government bill, which includes targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050, is not ambitious enough when weighed against the current and anticipated consequences of climate change.

Several teen activists were among the 40 presenters at a legislative committee meeting that sat for more than six hours on Monday to hear public feedback on Bill 213 — a bill that proposes new environmental goals and promises a strategy by the end of 2020 for achieving those goals.

Willa Fisher — a 17-year-old Citadel High School student and an organizer of youth climate strikes — told legislators that “the future of this entire planet” is in their hands.

“When I read this bill, it did not make be believe that you understand the extent of this crisis,” Fisher said.

She told the all-party committee, “Nova Scotians want climate action and you need to start taking bigger steps.”

The bill in question was tabled in the legislature last week by Environment Minister Gordon Wilson. The proposed Sustainable Development Goals Act is meant to replace the Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act (EGSPA) — a 12-year-old piece of legislation that was lauded for its ambition but will soon be outdated. EGSPA’s targets all expire in 2020.

The new bill proposes reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 53 per cent below 2005 levels — for a total of 11 million megatonnes — by 2030, and to net-zero by 2050.

While many of the presenters said they were glad to see steps being taken to address climate change, none were satisfied with the targets. Many urged the province to aim higher, echoing the recommendation of the province’s largest environmental advocacy group, the Ecology Action Centre, for a 58 per cent reduction by 2030, to 9.8 million megatonnes.

Presenters also called for robust public consultation as the province develops its climate change strategy in the next 12 to 14 months, and for greater detail to be written into the legislation rather than leaving it to regulations, as is currently planned.

Fisher’s classmate and fellow activist, Julia Sampson, said she wanted to speak directly to legislators inside Province House because she’d been “screaming” at them from outside for months with other climate strikers, and not seen the desired action.

“I’m hoping that by me being in here and them seeing me personally, maybe that will take some sort of emotion out of them that they can channel into this and make the right decision,” Sampson told reporters.

“Net-zero by 2050 is too late,” she said.

Sampson used some of her time in front of the committee to highlight what she believes to be gaps in the education system. An inadequate education on the topic of climate change, Sampson said, makes climate anxiety worse.

“This is the biggest issue of our generation and it seems like its completely out of control. Part of the reason it feels to uncontrollable is because we as youth don’t know enough about it.”

Sampson said she’d informed herself by reading the landmark 2018 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, digging up information in her spare time and talking with her peers.

“It’s almost like we kind of created our own school for each other,” Sampson told reporters.

“But that’s not what should be happening — we should be learning this in school. I shouldn’t be taking my free time to educate myself … about the most important issue of our generation.”

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While the call for action on climate change has crystallized in just the past couple of years for many people, Kyra Gilbert, a 17-year-old Mi’kmaw water protector, said environmental protection has always been an important fight for Indigenous people.

Gilbert used her time before the legislative committee to voice her opposition to the Alton Gas project on the Shubenacadie River. The company plans to flush salt deposits out of underground caverns for natural gas storage and dump the brine into the river. Opponents worry the increased salinity will destroy the river ecosystem.

“The bill you’re proposing says that you will take immediate climate action on any climate crisis … well, take a big look at this one,” Gilbert said, referring to the proposed Alton Gas project.

Gilbert wasn’t alone in broadening the scope of her recommendations to the government to include more than just greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Robin Tress with the Council of Canadians suggested that if the government is serious about taking climate action, it should swear off all resource extraction projects.

“Don’t even think about reopening the discussion on uranium mining or fracking,” Tress said.

“Stop trying to mine for gold, we don’t need it. Stop pouring money into offshore drilling. If we put equality and justice for people at the centre of a plan for the future, there’s no need for any of these devastating projects to go ahead.”

Mike Lancaster, of the Healthy Forest Coalition, said he would have liked the bill to include specific targets for environmental conservation, which were included in the bill’s predecessor, EGSPA, but are left out of new iteration.

He said Nova Scotia should commit to increasing protected land to 17 per cent of the province’s total territory, and he suggested that the recommendations of the Lahey report on ecological forestry be included in the new bill.

The environment minister doesn’t sit on the law amendments committee but responded to reporters about some of the presenters’ recommendations, expressing surprise that many people felt his bill didn’t go far enough, fast enough. Wilson was firm that the goals for 2030 and 2050 were based on science and didn’t need changing.

“I do believe that we have what I would call extremely aggressive goals here,” Wilson said.

NDP members of the committee, with the support of their Progressive Conservative colleagues, tried to amend the bill to reflect the call for a more stringent 2030 target, but the Liberal majority rejected it and moved the bill back to the house without any amendments.

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