“Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.”

We are in a climate emergency. When Greta Thunberg addressed the United Nations Climate Summit this week, she did so with the urgency and the anger you’d expect a child forced into her role would. Experts all over the world agree that we have merely eleven short years to drastically slash global emissions. Young people like Greta, frightened by inaction, have been showing the leadership that too many global leaders have lacked.

Last Friday, I was proud to march in New York with hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, united in their call for climate action. On Saturday, I joined a panel of political and union leaders from Australia, Europe, North America, and Africa at the UNited for Climate Justice summit to discuss how best to turn climate ambition into climate action. One theme was consistent: we need to not only take urgent and serious action but to do so in a way that does not leave working people falling even further behind.

I was able to offer a cautionary tale. I come from an auto family. In Ontario, manufacturing and industry brought people and whole communities into the middle class. But things have been changing. For people and communities who got into the middle class through work in mills and factories, over the last 40 years, change has meant jobs leaving, lower pay, less social mobility, fewer options, and less protection through unions.

Change has been scary because too often it has helped a very small group of wealthy people, and it has disproportionately hurt working-class people, racialized, and Indigenous people. Of course, Ontarians know it doesn’t have to be that way. Change always creates opportunities: we know those opportunities need to benefit everyday people.

Unfortunately in Ontario, we’ve seen what can happen when people don’t see opportunity. The Ontario Liberals’ decision to link a necessary phaseout of coal power with a completely irresponsible privatization of the electricity system fuelled a sense that only foreign corporations and a well-connected few would benefit as we moved away from carbon.

Now, instead of taking climate action, Doug Ford and the Conservatives have dismantled Ontario’s cap-and-trade system, scrapped retrofit programs and green incentives and are not only fighting the federal government to stop carbon pricing in the courts but are even forcing every gas station in the province to display partisan campaign stickers denouncing carbon pricing.

In the face of that, New Democrats, as Official Opposition, are offering a dramatically different vision. One that addresses not just the need for urgent action but also the need to see working people benefit. First, a bold plan to cut Ontario’s GHG emissions by at least 50% by 2030, and to reach net-zero by 2050. Those are the targets we need to reach if we are going to do our part to limit the worst effects of climate change. It’s where the science says we need to be. Second, a plan to create jobs and attract investment and an explicit guarantee to provide support for workers, communities and industries in transition. In other words, a just transition.

Both parts of the plan are vital. If we’re going to succeed, we need to counter politicians who see a political opportunity in stoking people’s fears. We need to ensure that, as we develop our plans, communities, workers and industry see not just a future for themselves, but opportunity for themselves and their children, and that giving in to the naysayers and doing nothing is a much bigger risk.

Children all over the world are demanding action from their political leaders. They know that if we do not act soon, it will be too late. We have the responsibility to not only respond with ambition but with care and compassion for all of those affected by our rapidly-changing world. As New Democrats, it’s part of our DNA to make sure we bring people along in everything we do. We need to be ambitious, and we need to show that government and civil society can make life better for working-class, marginalized, and everyday people.

The response to our Green New Democratic Deal has been incredible. We have received positive feedback from Ontarians, environmentalists, trade unions, civil society and businesses. We have a lot of work ahead of us. On Friday, I’ll again be joining climate strikers, this time in Toronto. Our shared future is worth fighting for and we can — and must — build that future, together. Let’s get to work.

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Andrea Horwath is the Leader of the provincial NDP and the Leader of the Official Opposition.

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