The whole world shifted for Alberta in 2014 and it never stopped shifting. The oil and gas rollercoaster economy that was all we’d ever known kept taking unprecedented hits from a dizzying array of sources, all of them global in scope and that would ultimately prove insurmountable for business as usual. Heading into 2022, Covid had forced the world to stop and consider just what it was we’d all been doing and reconsider what’s really important. At the same time, global climate disasters had ratcheted up to impact almost every jurisdiction in one form or another, making weak responses increasingly less tenable and the classic denialism that had held us back for so long reduced entirely to the extreme fringes.
Against that backdrop, Alberta’s climate organizations greatly benefited from Climate Reality Canada’s Matthew Chapman and his cross-country trek in 2017, where he introduced us to Climate Reality Canada’s Community Climate Hub format, creating some shared resources, necessary structure and critical engagement amongst us. I joined the newly founded Calgary Climate Hub in fall of that year, a group of impact-oriented climate citizens laser-focused on influencing our city’s upcoming Climate Resilience Strategy and, quite frankly, I never looked back.
A handful of other Community Hubs also sprung up during this time, and you’ll get no better idea of the important roles these Hubs have grown into than by looking into Alberta’s province-wide municipal elections in October of 2021. The Community Climate Hubs are non-partisan and can’t take sides in elections, but we can certainly remind citizens that every election is a climate election and encourage them to ask tough questions of the folks looking for their vote. I’m proud to say Alberta’s Climate Hubs (the Climate Hub of Southern Alberta, Bow Valley, Edmonton and Calgary) found a number of ways to keep climate in the debate halls and on the ballot, including:
- Candidate Questionnaires, Forums and Debates;
- The creation of a ‘Climate Report Card’ for city councils and ’Municipal Politics’ primers;
- Hub Climate Policy Platforms.
Alberta’s Climate Hubs are hitting the ground running in 2022, and why not? Recent Hub-sponsored polling showed formerly oil-and-gas-only Calgarians want to become leaders in the transition to renewable energy, and there’s every reason to think the same of Alberta’s other big cities. Time and time again, we Albertan climate activists have been saying this province has everything we need except the will to change, and that’s changing in a big way. If, like me, your beat is the global transition to a climate-friendly future, I promise you you’ll find no more interesting place than Alberta, and no better, more impactful group of folks to join than your local Community Climate Hub.
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Feb 16th at 7:05pm: A Climate Of Change Episode 4.2: Electrify Calgary
The Calgary Climate Hub is assembling a top-notch power panel of Calgarians with a diverse array of backgrounds and expertise to discuss a key component of our city's Just Transition to Net Zero along a meaningful timeline to properly and prosperously address the Climate Emergency: ELECTRIFICATION.
