Tobin Kern of Sault Climate Hub was standing on a picnic table, armed with a megaphone, to address a crowd of more than 200 people gathered for the global climate strike at Clergue Park on Friday.
“Is there anyone from city council, or the mayor, here today?” Kern said, eliciting prolonged booing from the crowd. “OK, that’s a good demonstration of what I’m talking about. We need everybody at the table.”
Similar global climate strike events are taking place across the globe Friday in order to bring attention to what many people are branding a climate crisis.
“For years and years, the scientists have been telling us what’s coming, and not much action has been taken on the world stage,” Kern told SooToday during the event. “It’s time for citizens to come together and demand the action that needs to be taken to tackle this issue.”
One of those citizens, Shannon Jondreau, brought her seven-year-old son Gavin to the event.
“We just wanted to come support everybody here,” said Jondreau. “We believe very strongly in keeping our environment clean, we just want to try to reduce as much waste as we can.”
“I want to keep the future bright for my son. He’s only seven [years old], and I just want to instill good beliefs in him, and help him to learn to reduce waste - and to make sure that there is an environment and a planet for him when he’s older, so he can have a family as well.”
The group then marched through Clergue Park en route to city hall.
“The city didn’t come to us, so we’re going to bring the message to them to make sure they hear it,” Kern said.
Former Green Party candidate Kara Flannigan was also circulating a petition calling on city council to declare a 'climate emergency.'
“The petition is asking city council to declare climate emergency. Over 400 communities in Canada have done so, and we did put it to them [city council] before the summer, and it didn’t make it to being declared,” she told SooToday. “We see today with all the number of people who have come out here, and all the anxiety around climate disruption and the challenges that we’re going to have with the changes in weather.”
That petition, Flannigan said, will be delivered to city council once there are a significant number of signatures.
“We want to get a lot more signatures to show them that it can’t be denied anymore. You can’t just fiddle-fart around,” said Flannigan. “The community is a big enough consensus that you can’t say no.”
“When we get to that level, we’ll deliver the petition to them.”
Kern hopes that political will eventually bend to public will when it comes to acknowledging what's being called an environmental crisis.
“Politicians are like long grass, and...if the wind blows strong enough, they will bend,” said Kern. “Basically, we’re trying to garner as much support, and as much public support, around this issue so we start to see actions that reflect the public will.”
“Already it’s a success because we’re collaborating with people like Sault College Student Union, who we haven’t been able to connect with before,” he continued. “I think this is better than what we expected, so we’re very, very happy.”