Vote For Climate
“We do have a choice: Creating positive tipping points for climate progress — or careening into tipping points for climate disaster. This is an all-in moment… to inspire the cooperation our world so desperately needs.”
— UN Secretary General António Guterres, June 2024
The earth’s climate is always changing, but the world currently faces a pace of change that is unprecedented in the history of our species. Our unrelenting combustion of fossil fuels, as well as other human activities like deforestation and animal agriculture, are raising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses to dangerous levels.
Even looking just within Canada, we can already see the impacts. From deadly heat waves, to record-breaking wildfires, to dramatic flooding and more, the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather and related events is a product of our warming planet.
The good news is that since humans made this mess, we can also find solutions. But we have to act fast!
One of the most important ways we can take action on climate is by voting. On this page, you’ll find information on why bold political leadership is crucial to address the global climate crisis, how climate change connects with other issues of concern to our communities, and why your “vote for climate” matters. You’ll also find guidance on identifying climate champion candidates, how to hold your elected representatives accountable, how to vote in provincial and federal elections, and how you can get involved with local climate organizing. We hope that, alongside raising ‘Vote for Climate’ signs region-wide, this page helps to inspire greater community-wide action.
As we hear frequently in the media, climate change is happening right now and is getting worse. We have already seen devastating extreme climate impacts here in Canada, including increasing wildfires that in 2023 alone burned through 15 million hectares (an area larger than Greece) — doubling the previous record for wildfires set in 1989. Over 230,000 Canadians were forced to evacuate their homes, and in some areas skies were filled with smoke for weeks — impacting air quality and posing risks to human health (see the Canada Wildfires 2023 report for details).
Despite all the coverage about climate change, many people still don’t have a complete picture about what causes it and how a warming planet is impacting environmental conditions and the wellbeing of humans and other beings. That’s totally fair — it’s complicated!
The overwhelming consensus in the scientific community is that current climate change is primarily human-caused. The fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas — burned mainly by the world’s wealthiest countries (including Canada) over the past 250+ years have emitted gasses that have the effect of trapping excess heat in the earth’s atmosphere. This excess heat increases extreme weather events and accelerates temperature increases around the globe.
Other kinds of human activities also produce greenhouse gasses or decrease the ability of the earth’s ecosystems to absorb those gasses and thereby reduce the problem. Activities like removing forests, widespread use of chemical fertilizers, and animal-based agriculture, are some of the other major contributors to the crisis.
This website is not primarily an educational resource about climate change and its impacts, but there are many reliable sources where you can learn more. For example, check out these pages from the United Nations, NASA, and the BBC. We also encourage you to read on in the following section, “How does climate change impact the things I care about?”
Katherine Hayhoe, Canadian atmospheric scientist and climate champion, uses a ‘bucket’ metaphor to illuminate the cross-cutting nature of the crisis, and how it can make it harder to address other things that we care about:
“Climate change is the hole in the bucket. If you have a bucket of whatever it is you care about and you’re pouring all the resources you have into it — all the money, all the effort — and that bucket has a hole in the bottom and that hole is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, what’s going to happen?”
Many of the economic and social challenges we face are tied up with the drivers and related impacts of climate change. As you consider which candidate deserves your vote, keep these connections in mind!
The increasing costs of natural disasters
More severe, unpredictable storms can lead to increased flash flooding and storm damage, washing away crops and damaging homes, livelihoods and infrastructure. Wildfires are also increasingly putting our urban areas at risk. These events have a huge human and financial cost.
For instance, the Jasper wildfire saw almost a billion dollars in insurable losses, and many people displaced. July 2024 flash floods in Toronto and other parts of Southern Ontario came in with a similar price tag. These costs in turn raise the price of insurance, putting increasing pressure on household budgets. In the United States, an increasing number of homes are being refused insurance altogether due to increased payments for climate-related damages by insurance companies.
Rising food prices
Rising food prices have many causes, but an underlying and increasingly relevant factor is the frequency of extreme weather events that damage or destroy crops, getting worse due to climate change. Here in Southern Ontario, protecting and strengthening climate resilience for agricultural lands is one crucial way to ensure our future food security.
Fossil fuel dependency & the affordability crisis
Fossil fuel dependency is part of systemic problems of economic instability and price shocks in fuel, food and other goods, driving the wider affordability crisis. Government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry could be better spent developing the green energy economy or addressing shortfalls in our healthcare system — among other possibilities — to address the climate crisis and real issues that Canadians are facing.
Health & Mental Health
Recent research highlights how climate-related high temperatures, air pollution, and natural disasters are impacting health, especially for pregnant women, children, and the elderly. Those physical health impacts and risks are linked to mental health impacts, also with disproportionate effects on vulnerable populations. Finally, as temperatures change, so do the distributions of animals, plants, and insects, which can also bring new or increased exposure to disease vectors, like blacklegged ticks.
Housing affordability & healthy cities
Automobile-dependent suburban sprawl is linked to higher greenhouse gas emissions, which means that policies promoting denser urban areas are good for the climate. Meanwhile, denser cities can also bring health and affordability benefits if we build complete neighbourhoods and provide for greenspace, as well as robust public and active transportation. The Alliance for a Livable Ontario’s Five Ways Home campaign sheds light on what an affordable housing strategy could look like in Ontario; this strategy is full of climate solutions too!
As Canadian climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe has put it: “It’s real. It’s us. It’s here. It’s bad. It’s getting worse. But our choices can and do make a difference.”
We are often encouraged by organizations and governments to do our part to fight global warming by changing our individual habits: using active transportation or taking public transit, showering less, changing out light bulbs, eating less meat, recycling and composting, switching to heat pumps if we own a home, etc. Individual actions do make a difference, but they can’t change the system that keeps reproducing our dependence on fossil fuels and other harmful forms of economic activity. Systems only change when people work together, and our most powerful institutions for collective action are our governments.
That’s why upcoming local, provincial, and federal elections in Canada are all very important for shaping future climate action efforts – both in our region and across the country. There is a pressing need for bold collective action aligned with climate science and Indigenous knowledge, which makes clear that climate change is already a real threat to our communities, nature, economies, children, and to our present and future wellbeing.
That’s why upcoming local, provincial, and federal elections in Canada are all very important for shaping future climate action efforts – both in our region and across the country. There is a pressing need for bold collective action aligned with climate science and Indigenous knowledge, which makes clear that climate change is already a real threat to our communities, nature, economies, children, and to our present and future wellbeing.
Your vote might seem like a drop in the bucket when we are talking about transforming our economic system, but the fact remains that voters can and do set the political agenda–for better or for worse. In the United States, a major opponent of climate action was voted back into the White House this fall. We need to make sure Canadian politicians know that we expect better, and that backtracking on Canada’s greenhouse gas reduction targets is not an option.
Our political leadership has a huge role to play in shaping an effective collective response, determining the kinds of investments our societies make into bold climate solutions. Whether it be setting energy policy to promote rapid expansion of renewables, setting standards for buildings and homes to be less polluting, building cities that rely more on low-carbon, public and active transportation, or promoting training and investment for a green jobs economy, our governments have an incredible amount of influence on the size of our collective future emissions.
Canadian governments at all levels have made some good policy changes to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gasses that cause climate change. However, it is clearly still not enough. Our emissions have actually increased by more than 20% since 1990, and we unfortunately have some of the highest emissions per capita in the world.
Why haven’t we made more progress? Unfortunately, the vested interests of polluting industries, and a lack of will among political and business leaders to embrace the energy and economic transformations we need has left us “locked into” an emissions-intensive society. To be clear, we don’t have to stay on this path; other countries are innovating rapidly to make the transition towards climate sustainability, and they are also seeing the socio-economic benefits of a growing green economy.
Concerned people everywhere have an especially important role to play by helping to elect climate leaders who can help move us on a path to decarbonization, increase clean energy, and get us moving on the journey of winding down our emissions to an eventual net zero. With the right approach, all Canadians can benefit from living in a cleaner, prosperous, low-carbon society.
Given the urgency of the climate crisis and its worsening impacts on animals, nature and all Canadians, each election in the near term presents a crucial opportunity for action. Your vote for climate action matters!
In 2019, all seven area municipalities across Waterloo Region, as well as the region itself, declared either a ‘climate crisis’ or ‘climate emergency’. These declarations joined thousands of other municipalities, countries and regions worldwide sounding the alarm with similar declarations, now representing over a billion citizens worldwide. Clearly, in response to a global crisis of this magnitude, bold and informed society-wide action is needed.
To address this challenge, greenhouse gas emissions that trap heat and worsen climate change need to be quickly reduced — with a goal of a 50% reduction by 2030 adopted in Waterloo Region, supported by local movements, and based on climate science.
Such a challenge is not easy — but is necessary to preserve a stable climate future which sustains all of us. The majority of our current emissions come from burning fossil fuels, whether in oil and gas production, transportation or in heating and cooling buildings and homes. Land use decisions (such as deforestation and animal agriculture), are also crucial contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. These are all areas of public policy that require cooperation between federal, provincial, regional, and municipal levels of government to address. We need to hold our decision-makers to account, and demand collaboration for bold and transformational change.
In addition to reducing our contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation to the changes in climate that have already begun is vital to ensure that our communities can make the best of changing circumstances, building their capacity for resilience. Justice and fairness also matter, to ensure that opportunities and burdens of change are shared equitably across our societies, and that no one is left behind as we transition to a more sustainable economy. For a compelling video series exploring these themes as they apply to Waterloo Region, see Stories of Adaptation in Waterloo Region.
Some good news is that as a major innovator, business centre, tech hub, agricultural area, and home to many amazing community organizations and multiple institutions of higher education, Waterloo Region is well positioned to lead efforts to build a more sustainable and secure clean energy future. The Region also has some strategies in place to support transitions to more sustainable futures — such as the TransformWR Climate Action Strategy adopted by all area councils in 2021. However, much work remains to be done to ensure that we meet those science-based targets while also benefitting local communities, work that will need support from all of us.
There are a range of different ways to vote in Canadian elections. It’s ideal if you can register ahead of time and receive your voter information card in the mail before going to vote, but even if you don’t have that card, you can usually still vote!
In Ontario you can use the online platform to make sure you are registered to vote at the correct address. If you aren’t registered, you can still vote, but you will need to look up your correct polling station at election time, and you will need to bring the right ID. For any provincial or municipal election, information on what’s required and where to vote can be found on the Elections Ontario Website. For more details on how to vote in Ontario, check out this entertaining video made by TVO.
For federal elections, you can visit the Elections Canada Website for information about which riding you’re in, look up your polling station, make sure you have the right ID, figure out how to do an absentee vote, or vote early if you will be out of town on election day.
Talking to candidates is important both to help you decide who to vote for AND to make sure that all candidates understand that climate is an important issue for voters. These discussions can help you gauge candidates’ priorities, and also find out more about their party platforms — what do they actually propose to do about climate change if they form government?
Once representatives are voted into office, you can continue to encourage them to act on climate change, and to ask them about their specific plans to do so. Some of the possible questions you could ask candidates or elected representatives include:
- What is your own understanding of the seriousness of climate change? What kind of action do you think is needed to address this global crisis?
- What specifically are you planning to do as an elected representative to help address the climate crisis, and how will you engage residents in Waterloo Region about potential policy directions?
- How will you help ensure that your party’s climate action plan follows the science for emissions reduction – requiring a 50% reduction by 2030 – and meets Canada’s existing climate commitments?
- Would you vote to preserve the current Canada Carbon Price & Rebate to address climate change? If not, what would you suggest to replace it with?
- What are your plans to address (and eliminate) Canada’s subsidies to oil and gas – a major sector that is driving the climate crisis?
- How will you push your own party to do more to address the climate crisis for all Canadians, and future generations?
During elections in Canada, lawn signs supporting candidates pop up everywhere. This often helps folks to see who is getting voter support, but rarely opens up public dialogue about key issues. The ‘Vote for Climate’ signs join other issue-oriented sign campaigns by citizens’ organizations that seek to change this.
In our view, sharing a non-partisan sign specifically encouraging “voting for climate” is especially important right now. These signs are reusable, affordable, weather-resistant, and can be easily stored and brought out again and again to draw attention in your community to emphasize the need to “vote for climate” in any future election. Each sign makes an extremely clear statement of the need to Vote for Climate, and the need to take action for a safe climate future for all of us. Each sign helps make climate change a bigger part of the public conversation — and hopefully a high priority for all candidates and elected representatives.
The first step to getting involved in the ‘Vote for Climate’ effort is simply to order a lawn sign to communicate your own support, which you can do here. Interested to do more? We love to hear from supporters with time and talent to share, who may be interested to support the ‘Vote for Climate’ effort and/or other campaigns and group efforts through the Waterloo Region Climate Collaborative. Reach out to us to share your interest at: [email protected]
This page is created and hosted by the Waterloo Region Climate Collaborative (WRCC). We are a grassroots coalition of over 50 different climate, environmental and related groups in Waterloo Region, striving to support each other to take stronger collective action to address climate change and work towards more sustainable futures. You can find out more details on the collaborative here, a local group directory here, and details on getting involved here.
The WRCC is non-partisan. We encourage all candidates running for office as well as elected representatives in office today to take meaningful action informed by science and Indigenous knowledge to protect our communities and address climate change, regardless of party association.