About Wheels for Change:
A group of us from across BC have begun this campaign because we share a deep concern about climate change and how it could affect our future and the futures of our children. We must all take action in our own lives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and we must let politicians at the municipal, provincial at national levels know that we will support them in taking whatever steps are necessary to facilitate deep cuts in emissions. If we act collectively, we will have much more of an impact than if we act alone!
What
Motivates Us:
“Climate change is not just a moral question: it is the moral question of the 21st century” Monbiot, 2006
According to a poll reported in the Globe and Mail, 90% of Canadians now believe that climate change will be a serious problem for all of us. This is because climate change threatens to tip us into what is classified as ‘dangerous’ runaway warming, due to triggers such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet or the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, if the planet’s temperature is not kept from rising more than 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
According to the economist Sir Nicholas Stern, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 (from 1990 levels). We also need to make our initial reductions as big as possible and as soon as possible, if we are to reduce the risk that we are taking with our future.
The good news is that solutions to reducing emissions exist, and this target can be reached if enough of us have the will to make it happen.
A group of us from across BC have begun this campaign because we want to provide an opportunity for people who feel as we do to demonstrate our commitment to stronger action, to be taken by ourselves and by our governments, to reach the necessary targets for reducing emissions.
How We Began:
This
campaign began in the fall of 2006, as the town of Vernon, population
40,000 people, experienced a 13 week run of Al Gore's film 'An Inconvenient
Truth'. A public meeting called by the Sustainable Environmental Network
Society (SENS) in late October to discuss this movie attracted a crowd
of 200 people. This is when we realized that a significant shift in our
community, and in society at large, was starting to happen.
As a result of that event, two of us, Mary Stockdale and Celia Auclair, began to talk. As mothers of young children, we both feel highly motivated to work for a better future, for them and for all children.
From our chance meeting came the idea for this campaign. Since then, we have been encouraged and uplifted by the support of the many people who have advised us, supported us and offered to join us!
If you feel as we do, please join us as well.