Peter Bevan-Baker’s response to the recent speech from the throne was spot on – especially in relation to climate issues.
It’s great to see specific plans and $60 million committed to promote research and development and to support businesses in the clean technology sector. But the lack of specifics on how we are going to more immediately tackle climate change was disappointing.
At the end of the throne speech under the heading of “A Cleaner Environment” is a list of one-line items which members of the legislature will be asked to “consider policy, program and budgetary proposals related to.” It’s not that all items on the list aren’t important — it is the lack of specifics that is alarming.
For instance, the first item is “Encouraging a greater use of electric vehicles”. Given that over a year ago the Climate Change Secretariat sounded the alarm about the need for bold action to reduce our emissions in the transportation sector and given that the Sustainable Transportation Action Plan of November, 2019 identified several actions to reduce transportation emissions, I expected more specific program announcements in this throne speech.
An EV and home charger incentive program was one of those actions. If we are serious about encouraging electric vehicle use we will need such a program as well as electric vehicle mandate legislation. “Implementing an Island wide transit system” was another line item in the throne speech. While it’s great to see this need acknowledged, improving urban and rural transit was part of the Sustainable Transportation Action Plan and here we are over a year later with no implementation plan identified. Given that half our province’s carbon emissions come from transportation, we need to get more bums in buses and more electric vehicles on our roads very soon in order to meet our climate targets.
The premier has made some bold commitments on climate but the lack of urgency and specificity reflected in the Throne Speech makes me wonder if we will get there.
As Greta Thunberg has said, “Our house is on fire”. We need to act now.
Marilyn McKay,
Charlottetown
