As their private jets descend on Toronto to promote a billionairist agenda will environmentalists confront Carney’s ecocidal CEO summit?
In a highly offensive article headlined “The 24 hours that could change Canada’s economic trajectory”, the Globe and Mail reported on the “heavy hitters soon to land their private jets in Toronto.” Saturday’s Report on Business should have described them as “heavy emitters”.
The CEOs and investment fund managers coming to Toronto in mid-September represent those disproportionately responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and overconsumption. According to Oxfam, the richest 0.1% exhausted their annual carbon budget – the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while staying within 1.5 degrees of warming – only three days into the year. The group labelled it ‘Pollutocrat Day’. “Since 1990,” noted an October Oxfam report, “the richest 0.1% have increased their share of total emissions by 32%, whilst the poorest half of humanity have actually seen their share fall by 3%.” Oxfam concludes, “to stay within the limits of the 1.5°C threshold, the richest 0.1% would need to cut their per capita emissions by 99% by 2030.”
Billions across the globe are being endangered by the GHG emissions of a small few.
An even more significant reason for the eco aware to oppose ‘Davos downtown’ is the capitalists attending are the ones propelling an economic system based on constant profit maximization and growth. Despite the 2020s being the hottest years in 100,000, they are pushing to extract more fossil fuels. It’s not just the climate crisis. The search for corporate profits is driving mass species extinction, soil depletion, ozone layer thinning, loss of arable land, freshwater depletion and other ecological crises.
Representatives of financial institutions managing over $100 trillion will be descending on Toronto in part because Carney has openly dismissed greenhouse gas reduction targets and pushed more pipelines. One of Carney’s first moves as prime minister was to eliminate the carbon tax while boasting about Canada being an energy “superpower”. In the federal budget Carney chopped in half the government’s commitment to plant 2 billion trees and reneged on a promise to subsidize electric vehicles. The Public Transit Fund and Greener Homes Grant also face further cuts.
At the same as he has slashed billions of dollars from tree planting, home retrofits, transit and Environment and Climate Change Canada’s budget, Carney has drastically increased war spending. Carney’s unnecessary, ecologically damaging, new submarines are expected to cost $100 billion over their lifecycle, which would cover Environment and Climate Change Canada’s budget for 58 years!
Most egregiously, Carney is fast tracking a million barrel a day tar sands pipeline to the BC coast. He’s set to put $40 billion in public funding into enabling further expanding the extraction of heavy emitting oil that should have been shut down decades ago.
In Saturday’s Globe and Mail the business reporter asks, “With such a large contingent of heavy hitters soon to land their private jets in Toronto, a quiet question has circulated around Ottawa and the Bay Street financial hub: Are we prepared for this moment?”
The same question should be asked of environmentalists. Are we ready to rage against Carney and the “heavy emitters” he’s bringing to downtown Toronto?
The Confront Carney’s CEO Summit mobilization needs help distributing thousands of stickers and leaflets in Toronto and also requires assistance with online outreach and art making. If you would like to assist with the mobilization email: capitalismcantbefixed@gmail.