Letter: Misreading Bill Gates Shouldn’t Derail Grey County’s Climate Plans
Reader John Butler urges County Councilors and residents to rethink impacts of climate change and our collective responsibility to act when issues require multi-jurisdictional support.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Editor:
At an October 29 meeting of Grey County Council’s Budget and Finance Committee, several councillors misinterpreted a recent essay by Bill Gates (of Microsoft fame), thereby spearheading a Committee motion calling for the elimination of Grey County’s Going Green in Grey Program (its plan dealing with climate change) and an agricultural initiative stemming from that program.
Their claim was that Gates had rejected climate action. The allegation is untrue. Rather than rebutting the spurious claim by several councillors, please read Gates’ words here. In a nutshell, he said:
”Climate change is serious, but we’ve made great progress. We need to keep backing the breakthroughs that will help the world reach zero emissions.
But we can’t cut funding for health and development—programs that help people stay resilient in the face of climate change—to do it. It’s time to put human welfare at the center of our climate strategies, which includes reducing the Green Premium to zero and improving agriculture and health in poor countries.
I’m not saying we should ignore temperature-related death…”
I urge you, County councillors and residents: don’t see Gates’ comments as an excuse to curtail local climate work. Consider them as a way to respect climate action and poverty reduction as two horses that both need to be fed, pulling the same wagon.
I have long been interested in the Home Front and its role in the First World War in Grey County. As Remembrance Day approaches, we should all be open to the lessons wars teach us.
Grey County didn’t start the First World War. County officials could have said (as one councillor said about Going Green in Grey at the Finance and Budget Committee) it is “beyond where we are as a local government.”
That’s not the position the County took. Instead, it found areas where it could most contribute to multi-jurisdictional war support, and acted within those areas, most notably (but not solely) by helping local folks to grow and donate food when we knew the losing side in that war would be the side that starved first.
On Remembrance Day, we might reflect on what would have happened if Grey County had responded to war by saying it’s “not in my wheelhouse” and “beyond where we are.”
Neither Gates nor any responsible scientist suggests that climate action and poverty reduction are any less important than waging a war. As our climate and local infrastructure deteriorate, how can we say it’s not our County’s business?
Must we wait until our own basement floods, a mega-blizzard maroons us, and a family member faces heat stroke before we act?
The motions to gut climate action will shortly go before County Council. If it stands fast and continues its climate actions to protect us, history will remember it gratefully. If it buckles because of a willful misunderstanding of our future, its failure will define our history too.
John Butler
Grey Highlands
Letters to the Editor do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of The Owen Sound Current and its editor or publisher.