As a part of commemorating Earth Day 2022, Windsor of Change is featuring a mini-series of short discourses from various residents of Windsor-Essex. They were prompted to think about what sustainability means to them, the role of local and global climate change in their lives, and what they would like to envision as the future of positive sustainable change in the Windsor-Essex region.

by Cameron Fioret

Climate change is a stark threat to our ways of living.

As the recently released Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC explains, the Earth’s temperature is guaranteed to increase by at least 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next 20 years. The UN warns that we are “firmly on track towards an unlivable world” if Paris Climate Accord goals, in keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius this century, are not achieved.

We may experience eco-grief or apathy when considering the climate crisis, but I delay in being a fatalist in the face of this most pressing issue. Yes, I feel sadness, anxiety and, sometimes, defeatism in the face of climate change, but the crises should steel our resolve to work together to reimagine our shared world and future, instead of alienating ourselves from each other and the natural world. In our communities, and with each other, is where hope lives. I hope to see us in Windsor-Essex always striving to create a better way of living with the natural world and with each other.

“ In our communities, and with each other, is where hope lives. I hope to see us in Windsor-Essex always striving to create a better way of living with the natural world and with each other. ”

I hope we turn away from apathy and the status quo and move towards a concerted bottom-up model of environmental-community mobilization. In doing so, we in Windsor-Essex may realize a larger percentage of land devoted to greenspaces, expanded and more efficient public transit, and the enactment of the local municipal climate action plans, like the 2020 Climate Change Adaptation Plan adopted and released by the City of Windsor or the 2021 Climate Change Adaptation Plan by the Town of Essex.

Our politics influence our response to climate change; therefore, I also wish to see change socially and politically so as to change our climate change responses. By this I mean communities that are most vulnerable to climate change’s effects – those marginalized, racialized, and equity-seeking – are supported by our elected officials and enabled by our community at-large to spur change. I am confident this would allow us to revolutionize the way we think about these socio-environmental issues inherently connected to our climate crisis.

In working together to address climate change, the Windsor-Essex community can leverage its opportune location at a busy international border surrounded by the Great Lakes (all while existing in relative political stability) to make changes that build community, strengthen our politics and democratic ideals, and fortify environmental safeguards and justice.