By Ben West
April 15th, 2011

Former Prime Minister Kim Campbell famously said, "An election is no time to talk about serious issues."  As an environmental campaigner, I've felt like that has been the philosophy of all the party leaders when it comes to the tar sands -- especially after watching the federal leaders debates in the last few days.

Canada is playing a central role in the heating of the globe but, watching those debates, you would barely have heard about our role in climate change and would not have heard about the tar sands at all.

We are sitting on one of the biggest reserves of oil left on the planet. Our economy is inextricably linked to it, the value of our currency now follows the price of oil as closely as global temperatures follow CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

The science of climate change has now been widely accepted worldwide by all leading experts. In fact the rate of warming is exceeding projections. The implications for humanity and biodiversity are severe. Already there are more environmental refugees in Pakistan alone as there are people living in BC. Extreme weather events have doubled in the last decade; even conservative estimates tell us that millions of people are already climate refugees.

Our tar sands alone contain enough CO2 to heat the planet 2 degrees, which is the tipping point where runaway climate change takes effect. That means that phasing out the exploitation of this oil reserve is fundamentally important not only to our own survival but to the fate of the planet.

The elephant in the room was ignored this week. To be fair, we did hear at least some talk of not doing enough on climate change and cutting the tax breaks for big oil from those other than our current prime minister.

What seems clear to me is that we need real substantive change and that all the party leaders need to show more leadership in this regard. Climate change and Canada's role are too urgent to be put aside until after election day.

Now is precisely the time to talk about this serious issue. And that's why I'm so excited that this Friday, April 22, Vancouver will see a youth-led Earth Parade and Celebration hosted by a new group called Youth For Climate Justice Now (Y4CJN). These young people have that sense of urgency built right into their group's name. I hope the politicians learn from them, and I hope you'll join us next Friday.