Hey Steven, what’s up? Do you remember the long nights? The wordplay? ECO remembers you – drafting articles to fill our pages, calling out climate inaction, doing what you knew best: speaking truth to power. Oh man, we had fun!
ECO is excited to see our old friend Steven Guilbeault is the newly appointed Environment and Climate Change Minister of so-called Canada. He is no stranger to the admittedly cold, austere, grey halls of COP. ECO’s friend and a founder of Climate Action Network, chair of the board, and former editor of this very newsletter, for over 25 years Steven was collaborating in meeting rooms, demonstrating in action zones, and speaking up in interventions alongside other civil society comrades. This year, with the return of COP comes the return of a veteran of these negotiations – this time, in a different position of power – one which brings with it many privileges, and many responsibilities.
Steven will no doubt recognize COP, but will COP and ECO recognise Steven? Will Guilbeault continue to be the champion of climate action and of civil society that ECO has known for so long? Will the man who once awarded Canada Fossil of the Day (more than once!) and published an ECO that referred to the nation as the “bad kid at the back of the class” and “the land of fossils” truly hold himself and his newfound colleagues in government to the standard of the systemic, terrific change that he spelled out back in 2012 when that ECO newsletter was published at COP18 in Doha?
Now Steven, with your change of status, ECO is hopeful that the climate hero we know is the climate hero we’ll see in the Cairn Gorm Plenary. I’ll remind you of what ECO cares about most: ambition, justice, reconciliation, equity, people, and planet. I know you know – we wrote these words together so many times, over and over again. Steven, tell me something, Has the time arrived for a new era of Canadian federal action on climate? Oh man, that would be fun!
You should know Steven, that some of us here on the ground still have some questions; after all, we’re talking to a key representative of a major petro-economy! So ECO has to wonder, how will the Minister responsible for getting a country to zero emissions before mid-century show that he takes seriously his role in protecting people from powerful fossil fuel interests? At COP26, ECO will be watching to see if you can help Canada re-chart the journey of an administration shackled to increased funding of fossil fuel subsidies and a vintage pipeline purchase. We hope to see you instead take Canada by the hand and lead the nation down a more responsible path towards the managed decline of the fossil fuel industry.
Steven, you are the brilliant mind once responsible for editing me. I hope you read and understand how happy ECO is to see you back. ECO trusts that you will put people and the planet front and centre.
We’re counting on you not to break our hearts.