(Fredericton) Green Party leader David Coon says a Green government would make New Brunswick a leader in building safe, climate change resilient communities. Coon says the lack of leadership on this vital issue to-date has held the province back, putting homes and jobs at risk.

Coon released the Party’s climate change action commitments today, which includes tough new limits on greenhouse gases for large polluters, strict requirements for NB Power to provide 50% of our electricity needs from renewable sources such a wind and solar energy, stronger protection for our forests and wetlands to protect New Brunswickers from heavy rain storms and sea level rise, and investments in home energy conservation.

“Climate change action requires strong leadership, not rhetoric,” says Coon. “A province-wide effort that moves us more quickly towards renewable energy and away from coal, oil and gas is warranted. If we take one lesson from the growing incidence of Lyme disease, the ice storm, and this spring’s dangerous floods, it must be that we need to protect our communities from the impact of our changing climate and rapidly invest in new jobs and training.”

“The obsessive bickering between the old parties of Higgs and Gallant over the carbon tax is a distraction from the urgent actions we need to take to avoid this crisis. A carbon tax is not a plan to fight climate change, it is one tool in the toolbox. The Green Party has a plan which we are ready to act on now.”

The Green Party’s commitments on climate change and green energy include:

• Legislation to put a cap on industrial carbon pollution
• Requiring that NB Power use renewable energy sources (wind, solar, hydro) to provide 50 percent of our electricity needs by 2025, 75 percent by 2035 and 100 percent by 2050.
• Financing energy efficiency upgrades for homes and businesses to meet new provincial targets to reduce energy demand.
• Providing financing and incentives to homeowners and businesses to convert from oil and gas to local sources of renewable energy.
• Ensuring New Brunswickers are served by an effective public transportation system, including buses, marine and river ferries and rail.
• Protecting intact forests, wetlands, salt marshes and flood plains as buffers against climate change impacts such as flooding and sea level rise.
• Support the training/re-training of workers in fossil fuel industries and young people to meet the labour needs of the green economy

David Coon has 30 years of experience in climate change. He is a past-chair of the Canadian Climate Action Network, served on the Legislature’s all-party select committee on climate change in 2016, participated in the United Nations Climate Summits in Paris in 2005, and in Montreal in 2005, played a role in the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers 2001 climate action plan, and contributed to the development of Canada very first climate action plan in 1994.

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