Photo credit: Elena Tita / the Collection of war.ukraine.ua The human-caused climate crisis is the greatest threat facing humanity today. It presents challenges to populations in every corner of the globe. Food insecurity and more powerful natural disasters will fuel massive conflicts, migration on a scale never before seen in human history, and political unrest around the world. All of this will shake democracy to its core after we have already seen the emergence of far-right extremism in well-established liberal democracies. This is why it is important to keep tabs on current crises that are both contributing to global warming and hurting local populations. To solve climate change we need to be global thinkers and to be effective global thinkers we must concern ourselves with the plight of people in dire circumstances around the world. The people of Ukraine are desperate and they need our help.

The industrial poisoning of the Grassy Narrows and nearby Wabaseemoong First Nations communities in northern Ontario is a horrible saga that began over a century ago with the opening of the Dryden pulp and paper mill in 1913. Each chapter of the story reveals a provincial and federal government complicit in industrial pollution and neglectful of its consequences, thus amounting to a clear-cut case of environmental racism.

In Canada, everyone has the freedom of peaceful assembly; it is described as "speech in action".¹ A person’s right to protest is legal and protected under ss. 2(b) and 2(c) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guarantees freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly.¹ Yet we are seeing an increasing crackdown on protests in Canada and across the globe, causing a growing concern for all activists.² Photo from Canva

World conflicts and the environmental crisis are inherently linked. The violence and humanitarian injustices that can be seen globally not only have many of the same root causes as climate change but contribute to it. There is a need for unification amongst climate action and calls for justice in global conflicts as environmental and humanitarian issues become increasingly intertwined. Photo by Markus Spiske