Climate emergency : Code Blue Alert

The health of the individual depends on the health of the environment. It’s something I’ve come to understand firsthand having worked as a nurse in New Brunswick for nearly 40 years.

Everyday, health care providers find themselves on the frontlines of the relationship between the environment and health. They treat the child who is having an asthma attack brought on by wildfire smoke; the couple devastated by the flooding of their home, seeking help for depression; the worker exposed to toxic spray who is suddenly suffering a host of ailments, in addition to potential long-term damage to their health.

If the government really wants to fix health care, it must also get serious about fixing the environment and tackling the climate crisis.

Premier Higgs and his cabinet could learn a thing or two from frontline health care providers on how to handle a crisis. When a patient is having a medical crisis, we don’t walk away and promise to study the matter, or simply declare we’ll have the patient cured at a later date (maybe 2050?). We treat the crisis as a crisis. We announce a Code Blue and get all hands on deck.

What does that mean in terms of government policies and action on climate change and the environment? It means doing everything possible to get off fossil fuels sooner rather than later by paving the way for new wind and solar energy, as well as battery storage. It means providing adequate incentives and infrastructure to electrify transportation and ensuring that all carbon tax revenues go towards greening New Brunswick’s electrical grid and supporting deep energy retrofits for homeowners and small businesses. It means cleaning up the toxins in our communities and taking steps to not introduce more.

New Brunswickers can reap immediate benefits from such decisive government action, including lower electricity costs, greater energy security, and safer, healthier communities. These measures would also create plenty of good jobs for New Brunswickers.

I believe it is our duty to leave things better than we found them for the next generation. I fear this government is falling far short in this regard. If the Premier and his cabinet are serious about fixing health care, they must also protect the environment in order to sustain healthy communities. Otherwise, they’re widening the floodgates for more and more sick people to show up at our overcrowded hospitals and clinics.

We’re in a Code Blue. It’s time for the government to realize it—and act.

Odette Landry lives in Dieppe and is a retired nurse.