Commentary

To breathe or not to breathe

November 27, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

My head is full of the poor results of the COP30, the United Nations Climate Change Conference held this year in Brazil in Belem, a city known as the gateway to the Amazon, to demonstrate at the outset the need internationally to curb and discourage in every possible way, the deforestation of forests and old-growth trees around the world. As these valuable forests are decimated, here in Canada, with the decades of destroying our Boreal forest by development, logging to excess and climate change, the job forests do of absorbing carbon increases the ever-growing dangers of climate change, as they are depleted.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger, “author, biologist and poet of the global forests,” who took part in an Authors on Stage event here in Orangeville, insists:

“When there are no trees, there will be no clean air.

“We won’t be able to breathe.”

Simple as that.

That was one of the two-pronged important disappointments of COP30 in the final document, that suggested, at the very least, there be established a “roadmap” to sustainable logging be established, which was only finalized as voluntary.

The second prong vied for how much it also matters: in 2023, for the first time, at the COP28 in Dubai, it was agreed to begin “transitioning away from fossil fuels.” However contentious and difficult this historic declaration was, it survived until this year, when, although the cause of many heated debates, fossil fuels were actually left off the table at COP30!

Left off the table both, but nevertheless it was acknowledged that “fossil fuels are the major cause of climate change” and there exists the absolute necessity to halt and reverse deforestation.

A general agreement was met that funds sent to developing countries that suffer the most harshly from the brunt of climate change should be tripled by 2035, yet without actually naming which developed countries would be sending financial assistance.

Overall, COP30 was greeted with disappointment.

Wopke Hoekstra, European Union climate commissioner, said to reporters, “We’re not going to hide the fact that we would have preferred … to have more ambition on everything.”

From Colombian President Gustavo Petro, “…the cause of the climate crisis is the fossil fuels used by capital. If that is not stated, everything else is hypocrisy.”

China was okay with COP30. No one from the United States attended.

Here in Dufferin County, there is a constant push and pull to the worst possible proposals that municipal and provincial governments could put forward. It is as though there is a strange and terrible race to do as much harm as possible in the name of beneficial development and jobs.

Doug Ford and his government yakking on about the Highway 413, we might present the 413 as the star of the bad plans. A highway with a useless 52-kilometre route that would cross the Gore Road and cut directly through the headwaters of Etobicoke Creek and the Humber and Credit Rivers. Picture only those few assaults, followed by many on this region and go on to imagine the destruction of hundreds of acres of prime farmland and the habitats of many species, including some in danger of being lost altogether.

It is very well known, and the Ford government has been advised many times that studies have shown that no highway digging up the Green Belt and the Headwaters is useful when traffic can be better solved by opening the 407 to trucks and increase the convenience of the GO system from Union Station to a number of stations to the “long awaited GO line in Caledon.”

This is a highway with an unknown price tag, last predicted at $10 billion, but now no number is offered. The assurance is that it will take at least a decade to build leaves us all trying to imagine the trials of a long-term, chaotic and devastating project under construction for years.

One has to ask why. Why so much damage for an unnecessary highway – because it will allow sprawling conditions for developers to profit– but “sprawl is the most expensive and inefficient way to build housing,” according to Environmental Defence. For more information, go to www.environmentaldefence.ca.

Why are we failing to begin truly transitioning from oil and gas? Because fossil fuel corporations love the profits, the ease of staying the course and even the lovely subsidies – lots of money – from our governments. No one in Western Canada is talking about transitioning away from fossil fuels.

As for deforestation, here in the north, it is used to supply the States with toilet paper, and in South America, to provide land for cattle. All reasons with better solutions.

The cap of 1.5°C as defined and agreed by the Paris Agreement, so the United Nations Climate Action tells us, is breached temporarily for a month or a week now and then. Hear the bells ringing? Namely:

“The science is clear: 1.5°C must not be breached, to avert the worst impacts of climate change and preserve a liveable planet; global warming needs to be limited as much as possible and as a matter of urgency,” according to the IPCC.

Are we so entitled that we believe we can carry on exactly as we wish, scorning the clear warnings of science and seeing the damage in real time all around the world? Don’t we have to go to the bother of transitioning away from fossil fuels? We do have to stop deforesting the most valuable harbour of them all – our forests.

Don’t we have to mend anything or apologize to our children of the future?

Can we go on exactly as the fools we have been because Elon or Jeff are going to get us to live on Mars, and it is already so bad for us, we’ll feel right at home?

Viviana Santiago, executive director of Oxfam Brasil, said COP30 “offered a spark of hope but far more heartbreak, as the ambition of global leaders continues to fall short of what is needed for a liveable planet.”

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