Teens hoping for ambitious sustainability framework from City of Regina

A dozen teens gathered in a building across the street from Regina City Hall on Friday, explaining their hopes for the city’s upcoming Energy and Sustainability Framework and why they want it to be ambitious.

Sophia Young is in Grade 11 at Miller Comprehensive Catholic High School. She said she’s passionate about climate change because it changed the course of her family’s life.

Young comes from a farming family in Colombia.

“We can’t farm anymore because of the rains, the weather changes (and) the droughts. There’s not a business anymore. Our family was out of work,” Young said Friday.

She said trying to move to a different field isn’t something anyone wants to do.

“For generations, you were proud to be a farmer and all of a sudden you can’t do it anymore because the weather changed,” said Young.

Young explained those effects are why it’s important that people in Regina start making changes.

“Nobody really recognizes how what we do in this part of the world affects other parts of the world and, eventually, it’s not going to be, ‘Oh, it’s some far off place. Those poor people,’ ” Young said. “Those poor people are going to be people in Saskatchewan. It’s going to be our neighbours, our friends, our family.”

The City of Regina is to release its Energy and Sustainability Framework on Monday — a document with guiding principles, goals and timelines on getting the city to net zero by 2050.

Young believes people should be excited about it.

“This is a really big step and it’s a step in the right direction and it’s going to change people’s lives in so many ways — not only in this city but around the world,” said Young.

She hopes other communities will join in and Regina will be an inspiration.

As part of her work with Regina Energy Transition, Young got a peek at what might be in the framework. She mentioned renewable energy, retrofitting existing buildings, re-energizing clean industry, and increasing active transportation and public transportation use, which she and others in the group Friday hoped would include free and fair transit for youth in the city.

Young did mention the targets in the report were between 1.5 C and 2 C, which she didn’t think was enough.

“I really hope that we would have taken a little bit more ambitious action and really hit that, by 2050, we would be below 1.5 C,” she said. “Right now we’re just kind of hoping that through federal changes and provincial changes that we would just kind of make it below 1.5 C.”