Have globalist tentacles ensnared your township? Thorold, Ontario, pulls out of UN-affiliated climate program

Originally published in Farmers Forum on June 27, 2024

Have globalist tentacles ensnared your township? Thorold, Ontario, pulls out of UN-affiliated climate program

Have Globalist Tentacles Ensnared Your Township? Thorold, Ontario, Pulls Out of UN-Affiliated Climate Program

Originally published in Farmers Forum on June 27, 2024

“Do we take control of our future or do we hand it to outsiders?” asked Thorold resident, Hermina Antes, at a council meeting last month. The local politicians voted to pull out of a UN-affiliated climate-change program after hearing from the public at the meeting.

UN Targets Local Governments with Climate Bafflegab, Offers Money for Restrictive Policies

By Nelson Zandbergen, Farmers Forum

THOROLD — Townships and counties across Canada are needlessly chasing environmentalist brownie points at local taxpayers’ expense, but the pushback has begun in places like rural Thorold, Ontario.

From hiring consultant greenhouse gas-counting gurus to slapping down unused bike lanes all over the place, to buying hybrid vehicles for township staffers, more than 150 Ontario municipalities are spending money to feel good about their chances of changing the weather.

They’re in a slavish pursuit of a global climate-control agenda and some people are getting sick of it. The municipalities are voluntary members of a virtue-signalling program spearheaded by the United Nations affiliated International Council for Local Environmental Initiative (ICLEI).

About 450 of Canada’s almost 3,600 municipalities have signed up with the ICLEI Partners for Climate Protection program. Enter the cleverly-named ‘KICLEI,’ started by Peterborough activist Maggie Braun last year with the aim of kicking the ICLEI agenda out of Canada, one municipality at a time.

The group scored its first major victory in Thorold, west of Niagara Falls, where the council pulled out of the program on June 18. The 7-1 vote came after Braun and others presented their concerns to the local politicians. It also coincided with a staff report to council recommending the city’s withdrawal from the program because of the extra work it would require of municipal staff calculating emissions and progress toward program milestones. There are “similar resources” from the surrounding Niagara region anyway, according to the report.

It was only in February of this year that Thorold joined the ICLEI program.

Local resident Hermina Antes recounted how her parents were poor farmers who left socialist Yugoslavia for the “hope and opportunity for a bright future” in Canada.

“Do we take control of our future or do we hand it over to outsiders, such as ICLEI, to decide?” she told the council. Antes was not anti-environmentalist, she said, but rather anti-globalist.

“I believe that the globalists are using climate as a motivational factor, to get people to sign on to things and initiatives, which may not be good for local ownership, enterprises and personal freedom,” she warned. “In other words, they are using the climate boogeyman to force people to do what they don’t want to do.”

Maggie Hope Braun spelled out the financial implications of the ICLEI program. Participating municipalities “appear to be spending five times more on climate initiatives than they are on addressing the immediate needs of the community, and that’s pretty sad,” she said.

Last year, Braun also persuaded rural Douro-Dummer Township in Peterborough County to oppose that region’s official plan because of its references to climate change and the county’s support for ICLEI.

She also fears the globalist pursuit of 15-minute cities, in which advocates say everything you need is within 15 minutes of your house. Critics suggest that 15-minute cities will be a precursor to a dystopian future where the masses are effectively restricted to 15-minute zones — in the name of saving the planet. Braun has previously highlighted a City of Peterborough document that used coded language to propose “targeting mobility.”

Local governments that commit to the ICLEI program are expected to cut their greenhouse gas emissions 45 % by 2030 and 100 % by 2050 (or “net zero”).

The expenses begin by hiring a consultant — or using additional staff time — to determine a municipality’s existing emissions. “Spending money counting carbon dioxide in Peterborough is a total waste of money, and it’s pushing up the taxes and making seniors impoverished,” John Dunn, a Peterborough lawyer and early KICLEI supporter, told Farmers Forum. “We have a full-time climate guru on our staff, and he reports to (another climate intensive staffer) and so a significant part of that job relates to this bullshit,” Dunn said. This will “make it more costly to build a house” and “it’s treated as meaningful because they are accepting the climate religion.”

Many of these municipal climate disciples have also declared their jurisdictions are in a climate emergency, although residents are often not aware of it or don’t see any emergency.

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