Climate change isn’t just about starving polar bears or melting ice, writes Sheila Watt-Cloutier. It is about human rights, human health, food security, poverty, loss of traditional knowledge, and global insecurity as traditional ways of life that are lost to glacier melt, coastal erosion, permafrost melt, rising seas, extreme drought, floods and violent weather.

Okanagan Nation Grand Chief Stewart Philip put it best when he said that the decision to exclude Indigenous peoples from the Treaty’s renegotiation is a “shocking unilateral decision” and an “act of absolute treachery.”

Incumbent mayoral candidate John Tory’s inability to grasp the existence, extent, and implications of his white privilege is akin to white Toronto’s inability to grasp mayoral candidate Faith Goldy. Both are rooted in a conflict-averse fragility that comfortably masquerades as pragmatism.

Two paths meet before us: the one we are on with all that the science says about it – for our planet, its biosphere, our health, and our wealth – and one towards a more flourishing future.