The June 2023 Canadian Psychiatric Association’s Position Statement on Mental Health and the Climate Crisis recommends that psychiatrists “participate in climate-related advocacy or activism at institutional and systems levels. Ongoing delays to decarbonize (“mitigation”) and to meaningfully prepare for the coming changes we cannot avoid (“adaptation”) represent policy choices that harm the mental health of Canadians.“
Accordingly, Drs. Ron Gibson, Kai Irani, Irfan Khanbhai, Robert Stowe, Steven Taylor, and Randall White, alongside the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, the Canadian Association of Nurses for the Environment, and Doctors for Planetary Health (West Coast) urge you to participate in the Fridays for Future Global Climate Strike event taking place in Vancouver next Friday afternoon on September 15.
Fridays for Future is a global, youth-led organization spearheaded by Greta Thunberg. The Vancouver event will be one of over thirty similar peaceful rallies planned in cities across Canada, and thousands internationally, timed to closely precede UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ Climate Ambition Summit being held in NYC on September 20th.
The goal of these actions is to pressure our governments to take urgent and decisive action to tackle the climate crisis, including a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels to an energy and economic system that is efficient, fair, and equitable, based on clean energy sources, and produced with respect for nature and the sovereign rights of Indigenous peoples.
We will muster at the southwest corner of Cambie and 10th at 12:50 pm, then join the main rally at 1 pm at Vancouver City Hall, where there will be entertainment (for kids and adults), and some brief speeches. Hopefully you can join us as well for the march from there to the Vancouver Art Gallery, where there will be a 3 pm rally with more speeches and performances.
