Citizens Can Do Their Part

We have the power to turn the climate crisis around

We can all play our part in solving climate change.

What we do matters.

According to Statistics Canada, just under 20 percent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions come from activities in households, including transportation. If we add the emissions associated with things we buy like food, clothes, and consumer products, household emissions rise to over 40 percent of Canada’s total. If we add emissions related to flying, household emissions rise even more.

Taking direct action is important. So is talking to friends and family about climate change. When we share our concerns and ideas about solutions, we signal to friends and family that it is an important issue. When we take the time to listen to each other, and speak from the heart about what we each care about, we can find common ground. Check out this guide from Climate Outreach on how to talk about climate change: Climate Outreach’s Real Talk Model is a great guide →

Climate Outreach’s Real Talk Model:

Respect your conversational partner and find common ground
Enjoy the conversation
Ask questions
Listen, and show you’ve heard
Tell your story
Action makes it easier (but doesn’t fix it)
Learn from the conversation
Keep going and keep connected

Talking about climate change is a great first step to acting. When you tell friends and family how you feel about it, they start to care too. Share these resources and comment on social media like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Social media comments influence how people think about issues. Let them know climate change is important to you.

Here are some tips to lowering your carbon footprint covering energy, transportation, food and waste (click on the section title for more information).

Waste

Waste generates about six percent of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions, including from rotting food in landfills and using oil and natural gas to make plastic. Once plastics are in the environment they, on average, take more than 400 years to degrade while leaching toxic chemicals into the natural environment, harming or killing wildlife, and contaminating land and oceans.

Reduce plastics use by buying unpackaged goods and re-using plastics because nearly 90 per cent of plastic in Canada is not recycled and pollutes our lakes, parks, oceans, landfills, or our air when incinerated. Oil and gas are used to make plastics, most of which is used for packaging and then sent to landfills.
Government policies like banning single-use plastics, requiring more recycling and making producers responsible for their waste are important cutting plastics use.

Food

These seven actions do the most to cut food-related greenhouse gas emissions (from energy used to grow or transport food, from rotting food in landfills, animals like beef that burp methane or fossil fuel-based fertilizers).

Energy and transportation

The big contributor to household greenhouse gas emissions is our vehicle (about half and more if you count flying) followed by space heating, water heating, appliances, and lighting. Think about these solutions the next time you travel, buy products, and buy or renovate your home:

Travel closer to home, if you can, for your next holiday to avoid flying.
For future vehicle trips, think about how to reduce how much you drive alone, whether that means combining trips, riding with friends and family, or using public transit.
The next time you are in the market for a vehicle look for the most efficient vehicle that meets your needs. The only way to lower the carbon footprint from a vehicle is to burn less fuel. When a sales person tells you a car is clean burning, they mean lower air pollution causing smog. The catalytic converter lowers some kinds of air pollution. That technology does not solve climate change (Click here for climate change basics). If you can afford it, consider a plug-in hybrid or electric vehicle. Natural Resources Canada publishes a vehicle efficiency guide that can help.
Take advantage of NB Power’s Home Energy Savings program for help assessing the efficiency of your home and incentives to make your home more efficient and comfortable. You can cut the amount of energy you use for heating by adding insulation, replacing windows, changing out your old furnace or installing a heat pump if you heat with electricity.
If you are in the market for a new appliance, especially refrigerators that run all the time, look for the EnerGuide or Energy Star rating and aim for the lowest energy consumption you can.
Solar panels are an option for some of us. NB Power has a net metering program that credits households with the energy they produce. See the links to videos and fact sheets below profiling stories of New Brunswickers who have taken the plunge and are happy they did.

Here are some tips to protect yourself from the impacts of climate change

Prepare for flooding in New Brunswick

Click on the images below to make them bigger, or click here to view them as a PDF.

Prevent tick bites

Source: The Conservation Council’s 2019 report, Healthy Climate, Healthy New Brunswickers: A proposal for New Brunswick that cuts pollution and protects health.

Keep cool in a heat wave

Calculate your carbon footprint!

Seeing is believing. Take a few minutes to calculate your carbon footprint, click here. To calculate greenhouse gas emissions for an upcoming or recent flight click here.

Send your letters, for the Love of New Brunswick

Send your letter for an affordable, reliable and renewable electricity system in New Brunswick

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Dear Minister Holland, I am writing to you today to ask that you commit New Brunswick to building a modern electricity system that is affordable, environmentally sustainable and reliable. We rely too heavily in New Brunswick on dirty fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas, as well as nuclear to generate our electricity. These fuels create pollution that make the climate extreme, and produce dangerous radioactive waste we must safely store for thousands of years. There are better ways to make electricity. New Brunswickers want pollution-free electricity to power our lives. A pollution-free electricity system that is affordable and reliable makes electricity from cost-effective renewable technologies like wind, solar and storage technologies. We can build renewable technology projects in just a few months or a couple of years, compared to more than a decade for untried and dangerous technologies like small modular nuclear reactors. We have no time to waste. Climate change is upon us and we have less than 10 years to stop burning coal, oil and fossil gas to power electricity and transportation if we are going to prevent even more dangerous climate change. We need to invest first in a mix of smaller and larger renewable energy projects in New Brunswick so we can close all fossil plants before 2030. As we build our own non-polluting electricity system, we also need to retrofit buildings so we use electricity efficiently. We need to ensure low-income households get the support they need to use less energy and shift to electric transportation. We need to connect regionally to balance the Atlantic power system. An energy efficient, renewable and interconnected electricity system can deliver affordable, environmentally sustainable and reliable electricity to power our lives. Investments, in partnership with the federal government and communities, will create jobs over the next 10 years, modernize our economy and make us more resilient to extreme weather events like floods, ice storms and tropical storms. How do we create a non-polluting electricity system to power our lives? Here is what we need: A strategic plan to phase out fossil fuels from our electricity system and to power more of our transportation and industry with electricity from renewable energy like solar, wind and storage technologies. We need a public process to develop this plan. Electricity reform to ensure the Province’s energy policy, the Electricity Act and government policies and regulation remove barriers to building a non-polluting electricity system. We need reform so we can consider social and environmental costs, not just financial costs when making electricity decisions. That is not the case today. Government policy would regulate a renewable energy target for the province of at least 80 per cent by 2030 (not emissions-free). I look forward to your positive response from your Government on the important question of electricity reform in New Brunswick and the Atlantic Region. Respectfully, Cc: Hon. Blaine Higgs, Premier, Hon. Gary Crossman, Minister of Environment

Send your #ClimateAction letter to Premier Higgs

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Dear Premier Higgs, I am worried about climate change. I am worried about how a changing climate affects my health and the safety of my family and our communities. We see the changes in our own lifetimes. From more intense rain, wind, and ice storms causing floods and power outages, to hotter days and seasons bringing dry summers and ticks, to sea level rise and storm surges tearing up our coasts, extreme weather is putting our communities and families at risk and disturbing life support systems. We all know this is not how it is supposed to be. I am feeling more anxious day-by-day because governments are doing so little to protect us from the effects of extreme weather, or to cut the pollution causing the problem. We need leadership that helps us transition to a clean energy system fit for a climate-friendly world and that invests in the infrastructure and planning changes we need to keep communities and families safe. It is frightening when the scientific community is so clear and united about the realities of climate change, yet so many leaders refuse to act with the urgency a changing climate demands. I was inspired to see hundreds of children and New Brunswickers of all ages gather in front of the Legislature and in towns and villages across our province for global climate action rallies over the past several years. So please, Premier Higgs, take climate change seriously. Take climate solutions seriously. We need to do more. Respectfully,

Learn more about climate change and solutions:

Ciizens can do their part

Governments can do their part

How and Why Climate Change is Affecting New Brunswick

How Global Heating Works

Who Pollutes our Climate the Most in N.B.?

Videos: For the Love of New Brunswick

These videos explore how climate change is already affecting the things we love doing in New Brunswick, and how we can all do our part for solutions.