For the second year in a row, members of Seniors for Climate Action Now, or SCAN, gathered in front of the Royal Bank of Canada branch on Princess Street in Kingston, Ont.
The group is protesting the financial institution’s investments in fossil fuels. SCAN partnered with a handful of other local climate action groups to divest more than $3 million of their own money from RBC in the last year to send a message.
SCAN member Nancy Nicol says she thinks it’s working.
“They’ve recently come out with an announcement that they will bring forward a motion in this AGM to uphold prior informed consent,” said Nicol.
Informed consent is playing a pivotal role in the decade-long battle by Wet’suwet’en people in British Columbia to prevent the construction of the Coastal Gaslink pipeline.
Nicol said SCAN’s mandate is to motivate seniors to take action, but their powerplay against one of Canada’s big banks couldn’t have happened without support from much younger folks from Queen’s University and local high schools.
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“Quite frankly the young people that have been involved with the organizing that we’ve done have brought a tremendous amount of energy, skills, knowledge and abilities,” Nicol said.
For local high school student Abbie Miolee, who started the LaSalle Secondary School Earth Club, the help and guidance she’s received from older climate activists in Kingston has been invaluable.
“Multi-generational efforts are so important and I’ve heard some older folks say that, yes, the climate justice game is a young person’s problem, but we need older generations to help us,” she said.
Miolee said it’s always been her dream to live off the land and to live as sustainably as possible, but it’s a goal she fears is falling further out of reach without real action on the climate crisis.
The group of protesters is pushing for renewable power sources, like wind and solar energy.
“Panels instead of pipelines, because the fossil fuel industry, it may make money, but it’s not going to buy us more time,” added Miolee.
Saturday’s protest was part of roughly 40 happening across the country.
RBC has its annual general meeting on April 11 in Toronto.
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