Climate change is shaping up to be humanity’s biggest existential threat. Rising ocean levels, ghastly heat waves, and melting ice sheets are all warning signs of an impending catastrophe activists have warned about for years.

Enter the COVID-19 pandemic.

When COVID-19 began spreading beyond China, governments around the world went into crisis mode: hiring battalions of doctors, preparing makeshift hospitals, and passing strict public gathering laws. Climate change was placed on the back burner, even as wildfire smoke from California fills Ontario skies. 

Ironically, one of the symptoms of our planet’s ongoing ecological shift is the possibility of more frequent pandemics.

Environmental organizations based in Canada are still organizing Climate Week rallies and preparing for a high-profile Supreme Court hearing on provincial challenges to the federal carbon tax. Others are shifting their efforts to digital activism. But all of them are also trying to keep the public engaged in spite of the pandemic’s dominance of the news cycle – and the difficulties their own organizations are facing. 

How are they coping? Future of Good spoke to five organizations about staying afloat and staying on message:

Lindsey Bacigal, Indigenous Climate Action

Indigenous communities working with Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) don’t need to be reminded about climate change during the COVID-19 pandemic, says Lindsey Bacigal, the organization’s director of communications. “We know,” she says. “Indigenous folks are on the front lines and experiencing the chaos of the climate crisis.” Perhaps the best example is Inuit communities, whose traditional hunting lifestyle in Canada’s Far North has been devastated by retreating sea ice. What’s more, Bacigal says Indigenous peoples are more likely to see the pandemic as interconnected with the climate crisis. Keeping them engaged isn’t an issue. 

Holding safe gatherings during the pandemic, however, is a problem ICA is still struggling to solve. ICA has had to put off its annual steering committee gathering. Organizing community gatherings, even digitally, to talk about climate change, food security, and other related issues has been extremely difficult. Not only is the pandemic devastating Indigenous communities at a disproportionately high rate – leading some nations to close their borders – but many also have poor internet connectivity. “One of our main pillars is gatherings,” Bacigal explains. “It’s really important for us to be able to gather in the community and to be with each other for things like storytelling.”

ICA has assembled what it calls the Indigenous Worldview Climate Change Toolkit.

For the past few years, ICA has assembled what it calls the Indigenous Worldview Climate Change Toolkit, a project to curate resources and best practices for Indigenous communities to fight climate change. The organization is also working on a program to train instructors in the toolkit – something Bacigal says is essential for communities worried about letting outsiders in during the pandemic. “Folks will learn how to give a training in their own community about climate change and the causes of climate change that represents Indigenous knowledge, but also mainstream knowledge as well,” she says.

ICA is also working on a way to train these instructors remotely despite spotty internet – or even phone service – within many Indigenous communities. The pandemic is forcing ICA to adapt as best it can. “It’s really thinking about a lot of different ways of communicating and reaching people,” Bacigal says.

 
Kim Bryan, 350.org

Last year, Greta Thunberg’s now-famous quip to the United Nations — “How dare you?” — made headlines for weeks. Millions of young people from Calgary to Copenhagen marched in the streets, demanding their lawmakers take drastic action in the face of ecological catastrophe. Then COVID-19 struck. “Prior to that, the momentum had been incredible,” says Kim Bryan, associate director of communications for 350.org. 

The pandemic has proven tough for organizing mass public demonstrations, and Bryan admits digital protests haven’t resonated as much. But the pandemic hasn’t quashed 350.org’s mission. Bryan says the response to COVID-19 shows exactly how collective action can confront a planetary crisis. “The world stopped,” she says, “and suddenly most of the world’s population to do something for the greater common good — which is exactly what we need to do around the climate crisis.”

Bryan proposes building bridges between the climate movement and those working to mitigate other struggles brought on by the climate crisis – and the COVID-19 pandemic. “The climate movement can’t sit in isolation anymore,” she says. “I think it would be quite exciting if we could actually get away from even calling it the climate movement, because every movement would just naturally embed into it.

Kevin Guyan, Extinction Rebellion

Extinction Rebellion (XR), the U.K. founded climate protest movement, is unlike many environmental organizations operating today. It has no centralized leadership, simply a philosophy that members agree on: the planet is dying and non-violent direct action – blocking budges, filling streets, painting guerilla murals – is needed to confront politicians asleep at the wheel. Not much about their messaging has changed. Kevin Guyan, a member of XR in Canada, says the pandemic is a good way of illustrating the drastic adaptations of a planetary crisis. “It’s easy to just use COVID as an underline,” he says. 

Guyan says XR is focused on what he calls “regenerative work” during the COVID-19 pandemic — in other words, repairing and rebuilding the organization. This includes training on how to communicate with members of the public during major demonstrations, part of the movement’s signature strategy of nonviolent direct action. Members are also building bridges with the organizers of racial justice efforts, including Black Lives Matter. “There’s a lot of people working online right now to build solidarity and support within climate action and social equality action,” he says.

Members are also building bridges with the organizers of racial justice efforts, including Black Lives Matter.

Guyan also says the pandemic forced XR to move deeper into the digital realm, a challenge for organizers. He isn’t sure, for instance, whether Toronto’s XR group is still operating (their Twitter profile hasn’t posted since April). These ‘growing pains’, as he calls them, have been tough. “They’re happening in every Extinction Rebellion group around the world,” he says. “Everyone is having to adapt to what the reality of COVID is when it comes to building solidarity.”

Kimberly Shearon, Ecojustice Canada

As Canada’s largest environmental law charity, Ecojustice Canada fights the climate crisis in the courtroom, not the streets. When the pandemic hit, the justice system ground to a halt. Kimberley Shearon, Ecojustice’s director of communications, says they were supposed to appear before the Supreme Court in March to defend the federal government’s carbon tax policy. That hearing is finally happening this week. “The clock is ticking on the climate emergency, the biodiversity crisis,” she says. “We feel that urgency every day.” 

“The clock is ticking on the climate emergency, the biodiversity crisis,” she says. “We feel that urgency every day.” 

She also reminds anyone doing environmental advocacy to remember that the pandemic hasn’t displaced the urgent need for climate action. “The mission and the broader vision we’re all building towards is still there,” she says. “It was there before the pandemic, it’s there now — it may not be front-and-centre — and it will be there after the pandemic.”

That said, Shearon says it’s important to remember the limits of staff during this pandemic. “The people who work at charities are people too,” she says. “They have families, they have kids, and they have all of the things that they’re carrying with them each day into the work that we’re doing.” While much of the world’s work has slowed down, Shearon says Ecojustice is as busy as ever. 

Lilah Williamson, Climate Strike Canada

Instead of filling the streets, Climate Strike Canada is asking its supporters to fill the inboxes and voice mails of their local politicians. Lilah Williamson, an organizer with the student climate movement, says they have been trying to put pressure on the Liberal government in advance of the Trudeau government’s speech from the throne on Sept. 23 – a reset of its priorities in light of the pandemic. “COVID has been terrible in so many ways,” she says. “It’s also a really amazing chance to imagine what can come next.”

She says the pandemic has forced Climate Strike Canada to consider approaching politicians directly with their demands rather than relying on mass demonstrations. “Getting involved in political decision-making is one of the most effective ways to create change – and also because we can’t have as many massive protests,” she says. That said, the movement still has small physically distanced rallies planned for Toronto and Vancouver during Climate Week, she says, along with other cities across the country.

As with the Second World War, the ongoing pandemic will change the very fabric of our society, and Williamson believes it offers an opportunity to dismantle racism, offer a recovery plan for workers in high-carbon or unsustainable industries, and treat the climate crisis like an emergency. “The government is really in a crossroads,” she says. “And we’re really at a turning point.”  

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