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Content Warning: The stories in this series deal with difficult and sometimes traumatic topics. Please practice self care, stop listening, and seek help if you need to. Scroll down to find links to available supports. Storyteller, actor and activist Angel Gates invites Megaphone author Peter Thompson into conversation about his poem, “Empty Inside.” Peter’s piece, published in the 2021 Voices of the Street anthology, is a poetic contemplation of loneliness and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. They discuss feelings of anxiety and longing for simple connection and interaction during lockdown. Peter also speaks to the devastating wildfire, fueled by climate change, that burned his hometown of Lytton, BC in the summer of 2021.

Co-Director of the Climate Justice Project at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and senior economist, Marc Lee, joins Am Johal to discuss the successes and failures of Canadian climate policies across the political spectrum. Marc speaks about the origins of the Climate Justice Project, and conceptualizes how reaching a net-zero carbon economy can be achieved — through a fundamental restructuring of Canadian and BC systems, and the implementation of decolonizing practices. Am and Marc also discuss how approaches like carbon pricing and carbon capture systems do little to counteract climate change, and instead offer “escape hatches” for the fossil fuel industry. They explore how other government-based responses like subsidizing pipelines, or setting climate goals for the distant future, do not adequately address the imminent threat of climate change. Marc ends by discussing how we need to deal with this climate emergency with the same level of urgency that was enacted in BC’s COVID-19 response.