Climate Change and Harry Potter: Sadie Vipond Speaks Truth to Power at Calgary City Council
June 1, 2018
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Wild Lands Advocate update by: Sadie Vipond
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Figure 1 – Sadie Vipond, taking a cue perhaps from her father Joe Vipond, recently delivered a call to action to Calgary City Council. We’re very pleased to republish Sadie’s remarks here.Hello, my name is Sadie Vipond. I’m 12 years old, and I came here today to make a difference. I want to try to help fix global warming, because it’s making lives around the world, not just humans, worse.
In talking to you, we can make a bigger difference, the more people that are helping, the bigger the difference is going to be. I’m not saying that one, single person is going to fix the entire problem of global warming by themselves. It’s going to by thousands and millions of people, working together to make the world a better place. And some people, well, they don’t believe that the world is suffering from global warming that we created.
In Harry Potter, I don’t know if you’ve read Harry Potter, but if you have you’ll know that the ministry of magic didn’t want to believe that Voldemort had come back from the dead because they were scared of that idea. But just shoving it away and claiming that it doesn’t exist doesn’t make the whole idea just disappear. Pretend that the ministry of magic are the ones that don’t believe in global warming, Voldemort is global warming, and Harry and many other people are the ones that raise an army to overcome Voldemort. We are that army. And guess what? Once the ministry figures out that they were wrong all along, they put in maximum effort to help overthrow Voldemort. We want that to happen. Since we made this problem, we have to fix it. If we don’t, who will? I’m pretty sure we won’t have dolphins and sloths in lab rooms trying to figure this out.
You guys are leaders, you can make a huge difference and lead us in the right way. My whole family is trying to make a difference. Even things that are quite small. My sister, Willa is working to ban plastics in this city and my dad does countless things to improve the planet. I beg of you to try your best to help our (mine and yours) future. And the more people we have helping, the more people will notice all of us trying to help, and this will go on like a chain reaction. Maybe the more people that are helping, we may have the whole world of 7. 6 billion people helping to change the world. I’m just 12 years old, I shouldn’t have to worry about this stuff. But I have to, because this isn’t the world I want to grow up in. So, we all have to protect my generation, the next generation, and so on. So please make a change for the better. Thank you.
– Sadie Vipond
