October Seniors Day is for Climate

Oct. 1 declared as Seniors for Climate Day

The following is a letter to the editor from a local Penticton resident about climate and threats we still continue to face from the oil and gas industry and a call for our elected leaders to take action on climate on National Seniors Day and International Day of Older Persons 2025.

Dear Editor:

In celebration of the October 1: UN International Day of Older Persons, and Canada’s National Seniors Day, I write to honour people who have lived long lives in the South Okanagan.

Most of them have been blessed to live contentedly in a region shared between settlers and Syilx peoples of the Okanagan Nation. And together, communities have grown and flourished in a land of rich abundance. Thanks be to all of them!

This region, however, is fragile, and its delicate natural balances are being increasingly challenged by chaotic climate events. Twelve months ago, Penticton mayor and council proclaimed Oct. 1 as Seniors for Climate Day. They recognized that we are facing a “climate emergency” and that we need “broad-based climate action . . . to preserve the planet that we love and depend upon.” These sentiments are even more necessary today than ever before.

Oct. 1 2024, our local Seniors for Climate group, who had presented this proclamation, had only recently formed to bring awareness to the precarious future we are bequeathing to our children and grandchildren. Since then, continued support for and financing of fossil fuel industries -- via all levels of government -- even in the face of drastically reduced costs for renewable energy, threaten not only the health of our youth, but their economic well being as well.

So on this Seniors Day 2025, I urge all generations to talk with young people about their dreams for the physical and social environments that they hope to inhabit. Please speak openly and factually, and encourage them toward actions so that they too can look forward to secure futures: futures possibly configured differently than our lives have been, but no less rewarding -- maybe even more so because of their intimate connections with planet earth as their beloved home.

Avril Torrence