Previous
Making an effort
?As you read this, all the bigwigs from all over the world are nearing the end of their landmark climate conference in Copenhagen. Everyone is hopeful that they’ll manage to agree on some reachable goals, that they’ll all celebrate and together put their signatures on a creative and insightful plan that will begin to turn around the environmental mess into which we’ve quite knowingly plodded.
The world is hopeful, yes, but that’s a good way from being optimistic. Most educated observers, including Uxbridge’s own Stephen Leahy (see page 15), an internationally respected environmental journalist whose articles are published every week in a dozen different languages, are convinced that nothing very productive is going to emerge from Copenhagen, and that Canada, long over its reputation as a world leader in things scientific, is going to take a fair share of the rap for inhibiting progress, thanks to the environmental catastrophe that is the Athabasca Tar Sands, one of the economic engines of Stephen Harper’s Alberta.
Our letter writers this week have a lot of interesting things to say on a variety of topics (keep those letters coming, folks!), but we’d like to draw your attention to the letter on page 13 by Leahy’s son Derek, who’s lived in Europe for six years and has a bit broader perspective on these matters than most of us probably do. Derek says that just in the few years he’s lived in Europe, he’s seen a slow, subtle but steady change in people’s attitudes toward him when they discover he’s a Canuck. As he says, maybe it won’t be long before we stop putting the maple leaf on our backpacks.
So why do we do this to ourselves? As Heinz Nitschke says in the very first paragraph of his letter on page 14, it’s because we’re lazy. We do the easy thing. We can still breathe, we can still afford gas in our SUV, so why rock the boat? Someone comes to Council asking for a stop sign down the street, to stop people from speeding through the subdivision. For the sake of the kids, we say yes. But is it the best solution? Maybe we need to make an effort to think it through a little bit more, to examine all the options. It may take a little longer to reach a decision, the decision may not be as popular, but maybe in the long term, it’s the right thing to do.
When someone comes with a plan to put up some environmentally friendly windmills (which OK, will also make them a few bucks), and the whole neighbourhood gets panicky because of the impact on the cows, maybe it’s not about windmills vs. cows, maybe it’s about taking the time to figure out a way for the cows and the windmills to coexist.
In the next municipal election, coming up next fall, we’d like to hear the candidates commit themselves to making more of an effort to do what’s best in the long term, for all of us. Municipal governments can’t do it by themselves, but they can’t let senior governments do it for them, either. We all have to play our part.
For our Christmas issue next week, we’ve asked our contributing writers to send in pieces on the theme The Magical Music of Christmas, telling us a bit about their favourite Christmas carol or song. We invite you, our readers, to do the same. Just send us a couple of paragraphs on why you love “Six White Boomers” or “Silent Night”. The more people we hear from, the merrier!
