Doug's Blog

An Open Letter to an Environmentalist

Shane, first up, I want you to know I love ya, cuz.  I truly do, and I respect your opinion, but I have to point a few things out.

You live in the largest city by land mass on the continent.  That means you participate in a culture that has fewer people per square meter than anyother city in North America.  You are an environmentalist, yet you seem to support paving over your world and telling everyone from the Inuit to the Mexicans what they can do with theirs.  You seem to feel its all justified because you live in a nice sized condo and work in an environmental food store and  get regular blogs from David Suzuki (who has four houses three of which have bigger square footages that average 4.5 times bigger than the the average family of four.

I respect your criticisms but if I did everything you suggest you surely must have considered that your power will go out, and as nice as is that you live in in your sweet condo in a growing city that paves over nature, you couldn't do anything to heat your house . . . not even burn a stick of wood which the great environmentalist Henry David Thoreau did . . . as an environmentalist, and which I do in my house to conserve the electricity I use.

Perhaps you haven't considered that the goods you sell come from all over North America and "how would they get to you if we didn't burn carbon?"  Perhaps they would all grow here . . . in green houses . . . and we could use solar power . . . but as yet not one greenhouse in this province can claim to be off the grid . . . and so they use a lot of electricity, but that comes from coal and adds to greenhouse gases.

My point, Shane, is that I understand and I believe change is and will come and we need to lead it, but there are two types of dangerous people in this world.  Those who believe all is well, that we don't need to change, that we are doing great, that adaption is not necessary, that the world is just fine . . . or essentially . . . in the status quo.

And then there are the others, like you. I have my Honours Degree in Environmental Philosophy so I am not an idiot.  I studied a lot and I studied hard.  I read books from your god, David Suzuki, that screamed that the next ice age was coming and we were all going to die . . . and those were written in the seventies, Shane.

People like you scream foul and cry for drastic change, but honestly, your type screamed 'ice age' in the seventies, and now you scream 'global warming' in the ninties and '00s.  You aren't rational, you are emotive.  You are driven, by different motives, but by the same arrogance and ignorance as the those (noted above) who think all will be well.

The truth is that none of you know well, and none of you base your opinions on fact (I know your knew got has that great movie out that, by the way, was ruled by three national supreme courts now to lack accurate and full scientific evidence) rather than real fact.

That doesn't mean that I, and governments should do nothing.  That just means that government's and leaders, and the public too, cannot move on fear, but must always step back to reason.  Running and deciding on fear is what causes police to shoot boys with toy guns, or and multiple other cases of quick and inaccurate judgements.

I can assure you this.  You may not be happy there isn't a green seat and you want proportion represention so that every party gets seats based on popular vote, but if you get that . . . the greens will still be small and the votes and politics in the house will become about power more than about the environment . . . which to some extend, Gore and Suzuki have already done to damage your cause.

Just because green isnt in the name of the party doesn't mean they don't care . . . but good government and good leaders don't jump to rash decisions . . . or else you may discover yourself sitting in your high rise condo with no power, no food, no job, and no future.

I know you don't think about the people who drill for oil, or weld, or harvest trees, or use fertilizer on their farms, or the people that supply them with groceries and tools and all that stuff, cause you live in your little condo with no car and walk to your little organic store, but as a politician in Alberta, I must . . . and that is why I can't do what you demand (and it doesn't mean I am destroying your world) but have to try to find a way to guide, and lead, and teach, and transition millions to a new future.  If I did what you wanted and made it all happen now . . . there would be no future . . . even for you.