#22: Healthy
Communities Face Facts
Inconvenient Realities![](images/divider.gif)
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Sit down Virginia. I have some
unsettling news for you. What I have to
say may cause you some distress, but you are old enough to know some
facts of life.
Contrary to what politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate leaders have
been telling you…there is no Environmental Santa Claus. You have been
fed a web of delusion for some decades now, about how, even if those
annoying radical “environmentalists” might have been right all along,
the solution to the climate crisis was just around the corner.
Re-cycling, smart light bulbs, and carbon capture, and wave power were
going to save us.
They didn’t. They won’t. All along, powerful forces have tried to
convince us that we can consume our way out of this crisis.
I can’t really blame you for missing the obvious signs, considering the
constant, well financed, self-serving and fraudulent attempts to get
you to turn a blind eye to evidence.
So here are a few truths that might be hard to swallow, and are more
than just inconvenient – to many of us.
You are to blame. We are all to blame. Each aspect of that blame can be
calculated on a sliding scale.
For instance – do you drive a car? Most of us do, but some of us
drive energy hogs, some of us commute long distances to work, many of
us use a car when we could easily walk or bike. Cars are a big
part of the emission problem. The fun part is seeing how twisted
the justifications for excessive car use can become.
Do you reside in a house or apartment? Most of us do. But does
your house have more that 200 square metres of living space? We all
want nice things, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that nice
things come without an environmental price. And please don’t embarrass
yourself by insisting that you need those extra rooms. No one needs
them – you want them. Have you made any effort to make the
heating and cooling of your home sustainable?
Housing is a giant contributor to climate change – are you willing to
assess your contribution?.
Do you travel by airplane? Did you need to? Honestly? Of course we all
want to see the world and visit friends and relatives. But let’s not
plead necessity where none exists. These are choices.
Do you eat meat? So do I. Not as much beef as I used to. Once again
these are choices and each choice needs to be evaluated.
Do you buy much stuff that comes from far away? This is tricky, because
it’s complicated. Some things we don’t grow here, and some things we
don’t make near home. But the bottom line is that we need to
think about the transportation involved as well as the health and
welfare of the people making the cheap shirts and growing the cheap
coffee. By buying most our manufactured goods from Asia we are
off-loading the environmental cost to that part of the world, and
helping to destroy the ocean while we’re at it.
So those are the big ticket items: transportation, travel, housing, and
food. We should know by now that we have to change what and how we
consume. Our dismal failure to avert disaster should tell us that. The
good news is we don’t have to give up everything, but we have to make
responsible choices. The bad news is that without leadership and truth
from our governments, individual actions won’t solve the problem
either. So in a way Step 1 is realizing that we can’t continue to
consume as we have in the past, and step 2 is electing
governments which will take the problem seriously and help us do the
right
things.
Did you vote for a political party that allowed this to happen? (That
would be most of them.)
Do you trust them to fix it? Did you ask them to fix it?
And just to add some specifics let’s continue with some more targeted
questions.
Do you have a lawn? Do you water it excessively? Do you use
gasoline-powered tools to mend it and annoy your neighbours? Lawn care
is a huge part of emissions and waste.
Do you choose to use gasoline-powered recreational toys such as
jet-skis, ATV’s and snowmobiles. Bad for you – bad for the earth.
Can you walk? Are you physically capable of hiking, skiing or
paddling?
Of course there are extenuating circumstances. If I lost the use of my
legs I might consider a powered mode of getting around. What’s
your excuse?
Do you have a spare home that you drive around? Large RV’s are the
opposite of earth-friendly holidays. And they are clearly a choice
rather than any kind of a necessity.
I could go on – but these things I’m listing are not news. There are
two types of people who are doing a lot of damage to the earth – those
who don’t know and those who don’t care. A subset of the “don’t
know” group is the “pretending not to know” group. I think that
may be the heart of the matter.
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