Dear fellow British Columbians,
Hey, there are ways to create a healthy sustainable society without ruining the environment, creating climate upheaval, and destroying the traditional lands and waters of First Nations people.
Here’s what I’m talking about:
Site C? A misguided decision based on economics that don’t hold water;
Open-net fish farms? A factor in disappearing Pacific wild salmon stocks;
Liquid fracked gas extraction and pipelines? Sending tankers filled with explosive gas across the Pacific Ocean – who thought this was a good idea?
These three issues, staring us in the face, are challenging us to find other ways to live on this precious planet, by finding clean, non-destructive methods of producing energy, raising fish and in the process, weaning ourselves off fossil fuel.
Take a look at what’s going on in other countries and industries where new technologies and creative minds are finding solutions to halt the frightening future we know will occur if we continue along the same old path.
A recent article in the Guardian,World Bank to End Fossil-Fuel Backing (22/12/17), states, ‘The Bank saw the need to change the way it was operating in a rapidly changing world’ and ‘will no longer finance upstream oil and gas.’
So what’s holding us up? Why can’t we, in beautiful B.C., become leaders, not laggards, in the switch to a sustainable, carbon-reduced, fossil-fuel free, renewable clean energy world? All it takes is a will, some visionary leadership and a little courage.
The destructive impacts on First Nation peoples, lands and waters with Site C, open-net fish farms and Kinder-Morgan pipelines is a clear violation of human rights and an embarrassment at this time of proclaimed reconciliation by our governments. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples UNDRIP has already changed the law of this land, and it is time we lived up to these agreements.
It leads to the benefit for all of us.
Sally Gellard,
Merville