Dear editor,
Happy 2019!
As I reflect on the many blessings I have from living in this beautiful valley and the year ahead, I can’t help thinking about climate change and how its effects are going to intensify and put our future and our children’s future at risk.
In B.C., we have already had two years in a row of record-breaking amounts of devastation from forest fires.
Of course, there is so much evidence of climate change for those who are willing to listen to scientists and our own common sense. Many academics have called climate change our greatest threat in thousands of years. Yet conversation and action is so minimal in comparison to the magnitude of the problem.
I learned recently why we humans are so disinclined to treat climate change as a serious threat worthy of decisive action.
As a species, we are used to responding to visible, known, enemy type threats. However, 1) climate change is not a tangible threat 2) we’ve never dealt with it as a society before and 3) in a way, we are all participating in its causes.
If it were al Qaeda causing it, I bet we would be more motivated.
As uncomfortable as it is, we are capable of facing and dealing with this threat.
There are great minds coming up with solutions to it on the economic, technological, social and in every other area.
I urge all of us to make 2019 a year in which we boldly face this threat head on and deal with it.
Celia Laval,
Courtenay