Dear editor,
(I shall send this letter as an Open Letter to the Prime Minister – by way of his office staff – and hope it gets the public attention it deserves.)
In a recent news release I hear that since 1992 the Globe has lost (I believe the number is three) trillions, yes trillions and not billions, and I am sure on that one, of ice, be it polar or glacial or together. We know that there have never been so many ice bergs floating from the Arctic Ocean and then the glaciers of the high mountains are retreating that should make every sensitive and intelligent person truly concerned.
And then, we have a president of the United States, the greatest industrial polluters (Am I right on this or is it now China or India?) on the planet, with the least solar power of the industrial nations (on a percentage basis), who, after withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, now announces he has signed for the go-ahead of opening the Alaska Wilderness Preserve for oil drilling.
Honoured Prime Minister (and all members of Parliament) would you please bring this up for debate in the House and then release a statement that the Canadian Government strongly oppose President Trump’s action. (Two wrongs make no right, if anyone points fingers at Canada re the “Pipeline” – I am of course also against that pipeline, feeding the Asian industrial giants with oil, instead of encouraging all nations to develop clean energies.
How far we have come from the days when a Dr. Fritz Schumacher in his futuristic books, Good Work and Small is Beautiful, pointed out that Oil is such a valuable commodity it should be preserved for producing medicines and other valuable products for mankind and not be burned up with our automobiles!
P.S., if I may be permitted to point this out: I am now an old man (one actually never feels old) of two months short of eighty-eight, and came to Canada for one year – that was my plan, working one year in the logging camp of Ontario, Camp 47, Ontario Pulp and Paper, earning enough money to return to Germany and attend forestry college there. One things leads to another when one is young and I was lured to Vancouver, and the rest is history. A house in 1952 was $12,000.00 and we earned $1.25 in the sawmill. A basement suite cost me $25, one eights of my monthly income, and today young people spend what percentage of their income on housing? Should this not also be discussed in the House of Commons and experts be appointed how this could have allowed to happen? Is this why young people have lost to fight for their precious, so far – until we find another one like it — “Blue Planet”, a planet that is in danger in so many ways. I am really concerned for the future of mankind. (But at 88, not for myself! Smile!) (There is something wonderful in getting old!)
B.F. Skinner, another one of those who came to public attention in my younger days: he said, “Mankind will act when it is too late!” Are we really that stupid or complacent, or, be it said, helpless, headed that way? I hope not!
Every concerned citizen should write to his/her MP or provincial MLA representative and let them know, that enough if enough and Mr. Donald Trump, president of our powerful neighbour will have to be opposed on this to the point, “it will – as the First Nation’s Lady, they featured on TV on this, said, … will never happen.”
Wilhelm Waldstein,
Port Hardy