What is the single most permanent and deadly problem our community faces right now? No, it’s not ISIS. Societies have survived deadly assaults from wild religious xenophobes, like the original Islamic explosion out of Arabia in the first century after the death of Muhammad in 632 CE.
No it will likely not be Ebola, which will mutate and be controlled following its initial deadly breakout.
It is the changing of Earth’s climate to conditions that will be incompatible with needs of most of life. Those conditions are sneaking up on us very fast and with growing momentum that for many centuries yet to come will be irreversible.
Why aren’t our leaders acting to prevent this? There are many reasons. They are primarily laypersons that have been lied to and don’t fully understand the problems or the solutions and they think you will balk at some of the possible remedies.
They may think you would rather just dump this mess on succeeding generations than face up to it now. The problem with that is we have already got such climate change momentum built up that some experts doubt we can reverse this in time to prevent total disaster. So my cry is: Awake! Action stations!
What action? Well, for starters it’s municipal election time. Municipal governments are the closest and most responsive to the people they can impact. Let’s give them a clear mandate to bring people together to coordinate changes to our materialist culture that will rapidly lower our negative impact on our climate. It won’t be easy, but would you prefer our early extinction. Time for us is like a rope and we’ve almost slipped to the end of our rope.
Press all your municipal election candidates and your neighbors relentlessly, to assume effective leadership roles to try to reverse this mess before it’s too late. Meanwhile realign your expectations and demands of your provincial and federal politicians. It’s later than you and they think.
You may be surprised to learn that some in the know, think our laziness and selfish greed make failure inevitable and they chose to try to enjoy the ride down until we hit bottom.
Sure, the required changes will bring economic problems, but would you prefer extinction? Ask your kids how they feel about that.
Norman Mogensen
Oak Bay