Re: School officials join fact-challenged ‘climate strike’ (Opinion, Sept. 22).
I feel a deep sympathy for your columnist, Tom Fletcher. When a person has lived their whole life surrounded by voices that tell them that continuous economic growth is both possible and necessary, that resource extraction and mega-projects are the best ways to take care of the people’s needs, it is extremely difficult to let go of that story and see the world in a different way.
It is scary to think of change on the scale that is necessary, especially if you are a person who benefits from the way things are. Far more comfortable to keep faith with the old story and paint those who insist on sounding the alarm as misguided and irresponsible. Even someone who accepts that this crisis is real, as I do, will find it very challenging to do what is required to survive in the old world while simultaneously trying to create the new one.
The solutions to the crisis are in fact quite simple; it is this very human inertia that must be overcome and climate strikes and protests of all kinds are one way to do this.
Alice Whitehead
Victoria