The letter about bee poop (Letters Aug. 8) got me into a chain of thought on the wider problem of our attitude to nature.
I also own a car and, starting in spring, there is a rain of aphid poop from the oaks which forms a sticky coating compounded with a dusting of pollen. This annoys me – and don’t get me started about incontinent seagulls.
I propose cutting down all oak trees to eliminate this problem. No, I am not serious, I’m just trying to point out that we are still in the mindset of the early European settlers to whom the wilderness was the enemy to be eliminated to create a congenial and profitable habitat.
A common attitude is that people are free to worry about the environment or climate change, as long as they don’t interfere with my freedom to enjoy my life as I see fit. Unfortunately, as children have less and less contact with nature and get most of their information from screens, the above attitude is spreading. The concept that we are part of the environment and are now the controlling organism is lost.
The above situation has never occurred before so we lack a political mechanism to take it into account. Science puzzles politicians. So thanks for the letter on bee poop, but over the centuries, modifying the environment for our immediate convenience has had disastrous results and will increasingly continue to do so.
M.J. Harvey
Oak Bay