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Letters to the Editor: Climate change; Food wastage; Alaska

This week's Letters to the Editor on climate change, Alaska and food wastage.

Letter to the Editor re: The looming crisis of climate change

The only thing offering any chance of averting an apocalyptic future—and of getting through what’s already coming with our humanity intact—is the kind of radically transformative social and political movement that has altered the course of history in the past. A movement like those that have made possible what was previously unthinkable, from abolition of slavery to civil rights.

To those who disparage the strategy of disrupting the fossil fuel industry and the institutions that support it as too extreme, business as usual is extreme. Just ask a scientist. The building is burning. The innocents—the poor, the oppressed, the children, your own children—are inside. And the Petro state is spraying fuel, not water, on the flames.  That’s more than extreme. It’s homicidal. It’s psychopathic. It’s insane.

Yvonne JamesNakusp

 

Letter to the Editor re: Paying the climate change invoice

Well before the Industrial Revolution, renewable energy was the norm, including woodlot management and millpond development.  When fossil fuels and nuclear power hit the scene, cost was the controlling factor in driving those non-renewable energy sources forward.

We now understand that our global concept of cost was ill informed.  Since the Industrial Revolution we have been invoiced for the real cost of non-renewable fossil-based energy.  That invoice is Climate Change – we just did not understand the fine print.

As a local and global society, we need leaders willing to legislate policies to pay off that debt, with a strong commitment toward non-carbon based energy sources.  The choices have been evident for some time – the leadership has not.  That has to change.

Amanda BathKaslo

Letter to the Editor re: Food wastage

It’s a big loss watching a small amount of food go to the garbage bin. There is this guilty feeling of knowing so many people around the world are starving because of a shortage of food. But what can we do when we cannot easily send off our extra food directly to those people in other countries who are starving? We tried to avoid wasting food but there is always leftovers that eventually go to the garbage. Food is so hard to produce yet so easy to throw. If only the dogs here would eat leftovers then at least we can say that the food is not wasted, but dogs here have more special food than humans. The only animals interested in the food that we throw away are the bears, and sometimes, the deer. But “a fed bear is a dead bear.”

There is a law in B.C. that feeding dangerous wildlife, even unintentionally, is against the law. What if, just what if we can actually feed the bear or other wildlife, but not around the town? If the Wildlife Conservation Organization could come up with a way of collecting all leftover food or picked apples and fruits around the town everyday and bringing it up on the mountains  to a specific place and leave it there for the bears to eat. This way, we can maximize the wasted food. The number of bears, or maybe even deer going down to the town might also be lessened. Killing of bears around the town might also be avoided. They may grow up in numbers but they should stay in the mountains where they have the chance to run or hide if the hunters hunt them down, not killing them in the town where they are exposed and hungry. Anyway, the best thing we can do for now is still to follow the B.C. law, unless the law is amended.

Still, we should try our best to avoid wasting food by our own discipline and teaching our children the old American saying “Get only what you can eat.”

Marissa WitawitElkford

Letter to the Editor re: BC as a Sister State to Alaska

It’s not a new concept.  Nelson, for example, is a sister city to Shuzenji in Japan and developing a similar relation with Sandpoint Idaho.

When Alaska governor Bill Walker suggested a ramping up of oil production to pay for the costs of remediation associated with climate change, it was as though he had taken a cue from Premier Christy Clark.

B.C.’s targets for CO2 reduction will be difficult to achieve given the trend is currently off course.  Add in to that the development of a new fossil fuel industry (LNG), in the hope it will generate cash and fossil based jobs; the connection is obvious.

The collective wisdom of Mr. Walker and Ms. Clark suggest a relationship that warrants being formalized by our Province becoming a “Sister State” to Alaska.  I would encourage all citizens of B.C. to petition their respective MLAs.  Our collective wisdom could then provide real leadership as to how the global climate really works.  The logic, of course, is that if we produce and sell enough fossil fuels, the cost of climate change becomes affordable – what’s not to understand.

Ron RobinsonNelson