Dear Editor:
Noam Chomsky is credited with saying "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
It would seem that from the apparent lack of public process on major issues affecting our city, province and country that we are not even able to lively debate the issues anymore, even within a thin spectrum of acceptable opinion.
It seems that "acceptable opinion" has become the position held by the particular level of government putting forth the idea. Public meetings are announced, delayed, cancelled and eventually a meeting is cobbled together. Views are heard and, unless complimentary, they are largely ignored by whomever is holding the meetings. Therefore, if we are not syncophants and "on board," we are somehow unsupportive and anti-economic progress.
Most of the big issues today in Canada are centered around increasing our fossil fuel production and transportation thereof, and if you are in opposition to this you are a nuisance.
Any biologist or economist will tell you that exponential growth in a biologic or economic system cannot be maintained. This means that increasing populations or concentration of populations and increasingly exponential economic growth are both headed for catastrophic implosion.
The other problem with these and other big issues today is that no one in charge seems to be
respecting the environment. The federal, provincial and municipal governments do not look for ways to mitigate or save the environment from damage but seem to look for loopholes that will allow them to ignore the environment and favour economic growth and job creation.
Do not get me wrong here, I fully understand the need for a strong economic, industrial and service component in our country. If you don't work, you don't eat.
However, we cannot expect our environment to support us if we continue to degrade and deplete it. Fossil fuels are not the long-term answer to the current jobs and environmental problems.
All levels of government know this but continue, in the short term, to exploit both fossil fuel resources and the environment hoping for a miracle. That miracle is not coming if we don't change our focus.
Canada has enough IQ power to be a world leader in new technologies that will create compatible environmentally nondestructive jobs and set an example to emerging economies that you cannot create a better life for your citizens if they can't breathe the air, drink the water and eat the foods that you produce.
It is time to change the way we look at the environment and economic progress and "seek to understand before we expect to be understood." (Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People)
Darcy Olson, by email
