Letter to the Editor

It seems enough of environmentalism’s fairy dust has settled upon Mr. Gerry Warner that he not only condemns world leaders in the attempt to negotiate treaties on Green House Gas emissions but also empathizes with activists like Greta Thunberg, who’s answer to the planet’s complex issues: starvation, unemployment, war, indentured slavery, limited access to medicine, homelessness, drug addiction, pollution, religious tyranny, poverty, over population, etc., (all issues that impact a countries ability to participate in global initiatives), is “Blah, Blah, Blah.”

It is the most cynical and least compassionate response to crisis that I have ever come upon. And that’s the problem with activism in a nutshell; theirs is a simple world without compassion and with only two options, their way or not.

Isms are the product of ideologues, people and organizations that polish their arguments with emotional touchstones, end of the world prophesies, media fanfare and divisive tactics that turn people against each other; American republicanism, Activism, call it what you will, its adherents  cynically divide communities by promoting hatred and discrimination.  One thing for sure they don’t like democracy.

And to my great surprise Mr. Warner even lobs a few cannonballs at the sacred NDP in his Nov. 7 Op-Ed commentary.  All of a sudden Gerry’s eyes have been opened; the BCNDP is a party of industrialists who have gone about creating the jobs and collecting the taxes that pay his pension by allowing the harvesting of trees.  Well, hallelujah. Welcome to B.C. and the industrialized landscape that pays the way for urban bliss.

He buys into Suzanne Simard’s anthropomorphized view of forests: old trees are not really trees but Mothers, giant Matriarchs feeding their desperate children who evil loggers cut down.  The same notions might be applied to agriculture, there are likely Matriarch chickens, sheep and grasses interconnected by a “network… not unlike the Internet.”

Mr. Warner I liked you better when you were a dyed in the wool socialist rather than sprinkled with the fairy dust of environmentalism.

Peter Christensen,

Radium Hot Springs

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