Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Earth Calling Canada: Stop Killing Everything

Canadian Geographic magazine has two outstanding features in the June 2008 issue. One is a revealing look at the Albertan Oil Sands development. The other is about the selfish greedy proposals to Strip-mine British Columbia's Flathead Valley.

What more proof do you need that Canadians are not angels when it comes to the love and protection of Nature? After all, these are the people who bludgeoned Seal-Pups to sell furs to Europeans; they are the people who raped the waters of all the fish in the Grand Banks of the North American East Coast until the cod disappeared, and even after 25 years, has not recovered; these are the people whose greed to grow grain in the Prairies created Dustbowls where once lived whole stable ecosystems.

Some of the maps and pictures of the oil sands extraction scarring Alberta are quite simply shocking. The eventual area to be damaged seems to be the size of the whole of England, if not more. Canadians have worshipped the car, and now they worship the money that comes from the oil that feeds the cars. I dare not even look on a Google Earth satellite photo... the rage it would bring up in me has to be managed.

As for the Flathead Valley, I suspect that now that British Columbia's economy is dominated by the mass economic migration from Hong Kong in the last 25 years, there is a complicity of ignorance and meekness at the prospective rape of the ecology in one of Earth's more bountiful climate systems (the Temperate, Rainy zones on the Eastern edges of the Great Oceans, namely places like Chile, Britain, and British Columbia).

Why should I assume ignorance and meekness when Greed will do? Why should you?

After all, they want the low-grade coal that is in the Flathead Valley. That's what they're doing in China. That's what they want to do in Canada.

Meanwhile the consumption habits of North Americans and Europeans are unabated as they endlessly buy gadgets, goods and machines that are Made in China. So whose fault is it ultimately? Is it the The Ignorant Consumer or is it the greedy Corporations and the Wealthy Private Elite that together rule their lives? It is probably all of them.

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