The Environment Issue

Volume 7 Issue 3, February 2008

Everyone reading this magazine is actively contributing to the destruction of the environment. Period. We have an unimaginably high standard of living, too often achieved by mining the future to pay for the present. Can this continue? Absolutely: that’s the problem. We’re cushioned enough by our prosperity to survive – my grandchildren are unlikely to starve. The same can’t be said for the global poor, or the millions of species teetering on the brink. We all have the moral obligation to stop this. There is no issue that even comes close to mattering as much. What we don’t have is the luxury to close our minds.

The Earth cannot survive if the environmental movement limits its tool set. We’ve spent far too long constructing taboos and absolutes to deal with an infinitely complex set of problems. We have to look for solutions everywhere: from grassroots groups to corporations, from communes to capitalism. Whatever works. Most importantly, the environment-economy dichotomy must be put to rest. The move towards a sustainable world is a move towards ending poverty, injustice, and oppression – not to ending prosperity.

Of course, there’s more to action than critical thinking. We all have the luxury of living in a democracy, something denied to the people whom global warming hurts the most. Not engaging with the system here is unforgivable. The current Conservative government, and the Liberals before them, have spat in the collective faces of Canadians and the world on this. They should be driven out, to the last MP. That, at least, would be a start.

Josh Smyth
Editor-in-Chief