Whatever you want to call it, it’s not good

Editor:

Thank you to all members of Clearview council for unanimously supporting the motion put forth by Councillor Doug McKechnie which will enhance the township’s ability to address the mitigation of, and the resilience toward, our impending climate emergency crisis.

I was both amused and somewhat saddened at the state of our society that some members of council seem to think it necessary to change the word ‘emergency’ to ‘crisis’ due to political associations… come on folks, the situation is not good, however you want to word it and the human race needs to make changes ASAP if it, and much of the life forms surrounding and supporting us, is to continue benefitting from our beautiful world.

Climate change is not a political issue unless you twist it into being one as the fossil fuel industry and its lobbyists did in the 1980s. Leading up to that time the majority of the world, including those industries, realized that continuing to harm the Earth’s atmosphere would lead to very dire consequences. (I suggest reading Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich).

Climate change is an existential issue, and while our mayor seems to have taken this positive motion as an affront to environmental initiatives taken by Clearview to date, nothing further could be from the truth. Yet I believe we should all be extremely cognizant that Clearview, and the vast majority of municipalities and citizens of the world are indeed ‘behind the times’… otherwise we wouldn’t be in a situation where in the past six years over 642 Canadian municipalities have declared a Climate Emergency… or Crisis if you wish. The slogan from an advanced building science training camp that I attended last week I believe sums up the situation well: It’s warming. It’s us. We’re sure. It’s bad. We can fix it. For the sake of our future and cominggenerations, let’s get cracking!

Jim Campbell,

Duntroon.