In his letter (The News, April 10), Alf Randall makes the classic, tiresome argument that to oppose the Raven Coal Mine one must abandon all trappings of modern life: cars, houses and so on.
The point that Mr. Randall misses is that we are not arguing for an end to modern industrial life. Rather, we are arguing for our society to transition to a sustainable modern industrial life.
No one I know wants to deny young families a comfortable future. Indeed, our concern for the future of our children is probably one of the largest motivations for our activism. The continued mining of coal will, without a doubt, cause mind-boggling environmental, economic and agricultural upheavals.
How comfortable will young families be when it is no longer possible to grow wheat in Saskatchewan or when the glaciers feeding the waterways in most of Asia have melted away? Personally, I oppose any further coal mining anywhere on the planet, not just in the Comox Valley.
How will we move forward as an industrial society without coal? I’m not in a position to say. But I have no doubt that once we make a decision based on the well being of the earth as a whole, rather than the profits of a few, we’ll figure it out rather quickly.
Mike Mesford
Fanny Bay
