Dear editor,
Christy Clark has shown us that she can achieve the seemingly impossible by recovering from a 20-point deficit early in the campaign to win a solid majority for her Liberal party.
She is truly “the comeback kid.” Former Vancouver mayor and newly elected MLA Sam Sullivan has even said that to him Christy Clark is a god.
She worked this miracle by (aside from a massive advertising campaign) articulating one simple policy: grow the economy. Growing the economy will solve all of our fiscal and social problems without entailing any tax increases.
I find it interesting that almost no politicians or economists address the basic problem inherent in growth: It can’t go on. Nothing grows forever.
It’s absurd to think we can choose to follow the path of growth without accepting the birth-growth-death sequence.
The advantage we have as humans is that we have historical perspective. We can see where we came from and where we are going.
Our problem is that we are enjoying the ride so much we choose to avoid looking at the rapidly approaching cliff not far ahead of us.
The idea of economic growth is a very recent innovation in human history. For millennia we lived without any significant growth in our population or GDP.
Only since the discovery of fossil fuels and the advent of industrialization a few hundred years ago have we experienced any real growth.
We have shown incredible ingenuity in using these resources to generate wealth and improve our quality of life. But we don’t seem to have the wisdom to control our population growth or manage these changes in a sustainable manner.
Christy Clark now has a mandate to (with the help of Stephen Harper) grow the economy. This involves exploiting our coal resources, fracking for gas and piping bitumen from the Alberta Tar Sand to oil tankers that will gingerly and skillfully negotiate their way through our west coast island channels.
This will indeed lead to more jobs, an increased population and economic growth. But at what price?
Unless you’re one of those who believe volcanos are causing all the trouble, it’s hard to ignore climate scientists who are warning us that burning only 20 per cent of known fossil fuel reserves will be enough to raise the earth’s temperature by two degrees.
This is seen as the tipping point for the earth’s environment and would be catastrophic for life on earth.
We have chosen to ignore these warnings by electing politicians like Christy Clark and Stephen Harper.
We have elected a prime minister who has muzzled climate scientists, cut their funding and closed their research centres. Does he want to protect us from hearing all that bad news and negativity?
B.C. voters seem to believe that Christy Clark is a miracle-working god who can let us have our cake and eat it, too.
We seem to have faith that all those fear mongering self-serving scientists are wrong, that Christy can once again achieve the impossible and save the environment by growing the economy.
Erik Taynen,
Courtenay
