Dear editor,
Re:The hijacking of our education system gathers speed (B.C. Views, March 24).
Ever since Ronald Reagan ignorantly and spitefully removed Jimmy Carter’s solar panels from the White House, I have been reading columns like Tom Fletcher’s, which repeat the same worn-out, obsolete arguments.
His columns dismiss, indeed, completely write off the concerns of young people for their future, a future which our generation and previous generations have stolen.
Serious agencies such as NASA, the NOAA, and even the Pentagon are all planning for dramatic climate change, and climate conflict. They are no longer debating the facts.
For 40 years, columns like Fletcher’s have been blowing smoke, and obscuring the truth. Anything to continue debating, and avoid the inevitable reckoning. What would the Second World War generation have done in this situation? Did they say, “We can’t wreck our economy to fight Hitler by switching to a wartime economy overnight?”
The fact is, rationing was adopted right away, and the democracies quickly converted to a wartime economy. Hitler was beaten, and the economy was just fine. The time wasted on the global warming front means that half measures will no longer suffice. A mere carbon tax will accomplish little, but imposing a personal carbon cap will do far more — by rationing every citizen’s carbon footprint. Solar, tidal, and wind power have been mature technologies for decades, but governments have wasted a fortune appeasing oil and gas. Notice the indecent haste with which yet another carbon intense technology – fracking – was developed and approved.
This is our generation’s battle, which has to be fought now. “Wait and see” is no longer viable, and it amounts to pure selfishness, compounded by stupidity, especially when the facts are known. You might as well tell Greta Thunberg and her idealistic young students; “We got ours, you’re on your own.”
Fred Fern,
Merville
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