If you ask the wrong questions, it doesn’t matter how “good” your answer — it won’t get us to solutions.
That is the situation we are in with our current dominant development mode and its requirement we have infinite growth on a finite planet.
Part of perpetuating that unsustainable mode is the continued “behind the scenes” power of those profiting from fossil fuel use – including war profiteers.
Since the 1970s, fossil fuel giants knew conclusively the burning of fossil fuels was a major contributor to human generated global warming of which climate chaos, refugees and wars are but a few outcomes.
Did this knowledge prompt them to release their stranglehold on the development and use of alternative energy sources which would not cost Earth’s capacity to support us? No.
Rather than releasing their strangle-hold on alternative energy sources the patents for which they have been buying since at least the 1920s, they doubled down on a propaganda campaign.
They financed a global network of so-called “independent” institutes that falsely equated their “freedom” to maximize profit with absolutely no concern for anything else — so they could delay having “stranded assets.”
Yet in spite of their best efforts, numerous authentically sustainable viable energy sources have been developed. A few include solar; tidal; small run-of-river; and geo-thermal.
If we cancelled the huge tax-payer subsidies we give the fossil fuel corporations, billions of tax-dollars would be saved per year.
If we applied a fraction of that savings to stimulating the use and further development of viable alternatives we could not only have a higher, healthier quality of life but provide stable well-paying jobs for our citizens.
Why, in a “free” society, is not everyone aware of this?
Yvonne Zarowny
Qualicum Beach
