I recently viewed a video in which a 12-year-old girl gave a speech to the United Nations. Severn Suzuki from British Columbia spoke of the devastating impact human greed has had on the environment.
For seven minutes, this young girl held her audience spell-bound.
She spoke of children starving because of the impact weather is having on food production. She noted the destruction of animal habitat caused by human encroachment, and the resulting extinction of some animals. There are deserts where there used to be lush forests and an ever-growing hole in the ozone layer.
Severn was part of a group of 12- and 13-year-olds who raised money to travel to the United Nations so they could make their plea to those from countries around the world.
In a short period of time, this girl asked some very compelling questions. Why do adults teach their children to share, not be greedy, to clean up their messes, then act the opposite way in their own lives?
She noted that in our world, so many people are starving, yet those of us who live in a country where we have everything are not willing to share. Severn rightly indicated that the wealthiest people are so often afraid to let go of some of their wealth.
She made the point - one I have made in previous columns - that if the money spent on war were to go taking care of the environment, provide food and medicine for those in need, and find cures for diseases, this would be a very different world.
We are a consumer-driven society. Not only are we using up natural resources, but we are polluting the air and the land. We are moving at a snail's pace to find clean alternative sources of energy.
Too many companies are more concerned with the bottom line, than with the health of our planet.
Stephane Dion is proposing a carbon tax. Harper is expressing his opposition to this proposal. From what I gather, the proposal would be tax-neutral for lower income families.
Those who use the most, would pay the most. There would be real incentives for companies that are the greatest polluters to become "green."
There is one thing we humans have to consider. If we don't implement a carbon tax, or something like it, Mother Nature will tax us in her own way.
And as young Severn Suzuki pointed out, if the adults in this world don't know how to fix the environment - we better make sure we don't break it. Shirley Hallee's column appears every two weeks.
Teaching by example, not words
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Comments
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- HB
- - January 18th, 2010 at 11:20:54
Jason - yep, pretty much. It's all marketing and lies. Putting a little girl up to tug at people's emotions just proves it.
Of course, the federal election here in Cumberland County is pretty much a non-issue anyway, so none of it really matters to us. Bill's gonna walk away with it, and he represents no party so we don't get a say in the next ruling party or prime minister anyway - not that I'm an anti-Casey heretic or anything, in fact I think all MP's should be independent. -
- HB
- - January 18th, 2010 at 11:07:06
Interesting comment about how the carbon tax would work, although the vision of it may differ from reality. In reality, corporations would simply continue business as usual and pay the tax without changing processes, passing along those increased costs to consumers. This does nothing to help the environment. There is no real incentive to reduce emissions.
The so-called redistribution of those taxes would simply get gobbled up by increased costs, resulting in a net effect of zero. That is, that's what would happen if we could trust politicians to actually do what they say, and not have all the 'redistribution' get gobbled up by administration costs and redirected to other half-baked ideas, which I have my doubts about.
In reality, if politicians follow their normal course of action, we would simply have increased taxes on so-called carbon emissions, inceased prices on just about everything, a whole other bureaucracy to support, and bottom line less money. It's even worse here in the East Coast where we require many goods to be shipped over longer distances and generate electricity with coal, oil and natural gas. How much higher would you like your power bills?
The fact is that so-called global warming has taken such hold in people's minds that politicians have grabbed onto it for sheer political purposes only, and will twist and spin it any way they can for votes only. Nobody is looking at the facts because they no longer matter, it's all about marketing. Unbelievably, this new religion of global warming is so strong that they have people believing that yet another useless new tax could be a good thing, and that's a sad statement about our voting population. -
- Jason
- - January 18th, 2010 at 10:57:35
No comment but just an observation. I think this is the first Hallee article open for comment EVER.
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- Jason
- - January 18th, 2010 at 10:51:18
HB? so blah blah blah tax and blah blah blah no tax.
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- Jason
- - January 18th, 2010 at 10:42:09
To the moderator: Read HB's response, my post was an example of something that adds to the discussion.
Your response is an example of someone deciding what adds or does not add to the discussion.
