Environment is a People Issue

I’m not sure how many caught my letter to the editor in the Toronto Star on Thursday, but I’m happy to report that they did not delete a word that I wrote.

I was reacting to this article on Tuesday by columnist Richard Gwyn.

And here’s my letter…

Opinion, April 3.

Richard Gwyn is so far off the mark in his assessment of the motivations of people concerned with the environment, stating that this concern comes at the expense of concern for people, that I hardly know where to begin.

Yes, it’s true that continuing down the road of business as usual, treating the planet and atmosphere as an endless dumping ground, will affect other species such as polar bears and many others, and that these are being used as the symbol to stimulate concern and action.

But the current upswell of public concern comes from people finally beginning to understand that while nature will go on in some fashion regardless of how many species we kill off, nature’s future may not necessarily include human beings.

Environmentalists have long understood that the natural environment underlies the health and wealth of all human activities and that by eliminating biodiversity, killing off species and permanently altering ecosystems, we are also endangering ourselves. How much more “concern for people” do you want than concern for our ability to live on this planet?

Gwyn shows his misunderstanding further in his failure to grasp that “environmental issues” (global warming, pollution, waste, water overuse and contamination, unsustainable farming, GMOs, etc.) and “people issues” (poverty, malnutrition, income inequality, unemployment) stem from the same root causes, those being globalization, debt-based money supplies, overpopulation, dependence on non-renewable resources and the drive for constant growth.

And to characterize the New Democratic Party and the Green party as “exclusively” concerned with a narrow set of issues further shows Gwyn’s complete lack of knowledge and research into these two alternative political platforms.

Both parties have a wide-ranging set of policies on all the same issues as the traditional parties. They have most of the same concerns, but with alternative approaches to addressing the problems. And Gwyn’s furtherance of the (incorrect) stereotype does a serious disservice to his readers, democracy and the environmental and people issues we are all rightfully concerned about.

Glenn Hubbers, Aurora