by Eva van Loon

...are we doing?

BC Liberals just flew 5 planeloads of humans to Hudson’s Hope to deliver a news release.
Wouldn’t TV, Youtube, Facebook, or even old–fashioned newspapers or the steps of the Legislature have served? A single plane flight uses 3.5 years of an individual’s carbon emissions—who initialed this cost on poor old Earth’s carbon-balance sheet?

Must be some event, you’re thinking. Some earth-shaking, mind-bogglingly new approach to sustainability. A harbinger of a healthier long–term way to save our province from becoming industrial wasteland. Wow! Wish I were in Hudson. Hope for this!

Hearing the announcement on beleaguered CBC, I thought I’d been taking crazy pills. Gone partly deaf or missed April Fool’s. Or I’d slipped over into Alzheimer’s and was reliving the Seventies. Site C? They’re going ahead with that damned dam in the north? Again? Didn’t my generation win that battle 40 years ago?

Another battle ahead. Last year, 700 rivers proposed for exploitation. This year, Site C. The same tired justifications: “good” short-term jobs, steady resource base, future need—as if we can increase population without end. However, the PIPs (People in Power) are not so naive as in our longhaired days—every proposal is first greenwashed, so that it’s easier to make prudent questioners look like idiots.

Today, environmental assessments are required. Then the struggle was to force assessments into existence. Now the battle requires more sophisticated weaponry. Perhaps law practice ruined my trust in government wherever there is a smell of money, but the process reminds me of the independent-expert system in our courts. Experts are supposedly impartial, but, as every trial lawyer knows, there are stables of experts for the defence, and stables for the plaintiffs, and rare is the expert who never resorts to “boilerplate”. Fortunately expert witnesses must be qualified before courts will hear their evidence—but what protection does Earth enjoy from environmental experts from the corporate stable?

Us. We are Her only protection, although, ironically, our species is Her major problem. But we’re wearing out from a multiplicity of battles.

A paradigm shift is needed. We must begin asking the essential questions nobody considers. Do we want SuperNatural BC to stay as “natural” as it is? More? Less? Do we want food security in all areas of the province? Do we want BC to make our essentials—shelter, clothing, and basic equipment? What do such goals imply for population levels? Do we have the right number of people for sustainability? Do we want to base our economy on ripping stuff off and out of Earth to send far away for manufacture, and, if so, how much will we risk?

Only when the PIP begin to hear answers to such global questions from Us, the People, will we become the experts Earth needs before allowing projects like Site C.