Letter to the editor
Our great grandkids are already calling to us. Can you hear them (soft as a whisper)? Why grandpa, why grandma . . . why?
Our planet, our province, our town are deep in kaka. Our planet needs help. Our kids’ futures are burnt and bleak. It is time to work on our kids’ futures. It is a choice.
If you look to the west of us, towards Steamboat Mountain, the rocks you see can be up to three billion years old. To the east, the Rockies, some 750 million years. Three billion years from now, Steamboat will likely have disappeared, but some may still be around. The Rockies will look much like Steamboat now. You and I? The most powerful and important species that has ever lived? Three billion years from now we will be a meaningless, insignificant micro-blip of history.
Unless we choose to change our ways . . . now.
We were given a paradise to live in. Nobody can deny any longer we are destroying it. It is our children’s children, your granddaughter, your great-grandson living in a burnt, waterless, ever-warming desolation who will ask . . . why? You all knew and did nothing. Why?
Our once unimaginable 50 C summer heat waves will be their cold February mornings. Do we want history to describe humans as the biggest ‘loser’ micro-blips ever? They were handed paradise and used it to annihilate themselves in a couple of thousand years.
We all watched Horsethief Creek burn last year. Ours was one of the tiniest of the hundreds of fires burning in BC. Across North America it is becoming impossible to buy house insurance for one of two reasons, flood or fire. Most summer days you cannot see across the valley because of forest fire smoke. We can no longer deny. There will be no forests for our children to explore, no camping at the lake, no sledding to Farnham glacier. It will all be gone.
We have to start looking at our ways. I have no right or ability to offer solutions, but I personally believe every person on earth should be asked this one question whenever necessary: “Do I need to start this internal combustion engine or can my great grandson walk on glaciers?” Just one of the hundreds of personal questions we have to start asking and answering.
I believe each of us intrinsically knows what is right and what is wrong. Our paths are a personal choice but I fear our children’s, children’s futures rest on our working together to choose our paths wisely.
Wouldn’t it be nice to go to Golden one day, look over at Steamboat and muse about what it will all look like in three billion years. Because at the moment, with the choices we are making, we all have futures with great-granddaughters looking at us with big tears in those beautiful eyes asking why? Why didn’t you do anything?
Gord Crawford, Spur Valley
