Climate, Food, Population, and Biodiversity Highlight Youth’s Concerns

Climate, Food, Population, and Biodiversity Highlight Youth’s Concerns

“We need a new system that no longer concentrates power and control of the food chain in the hands of a few global corporations and interest groups, at the expense of everyone else, one that puts diversity at its heart and respects the limits of the natural world, rather than trying to override them.” Joanna Blythman, The Guardian, U.K.

Have you ever noticed that people will call you ‘passionate’ about a cause or subject when they see you stand up and act or give voice about a cause or subject that sets you apart from the conventional? Certainly this happened last week when a page stood up with a sign saying “Stop Harper” during the Senate Throne Speech; she even had a press release telling Canadians that climate action and a compassionate social agenda is not part of the new majority government’s priorities for the next five years. Coinciding with International Day for Climate Action, a small group of youth brought out placards in the public gallery of Parliament, decrying the lack of positive climate safety initiatives. People called these youth ‘passionate’ while at the same time they shunned indorsing these simple forms of civil disobedience. Not one parliamentarian congratulated them on their courage, but they routinely and tenderly called them ‘passionate’ youth, as if to say that people who do care will get over it when they grow up. Is that the best we can do? Does not “com-passion” find a place in North American society? These youth are protesting the government’s utter indifference to the following effects of climate change: heat waves, asthma and allergies, infectious disease spread, pests and disease spread across taxa: forests, crops and marine life, winter weather anomalies, drought, food insecurity and mass extinctions.


The article,” The Case for Young People and Nature: A Path to a Healthy, Natural, Prosperous Future” http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110505_CaseForYoungPe... written by some of the world’s greatest scientists, economists and thinkers, believes these young people have every right to be despairing when they see such a lack of leadership in our ‘democratic’ governments. “If governments fail to adopt policies that cause rapid phase-down of fossil fuel emissions, today's children, future generations, and nature will bear the consequences through no fault of their own. Governments must act immediately to significantly reduce fossil fuel emissions to protect our children's future and avoid loss of crucial ecosystem services, or else be complicit in this loss and its consequences.”


Our preoccupation with our stuff has created a Canadian that does not care, and ‘care packages’ to the almost one billion people who need food instead of more stuff, will only be delivered when Canadians and Americans say ‘enough is enough’. Care packages mean giving people the means to grow their own food and not be given a hand-out in a box in a refugee centre. A quick look at the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/food will tell anyone that the global food crisis is here. It’s not just the increasing food prices throughout the world (ethanol made from corn helps to increase food prices) that is making nutritional food inaccessible, but also the frequency of contaminated food throughout the world.
Now that the U.N. has released a report telling us that there will be 10.1 billion people on the planet by 2100. Can they be fed? Will only those rich groups bunkering down in compounds, keeping everyone else out, have enough to eat? The respected Center for Biological Diversity is concerned that over-population and climate instability is already having a devastating effect on our oceans’ abilities to maintain a healthy marine population. http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/overpopulation/oceans/...

Collingwood and area has a community garden that is dedicated to looking for a way to feed ourselves. This summer it will showcase many kinds of vegetables, many of which you may never have seen grow, such as sweet potatoes for a hotter climate. The garden tries to highlight many varieties of vegetables. Now that the Walmart-Evergreen fund has given the gardens $5000, expect to see fruit trees blossoming there in the next few years.