My first anniversary of living in Edmonton is coming up. It’s been a few years since I have lived in on and the same place for so long. And my conclusion is: I’m living in the wrong place! And I have had enough of it. For somebody like me who loves the outdoors, is young, healthy, and a recently-turned mum of a very cute, active little girl it’s difficult to live in Edmonton, oil-country Alberta, Canada. I have become an environmentalist.
After lots of bureaucratic hassles and constant head shaking about Alberta’s (provincial) and Canada’s (federal) politics, especially on environmental issues, writing letters to my mayor, city councillor, ministers and representatives of the provincial and federal government has become my hobby. It’s not a pleasant one but I believe nothing will change if nobody does anything. It’s time to act, it’s getting really late.
I don’t want to raise my child in a country that refuses to sign any paper on the protection of the environment, whether that is in the form of a federal law or through the United Nations, a country that puts the economy above anything, where government is industry’s best friend, acts short-sighted and does not seem to realize that you can’t eat money and you can’t drink oil; a country that destroys vast stretches of beautiful countryside to dig up oil; that mines asbestos for the import to India; that allows tons of chemicals being used in everyday toiletries/cosmetics knowing that there are potentially harmful, a country that is so car-obsessed and has too many gas-guzzlers on the roads.
Watching “Being Caribou” last night, sequences of both Bush presidents were shown, with a 10 year lapse in between, where both of them said that they did not care about protecting the caribou and their habitat, they only cared about the American people and jobs for these people. The deal is that the US wants to drill for oil in the calving grounds of the caribou in North East Alaska. Why I am mentioning this? I think that attitude also applies to the Canadian government – not for the caribou itself which is surprisingly protected in Canada but for the habitat. But then it’s only an example. I wonder: Who do they want to create jobs for when people suffer from floods and droughts, when people come down with cancers, pulmonary and heart diseases because all warnings about climate change and pollution have been ignored and denied, when people are so obese that they can’t move? Suggestions, anyone? I don’t think they think that far!
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