Environment safe with heads in the sand

Re: Suzuki should quit scare mongering, Letters Oct. 16, 2009.

Keith Sketchley you and I have nothing to be alarmed about.

You, because you have your head buried safely in the sand and me because I chose not to have children or grandchildren.

Eternal optimists (everything is going to be just fine) like you are quickly killing our planet Earth. We need more “wolf criers” like David Suzuki.

Rick Fournier

Oak Bay

David Suzuki bashing wrong, misses point

Re: Suzuki should quit scare mongering, Letters Oct. 16, 2009.

It really bothers me when I see people writing in attacking David Suzuki.

Suzuki is an expert on environmental issues and to call him Chicken Little is outrageous, and as often the case, completely misses the point.

Have you seen The 11th Hour? Read Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization or Stupid to the Last Drop, or many others?

Many scientists are concerned that civilization is in danger of collapse.

With global warming, declining world food production, environmental destruction, biodiversity loss, over-fished oceans, pollution, peak oil and an increasing human population coming to a head, it is hard for us in Canada to imagine this with all our open spaces, fresh water and other natural resources, but much of the rest of the world is near its limits.

Gerry Haustein

Langford

Praise David Suzuki, don’t vilify him

Re: Suzuki should quit scare mongering, Letters Oct. 16, 2009.

Keith Sketchley accuses David Suzuki of scare mongering, because he works so hard to warn the world of the perils to come if we don’t tackle the climate emergency with the seriousness it demands.

To the contrary — David Suzuki is in reality acting as Winston Churchill did when he tried so desperately to warn the British people in the 1930s that Hitler was re-arming, only to be met by a “now, now, calm down” response from people who thought he was scare mongering, and preferred to think Hitler was a reasonable human being.

Suzuki is right — and he is doing us an enormous service by telling us what we need to know about the climate crisis.

It is Mr. Sketchley who needs to stop scare mongering by suggesting that tackling the climate crisis will “hurt humans by taking away their mobility, shelter and other life-fostering products of industrial civilization.” What nonsense.

Since when did making our homes more energy efficient and using renewable energy deprive us of shelter? Since when did shifting to electric vehicles, transit and more cycling deprive anyone of their mobility?

Mr. Sketchley can huff and puff all he wants about supposed government interference, and how environmentalists are “control freaks,” but he can’t make the reality of the climate crisis go away.

When we apply the creative human mind to the problem, which I have been doing for the past 20 years, what we find is truly hopeful — that we are on the threshold of an amazing transition to a green, sustainable world that will no longer destroy the atmosphere and ecosystems our lives depend on. The sooner this happens the better, for the consequences if we do not are every bit as dire as the world’s climate scientists are telling us.

Guy Dauncey

Saanich