Toronto, ON
Only in a society obsessed with food avoidance (carbs, salt, trans fats, etc.) could we be so short-sighted. The solution, of course, is not to engineer cheap substitutes for the vending machine fare that currently passes as nourishment (with or without the dreaded trans fats), but to embrace whole foods and self-sufficiency. As Michael Pollan wrote in his essay “Unhappy Meals” in the New York Times, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
April Nauta
* * *
Mai Gwaii Flies High
I live at the edge of the Western world, on the islands of Haida Gwaii, where, despite the ravenous maw of consumer culture, I am surrounded by wild waters, deep forests, and four-legged, finned, and feathered friends. Isolation forces engagement with nature: a big storm delays the food ferry, a strong wind cuts power, and snow means you walk. In this context, I rely on The Walrus, the cbc, and the Guardian to keep me up to date on what’s happening in the rest of the world.
Thankfully, the March issue of the magazine arrived on time. I was nodding along to Ken Alexander’s editorial on last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (“Bali Dancing”), when suddenly there it was: greed. “We exist,” he writes, “in a fearful, greedy present.” Nowhere in print have I seen the West thus described, and I applaud you for it. A survey of philosophical, religious, and spiritual systems suggests that greed is always the precursor of doom, and it’s time we had the word thrown at us to make us stop and think about who we are and where we’re going.
Rev. Sara Eaton
Queen Charlotte, BC
Grab your mai tais and pull up a chair! “Bali Dancing” conjures up some great images, and I agree with most of what Ken Alexander says about Canada’s resistance to greenhouse gas reduction targets. But in turning over so many rocks, he’s missed some basic points.
All treaties are, at bottom, trade agreements. Someday soon, there will be pressure within countries that have acted on this particular file to enforce carbon content restrictions on imports. In fact, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, wending its way through the legislative mill south of the border and designed in part to ensure that US efforts to curb emissions do not merely move economic activity to countries like China, provides for the imposition of import tariffs on the basis of product carbon content. If the US is prepared to go this far, think about what other countries might contemplate and what that could mean for Canada’s business prospects.
Comments