Responding to the Critical Condition of Earth

Chapter 1

“An American oil baron eventually answered the call, building an open-pit mine with an upgrader in the 1960s. He used technology largely funded by Canadian taxpayers. Although the mine lost money for decades, it kept the dream alive.”

Chapter 2

“But neither the Alberta nor the Canadian government has done a thorough energy accounting yet.”

From: Tar Sands by Andrew Nikiforuk

A Response:

Canada is attempting to raise itself up on the shoulders of an entire world dependent on cheap oil resources, in the name of profit and political standing, Canada is dragging this world deeper into environmental degradation and addiction to fossil fuel-dependent, unsustainable life.

As people of this age, whether in Canada or not, we must all move in the direction of re-building our society, to live on this Earth, as focused on what is both local and sustainable as possible, in order to revise our habits of depending on food sources cultivated by the world's poorest, on clothing made by the world's most destitute and on materials and energy for our way of life which depend on the degradation of our environment and the destruction of small-scale and remote human communities. Our housing and transportation technologies are leading us towards inevitable destruction, displacement and complete abandonment of the human community. Why have we chosen to neglect our future generations and remain ignorant about the creative solutions that we know we can achieve to change all of this in our own lives?