Open Letter To Brad Wall. 

   

 

  Mr. Wall, 

     In a recent statement about the 2015 United Nations Climate Summit in Paris, you seemed to be under the illusion that current economic problems are somehow comparable, or of equal or near equal importance, to our planet's ability to support life.

 

Quite simply, it is irrational, unreasonable, and not at all sane to suggest that a social system created by humans within the past few hundred years, that we lived without for the rest of our history, could even be on the same list of priorities as our planet's ability to support life as it has done for millions of years. 

 

Your exact words, "Lots of talk about the environment, understandably, but not a lot of talk about the economy right now, and it's on the minds of a lot of Western Canadians.".

  

 If economic problems are considered by Western Canadians to be a more important problem than our planet's ability to support life, that is the fault of our leadership and our news media, who have failed to comprehend and explain important issues in a rational manner. Most people are sane enough to understand, they have simply been badly misinformed and under-informed about the issues. 

 

  The current system of trade in goods and labor, what is commonly called 'the economy', is fundamentally flawed. This flawed system is the number one cause of many serious global problems, including the environmental degradation that the Climate Summit is supposed to address.

 

It is a system that causes people to starve in countries that export food to places where people have food fights and eating contests and waste is a part of everyday life.

 

 It is a system that encourages excess for the sake of it, insists on creating unnecessary busywork and additional expenses simply for their own sake, it encourages self-centered ambitions and rewards dishonesty and corruption. 

 It is also only one economic system among many potential systems that could do much better.

 

The environment, on the other hand, the natural systems on this planet that enable the existence of life, is the only system of it's kind that we know of, and we do not have the technology to replicate it's functions. That life support system that we depend on is being destroyed for the sake of abstract concepts like 'economic growth', 'returns on investment' and 'job creation', which do not actually exist or hold any meaning or purpose outside the context of the current economic system.

 

I understand you like being 'affluent', and you may feel you have earned the lifestyle you have through the current economic system, that you wish to preserve that lifestyle and economic system that makes it possible. 

 

But in doing so, you and others like you are endangering this planet's ability to support life. This can't be allowed to continue. 

 

Many world leaders, including people more affluent than you, have recognized this. That is what the United Nations Climate Summit was about. You don't seem to understand this, and you have embarrassed this province and this country in front of the world by your inability to understand climate science and grasp rational priorities. 

 

Daniel Johnson