To the Editor,
Re: Writer’s point indecipherable, Letters, July 5.
Regarding the dialogue between Jim Corder and David Dunaway in the News Bulletin’s Letters, I found David Dunaway’s letter completely comprehensible and apropos to our times.
There seem to be opposing world views, one being capitalism, which tends to promote greed.
To profit economically is to gain, taking more than one needs; hence the imbalance in our environment and society.
Not everyone is blessed with the abilities to exploit in a capitalistic world, and that is why the other way of viewing the world, socialism, is seen as a way to redistribute wealth and care for others.
Dunaway states that if an economy produced “true wealth”, our society would not be so wasteful (insufficient landfills) and all people would benefit. Consider the indigenous peoples on this planet, who do the least damage, taking only what they need, living in harmony with the land.
Dunaway’s reference to the economy’s undoing of nature is not bizarre when one sees as bizarre the rampant destruction of our forests, which affects climate change, or the dumping of mining waste into lakes for tailing ponds, or oil spills that affect both wildlife and humans.
The economy despoils the wealth when it destroys the life supporting resources that belong to all of us – the environment, the air, the food, the water.
It is little wonder there is so much malaise and disease in our society. What is indecipherable is the lack of love and respect for nature that seems to accompany current economic growth.
Lavonne Garnett
Nanaimo