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Environmental protection should be election issue

Civilizations have collapsed when unsustainable practices clashed with climate changes

Re: Agricultural land use is undervalued, Opinion, April 4.

Recent publications of edifying letters focusing on the goodness and wonder of life benefit us. So too, Marjorie Stewart’s connection between Site C dam and our need to value agricultural land.

When the B.C. Liberals inherited a revenue surplus, when gas prices were high, they latched onto the now-defunct idea that LNG would save our government’s diminishing coffers which, oddly enough, have supported so many trade missions, while failing to meet public health and education needs. A government that changes Agricultural Land Reserve legislation to exclude the Site C area from ALR protection appears desperate to support industry. Yet, we cannot depend on corporate profits to trickle down.

Civilizations have collapsed when unsustainable practices clashed with climate changes. We, including the politicians we ‘hire,’ all need to focus on creating healthy environments, internally and externally. Continuing destruction of land is neither healthy nor edifying. It is up to us to rein in growth gone wild and to create the world that embodies the goodness and wonder of life for all of us, not just for those whose rhetoric brought us into the current messes we face. It is time to ask, which politicians dare to fill the position?

Lavonne Garnett, Nanaimo