To the editor,
For far too long B.C. marine authorities have been receiving a multitude of serious credible concerns regarding their privileging of an economic argument for their actions over the protection of the marine environment. This at the cost of the ‘natural’ health of a now-deteriorating marine ecosystem.
Arguably, the workaround of the BCMAs has been to invoke rhetoric tropes intended to amplify minimalistic action(s) feigning necessary protection of the well-being of our remarkable marine environment. Has the public then been effectively hoodwinked into thinking BCMAs are seriously taking care of the complex delicate local marine ecosystem?
There are often over 30 huge cargo ships anchored among the Gulf Islands. Twenty-four hours a day these ships physically, sonically, chemically, visually, infuse their proverbial feculent into this incredible, incredibly delicate and vulnerable marine ecosystem. These ships are a prescient example of the system in action, a floating, flaunting icon of the economic regime – coarse consumerism in short. The BCMAs are, of course, another example of this system in action.
What goes around comes around. Which is to say one’s silence about the degradation of the marine ecosystem makes one complicit in this particular saga of the onset of the extinction of the local marine ecosystem.
Have we passed the red line, you might ask, now with a keen sense of urgency? Has the momentum of our impetuous reliance on a certain consumer economy come at the expense (pun intended) of the economy of life-forms in the unique Gulf Island ecosystem?
Certainly seems so if the effects of BCMAs’ decisions continue apace.
C. Worthing, Gabriola Island
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