To the editor,
Re: Students press for climate action, May 28.
It’s high time to get these kids at the climate change protests back in school. I was at the climate change rally the other day. As a student myself, I find it extremely distasteful that this is what they spend time on.
The demand for oil isn’t going anywhere. Yes, climate change is real. Yes, we should do something. No, it doesn’t mean dragging our economy through the mud. If they want to truly make an impact, get people to protest in India or China. Canada barely makes a dent in global carbon emissions anyways. Even if we cut emissions by half, which would certainly bring on economic Armageddon, we would cut global emissions by less than one per cent.
What we should not do is radicalize those who have a limited understanding of the world to engage in fear-mongering.
To radically cut our fossil fuel usage will only cost us jobs and diminish the number of people who will be able to get to work, in a negative feedback loop.
What we should do is to fully utilize the strategic value of our oil, outcompete brutal authoritarian regimes in oil sales, and gradually use the profit to prepare for a post-oil future and to make our social safety net more robust than it is. It is unethical to not use Canadian oil. It is un-Canadian.
Peter Ussurinov, Nanaimo
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