Climate lockdown must not be delayed
We are in danger of getting side-tracked from the greatest threat of our time by other important matters that feed into, but are not of the very essence of, the all-important reduction in global warming.
These urgent matters may be easier to tackle, and are long overdue for social justice, but do not in themselves pose a near or complete catastrophe for most life forms.
Black lives, Indigenous lives, and those of other disentitled minorities without a doubt matter as much as those of the straight white anglo male. It is true that the awful inhumanity of such problems deeply intersect with the economic, health, political, and educational structures and with each other and with climate change.
Nonetheless, we must keep our efforts strong and sustained directly on measures to reduce our greenhouse gases and our reproduction rates, geographical footprint, and pollution. We are amongst those most profligate with the unsustainable and the unsustaining resources of the Earth.
We are also among the better equipped with the least detriment to ourselves to lead by example, and not merely catch up with Costa Ricans, Europeans and others. We should do so on personal as well as at state, provincial, and municipal levels.
It will help us better culturally adapt to present and forthcoming problems.
Fewer cars and planes, a guaranteed livable income, more mixed and modest housing, food sovereignty and ecosystem protection with an eye on climate change mitigation will aid social justice and equality as much as any thrust even less likely to appeal to those class-superiority obsessed within our all too powerful and impractically envisioned elites and leaders.
We need a climate lockdown and we need it now.
Glynne Evans
Saanich
Making changes to rid us of racism
Re: “How I deal with discrimination,” Ben Pires, June 18.
It is true we are all related; 99.5 per cent of our DNA is the same across all human beings. Physiologically we are all the same. But racism is not due to physical similarity or dis-similarity; thickness of our skin is nothing to do with racism.
The role of physiology in racism is rather insignificant; racism is all due to what happens above our shoulders — in the dark chamber of our brains. The neural activity across 100 billion neural cells that dictates our social and personal behaviour is fundamentally based on two key factors — our inherited genetic make up and the environment in which we are raised and grow up.
We cannot change the genetic make up or colour of skin or eyes, but we can certainly change the environmental influences through education provided the change starts at elementary school and continues through post-secondary education.
These educational initiatives must also be supported by changes to the existing legal and regulatory mechanisms to moderate the impact of entrenched social beliefs of race superiority.
This will help our younger generation and millennials to flourish in a future that is free of hatred, violence and conflict.
It will take time, but it must start now — start with education and support it with changes to existing social, institutional, legal and regulatory systems to address existing discriminatory practices.
Jeet Rana
Victoria
Piece on discrimination should be read by all
Ben Pires’ commentary was inspirational and humbling. I hope many people read it and give it a lot of thought.
I am going to cut it out and keep it handy for whenever I have a racist thought or moment, for whenever there are riots, protests and when terrible things are said or done to innocent people. It is a piece that should be read and re-read by all of us.
The example set by Pires will be a hard one to follow, but there is always hope. If some of us learn even a little bit from the way he has lived his life, then there is hope for a future that is kinder, gentler and more inclusive.
Betsey and Chris Bomford
Saltair
No proof hospital guessing game is racist
I have to shake my head in wonder at the people falling all over themselves claiming everything to be racist these days, and then jumping to conclusions.
Hospital staff have a difficult job, and in many cases they guess things for fun. They guess how long a woman will be in labour, the weight of the baby, and allegedly the blood alcohol level of intoxicated patients.
There is no evidence that it is only intoxicated Indigenous people that they play the guessing game on. If they do this to all people who show up acting intoxicated, it isn’t racist.
To have our elected officials go off on how horrid it is to see these “reports of ugly, anti-Indigenous racist behaviour” with no evidence is irresponsible and causes more problems than it solves.
Lynne Williams
Ladysmith
Why are deer left to roam in the city?
My question for Victoria’s mayor and councillors: What is the goal or anticipated effect of a policy or lack of policy that allows urban deer to roam through our neighbourhoods? Would it be to introduce the deer tick which may cause lyme disease, or to fertilize our lawns and gardens with deer droppings, or to destroy gardens lovingly tended during the pandemic?
Janice Drent
Victoria
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