Back to the dead ducks

When Premier Stelmach finally stopped drooling out comments about wind turbines and the evil Sierra Club, I thought that writing fodder on this subject had just about come to an end. However, yesterday in the letters section of the Journal I saw about a square foot of backlash towards citizens like us here at AGRDT who've been impolite enough to raise a stink over this whole issue, which kind of got the gears turning. Adding to this, today I was forwarded this piece of nonsensical sanctimonious tripe (penned by Ian Robinson for the Calgary Sun -- surprising, I know) that, as you can probably tell from the description I gave it, riled me up enough to write one more post on this issue.

There upshot of most of the letters in the Journal and Robinson's piece (if there is one; he rambles from topic to topic, the only common thread seeming to be his desire to malign "enviro-whackos") is that, in the big scheme of things, the death of 500 ducks isn't a big deal. Many more are killed by wind turbines/hunting/cats/cars/houses each year, so we should just forget about this (and, presumably, go on with strip mining the rest of the province.)

Talk about missing the point. I completely agree that the death of 500 ducks, in itself, is nothing to get too upset about. But the big issue with this incident isn't the ducks per se; it's that we ever allowed an enormous, poisonous lake that can more-or-less instantly kill an entire flock of ducks unless it's surrounded by constantly-firing noise cannons to ever exist in the first place. The unfortunate death of these ducks simply brought that to light in a very visible way. The communication I've seen that has been critical of this incident has consistently conveyed this idea, but people like Robinson seem to be more worried about painting "enviro-whackos" as a bunch of bleeding hearts who guilelessly personify all living creatures like a bunch of misguided children than actually thinking about what they're saying or writing.

Here's a few numbers to illustrate my point: in 2004 there were 622 murders in Canada. In that same year, a 160 762 Canadians died from either  circulatory diseases, cancer, or respiratory diseases. Using the logic of Robinson and his ilk, we could safely conclude that murder isn't a problem in Canada, so we should just go on our merry way without being burdened with the unseemly task of figuring out how we can improve things.

The problem with this logic, of course, is that it's really stupid -- it ignores the fact that there is some sort of underlying problem with our society that is causing the murders. Although simply not worrying about this would undoubtedly make it easier to sleep at night, it would unfortunately do absolutely nothing to solve the problem.

I'll agree with Robinson and say that the death of 500 ducks in itself doesn't constitute a tragedy. What's truly tragic -- and what this incident illustrates -- is the sorrowful extent to which our governments have allowed our environmental stewardship to degrade.

Comments

[Polly Jones]

Good post. I'm glad I found this blog.