LETTER

Reply to an anti-environmentalist

 

Poor Robert Thompsett. Like other acolytes of the Church of Big Business, he feels that his rights and freedoms are being repressed whenever he can’t buy all the stuff he would like. The real repression will be faced by future generations living on a planet degraded by our rampant materialism and unbridled growth.

While I share his concern over mercury poisoning, I find it curious that mercury-bearing fluorescent tubes have been with us for many decades, but people like Thompsett only developed a dislike for them after they were transformed and presented as an environmental “solution”. (In reality, they are nothing more than another economic band-aid to temper some of the deleterious effects of that unbridled growth.) Moreover, the risk of contamination from fluorescent bulbs can be limited with recycling (gasp! - another crazy “Gaian plan”); society is already moving past compact fluorescents towards LED bulbs, and there are far worse sources of environmental mercury, such as the burning of coal by the power plants necessary to keep us awash in all that wasted energy.

Then there is his inane statement that any degree of environmental responsibility will move Canada toward “Bolshevik central planning.” It has obviously escaped his attention that “Bolshevik” regimes treat the environment even more poorly than capitalist states, but I guess any slur will do when fighting the ‘evils’ of environmental and social responsibility.

David Desjardins
Aylmer

(Editor’s note: to both writers: There are no Bolshevik regimes any more.)