I Care About The Environment

@Sadwithasmile At 18 your education consists of having gone to school for a number of years. Too Funny. About your age was when I hiked the great divide trail through the mountains of Western Alberta. Of course I had grown up on a ranch and was very familiar with all the wildlife in the area. The year after that I began teaching aircrew how to survive a crash into forested areas. The course consisted of three weeks in the bush living with a sleeping bag and axe. I live in a city with the largest urban park in the world. It is the river valley and it is teaming with wildlife. Of course you have never left the city so you are expert on the environment of you block. Too funny.

@hippyjoe1955 im 20, im a second year economics student at the London school of economics. London has endless wildlife all over in it’s endless parks and lastly my comments werent aimed at you.

@Sadwithasmile Regardless you singled out MEN. In particular middle aged men. The facts are that the older generations have had years of experience you likely have never and will never encounter. Ever had a bear in your kitchen? How about a cougar killing your chickens? How about a moose on your front lawn? Maybe a coyote staring though the front window? Maybe a badger attack your shovel when you are moving grain? The fact is kids (and I know because I used to be one) get sucked into all kinds of nonsensical ideas and ideals. When you get a little older you begin to realize you have been conned and weren't aware of your teachers and profs doing it. They were all so sincere.....

@hippyjoe1955 have you ever walked 10 kilometres in 53 degrees Celsius due to a power out? Have you watched your family members get slaughtered like cattle on international news? Have you lost the people you loved while being forced while you were sitting in class continents away from your family? Have you seen your father’s kidneys fail and find him on the ground in a pool of his own blood, have to drive at 4 in the morning to try to save his life without knowing what is wrong with him? Do you wonder if your mother who works at the front lines at the corona test facilities will come home today? When will you get the chance to hug her? Has your life been destroyed with recession after recession and civil war after civil war and terrorism after terrorism?

No because you middle aged western men think you saw the worst in the world, to blind to see how people are suffering for not being male and not being western.

@Sadwithasmile And how many of those hardships have you encountered? Well where I live the temperature doesn't get to 53 C. It does get to -48 C and yes I have walked and skied in that cold. I have camped out in that cold by myself. I have skied through blizzards where you can't see a couple of meters in front of you. Yes I lived way out in the bush and have had to make some very trying trips to medical care hours away and in very inclement weather day and night. One such case was -40 C at midnight when we set out. The weather was below flight limits and it was quicker for me to drive the 4 hours than to get an ambulance to drive out to where I was and then back with the patient. Yes I lost my father at 24. He was a quite young but had a heart attack at work and was dead before the ambulance got to him. Yes I have gone through recessions and lost my life savings more than once. Fortunately for me I had a mother who had lived through the dust bowl of the 30s and could stretch a dollar farther than anyone I know. That completely aside none of this has anything to do with environmentalism. The facts are that if you live in a city you likely think the 'natural world' is oppressed by mankind's over population. If you live in the bush and never see another human for weeks at a time you realize that nature is carrying on pretty much the way it always has. The point I make is that the city where the environment is hazardous is the problem of the people who live there. It is not up to me or you or anyone else to tell them how to live their lives. If they want to live in smog and drink poisoned water then it is their choice. It is not my white guilt to tell them that they have to clean up their act. They are no less human than I. They are not stupid or uniformed. They have the choice to make. I choose to live where I live for a reason. I kind of like walking down the path and seeing a lynx and her cubs in front of me. My choice.

@hippyjoe1955 i went through all of the things I mentioned plus over a decade of abuse from my teachers for not being western. I have seen and experienced things no child should ever had to go through.

I got rejected from the LSE after getting in, idk why but that is the only thing i lie about because it was my dream to go there but i never will, i go to the university of york (the one in the uk not Canada) which is a “top uni” though it will never be the lse.

The city is where we are all heading, rural areas are becoming less important as food can be produced in cities. Environment doesn't mean the earth is going to melt but you said it yourself mining released toxic gases, that is an environmental problem. That is why researchers are hoping to create carbon batteries, they don’t explode and hold several times more electricity. Carbon dioxide isnt bad, it is a natural process and mega cities produce more carbon dioxide through breathing than anything else on the planet. I very much believe sunspots are the reason for global warming (though i see little temperature difference). But tell me here and now that exhaust fumes aren’t dangerous to us and they dont cause acid rains which harm wild life and farming. And that you wouldn’t prefer a life with no car, plane or other noise made because of combustion? That is sound pollution and due to the corona i have heard silence and it is beautiful.

@Sadwithasmile So you are going to blame western men for your hardship? Wow. I grew up on a ranch. Getting up at three in the morning when it was -30 c to help a cow give birth was normal for me. Who do I get to blame for the frost bite when I had to strip to the waist to reach inside the cow the get the calf re-positioned. Life is hard and it isn't fair. Get used to it. I certainly did. I remember unloading 6 tones of coal from an old truck using a shovel. It was -30 c and my hands were freezing. I was 8 years old. I was outside doing the easy work while dad was in the coal chute making room for the rest of the coal. If you think that was some kind of privilege you are welcome to take my place.

@Sadwithasmile Lovely and supportive message. Please don't worry about me being attacked.. the people who tend to do that tend to be of very fixed and entrenched views and their modus operandi is to attack and insult - this is generally because they don't have anything other than that, i.e. no intelligent input. I can more than hold my own against them.. Indeed I can wipe the floor with them as they really aren't hard to better!

I do appreciate your input and it's always so reassuring to hear from young people who truly do understand the situations we all face.