I am amused — and bemused — by the attitude toward environmentalists expressed by Mike Weismiller in a letter to the editor on July 28.
He caricatures environmentalists as vacantly holding up signs saying “save the trees” or running amuck pounding spikes into trees with the aim of maiming loggers. Why are they not, he asks, in the front lines of fighting fires if they care so much for trees? Where, he asks, are they?
Environmentalists are all around you. We are people who love the mountains, forests and ocean of this region and believe that human activity has to be balanced by preservation, sustainably. Environmentalism is not a niche concern, and being an “environmentalist” is not an identity that excludes all our other ones. Environmentalists can be anyone and anywhere.
We are ordinary people, for instance, who believe that water is a public resource to be managed for the good of all, and accept regulations on its use in time of drought.
Some of us go further into concern that government not privatize and sell our water to bottling companies, or give it cheap to corporations that suck sources dry by fracking. Some of us also want to protect the water all around us from oil spills made inevitable by massive oil tankers.
Most environmentalists don’t make grand contributions. But we do what we can: we donate appropriately and we vote thoughtfully. In the popular vote of the past two federal elections, two thirds of Canadians took the most significant action an environmentalist possibly can: we voted against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. I welcome you to join us.
Eileen DombrowskiNanoose Bay