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magazine / mj99
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May/June 1999 issue |
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EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
Our unthinkable, “disgusting” past
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| Meadowview landfill in Kentville, N.S. |
CHATTING ONE NIGHT
with my children, cigarette smoking came into the conversation
and I told them that up until about the early 1980s people lit
up on buses, trains and airplanes. And in the workplace. I worked
for a newspaper in Montréal and the religion reporter
who sat facing me in the newsroom smoked a pipe while he tapped
away on his computer. "That’s disgusting," they shouted,
incredulous. "How could you travel? How could you work?"
That hazy past seems pretty distant now. Remarkable, isn’t
it? Something that everyone takes as an unchangeable fact of
life becomes unthinkable. We study, learn, agitate and, slowly,
our world does turn. People adapt.
What’s frustrating is the stuttering pace of change. Pollution
and other environmental concerns have excited popular interest
since the 1960s, yet little ever appears to come to a resolution.
The parade of environmental horror stories just seems to get
longer every year. The message that filters through to children
is that we can’t halt the poisoning of the planet. They despair
and feel helpless. But culture, like nature, is mutable. We evolve.
How? Cast a glance at this list of behaviour that has become
or is becoming unimaginable:
1. Burning garbage or hauling it to open dumps
2. Throwing old newspapers in the trash
3. Using CFC-fuelled aerosol hair spray and deodorants
4. Tossing litter out the car window
5. Pouring used motor oil down the drain
6. Using leaded gas in our cars
7. Thinking bicycles are for kids, not commuters
8. Clearcutting forests
9. Drinking from styrofoam cups
10. Using PCBs in everything from transformers to inks
Each advance we make poses new challenges, obliges us to make
difficult choices. We have removed lead from gas but its
replacement may cause its own problems. We landfill garbage
now instead of burning it but that’s far from an ideal solution.
In this, our annual environment issue, we profile two champions
of nature, report on the possible health hazards of the gasoline
additive MMT, explore the changes taking place in the North Pacific
Ocean, and invite people who live along shorelines to help safeguard
these ribbons of life. The stories in this issue are meant not
to alarm but to engage curiosity, to arouse concern and to leave
everyone, especially our children, with a sense of hope.
— Rick Boychuk
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