I was watching the Green Party's press conference yesterday, and Jim Harris mentioned that 1 in 5 children in Canada has childhood asthma. "That can't be true," says I. Surely we wouldn't let things get so bad, I thought. But the Ontario Lung Association more-or-less backs him up.
1 in 5 children. Can't. Breathe.
My friend Paul has a nice way of looking at things like this - what would we do if a foreign enemy were doing this to us? What would Canada do if we woke up tomorrow to find that, say, Osama bin Laden had poisoned 1 out of every 5 children in Canada?
I think for most people - and all parents - the phrase "total war" comes to mind. What burdens would we not bear, what expense would be too much, to find and punish the people responsible?
This morning, I caught a rerun of Dalton McGuinty speaking at the end of the year, in which he said as Premier he would "do whatever it takes" to assure clean, affordable electricity for Ontario. Those words - "whatever it takes" - makes it sound like Dalton would personally run naked into razor wire if he thought it might get us even one extra electron. Boy, we sure are blessed to have such a brave leader.
Of course, it's becoming clearer and clearer that when McGuinty's government says "whatever it takes" he's basically preparing the ground for a new round of nuclear plants in Ontario. This isn't brave, it isn't hard-headed, it's dumb. Ontario still has over $30 billion in debt from our last nuclear binge, which I'll already be paying off until I die. Frankly, I'm not too interested in building more.
More importantly, 1 in 5 children still can't breathe, and the provincial government's best response is to get ready for another century's worth of debt, and another millenium's worth of toxic waste.
I am so fucking depressed right now.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I had asthma as a child and still do now, but I can breath fine, except around cats and dogs. I expect that only a fraction of the asthma cases are related to air pollution.
It has been suggested that the rise in asthma is not because our world is too dirty, but it is too clean. People live in houses that are so much cleaner and antiseptic then in the past, children's immune system aren't getting initialized properly because they aren't being exposed to normal dirt and pollution at a young age, which causes the immune system to react badly to it when it is exposed lator.
Darwin O'Connor
doconnor@reamined.on.ca
Click on the following link to read about Ontario Pemier McGuinty's flip-flop on hydro electricity privatization.
This is from the Ontario Tenants Rights website that has a lot of information about Ontario hydro electricity energy issues.
Post a Comment