timothycomeau.com > writing

Letter to the Editor of the
Ajax News Advertiser

October 2002

To the editor:

I simply to express my support for the Kyoto Accord, and hope Pickering-Ajax-Uxbridge MPP Dan McTeague will vote in favour of it when it comes up later this year.

I am a young person, 27 years old, who is very concerned about the world I am in the process of inheriting. While I understand Kyoto will have economic consequences, I believe scaremongering on this basis is both irresponsible and representative of a parochial view. It would seem to me that those so heavily invested in a fossil fuel-based economy are refusing to see the economic benefits (and I would think, great opportunities) of a Green-based on.

The jobs that will be lost are — like an ‘executioner’ — jobs that probably shouldn’t exist in the first place, since they are detrimental to the long-term survival of the biosphere.

Members of parliament are from a generation older than mine. They have experienced and enjoyed an ecosystem that will probably not exist for my children or grandchildren. This is something new for us a human beings and as citizens or Canada; the rural generations of a century ago did not imagine their descendants not enjoying clean rivers and clean air.

Why should we make the future pay for our selfishness?

Kyoto may be considered a small and almost insignificant step, but we have to start somewhere.

Please vote in favour of Kyoto.

Timothy Comeau, Ajax