Re: “Neros are fiddling while Earth burns,” column, April 21.
Dr. Trevor Hancock rightly compares Nero’s fiddling while Rome burned with Canada’s political and corporate elites who ignore climate-change warnings. I’m glad to be so old that I might not live to see our demise, but I feel railroaded by decisions made by our leaders who fiddle about while Canada burns.
Oil extraction in the oilsands, for example, contaminates the water it uses, and the extractors store this poisoned water in tailing ponds where one supposes that filters should clean the water so it can be harmlessly returned to the soil. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Rivers downstream from these extraction fields receive less water than in the past and what they do get has been poisoned by leaking tailing ponds.
Canada’s North is drying up. No wonder Environment and Climate Change Canada says that: “Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.”
Mary Lowther
Mesachie Lake
