"We have seen many emotional issues that became fads in our society and it seems true that our collective attention span is short. Never before, however, have we been confronted with an issue of such profound significance to our future, so continuously with us, and of which we are so constantly reminded, breathing the air, listening to the constant din of noise around us, fighting crowds and traffic, wrinkling our noses and averting our glances from the creeks and lakes that border our cities. If, in the face of these constant and insistent reminders of our plight, we 'turn off,' lose our intent, and flit on to the next sensation without ensuring the solution of our environmental problems -- then, truly, we will deserve what we get."
I just came across this statement from Dr. Donald Chant, Pollution Probe co-founder and provost at the University of Toronto, in the May 1978 edition of the Probe Post magazine. The statement may be thirty-two years old, but I suspect that it is just as relevant today, if not more so, than the day he first wrote it down.
It is still incredibly relevant. Where I live in London I am overwhelmed all of the time by the sheer levels of garbage choking the river banks and along the trails. And this is in a city that is making efforts to be both green and a forest city! What is so difficult about these issues are not that they are so complex but that they human mind is so complex. How do you get people to stop treating the environment as a waste dump? How do you make that link in the minds of the majority and not just in the abstract, but in day-to-day, ordinary tasks?
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