Editor,
Re: the 24th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Quesnelobserver.com)
Maybe due to Earth’s large size, there seems to be a general obliviousness in regards to our natural environment, as though toxic pollutants emitted through exhausts pipes and tall smoke stacks – or even the largest contamination events – can somehow be safely absorbed into the air, sea, and land (i.e., out of sight, out of mind). It may be the same mentality that allows the immense amount of plastic waste, such as disposable straws, to eventually find its way into our life-filled oceans, where there are few, if any, caring souls to see it.
Indeed, it’s quite fortunate that the plastic waste doesn’t entirely sink out of sight to the bottom, like Albertan diluted bitumen crude oil spills, for then nothing would be done about it, regardless of divers’ reports of the awful existence of such plastic tangled messes.
As for the fossil fuel industry, it must be quite convenient to have such a large portion of mainstream society simply too exhausted and preoccupied with just barely feeding and housing their families on a substandard income to criticize the former for the great damage it’s doing to our planet’s natural environment and therefore our health, particularly when that damage may not be immediately observable. Also, to have almost everyone addicted to driving their own fossil-fuel-powered single occupant vehicle helps keep their collective mouths shut about the planet’s greatest and very profitable polluter, lest they feel like and/or be publicly deemed hypocrites.
Frank Sterle Jr.
White Rock, B.C.