Dear Editor:
RE: ‘Control agendas?’ (July 20).
As Peter Mandic suggested, I checked the Canadian National Fire Database and the previous Canadian record was more than 7.3 million hectares burned in 1989. This year in Canada, 10 million hectares had already burned by July 15, and we are only about a third of the way through summer!
Seems unprecedented to me any way you look at it.
Mandic went on to write that Canadians don’t need to worry about our emissions, nor about a livable future for our grandkids. I disagree!
CO2 emissions per capita in 2020 were: 13.6 tonnes for Canada, 7.8 tonnes for China (43% less than Canadians), 6.7 tonnes for Norway, 6.6 tonnes for Finland and 3.2 tonnes for Sweden. Most of the population of the last three countries live farther north than most of Canada’s population. We have no reason to be smug. As members of the world population, we should do our part to reduce our emissions to at least that of the Chinese.
Peter Mandic chose to ignore the point in my letter (‘Time to ‘Wake Up,’ June 22), that farmers have an opportunity using biologically enhanced agricultural management (BEAM), to grow healthier food more profitably and sequester carbon in the soil. Government has an opportunity to help farmers make the transition to BEAM, a known and tested technique for aggressively sequestering carbon, instead of wasting tax dollars on the fossil fuel industry to research unproven techniques for storing carbon, and worse yet, pay for a pipeline to further support a dying industry.
What’s not to like about farmers winning, the environment winning and taxpayers winning?
Ron Moore,
Hillsburgh