Old-school thinking is killing us
This isn’t about COVID. It’s about that other important thing that’s wreaking havoc on humanity — climate change — and the old-school thinking that enables it.
I know a guy. He’s ancient and relatively wealthy. I know he’s ancient cuz he looks worse, and moves slower, than Tim Conway’s Old Man. I know he’s relatively wealthy cuz he has no children, and three expensive sports cars that he never drives.
His home sits on a double-sized lot that backs onto a ravine. Given the neighborhood he’s in, we’re looking at $4–5M (CAD).
He recently decided to sell the “unused” part of his property. This piece of land is covered with at least a dozen old-growth trees — towering pine, elm, and even a few birch — and all the animals that make that patch of land their home. So… not really unused; just unused by profit-mongering capitalists.
Whoever bought the land intends to build on it, which means most of those old growth trees are getting cut down.
That is, as far as I’m concerned, utterly immoral.
If the old man needs money, he could have sold the gas-guzzling phallic symbols in his garage. Or he could have downsized into a nice condo and still had lots of cash left over.
An even better solution would be to lease the land to the City for a token amount, in exchange for the City to erect a sign with his name and some kind words about him on it, identify the area as a “wild farm” and facilitate various members of the neighborhood to grow edible plants around the existing old growth trees. Those who “farm” the lot would keep what they grow (to eat or sell at the local farmer’s market), minus a small amount to be given free of charge to the old man and his wife. This would be a sustainable solution that would help build community in an area that’s seeing a lot of turnover (because most residents are really, really old) and needs a reason to be a community again.
But no! He sold it to some schmuck who will probably build a huge and tacky McMansion.
…hmmm, perhaps this post is about COVID, in a way, because it points to the same miserable human shortcomings that delayed appropriate responses to the new coronavirus and endangered pretty much the entire planet. Humans are, generally speaking, self-absorbed, intellectually lazy, narrow-minded prats. The old man has done what old men have done for decades: profit at the expense of the environment. In the same way, the obsession with economic well-being by a bunch of old men have exacerbated the COVID pandemic by preventing the immediate imposition of social, physical, and behavioural measures, as well as a resistance to spend money on the infrastructure (PPE, test kits, etc.) needed to save lives.
As this post started, I know a guy.
And he’s a dick.
