Stop being reactive on B.C. wildfires

We’re again in the Smokanagan with our neighbours to the north and south battling for their homes, livelihoods, and the natural world.

In Penticton, our ability to breathe affected by which way the wind blows.

As I write this, the Air Quality Index rates our city’s air as “excellent” — the first time in two months.

We’re 60 years beyond the publishing of scientist Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 — the book that launched the environmental movement. That’s three generations ago.

Fighting wildfires and other environmental disasters isn’t enough — that’s reaction. We must legislate immediate action and stop funding and burning the fossil fuels that are choking us and drying and incinerating Earth.

Petroleum can still be wisely used to create much of the material stock of the 21st century, but we must stop burning it. Our lives depend on immediate action. There’s no substitute for breathable air.

Enough of climate deniers, climate action delayers, and those who continue to kick the can of change in our energy system to 10 or 20 or more years into the future. Always putting the economy and our current standard of living ahead of environmental reality will kill us.

We’ve mobilized to confront COVID-19. We can do the same for immediate climate action and embrace renewable energy and train for all the jobs needed to make a liveable world a reality.

The federal election on Sept. 20, let’s vote for a party with a leader who will act in changing our desperate environmental circumstances.

Merle Kindred Penticton