We're proud to live in this great land

At any one time, half the citizenry of our fair country is annoyed with the government, but with Canada itself? I and my friends frequently talk about how proud and happy we are to live in this fabulous country. We are the envy of the rest of the world. We rank third in the world for best quality of life.

Anyone who is angry with the state of Canada did not read the rest of your newspaper on Saturday or any day of the week for that matter. Wars, famine, starvation, hundreds of children kidnapped from their school, adults and children massacred with guns in the U.S. — the list is endless. None of these headlines has anything to do with Canada. We are the lucky ones.

The climate-crisis ranking was also very disturbing to me. That is No. 1 on my friends' lists of what we must take action on now. If the planet dies, inflation won't really matter that much, will it?

Climate science is real.

Back in the 1970s, we saw the effects of acid rain: dying rivers and the fish washing up to the shore, buildings peeling and corroding, animals suffering, trees dying. We did something about it and it more or less disappeared in North America. Governments worldwide joined together in an international agreement. The hole in the ozone layer was visible and again, governments worldwide listened to the science and stopped using the chemicals that were depleting the ozone layer. If the permafrost keeps melting, the methane that is emitted will speed global warming past the tipping point and life as we know it will cease to exist.

This crisis is the same, but for some reason, people don't want to admit it's real.

Climate change is No. 1 on my list of importance. Annabel Buckley, Ottawa