CLOCK IS TICKING DOWN ON PORT AU PORT WIND PROJECT DECISION – WILL WE CHOOSE ENVIRONMENT OR GREED?
In a few short days, on April 9, our provincial government will make a decision regarding WEGH2’S industrial wind project on the Port au Port Peninsula and Anguille Mountains. They will either approve or revoke the project based on the company’s environmental impact statement.
It’s a stressful and uncertain time for many of us, but especially those who live in southwestern Newfoundland who will be affected by the development if it goes forward.
And let’s not forget the people of the Burin Peninsula, the Bay of Exploits, and the Isthmus of Avalon, who all have similar large-scale industrial projects proposed for their areas and who feel all of it is being fast-tracked with no regard for long-term impacts.
Many people have spoken about the environmental, social, and economic degradation that industrial wind development will bring about to the sensitive areas of the Port au Port and Anguilles. WEGH2’S proposal is not a green project focused on healing our planet from the harms we have afflicted her. It is a subsidy-harvesting operation focused on money. It is thinly-veiled corporate colonialism, a land-grab attempt that will displace thousands of people, destroy their homes and livelihoods, and ravage a pristine natural area of global importance. Why should our public lands be sold for the benefit of an elite few at the expense of the health of the land and its inhabitants?
We are systematically murdering the planet to prolong an illusion of domination over it, when in reality we are part of a united and interconnected whole.
John Muir said, “When we try and pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” We are part of an intricate web of reciprocity between all living things. Corporate powers may see nature as dead or as separate from us humans, but we despoil and exploit her at our own undoing.
People in rural Newfoundland, where the projects are slated to occur, have spoken loud and clear that they do not want this industrialized takeover of their home.
These protests have fallen on deaf ears. Corporate and government land management policies are being driven by rich people who live in urban areas and who have no relation with or knowledge of the land they are selling.
In fact, they appear to have no personal relationship with nature and wilderness at all. They cannot conceive how people who live close to the land don’t see nature as a commodity, and haven’t put a dollar sign on every tree and river.
Many Newfoundlanders still live close to the Earth — hunting, fishing, gardening, foraging. These ways of life will be forever altered or no longer viable for the people who live in the vicinity of these massive windfarms.
Of what worth are dubious promises of jobs and money if we have harmed the Earth to the point we cannot grow food, or fish, or hunt, or drink clean water? Newfoundland is a refuge from the ravages of industrialization. We should embrace this gift, not seek to sell it away and join the rest of the world in its destructive folly. No one will come back home if there is no home to come back to.
Ancestral homelands will be devastated. Wildlife will flee. Birds and bats will be killed. Plants, wildflowers, trees, and fungi will be bulldozed. Mountains will be blasted. And wastewater effluent will decimate coastal marine life.
Humans will suffer, too. The health of the Earth is the health of the people. By wounding the land, the WEGH2 project will be wounding the people—both physically though pollution and contamination that are inherent with industry, and spiritually through the loss of their home, identity, and way of life.
The boreal forest, which comprises much of Newfoundland and Labrador, is of utmost importance to the Earth in its role of absorbing and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. This vital ecosystem is the lungs of our planet, responsible for up to a third of the oxygen we breathe. These forests and embedded wetlands are also vital to the health of our rivers, and ultimately our oceans. Bogs and wetlands are natural water absorbers and purifiers, and the root systems of forests hold our lifegiving soil together. Together they are a terrific mitigator against flooding, landslides, and erosion. To continue to wilfully damage our forests and waterways in favor of corporate infrastructure is inexcusable.
In the words of Albert Einstein, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Rather than expecting technology to save us from the climate and biodiversity crisis we’ve created, we need to rethink our entire way of living.
This is why corporations, modern technology, and consumer-capitalist incentives will never be able to lead the charge and be successful against the problems our planet is facing. The solution lies in grassroots initiatives to return to the land, slowing down and using less, finding a renewed respect and love for manual work, and rediscovering our place in the family of all living things.
The clock is ticking. Are we to be stewards of the natural world in which we live, or justify its permanent destruction in the name of corporate greed?
Veronica Sullivan Comfort Cove