Lead by example to save the environment

It’s falsely said ordinary individuals cannot change our extinction-bound system of pollution and climate chaos-making.

We must change cultural preferences and habits, with some inconvenience in early years, thus adjusting the economy. Living youngsters and their descendants require it to survive.

For instance, refusing plastic water bottle use is important, (though if recycled some can be reused close to a half dozen times when reconstituted).

However, a higher level of commitment is needed to avoid the use of polyester clothing, for when elastane is incorporated it makes their recycling — as distinct from re-use — impossible.

Wearing such items more before discarding them is an improvement, but buying hemp, linen and bamboo is better still. If enough of us do it, the producers will adjust and the increase in scale will almost always bring the costs down, as in electric (and other) vehicle manufacture.

Regenerative and organic food production brings back natural soil fertility, reducing need for polluting chemical applications. Initial harvest decreases are thereafter restored.

Governments must also be persuaded to severely cap and regulate greenhouse gas production and hence reduce health problems caused by multifarious attendant pollution pathways.

These vital restrictions will be hastened by our determination to each alter the course of the economy, both by direct influence on producers of all sorts, and by signalling politicians with greener votes that they have to cater to our caring about the environment to regain these votes.

We must lead by example. It’s our best, nay, only hope.

Glynne Evans Saanich