My recent columns about the ecological crisis we face and the need to reduce our ecological footprint generated emails from several people saying I should address the issue of population growth. They have a good point, but the issue is complex, and the solution is not just a matter of family planning.
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Finding hope can be challenging these days, what with the global ecological crisis, high levels of poverty and inequality, nasty xenophobic and nationalistic politics, and the general failure of governments and societies to respond effectively to these and other challenges of the 21st century.
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The ecological footprint measures our impact in terms of the amount of biologically productive land and sea we need to provide the crops and fish we use for food, the grass and feed crops we use for livestock, the timber we use for paper and wood, and the land we need planted in trees to absorb our carbon emissions (“energy land”).
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There is an interesting common thread underlying many of my recent columns. It is the question in the headline: Does mental health matter most?
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The term solastalgia was coined 15 years ago by Glenn Albrecht, an Australian philosopher. He derived it in part from the idea of nostalgia, which means home-sickness. In the 19th and into the 20th century, he wrote, it was considered a medical condition caused by a desire to return to one’s home.
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Not all resources must be mined, used and exported; the sorry story of asbestos proves that point, although it took a long time to overcome stubborn government support for this industry. The last asbestos mine in Canada closed in 2011, and Canada finally agreed to ban the use of asbestos as of this year — 30 years after the World Health Organization declared asbestos a carcinogen in 1987.
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The World Economic Forum released its 2018 Global Risks report last week. One business reporter dubbed it “the Pandora report,” and that is a fair assessment. If you have an interest in the welfare of future generations — or, for that matter, young people alive today — it makes for sober reading.
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I often find reason for hope — if not optimism — at the local level. Experience has shown that good things often start locally and move up, which explains why we should think globally, but act locally.
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There is an emerging community-based movement in the capital region — and elsewhere around the world — that recognizes that ecological, social and economic conditions and human well-being are not separate issues but are inextricably linked. In Victoria, some related initiatives have sprung up, mostly in just the past couple of years, that are working to address these intersecting issues holistically, but in different ways.
Read moreNot only is poor mental health costly to manage, it also represents a large burden of human suffering and loss of human potential and — to the extent it is preventable — a tragic societal failure. So it is good to see that, finally, we are beginning to pay attention to improving the mental well-being of the population.
Read moreBut let’s face it, the purpose of marketing is to persuade us to buy more of their products — why else would a business spend all that money? And therein lies perhaps the greatest danger. Because marketing feeds into and supports the dominant narrative of growth, it stimulates us to want and need more products, more “stuff.”
Read moreThis is not going to make me popular with my beer-drinking, Morris-dancing friends, or with a lot of other people, I imagine, but we need to put higher taxes on alcohol and implement other proven policies that make it less accessible and less glamorous. This is the conclusion one must come to on reading the report on alcohol harm in Canada just released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information and a 2015 report by Canada’s chief public health officer.
Read moreToo many governments seem to think that the business of government is business. This comes from the erroneous belief that the central purpose of government and society is economic development.
Read moreThere is a lot of money to be made from making us ill. The No. 1 example is the tobacco industry, whose products, if used as intended, are bound to make us ill. But close behind it is the food industry, which for years has been selling us both too much food and the wrong sorts of food.
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One of the key principles of population and public health is social justice and equity. We recognize that inequalities in health exist, but that when they are unfair, unjust and preventable, they are unacceptable.
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