Dear Editor:
As the Occupy movement fades from view, and debate over oil pipelines dominates the news, the two issues intersected for me on a recent walk through our neighbourhood. A house was being torn down, not because it was old or worn out, but because it was only 2,000 square feet. A machine ripped it apart, loaded it into containers and trucks hauled it to the landfill. It is to be replaced by an 8,000-square-foot "house."
This is nothing new, but I found the whole thing thoroughly disheartening, and I asked myself why. No laws or zoning guidelines were being broken. Construction jobs will be created, and vast sums will flow to everyone down the chain of supply. Chances are the proud eventual owners will have come by their wealth in some perfectly legal manner, and will pay their taxes without protest. They have every right to use their money to enhance their lives, including ownership of a remarkable house.
However, we are learning that definitions are fluid; what was once impressive is now laughable, or even obscene. These people are presumably educated and know that our planet is protesting our reckless consumption. So why would they want a house the size of a high school gymnasium? Why not invest their resources in a home that consumes less energy, rather than more? Why not support technologies and products that need "early adopters" in order to become affordable and accessible for us all?
I would argue that their reasons are the same as those in the minds of oil pipeline proponents: it seems to make good business sense, and it is conventional. China and the United States need oil, and big homes maximize your lot value. Prosperity is worth a few environmental risks, and the wealthy don't worry about the cost of heating their immense homes. Albertans deserve to cash in on the fossil fuels slumbering under the prairie, and gross waste doesn't matter if you can afford it. After all, what is the point of wealth unless you can have more than what you need?
But perhaps our conventions need to change, particularly our conventions of wealth and business.
Maybe we can see the silliness of shipping oil, at great risk, to the other side of the world, where it can be turned into rubber storage bins and plasma TVs to be shipped back here, where within a very few years it will be returned to the ground as garbage.
Maybe the practice of using wealth for indulgent bling will be replaced by something wiser, more in concert with global realities.
I would suggest that the rich, with their greater freedom of choice, can most easily nurture these changes. Not out of altruism, or socialism, or because some hardy soul tenting on the courthouse lawn shames them into it, but because they are intelligent and educated and can see (if they care to look) where our current course is taking us.
Craig Johnston, North Vancouver
