The Herald's article "Environment group is ready" (Jan. 26) represents the views of a group of "environmental activists" pressuring the city to approve an initial subsidy of $120,000 per year - to go to them - which will come out of our taxes.
First of all, I am concerned about the qualifications of this group wishing to enter into an agreement with the city, allegedly to educate our city council, businessmen and citizens on environmental issues. There is a great difference between "environmental activists" and "environmental scientists." The former work with ideological delusions and spread misinformation with the intent of appealing to our feelings, while the later are highly educated specialists working with a logical rational communicating scientifically backed data.
The proposing group "Environment Lethbridge" (EL), by their own admission, do not possess the needed expertise. They have promised to obtain it in the future. Where and how are they going to get this needed expertise? The requested $120,000 subsidy is committed to EL salaries, rent and expenses of the proposed environmental shop.
Good information costs money if it is obtained from environmental scientists. Will the city be paying these consulting fees over and above the $120,000 annual subsidy for EL? If not, then the source for the supposed expertise can only be that provided for free from similarly minded people i.e. from environmental activist groups that were included exclusively in EL's original invitation and are now the backers of EL.
I believe that city council want to work with rational plans to address this issue, thereby providing no-nonsense leadership. To assist them in this task I will quote from a recent letter sent by the father of the "Green" movement, Dr. James Lovelock, objecting to a wind farm development in Devon. This letter illustrates the potential problems created by "green" or environmental activists:
"I am an environmentalist and founder member of the Greens but I bow my head in shame at the thought that our original good intentions should have been misunderstood and misapplied. We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs. We need to take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilization."
Cosmos Voutsinos, P. Eng
Energy Collegium
Lethbridge