The global issues that are of the deepest concern to me are: extreme environmental degradation and severe social inequality.
Both of these challenges will be impacting global economies within the same time frame as a global reduction in adaptation capacity caused by the necessary cessation of the use of fossil fuels. However, I feel these challenges are not being adequately addressed by our Canadian society, and are certainly not being addressed on the same scale as the massive challenges facing us, challenges that will require equally massive technological and social adaptations.
These issues together, if left unaddressed, pose the significant risk of a cataclysmic collapse of modern society, and even the risk of initiating a sixth great mass extinction event of life on Earth.
Alternately, if we genuinely address the root causes of these environmental and social challenges, we can collectively restore the well-being and the resiliency of both human and natural communities, perhaps even sufficient that we may together avert the worst of the effects of, and even find ways to thrive within, the unavoidably changed world ahead of us.
I hope that any and every Canadian would consider how best to respond to these issues with the honest, swift, radical, and thoughtful action that will be necessary.
Environmental degradation and social inequality both have consequences that are far larger than any one societal group, and thus the responsibility for action upon these issues belongs to, and belongs with, everyone of every group.
Thus, the responses to these issues must be broader, swifter, and deeper than they could possibly be from any one of the narrow divisions we have set for ourselves, be it any individual or any individual nation.
We must come together to address the consequences of the externalities of our current society, so that we may internalize any harms done to living systems, human or non-human, and seek to heal these harms to collectively create a sustainable way of living through, past and beyond the challenges we now face.
Please, I request that we can all come together to give serious consideration to these challenges, because our collective actions or in-actions now, will later affect the survival of us all.
Amanda Patt
Fruitvale