What are our children, grandchildren, and the next generation going to inherit? The “me, me, me” people don’t worry about the future, because they say, “that will be their problem!” I have dedicated much of my life to helping those in power understand that we are but the caretakers of our grandchildren’s world. Today’s generation has enjoyed probably the best times of all. We have gone from the horse and buggy to rockets that have taken man to the moon and back. We can enjoy foods from all over the world (maybe because we have used up some of our non-renewable resources to keep prices down). Not too many generations ago, people thought that the world was flat, and when Christopher Columbus first set foot on America, he called the Indigenous people “Indios” because he thought he had landed in India. Our ancestors came to the new country because on a bad year, the kings and their armies stole grain, animals, food and land from the peasants to keep themselves eating like kings. One of the new world’s earliest exports was beaver skins for kings and other European aristocrats to wear.
And what did the Europeans bring to America? New diseases that First Nations people couldn’t cure. Then we shipped Europe “square timber” and other wood to build with, because Europe had used up most of its forests.
So, what about pollution? When people were spread out through the country on farms and in small villages, pollution and disease had not yet taken hold. Extensive burning of coal didn’t begin until people gathered in cities in coal-heated houses, and industry began using coal. Soon, coal-fired boilers on trains became more efficient than those which used wood to fire the boilers. Oil was not discovered in Canada until 1858 in Ontario. The world didn’t realise how polluted we were until Covid-19 shut down airplane traffic and most other oil burning transportation. Then pollution in the world’s most populated cities and skies cleared up when fossil fuel burning vehicles came to a halt. The world’s most polluting country (China) now leads the world in fighting climate change. China is aiming to be carbon neutral before 2060, and is now the world leader in electric car production and use, and in the development of electric battery technology.
Meanwhile, in America, the president has given up the battle on climate change. The U.S. is missing precious metals needed for making EV batteries, and is trying to take over or annex countries that have oil reserves. It seems like the U.S. has been influenced by both big oil and big pharma. The number of wildfires in the world has spiked in the last few years, as has the global average temperatures. As the fires burn on and an increasing number of acres of farmland turns into desert, there still remain some climate change deniers, even in our governments. Even though wildfires are consuming millions of acres of forest every year and more homes and people are being lost to those fires, it is probably desertification of farmland that will cause starvation in the world. Many of our smartest scientists have already declared that micro-plastics in our water and food are slowly increasing and finding their way into our bodies. New “forever chemicals” have been approved for use in some crop sprays in the U.S.. Those chemicals never go away and are life shortening. It is guaranteed that some investors are becoming rich from profits tied to those chemicals, but do we need them?
Mankind only needs three things to be healthy: clean air, clean water, and clean, nutritious food. Can we make that happen?
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
