Labour Day & Sustaining Creation

 

I've written abou the protests at a site called Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island, an area which contains some of the last old-growth forest in British Columbia. Indigenous and environmental protesters have been blockading logging roads since last year in an attempt to save these trees, many of which are massive. There have been roughly 800 arrests a number now comparable to the civil disobedience "war in the woods" at Clayoquot Sound nearly 30 years ago, also on Vancouver Island. 

As always there are arguments that the tree-huggers are naively impeding the livlihoods of workers who are employed in the forestry industry. So, just who's side are we on on Labour Day?

 We should be cautious about villainizing people who are earning a living in resource extraction industries, including foresty and fossil fuels. Ultimately they are not the ones who become wealthy as a result of short-sighted and destructive practices for harvesting and extraction.. At the same time, when these trees are gone, they are gone. Suzanne Simard grew up in a logging family and worked in the industry until she concluded from her groundbreaking scientifc research that forestry as it's practiced on the West Coast is unsustainable. People deserve to have worthwhile employment, but what happens when the resources have been depleted and disappear? I highly recommend Simard's book, Finding the Mother Tree. 

                                                                            Fairy Creek 

I do feel that we must develop a more expansive understanding of sutainable work alongside ecological sustainability. As I've noted before, the words economy and ecology have the same root in the Greek word oikos, which means household. "Super Natural" British Columbia is now dealing with summer after summer of wildfires which blanket the province in smoke and threaten communities. These fires are exacerbated by climate change which threatens the wellbeing of thousands. 

God never gave humans license to plunder, nor to destroy the "meaningful work" of the ecosystems which sustain us and all life. When will we wake up, I ask once again. 

. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/fairy-creek-blockade-election-1.6161196