Bog Blog
Jim Posynick, KCDCS Board Chair
As governments around the world try to keep the wheels of industry turning and people working, mounting debt threatens venerable programs and institutions that enhance our quality of life and offer security against future life-threatening circumstances including climate change, economic collapse and disease. Those programs and institutions are now more important than ever, especially those that provide the foundation for understanding the complex relationship between humans and nature.
When the post-war (my) generation went to school, the emphasis was on getting an education that would lead to a good job with high pay and inclusion in the looming age of technology. The ‘good life’, including a single family house, a nice car, annual vacations and retirement income, was the dangling carrot that kept our noses to the grindstone. In the meantime the weather got worse, flooding and droughts became the norm, millions of people were displaced, economic disparities contributed to social unrest and violence and, inevitably some say, to a world-wide pandemic.
Like most of the people from my generation, my education had almost no environmental content. Only after my children were born did I realize what a mistake it would be to raise them without helping them understand the relationship between our natural environment and past, present and future human experience. My family lucky to live in northern Canada, have aboriginal friends and easy access to wilderness. Our environmental education was a cross-cultural experience, learned first-hand. Today, for largely economic reasons, most Canadians “experience” nature on television, at the movies or for a few weeks on vacation.
