In Which I Make My Opinion Known

A few days ago, I sent this complaint to the administrators of the Young Greens web site:

To those responsible for this ad campaign to the Young Greens:

As a young voter (I am 18) I do not appreciate this attempt to belittle my parents and the parents of this generation. The implication that they are wasteful is offensive, and the claim that they 'fucked up' our planet misguided and untrue. Blaming problems with the environment (which, I might add, are grossly exaggerated by the mainstream media and amount to an insipid attempt to make people feel good about themselves for being 'green') on our parents' generation has nothing to do with the environment. It attacks family unity and makes light of the innumerable sacrifices our parents have made for us. Even now, many of us who are university students are completely dependent on our parents' generosity for our continuing education.

In the next federal election, I will be voting for Stephen Harper's Conservatives. 

Today, they sent this response, and this one.

Basically, they amounted to "you're wrong about this, this and this, and we don't care if you think we're offensive." Boy, do I ever feel like a valued youth member of society for making my opinion known. However, I would like to address a few of their claims.

From the site response:

The arctic ocean is currently warmer than it has been in the last two thousand years and will be free of ice in our lifetime.

We have no records of the temperature of the arctic ocean farther back than about the last century. It may well have been warmer at some point than it is now. Also, there is no way of knowing until it IS free of ice that it will be free of ice in our lifetime. I don't care what computer model you use. Nothing, outside of the divine and miraculous, can predict the future with 100% accuracy.

Canadian leaders, including the Prime Minister, make no apologies for declining to even attend major international climate talks.

Some Canadian leaders are intelligent enough to realize that they have more important things to be doing than freaking out over something like the weather. Climate change must be second to issues like poverty and terrorism. The bottom line is that we are discussing the WEATHER here.

Youth unemployment in Canada is at a 30-year high.

Unless I'm mistaken, ALL unemployment in Canada is at a high right now.

Annual global military expenditure reached over $1.46 trillion in 2008 while nearly half of the world’s 2.2 billion children live in poverty.

I am borderline offended by this. Why is money spent on the military automatically BAD money? Why is it somehow a bad thing to want a force to defend ourselves against aggression, should the need arise? Also, do the millions of dollars in relief sent to those children living in poverty, much of it not through taxes but through donations out of personal earnings, not COUNT? I am a young adult saving for university and I still give money to support a little girl in South America through Compassion Canada. I'm not the only one.

In Ontario alone, tuition fees have jumped by over 200% since 1990.

And inflation has happened and I fail to see how this is an issue...?

And from Elizabeth May's blog:

I am a parent and a grandparent. I do not take their slogan personally. The real obscenity is that so many in leadership are prepared to ignore the climate crisis, and ignore the compelling warnings of science that this crisis threatens our very civilization.

I've heard these 'compelling warnings of science' and I have heard rebuttals against them. Again, there is no way of knowing that this is a climate crisis. This earth has been around for a long time and we have records of temperature for a tiny fraction of that time. There are larger crises 'threatening our civilization'. For example, the USA is currently the ONLY Western and first-world country maintaining a birth rate that will keep its population constant. Countries like Canada, as well as nearly all European nations, have national birth rates so low that it is ECONOMICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for us to recover. That's a crisis. Warm weather is not.