“The campaign against climate change is unlike all previous public protests: it is not about abundance but austerity; it is not for more freedom but for less; it is not against other people, but against ourselves.”  George Monbiot “Heat”

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”  John Kenneth Galbraith

Although Castle Glen, near Collingwood, is a place of great natural beauty, it did not take very long for the sole presiding officer from the Ontario Municipal Board to destroy its 1,500 plus acres for two golf courses, shopping malls, two hotels and sixteen hundred new homes.

All this stuff will be allowed to not only be on top of the escarpment but flow over it like some cancer engulfing the forests and biodiversity (Castle Glen is 70-per-cent forested). This is the largest destructive rape of land in the Niagara Escarpment Commission’s 30-year history.

Ironically, the Commission itself wanted the Phase 1 to go through.  

Perhaps the officer in charge of the hearing for the larger Phase 2 destruction didn’t believe in the new found belief in conservation of the Escarpment Commission and the protection of Castle Glen?       

There is no point in going over the many failures of the OMB’s proceedings, and it is now left to whether or not an Ontario government minister will stop the brutal destruction.

If we look at some key issues related to climate change, development always comes up.    

Building second homes for the wealthy so they can keep lights and heat on when they are not there (as well as spiking up the cost of housing and depriving working class families the opportunity to own a simple home) is obviously unethical.  

What is less obvious to North Americans is that developments such as Castle Glen release huge quantities of greenhouse gases through the unwarranted suburbanization of vast tracts of pristine countryside.

Thousands of hours of bulldozers pushing around earth to make new toy houses, creating unneeded “status” pesticide-ridden golf courses and pulling out trees for one more boring shopping mall for the unethical baby boomer homebuyer is just the beginning of the list of horrors to come.

What is interesting about so many of these new developments are the names that go with the butchery of nature: ‘Preserve”, “Maple”, “Blue”, “Ramble”, “Trail”, “Willow”, “Woodland”, Oak” start the list.

Clearly the marketing strategy demands homebuyers feel that nature is at the doorstep.  

Why, we are told about stars, Northern Lights, perfect views and even falcons to make the fantasy seem true.

The word “development” has taken on such an ominous tone in the last 20 years.

Why have we bought into these sterile fantasies?

We have let ourselves become alienated from nature, and we’d rather call nature the “environment” so the planet does not get too close.

 What do you think we should buy into: more development, or clean air and a place for future generations?