To the editor,
As we contemplate the appropriateness of Shear Wind’s Glen Dhu Wind Power Project for our community, we should ask, “What are our responsibilities to the natural world, to each other and to our community?”
Culture is created from our stories, history and connection to a particular place. Culture and place are images of each other. Community is created from those same stories, history and connection to place, but community also requires compassion. It is the history of a given place, combined with compassion that holds a community together.
Land as a community is the foundation of ecology. It is our history with the land that governs our ethics, that supplies a memory to the land and imbues us with a morality and a responsibility to speak for that environment and the wildlife that exist there.
If we ignore our responsibility and relationship to place then that place will suffer. Eventually the wildlife and we ourselves will suffer and community will be lost.
If our connection to place is reduced simply to a deed for land that we can profit from while inflicting property devaluation on our neighbours, then we have opened ourselves and our community to exploitation and manipulation for a short-term gain for a select few.
Nature, wildlife, scenic views, quality of life and human health do not stop at each owner’s property line. These are a communal resource held together by memories and compassion for each other and the ecology of the area.
Those who seek to gain financially from the industrialization of this community must not lie to this same community by stating that they are speaking for the land. We must not simply and superficially grab at an idea without fully informing ourselves of the consequences of this idea.
For any community and culture to remain strong, viable, decent, generous and wise, there must be a recognition of our responsibilities to place and to each other.
There is great power in a community that shares its stories, documents its history and protects the ecology of its chosen place. These are the places people choose to live in and call home. These are the places people choose to travel to, not a place that has been industrialized and exploited, not a place that has forsaken its compassion and ecology.
Susan Overmyer
Baileys Brook
Dear Susan. I know you presently use electricity and in Nova scotia it is generated mostly by burning coal. There are three main by-products of burning coal,co2 sulphur and mercury, none of which are good for the enviroment. do you drive to town and back using a car? More threat to the enviroment. Just look at the high rate of cancer and other illness cause by pollution which comes up from the eastern seaboard of the USA. have you eaten a lot of tuna lately and had your mercury levels checked in your blood. wind turbines are not the total answer by to my way of thinking are a step forward, just look at the Gulf of Mexico.