Letter: Time to grow up and learn to live together in the world
By Letters to the editor
To the Editor:
Recently I saw an online site that claimed to be footage mainstream media won’t show you. I watched a video of an 18 years old soldier holding a big gun.
He was sobbing, standing behind a tree, realizing he would soon be killed.
At that moment he must have questioned everything that convinced him to fight.
Why should anyone experience that kind of horror? Children, women, reporters — no one in a war zone is exempt.
Environmental groups have been emailing, and none mention the impacts of war on people or the environment.
I’m terrified at the state of our natural life support systems. The military is the biggest user of fossil fuels, and cause of emissions — which go unmeasured – and we’re ignoring the elephant in the room.
Perhaps it’s because it feels insensitive to mention war’s environmental impacts. My heart truly goes out to anyone who has been impacted by war personally or who has lost loved ones. Sincerely. And I acknowledge my privilege in not being directly exposed to this terror.
Our privilege can help achieve peace: go to a demonstration, write political representatives, wear a white poppy for peace, all these things and more.
We need peace talks now. And they need to be fair. There is no peace without justice.
Collectively we have to grow up and learn to live together in the world, or we all die.
If we don’t address climate change we won’t know what hit us.
All of us will be that 18 year old.
We need peace, and social and environmental justice now.
