By Nadine Moedt (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: October 16, 2013
Every once in a while you read an article that gets your goat. The writer is a smug bastard, you vehemently disagree with the points made, and even if you’re not usually one to swear, the expletives come all too readily.
This happens to me every time I read Jon Ferry’s column in The Province.
Ferry is a rabid anti-environmentalist, and thoroughly boomer-centric. And his position at The Province? Covering the “metro view:” issues and people in the lower mainland.
Here are a few examples of his latest columns that, as residents of the lower mainland, supposedly cover our concerns.
On October 9 Ferry tackled the topic of eco-density, a urban design vision to increase the density in cities to prevent urban sprawl. The plan is designed to allow these pockets of density to gather around light rail stations, decreasing our reliance on cars. It would allow for a focus on public transportation, a necessity if we want to phase out infrastructure that is reliant on fossil fuels. It’s an idea that would take some thought; these types of high density situations have to be livable for residents too. But I would think that anyone with an environmental conscience would see it as a step in the right direction.
Ferry does not. As he puts it, this is just another “Big idea” thing. This “Big idea,” or as Ferry so cleverly puts it, “Big lie” (see what he did there?), is hell-bent on trying to upset everyone about some climate change scare.
In his typically smug fashion, he takes an environmental activist—in this case Man of Peace recipient and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bob Geldof—and rags on the dissonance between their environmental views and personal actions. Yes, Ferry, Geldof has a mansion in the English countryside. But what does that have to do with the rest of us, who don’t want to be trapped in a fossil fuel-based economy and infrastructure?
Ferry’s tendency to try to shock us by taking big name environmentalists and “exposing” their inconsistencies speaks to Ferry’s petty and small-minded vision of environmentalism. His article entitled “Silly time for Suzuki to visit Australia” criticizes David Suzuki’s airplane trip (it used jet fuel! Scandal!) and his decision to speak in a country whose citizens voted into power a man who abolished the climate commission in Australia. By the end of the article, Ferry has called environmental policies “scare mongering,” and labelled climate change theories a “hysterical load of eco-codswallop.”
This isn’t even the worst of it.
An especially smug article entitled “The Jon Ferry Ecochallenge: I dare you to live without oil” revealed a completely out-of-touch and, quite frankly, incredibly ignorant approach to environmentalism. According to Ferry, all environmentalists do is preach from their “eco bully pulpit.” And all he wants is to be left alone to “happily live with and enjoy the remaining oil while it lasts.”
Ferry does not seem to understand what environmentalists stand for. Right now, no one can live without oil. But the reason people are protesting pipelines and advocating for a green existence is so that we can move towards a more environmentally friendly way of life; one that attempts to focus on creating a society that is sustainable and that is based on a green economy.
Ferry disgusts me with his self-absorption and sense of entitlement. He is the epitome of boomer-centricity; he is myopically concerned with the needs of the baby boomer generation to the neglect or detriment of other large segments of society and future generations.
It reflects badly on The Province to allow Ferry a soapbox to spew his near-sighted selfishness and his tired and typically negative perception of the concerns of younger generations.
