Caring for planet earth: Beth Porter of L'Arche Canada interviews environmental activist Elizabeth May, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada

Catholic New Times, Nov 20, 2005 by Beth Porter

Beth Porter: What environmental issue should most concern us today?

Elizabeth May: Climate change. The worst scenario would be that we actually destroy the earth's atmosphere. I care about lots of things--eliminating pesticides that cause cancer, protecting endangered species--but the fossil fuel concern outpaces all else. The challenge of the next two decades is to eliminate our addiction to fossil fuels by shifting to other energy forms and by more energy conservation.

BP: Many people believe we're beyond being able to turn things around. What do you say to them?

EM: Throwing up our hands and saying it's too late assumes much more than we actually know. There's something extraordinarily powerful about the life force on planet Earth; it's what makes dandelions get through a concrete sidewalk. I have a strong sense that what's possible far exceeds what we perceive is possible. I'm increasingly buoyed by a sense of the miraculous. Just as our own bodies have an ability for spontaneous healing and no doctor can explain it, I've seen over and over this powerful life force at work. For instance, where a river has gone through ecological restoration and we hope for fish to return in ten years but they return the next year.

BP: Sometimes the environment movement gets bad press.

EM: People not in the environmental movement can be disparaging of it, even speaking as though we were a new religion. These are usually people who want to elevate consumerism and material wealth the religion of money--as though it were the secret of happiness. Advertising contributes to people always struggling to buy some new thing. Compared to the human potential to live a full creative life, it's not much of a vision.

Persuading people they should not destroy the life support system of our planet should not be a hard sell but it runs up against the notion of sacrifice and people shut down. We need to tell the story in terms of value. Living in a sustainable way makes for a much more personally rewarding life.

BP: How does Canada stack up?

EM: Canadians have exhibited leadership in international negotiations for issues such as Kyoto, while at the same time we have been rapidly expanding poor carbon extraction, as in the Athabaska tar sands, because we know we can sell it to the U.S. There's a cognitive dissonance.

BP: What can individuals do?

EM. We have to work together to make the large polluters do their share, but individuals can make a huge difference. Most important is to figure out how to reduce one's own carbon emissions. Ideally, don't have a car. Otherwise, use it less, and consider the new energy-efficient hybrid cars if you're able. Government programs offer tax back for retrofitting homes to be more energy efficient. The National Resources Canada website gives information on this and on energy-saving appliances. Refrigerators are the biggest energy guzzlers after a car and heating and cooling a home. I encourage composting and trying to buy locally grown foods rather than foods transported thousands of kilometers in fossil-fuel burning trucks.

Get involved in local issues that affect you. This is where you can be most effective. Becoming politically active doesn't mean being belligerent. It just means gathering with others to make known the kind of world you want to live in. People in worshipping communities are the ones who most often organize to protect their environment, because they already have a sense of community.

BP: How did you get started in this work?

EM: My mom was in the movement against nuclear weapons testing because she had a new baby, me, and the fallout was associated with childhood leukemia. I organized my school's first Earth Day. I planned to go to Yale and become an environmental lawyer. My parents fell in love with Cape Breton, and in 1973 we moved there from Connecticut and opened a gift shop. It was a financial disaster and I left university to help support us. I worked in a seafood restaurant and volunteered helping organize a grassroots movement against insecticide spraying for the spruce budworm. I never finished my undergraduate degree, but in 1980 I started law school at Dalhousie.

BP: What's been your most difficult experience?

EM: In June 1982, the Nova Scotia government approved spraying Agent Orange (2,4-D and 2,4,5-T), a herbicide used to defoliate trees. It was used to kill the hardwoods that compete with the fir and spruce wanted for pulpwood. Our grassroots group filed a lawsuit. I worked for the lawyer we hired, raised money, and coordinated the media, all while trying to finish law school. After a 30-day trial the judge ruled against us. He ruled Agent Orange had never caused any health problems, not even in Vietnam. It was devastating. Before the trial our group was ordered to pay costs and damages to Scott Paper. The company was threatening to send out the sheriff and the homes and farms of 18 people were on the line. My mom generously sold the 80 acres overlooking the Bras d'Or lakes that they had managed to hold onto for their retirement. That was the biggest heartbreak. In the end, Agent Orange was never used in Nova Scotia. The available supply in Canada was used in New Brunswick before the 1983 spray season, and it was no longer possible to import it because it was banned in the U.S.