AN ENVIRONICS Research Group poll shows that fully 20
per cent of Canadians now place environmental concerns at
the top of their list of urgent problems to be dealt with.

Unemployment — the classic
bugaboo of the citizenry — scores
a mere 12 per cent, and everything
else falls well below, such issues as
free trade having dropped off the
bottom of the scale of public opi-
nion entirely, the loss of some
75,000 jobs to the U.S. in the last
year notwithstanding.

What is significant about these
poll results is that they apparently
represent a permanent turning-
point. Until October 1988, despite
two full decades of passionate ac-
tivism on the part of conserva-
tionists, public concern about the
environment had remained cons-
tant at a piddling three per cent.

With environment now firmly at
the top of the list of public con-
cerns, enormous political and
social pressure comes to bear on
the ecological question, hitherto
the domain of either the counter-
culture (remember that?) or a
handful of artists, academics and
veggies.

Politicians in a democracy, even
an imperfect democracy such as
ours, simply cannot resist pressure
like this. The last federal election
saw a lot of lip-service paid to the
environment — the new polls had
just come in — but before the elec-
tion had run its course the issue
got buried in the free trade debate.

The next federal election, like
every provincia! and municipal
election in between, will pit fire-
breathing green politicians against
other fire-breathing green politi-
cians, simply because all parties,
from the Socreds to the Parti

E+i

Employment and
Immigration Canada

Quebecois, are scrambling to green
themselves.

What caused the change? Why,
between March and October two
years ago, did public opinion
massively shift from ecological
apathy to something approaching
panic?

The short answer is that the
summer of 1988 saw the first really
tangible evidence of the
Greenhous: Effect. Or, perhaps
more to the point, the media for
the first time really concentrated
on the blistering heat wave that
nearly wiped out North America’s
food surplus, the emergence of
super-hurricanes, and the first
documented evidence of global
warming.

But at a deeper level, the im-
plications of the Gorbachev Revo-
lution finally registered in the
West. We were not, it became
clear, going to nuke ourselves to
death en masse. It takes two
superpowers to wipe Gut a planet.
The moment one of them drops
out of the Dance of Shiva, the
megadeath party is over.

From the moment the majority
of us began to realize that a nu-
clear winter wasn't in the cards,
but a greenhouse summer definite-
ly was, and thal it was potentially
every bit as disastrous in the long
tun, the focus of our fear shifted
from Star Wars to Mother Earth.

As we head into the '90s, we will
be confronted by plenty to keep
our fear alive.

Dr. David Suzuki says our

Emploi et

planet is ‘‘dying,"' and that if we
do not turn the tide of events
around between now and the end
of the century, we will be over-
whelmed by an irreversible en-
vironmental cataclysm.

Hard on the heels of the Nestuc-
ca and Exxon Valdez oil spills, as
the decade begins, comes the
70,000-ton Kharg 5 spill off
Morocco and the 25,000-ton
Aragon spill off the Canary
Islands.

Eopect another major
nuclear accident on the
scale of Three-Mile
Island or Chernobyl some
time in the decade...”’

Both these disasters have been
attributed to the fact that the
world tanker fleet is aging.

Most supertankers were built in
the 1970s, and, like old-model cars
and jumbo jets, are getting close to
the end of their life expectancy,
which means that on top of all the
natural reasons for accidents at
sea, including drunken skippers
and faulty radar, we have the
problem of long-in-the-tooth
tankers.

Expect more oil spill catastro-
phes than ever!

Also, keep in mind that it is not
just tanker fleets that are aging. So
are nuclear reactors all over the
world, including Canada’s cluster
of them, mainly in Ontario.

Even though the nuclear in-
dustry insists that the CANDU

Immigration Canada

reactor is good for 40 years, a unit
at Pickering nearly hada
meltdown a couple of years ago.
Ontario came close to province-
wide power shortages this sinter
due to prolonged repair work on
several reactors that shouldn’t, in
theory, have been down.

Expect another major nuclear
accident on the scale of Three-Mile
Island or Chernobyl some time in
the decade, more likely sooner
than later!

The ravages of the Greenhouse
Effect will also be felt within a
couple of years as massive drought
leads to famine on a scale never
seen before.

Respected French agronomist
Rene Durnont told a conference on
global warming in Montreal jast
month that a million people in the
Third World died last summer as a
direct result of the rise in planetary
temperature and resulting drought
and desertification — and this is
just the beginning!

images of children dying not
just in Ethiopia, but throughout all
of Africa and much of the Asian
subcontinent, and not because of
political bungling by their leaders,
but because of carbon dioxide
spouted from the exhausts of cars
in places like Vancouver and
Toronto, are going to be with us
virtually every day of the decade.

Twenty per cent worried about
the environment? It seems high
now, but within a couple of years
it will have gone up in direct pro-
portion to the global disaster un-
folding around, over, and under
us. The long-awaiting greening is
long overdue, but it’s cominge

i

Ben Chow
Retail Sales Manager

inda Stewart, Advertising

Director, is pleased to an-
nounce the appointment of
Benjamin C. Chow to the posi-
tion of Retail Sales Manager of
the North Shore News.

Ben comes to the NEWS from
the Prince George Citizen, a
Southam owned daily
newspaper, where he served as
Account Executive for seven
years. Prior to that, Ben was a
realtor with Royal LePage.

Ben brings extensive ex-
perience and knowledge in ac-
count management, advertising
planning and sales promotion
to the News Display Advertising
Department. As Retail Sales
Manager, Ben will oversee nine
Retail Advertising Consuitants.

Teed VORCE 08 SONTS AMO WEST MARC OUTER

The Government of Canada zecently
presented to Parliament a series of
amendments to the Unemployment
Insurance Act (UIA). The purpose
of the proposed amendments ts to
improve existing legislation and to
provide additional funds for programs
and job training in areas critical

to Canada’s economic future. Major
improvements include additional
maternity/parental benefits and the
extension of coverage to people who
choose to work beyond age 65.

Although passed by the House
of Commons on November 6th, 1989,
Bill C-21 is still under consideration

y the Senate and will not become
law on December 31.

Under one section of the
current law, workers may qualify for
regular UI benefits with at least 10 to
14 weeks of work during the previous
year. That section of the law expires
January 6th, 1990 and until amend-
ments to the Act are adopted the
following interim rule applies:
Anyone making a claim for regular
UI benefits that would have started
on or after January 7, 1990, must have
worked a minimum of 14 weeks during
the last year to qualify.

For more information contact
your local Canada Employment Centre
(CEC). There are more than 500 CECs
across Canada; phone numbers are
listed in the Federal Government
section of your phone book.

Canada