THE NIGHT IS DARKEST JUST BEFORE THE DAWN

 O.K. I suspect that I've misstated that old adage in the title above. Hopefully readers all understand what I'm trying to say. Right now the forces of greed, dishonesty, political correctness, puffery, and self-benefit are in total control. That does not mean that I've given up trying to shine a light on the abject failures that our political leaders are hell bent to defend. All authorities including political ones know that they will stay in charge as long as the populace think everything is under control. I'm really not sure how the populace can possibly believe that between the population bomb (Paul Erlich 1960s) and Climate Change. While climate change/global warming are appropriately front and centre nevertheless the ever growing world population combined with demands on a limited food supply, shrinking farmland due to residential and gravel pit development and constantly increasing discharges of human sewage into our waterways; continues to slowly overwhelm our technology and the overstated and relied upon so called natural attenuation of our waterways.

The paragraph above while written with Waterloo Region and Woolwich Township in mind actually is a microcosm of the entire world. We need to stop asking our wealthy political and business leaders and well connected families how we are doing and instead ask families who will never live in their own homes, who depend on food banks, whose jobs and work are totally insecure both from economic vagaries as well as from employer biases and abusive power. We also need to speak to citizens from third world countries and again not those in charge and in power. Their worlds are insulated from the worst realities of overpopulation and climate change. Money can buy just about everything including justice and to a point health. Their mantra is the status quo and look where that is getting the majority of people in the world. 

Drastic change is required simply because there has not been enough ongoing change to the realities of overpopulation, pollution, climate change etc. To date our political systems whether democratic or not have failed the entire world. Management and governance have been primarily for show and appearance. Yes to a certain degree citizens have failed by not being involved and informed adequately. They have focused on their jobs and their families which is hard to criticize.

Here in Elmira, Ontario we have been misled, obfuscated to and "managed" by self-serving corporations and politicians. Lanxess, GHD and the Ontario Ministry of Environment are in bed together to maintain the facade and myth that the former Uniroyal Chemical property and pollution from it has been both stopped and cleaned up. It has not, not by a long shot. They are winning the battle in their sale of this alleged "truth". But it's not over. Just one possibility for a turnaround is the factory's almost innate ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with yet another fire, explosion and toxic fugitive emissions. While I believe that significant steps may have been taken to minimize the inevitable from a chemical factory, I also believe that they have a history of more talk than real action. The next one could be the big one and after that there could well be real oversight and demands for improvement and cleanup that can' not be so easily smothered and hidden.