A tireless activist for the environmental cause and pioneer of the Quebec environmental movement, Harvey Mead died on January 14 following a long illness, at the age of 82, after several decades of involvement in the place. public.
Alternately teacher, deputy minister at the Quebec Ministry of the Environment from 1989 to 1991 and founding member of the environmental organization that would become Nature Quebec, Harvey Mead was “one of the most important figures” in the environmental community. Quebecois for the past 40 years, underlines the former journalist of the To have to Louis-Gilles Francoeur.
“He left his mark on the evolution of Quebec’s environmental milieu through intelligent, unfailing and unifying leadership,” adds Mr. Francoeur, who has covered environmental issues for 30 years. “Harvey Mead was a man with a broad and generous vision when it came to protecting the environment, and in particular biodiversity. »
“For the Quebec environmental movement, Harvey’s legacy is immense. He made a significant contribution to advancing public policy by relying on local struggles,” recalls Christian Simard, former executive director of Nature Québec and Harvey’s companion for many years.
“He was one of the first to try to get things moving first in an organization, then from within the state machine and finally, by drawing up a critical assessment of his interventions, while proposing to review in deepen the notions of growth and development,” continues Mr. Simard.
In 1981, a series of parallel struggles for the preservation of wetlands in the face of development projects, including an extension of the Port of Quebec and a highway project in the flats of Beauport, led Harvey Mead and other ecologists to found the Quebec Common Front for Green Spaces and Natural Sites, which became the Quebec Union for the Conservation of Nature, then Nature Quebec in 2005.
Beliefs
During his career, Mr. Mead was also the first to hold the position of Sustainable Development Commissioner of Quebec. Appointed in 2006, however, he served only one two-year term. He would have been sidelined following a particularly critical first report by the government, particularly with regard to the application of the Sustainable Development Act.
In this report published in December 2007, several findings of which were subsequently confirmed, Harvey Mead denounced the lack of environmental supervision in the agricultural sector and the lack of will to reduce the production of residual materials. He also felt that the fact that Quebec consumes hydroelectricity masks part of the reality with respect to pollution and the abusive exploitation of resources. If all of humanity consumed as much as the population of Quebec, he pointed out, it would take three planet Earths to meet its needs.
Louis-Gilles Francoeur also remembers when, during his time as commissioner, Mr. Mead chose not to budge from his principles. “While he seemed cramped in the position of Commissioner for Sustainable Development and Environmental Assistant to the Auditor General, positions he held after his resignation from Nature Québec, he nevertheless fiercely defended his convictions in this critical function. »
Critically
Harvey Mead also continued to contribute, until last March, a blog where he dissected several environmental issues from a very critical angle, including the climate crisis, projects related to fossil fuels, Canadian and Quebec public policies, the economic development or decline.
He also published in 2017 the book Too late. The end of a world and the beginning of a new one, published by Écosociété. In this book, he pointed out that it was too late to preserve life as we know it after decades of inaction. According to the thesis defended in his book, either we change our system through a massive collective effort, or this system will collapse under the weight of its excesses, whether economic, social or ecological. In this context, the idea of a “soft” transition to change the deleterious trajectory we have taken is impossible, as is the maintenance of the growth paradigm, he argued.
“This teacher from an English-speaking CEGEP had left the United States because he could no longer endure the frantic development of this country devoted to everything from automobiles and consumption, to which Quebec today seems to be slipping inexorably,” argues Louis-Gilles Francoeur.
Beliefs
In interview at To have to in 2003, when he was president of the Union québécoise pour la conservation de la nature (which has since become Nature Québec), Harvey Mead was already insisting on the importance of better taking into account the environmental impacts of development projects. “No one can make fun of the environment today, promoters must demonstrate the impact of their actions. »
He was also critical of the real desire of citizens to change their habits in the name of environmental protection. “People are not demonstrating that they will change their consumption habits. Public opinion is sensitive to the environment, but actions do not follow. In all the polls, to the question “Would you be ready to pay more to have a healthy environment?”, everyone answers yes, but in fact, it is not. »
Mr. Mead cited as an example the purchase of highly polluting but increasingly popular sport utility vehicles (SUVs). “We would have to take drastic measures and put in place a tax of several thousand dollars to discourage people from getting it,” he told the newspaper. To have to. If they persist, the money could go to environmental programs to fight climate change. One could also give a substantial discount on small cars to entice people to buy them. But you have to touch the wallet, it is with money that people change their ways of acting. »