This year again, we will have had the right to another Bye who cares nothing about the environmental crisis. Fortunately Infoman is more anchored in the reality of its time, otherwise one would believe in the reviews of the year of an ostrich company. However, it is not as if we had run out of material.
If this reality is so absent or still treated in such a superficial way, it must no doubt be understood that the organizers of the Bye have no affinity with the subject and obviously no desire to deepen their knowledge. In 2022. It’s rather disturbing.
However, this crisis is part of the news more than ever and concerns us all. Several times this year, thousands of Quebecers have risen to demonstrate or to fight against the aberrant decisions and positions of our governments (which should also be found in a review of the year, they have been so absurd ).
Among the striking events, there will have been the failures of COP27 and COP15. The struggling metro and the government’s total lack of interest in public transit. Intercity transportation that becomes a laughing stock. The flop of the REM and its outdated development project. Our ridiculous Quebec Minister of the Environment who says that it is impossible to do more and who sees the crisis as a business opportunity. The rise of SUV purchases. The lamentable treatment of the caribou file. The oil project announced and defended by our federal Minister of the Environment. The blocking of a pipeline by Quebec demonstrators. The demonstration of thousands of people in front of the National Assembly for Mother’s Day. The fall ones. The phenomenal rise in bicycle use. The third link, of which there has been no mention this year, despite the fact that it is still quite relevant.
Even the Horne Foundry dossier, which was discussed, was only very superficially mocked, nowhere mentioning all the people who became involved in the dossier and the fear strategies used (successfully) by the government. But where are the people who are not indifferent to this crisis, in the scenario of the Bye ? They do not exist.
Yet two things are becoming increasingly clear: the political and social changes that should take place; and also realize that to move faster, everyone needs to be involved. Especially people with a grandstand.
There is something so depressing and tiresome about this denial of the context in which we find ourselves. This is one of the reasons why I took a break from my civic involvement in this cause: everywhere, civil society is being asked to get involved in order to get us out of this political impasse. But when we do, we hit a wall of media denial and a collective inability to support those who get involved. What we ask people, ultimately, is to pedal in a vacuum.
I wish us a year 2023 very different from all this. A positive, intelligent year, that of a real collective awakening. A year rooted in reality, in action and in supporting action. And I wish us a much better Bye next year.