Dear Editor
At age three, would you have passed the marshmallow test? Would you have waited indefinitely for two future rewards, like two marshmallows, or would you have gobbled up the one reward available? If you passed the test, it meant your brain’s executive function was wired in and you could delay gratification; an important ability for life success.
If your pension or investment portfolio includes fossil fuels, you now have a new marshmallow test, but the test has changed radically. The test is if you gobble up the one reward now — a human friendly planet — our children and grandchildren will be living on a human unfriendly planet in the future.
How unfriendly? What does it matter? Any level of unfriendliness is unfair because we will not be the ones suffering. We mindlessly sacrifice our lives as wage slaves in an economy where the fossil fuel industries pursue profit by externalizing their costs on the environment (and society) while we could mindfully make sacrifices that would liberate us by creating an economy based on renewable forms of energy.
The sacrifice of divestment in oil is one thing individuals and groups can mindfully do to weaken the industry and hence the industry’s hold on our governments. On Feb. 14, show your love for our human friendly planet and support 350.org’s Global Divestment Day by divesting to keep “oil in the soil and coal in the hole”. Let’s not fail this test.
Nancy Carswell
Shellbrook
