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EDITORIAL Nice Aur Geo ADVERTISING 9058538888 Fax 9058534626 DISTRIBUTION Fax 9057171909 Industrial Aurora ON L4G 4C3 Editorial Editor Aurora com Editor Newmarket TedMcFadden Editor Georcbia Tracy Kibble Production Manager Jackie Smart com Advertising Retail Sales Manager Dave Williams com Classified Manager Bonnie Rondeau brondtau1Pyrmgcom Administration Office Manager THE ERA THE BANNER York Region Media Group community newspapers Trie EraThe Banner every Tuesday Thursday and Sunday are divisions of me Metroland Media Group ltd a subsidiary of Corporation The family of newspapers comprised of 100 community publications across Ontario The Region Media Group includes The Liberal serving Richmond Hill and Crozen Economist Sun Stoufrvine SunTribune Advocate North of the Dry com and Region Printing LETTERS POLICY All submissions must be less than words and include a daytime telephone number name and address The Era The Banner reserves the right to publish or not publish and to edit for clarity and space Write Letters to the Editor The EraThe Banner Bon 236 NION Established 1853 THE ERATHE BANNER 580 Steven Crt Newmarket ON L3Y 250 Industrial N Aurora ON 4C3 Publisher Ian Proudfoot Editor Chief Kelly Business Manager Robert Director Operations Barry Black Director Advertising Distribution Gorrf Paolucci Director Sales Marketing Classified Todays Homes Debra Welter LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Residents understand plan they just dont support it Re loses appeal in golf course Feb 21 Since 1988 Enterprises has tried to get approval for development of its Leslie Street property Back then it was for 59 estate homes The plan now is for 75 clustered homes and an hole golf course with club house dining facilities equipment and services all on the Oak Ridges Moraine Why is this a good idea now Auroras water resources are already strained Lebovic thinks running the water through the residents and treating the waste to irrigate the golf course is water conservation Its a shell game executive vicepresident Lloyd suggests residents dont understand the proposed develop ment despite their efforts to educate us We understand it We just dont believe it In the companys environmen tal assessment it says well tests were undertaken on resident wells On my property there are three wells and not one was tested yet there are numbers for each well in the assess ment Mr points out opposing residents are also on the Oak Ridges Moraine Thats true and its also true that under the Oak Ridges Moraine Plan none of the residents can build a single new house on their 25 75 and 100acre properties never mind 75 homes and golf course Naturally Aurora opposes the devel opers appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board Its a plan based on the standards of the last century The OMB hears planning issues and the environmental tribunal hears environmental issues Both bodies should review this pro posal The town is correct in defending its position through a joint hearing SUSAN JONES AURORA ORE if Youre ONLY CELEBRATING THE TEAM MEDAL I Nature imposes the real bottom line on our lives In December Canadian specialty TV channel Business News Net work interviewed me about the climate summit in Copenhagen My sixminute interview followed a fiveminute live report from Copen hagen about poor countries demand ing more money to address climate change and rich countries pleading a lack of resources Before and after those spots were all kinds of reports on the Dow Jones industrial average the price of gold and the loonie and the implications of some new phone technology For me this brought into sharp focus the inevitable failure of our negotiating efforts on climate change BNN like the New Yorkbased Bloomberg channel is a 24-hour-a- day network focused completely on business These networks indicate the econ omy is our top priority And at Copen hagen money dominated the discus sions and the outcome But where is the 24hour network dealing with the biosphere As biological creatures we depend on clean air clean water clean soil clean energy and biodiversity for our wellbeing and survival Surely protecting those fundamen tal needs should be our top priority David Suzuki with Faisal and should dominate our thinking and the way we live After all we are animals and our biological dependence on the bio sphere for our most basic needs should be obvious It makes no sense to elevate the economy above the things that keep us alive But thats what our prime minister does when he claims we cant even try to meet the Kyoto targets because that might have a detrimen tal effect on the economy This economic system is built on exploiting raw materials from the bio sphere and dumping the waste back into the biosphere And conventional economics dismisses all the services nature performs to keep the planet habitable for animals such as us as externalities As long as economic consider ations trump all other factors in our decisions we will never work our way out of the problems weve created We often describe the triple bot tom line society economy and environment as three intersecting circles of equal size This is nonsense The reality is the largest circle should represent the biosphere With in that we have 30 million species including us that depend on it Within the biosphere circle should be a much smaller circle which is human society and within that should be an even smaller circle the economy We also draw lines around prop erty cities provinces and countries We take these so seriously we are will ing to fight and die to protect those borders But nature pays no attention to human boundaries Air water and soil that blows across continents and oceans migrating fish birds and mammals and windblown seeds cannot be managed within human strictures yet all the discus sions in Copenhagen were centred on countries that in turn were divided into rich and poor In sciencefiction movies where an alien from outer space attacks and kills humans national differences dis appear as we join forces to fight a common enemy That is what we have to tap into to meet the climate crisis We know how much carbon diox ide can be reabsorbed by all the green things in the oceans and on land and we know we are exceeding those lim its All of humanity must find a way to keep emissions below the limits imposed by the biosphere The only equitable course is to determine the acceptable level of emissions on a global per capita basis Those who fall below the line should be compensated for their small carbon footprint while those who are far above should be assessed accordingly But the economy must be aligned with the limits imposed by the bio sphere not above them David Suzuki an occasional column forThe AdvocateThe BannerThe Era Or Faisal Moola is the