Village Idiot’s Warnings Go Unheaded – And So Do Those Around Climate Change And The Keystone XL Pipeline

By Delila Jahn-Thue – A Voice from Canada’s mid-west

We’re burning through February here on the farm.

 Farmer’s winter is punctuated by a series of tractor troubles, storms and junk pile emergencies. “Junk pile” is what he calls my mini-van. Throughout January it sat lifeless most times I tried to start it.

It seems there’s a statute of limitations on battery life. I neglected to make sure a switch was off and once depleted in polar conditions, the battery refused to hold a charge. During one compelling emergency I was even forced to drive Farmer’s new-to-him truck.

He wasn’t pleased.

Farmer’s hoping I’ll pay closer attention to sources of battery drain and prevent future losses. I’m dreadfully thankful for all his help and sorry for the inconvenience caused both to him and the poor fellow at the Co-op who ended up fussing with my bothersome battery change on his especially busy day. 

Farmer puts up with a lot. An hour after midnight again tonight he passed me on his way to the bathroom while I grabbed slippers, preparing to write. Fragments of Elie Wiesel’s Night are haunting me.

Awake again, there’s nothing else for a night like this except to read or write. What else is winter for anyway, except to learn, contemplate and plan for a better spring for ourselves? 

A Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wiesel cannot abide the notion of Holocaust denial. Believed or not, his is another eye witness account of the largest and fastest extermination of humans in recorded history.

His is a compelling story. Wiesel saw his mother and siblings for the last time on a railway platform. He marched with thousands in various “selection” lines, witnessed babies tossed into a burning pit, his own father starved, worked, frozen and beaten to death, and in a mirror at the end of it all, his own body reduced to skeleton. 

I’ve read many such accounts but Night stands out in that Wiesel includes the warning signs that were flatly rejected in his home village. The kind, once respected man who warned them was suddenly shunned as the village idiot. Had they heeded and fled, many may have been saved. 

As the enormity of this nightmare became apparent, Wiesel met his exterminators with disbelief that the world would allow such barbarism. 

“[H]ow naive we were,” he writes “that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”

But Night isn’t simply a historical account, it is also a warning and since it was originally published in 1958, Wiesel has continued to fight for human rights on an international scale. He writes letters and speaks publically, drawing attention to violations. He’s a conscience in this modern age where one seems lacking.

Warnings are gifts nobody wants tied in simple packages. It’s no coincidence Wiesel’s book comes to me after two others sounding alarms on climate change.

How many renewable energy jobs could be created with $7 billion?

Recently our Premier, Brad Wall wrote a letter to President Obama urging him to let the Keystone XL Pipeline have our future. I was sad, but not surprised. The best science available globally indicates ventures like the XL Pipeline quack and walk like XL Meats. Follow this path and we swiftly go the way of the dinosaurs.

Heed the messages or not, we’ve been warned: earth’s current freeze/thaw vitals signal the lightning-fast extinction of many. If that’s hard to hear, it’s because Canada deems our wisest scientists to be village idiots.

Delila Jahn-Thue is a teacher, columnist: Living from The Farm and author of Advice Between Kingdoms – How the Hays Moved Trash Mountain (Balboa Press 2012).

She is involved in ecological causes including farmers’ rights, water quality and creating rural recycling opportunities. Passionate about the land, Delila travels to communities and schools sharing awareness of how our daily actions affect the land that feeds us.

We encourage you to visit Delila’s website at  Livingfromthefarm.com .

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