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Will somebody please answer Ms Verna Gordon-Binns?
Sunday, September 28, 2008
The theme of yesterday's World Tourism Day celebrations 'Tourism: Responding to the Challenge of Climate Change' is apt, especially since Jamaica and the Caribbean have been designated among the world's hotspots in terms of our environments' vulnerability to the earth's changing climate.
As such, our need to formulate responses to the phenomenon of global warming is critical, given our high level of dependence on the revenue from the tourism industry.
However, we must be careful in so doing, not to fall victim to the wealth of rhetoric that the discourse on this most critical issue has already begun to generate.
For when you get right down to it, all the talk about 'enhancing environmental awareness and sustainability'... 'strategically planning to confront the challenges and optimise the opportunities presented by climate change' and 'mitigating the environmental fallout from anthropological activity' becomes meaningless in the absence of simple, practical action.
It's no use convening expensive seminars at fancy hotels if simple, straightforward questions like the one that Ms Verna Gordon-Binns, manager of the Ashton Great House and Hotel in St Elizabeth, asked about the feasibility of using marijuana to make ethanol, can't be examined at the very least.
According Ms Gordon-Binns, who is quoted in today's edition of this newspaper, it would make more sense from an environmental perspective to use marijuana, which is a fast-growing biomass plant, to make fuel instead of corn and sugar cane, which are more critical to the food chain.
This, we read, was met with ribald laughter on Friday at the Ministry of Tourism's climate change conference at the Ritz Carlton Golf and Spa resort.
As we understand it, the conference, which was strategically scheduled a day ahead of yesterday's World Tourism Day celebrations, was designed to examine climate change and the bottomline concerning this very important industry in Jamaica and the region.
We wonder, then, why was Ms Gordon-Binns' suggestion treated as a joke?
Could it be that the whole shebang was just a public relations ploy designed to accommodate rhetoric as opposed to new thinking and seemingly radical ideas?
We hope not.
It may be that Ms Gordon-Binns' suggestion won't result in a legislative or any other kind of revolution. And that's all right, because we know that like the issue of the so-called billions that Jamaica stands to earn from the international trade of carbon credits, some things are simply easier said than done.
However, in our opinion, conferences like the one arranged by the tourism ministry and its partners, need to give due consideration to all relevant ideas that are presented, instead of laughing them out of the water.
For behaviour that falls beneath this is, as Ms Gordon Binns put it, just plain silly.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
The theme of yesterday's World Tourism Day celebrations 'Tourism: Responding to the Challenge of Climate Change' is apt, especially since Jamaica and the Caribbean have been designated among the world's hotspots in terms of our environments' vulnerability to the earth's changing climate.
As such, our need to formulate responses to the phenomenon of global warming is critical, given our high level of dependence on the revenue from the tourism industry.
However, we must be careful in so doing, not to fall victim to the wealth of rhetoric that the discourse on this most critical issue has already begun to generate.
For when you get right down to it, all the talk about 'enhancing environmental awareness and sustainability'... 'strategically planning to confront the challenges and optimise the opportunities presented by climate change' and 'mitigating the environmental fallout from anthropological activity' becomes meaningless in the absence of simple, practical action.
It's no use convening expensive seminars at fancy hotels if simple, straightforward questions like the one that Ms Verna Gordon-Binns, manager of the Ashton Great House and Hotel in St Elizabeth, asked about the feasibility of using marijuana to make ethanol, can't be examined at the very least.
According Ms Gordon-Binns, who is quoted in today's edition of this newspaper, it would make more sense from an environmental perspective to use marijuana, which is a fast-growing biomass plant, to make fuel instead of corn and sugar cane, which are more critical to the food chain.
This, we read, was met with ribald laughter on Friday at the Ministry of Tourism's climate change conference at the Ritz Carlton Golf and Spa resort.
As we understand it, the conference, which was strategically scheduled a day ahead of yesterday's World Tourism Day celebrations, was designed to examine climate change and the bottomline concerning this very important industry in Jamaica and the region.
We wonder, then, why was Ms Gordon-Binns' suggestion treated as a joke?
Could it be that the whole shebang was just a public relations ploy designed to accommodate rhetoric as opposed to new thinking and seemingly radical ideas?
We hope not.
It may be that Ms Gordon-Binns' suggestion won't result in a legislative or any other kind of revolution. And that's all right, because we know that like the issue of the so-called billions that Jamaica stands to earn from the international trade of carbon credits, some things are simply easier said than done.
However, in our opinion, conferences like the one arranged by the tourism ministry and its partners, need to give due consideration to all relevant ideas that are presented, instead of laughing them out of the water.
For behaviour that falls beneath this is, as Ms Gordon Binns put it, just plain silly.
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