Family Wealth & Climate Change

My grandpa Qayum was a Pakistani immigrant who moved to Alberta to get his education and became a petroleum engineer for Husky during the oil boom. He passed away in 2012, and I often wonder what he would think about the current state of our world and the link between the climate crisis and the burning of fossil fuels.

I assume it’s likely that he had never considered the impact of the industry or company that he worked for, but I wish it were possible to have a conversation with him about it today to understand his opinion on the issue.

It was obviously a form of employment that allowed him to move to a new country and provide for his/our family. I wasn’t born yet at the time, but my personal circumstances have benefitted from this industry as a result of my grandpa’s actions.

That industry has done more to harm our planet than any other, I understand the harm it has caused, and I think there’s something funny/odd/coincidental that I now work for an organization that fights against fossil fuel development in Alberta.

Maybe the takeaway from this is that I’m fortunate that my grandpa was able to support our family (I might not have been born without it), but as times have changed and we have come to learn the faults in our actions, we need to be willing to change as well. I can recognize the benefits that employment in the fossil fuel industry has provided for working class families, but it’s no longer tolerable to pollute and harm our world — and it never should have been in the first place.