Twenty-two-year-old environmentalist Andrew Munoz decided last week that he had no choice but to begin a hunger-strike. He will continue the strike, taking place on Parliament Hill, until the government can convince him that his children’s future won’t include avoiding the sun and scraping the bottom of garbage piles for food. In other words: he is pressuring the government for a more sustainable
environmental policy.
On January 15, after months of unsuccessful email and letter campaigns to the federal parties, Munoz sat down and ate a large pizza with hot peppers, onion and pineapple and then pushed his plate away.
The length of his hunger strive will depend on what the newly elected Conservative government plans to do about Canada’s unsustainable environmental practices.
“The hunger strike is one of the only means available to spread my message without using any natural resources,” he said. “I will not start to eat again until we as a nation have a vision of a sustainable Canada that we can be proud of. Everyday that goes by is another day that we offer less to our future generations.”
Backed by his own brainchild, Green Reality, Munoz says that he will continue his hunger strike for as long as it takes. Green Reality, a loose knit, non-violent youth organization supporting the goals of Conservation, Education and Innovation, was founded with the mandate to explore new directions for a sustainable future.
The hunger strike helps expose the issues of sustainable environmental practices in a metaphorical manner.
“It is a way to put things into perspective for the general public and uses no natural resources,” Munoz said. “I am going to wither away, if left on strike. Just as the natural wonders of Canada are going to wither away if we continue along this path of unrestrained economic growth. The hunger strike is one of the only means available to spread our message without being hypocritical.”
The mission statement of Green Reality is for people to leave the world at least in the same state as they entered it. “It is simply unfair to think that 200 species a day go extinct,” Munoz said. “To think that a newborn today will, by the time he is twenty, live in a world with 1,606,000 less species than when he entered it.”
Munoz spent the fall of 2005 deep in the old growth forest of British Columbia’s Powell River where he began to sense that more needed to be done to protect the environment. He has traveled the old growth forest from the great bear rainforest down to Los Angeles, and last year hiked through the giant red wood forests in California. In 1995 Munoz also took a trip to the rain forests in Brazil.
“I have seen clear cuts on two continents and unspoiled wilderness on three,” he said. “Comparing the two, there is little contest about which is more desirable.”
Munoz had planned to take his hunger strike to the obvious and most important site: the front steps of Parliament Hill. But it wasn’t long before the RCMP asked him to leave and suggested that he make an application to Heritage Canada if he wanted to protest.
However, Munoz doesn’t see his hunger strike as a protest: “Green Reality is just a lot of young people who were strong enough to say this culture doesn’t work, and we are not going to buy it.”
During the election the NDP’s Jack Layton was the only candidate to respond to Munoz’ letters. “I did not hold out much hope for the others, at least until after they are elected,” he said.
“We can offer our children avenues down which to travel that lead to a bright and sustainable future, or we can offer them the dust pan and broom and ask that they clean up our mess,” he concluded.
