On August 28, as I was passing the “Welcome to Nelson” sign going west, I couldn’t believe what I saw: two city employees pushing gas lawn mowers over the parched and stunted grass stubble surrounding the base of the sign! There were about 10 green chicory stems poking up from the flat ground. The workers seemed to be in a bit of a hurry to run over these stalks while maintaining “orderly passes over the lawn to be cut” (perhaps adhering to a regulation prescribed by a “City Landscape Maintenance Policy Action Plan”??).
I would rather see our City employees drinking coffee at one of our many coffee shops — using washable cups of course — than needlessly polluting our already particulate-filled and officially “hazardous to your health” air for the sake of adhering to some lawn-mowing timeline or “make work, look busy” policy.
B.C. is experiencing the worst wildfire year in our history. “Apocalyptic” is one adjective being used to describe the rainfall in Texas that has shattered previous records. Hurricane Harvey has dumped more than twice as much water to date than Hurricane Katrina did! And while all eyes are focused on Houston, one of the wealthiest cities in the world (still barely able to cope with the disaster), more than 40 million poorer people are experiencing similar flooding in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Over 1,000 people have been killed so far and the monsoon season is far from over.
Fire, floods — do we really have to wait for the wave of pestilence to sweep the nation before we realize that climate change is the most serious threat (short of an immediate global nuclear war) facing humanity today? And wars are already raging around the planet, many with climate change as a contributing factor to the social pressures that have brought about armed struggle.
We need to address climate change at the local (city and regional district) level in much the same way our provincial government made “Vancouver 2010” the cornerstone of any and every government decision throughout the first decade of this century. Olympic circuses come and go but this time, it’s literally life or death. Time to stop wasting fuel and get active on solutions.
David Beringer
Nelson