Editor:
In response to Paul Rhodes letter (“Open mind on climate change,” Nov. 27), any suggestion that Canada shouldn’t take steps to further reduce our emissions due to its already low GHG emissions is completely asinine.
I wrote the Sechelt Chamber policies that were passed at both the B.C. and Canadian Chamber levels, first: to ensure there was policy on these topics in their books, and secondly: to ensure that the provincial and Canadian governments were aware that B.C. and Canadian businesses want them to place a focus on clean and renewable energy technologies in an effort to create jobs and reduce GHG emissions.
Most forward thinking people, including highly qualified climate scientists (those who are not in the old boys fossil fuel club) believe and agree that we, as a human population, need to phase out fossil fuel use. In order to do so, we must replace the technologies and products that use fossil fuels. It’s a no-brainer. By doing so, we can not only create replacement jobs for the fossil fuel sector but create clean technologies that can be used regionally and for export to countries such as India and China.
We need a forward-thinking government to embrace these clean and renewable technologies in order to grow these job sectors and create export opportunities. I am not talking about word crafting and bastardizing the definition of clean energy as our current provincial government has with its LNG pipeline dream. We need unbiased, peer reviewed, science-based decisions.
Furthermore, in response to the claim of billions of dollars in subsidies that the U.K., Germany and Spain have invested in alternative energy, it does not even touch the $452 billion US in subsidies that G20 countries pay out every year to the fossil fuel industry, an industry that has been around for how many years?
Kim Darwin, Sechelt
