Editor:
For years we have had a robust community recycling program in place and now we also have a food waste composting program. We have a Climate Action Plan, a long-term strategy to combat global warming and the resulting climate change.
These initiatives, while admirable insofar as they indicate that our town acknowledges that we are facing an environmental crisis on many fronts, simply lack substance.
Only eight per cent of the plastic we dutifully place in blue dumpsters will actually be recycled, the rest will end up in landfills the majority of the other materials that we place in recycling bins will fare little better. This may change in the future, but for now recycling is little more than a feel good placebo.
As far as our Climate Action Plan is concerned, it too lacks any indication of the will to make the tough decisions necessary to actually reach our lofty goals. Things like closing the downtown core off to motorized traffic, or limiting the size of new homes and the density of new neighbourhoods, are not even on the table.
We have a unique opportunity to actually make a concrete difference for the wilderness of our mountain home, not in 30 years but right now, but it will take courage and vision.
I join my voice to those of my fellow concerned citizens in asking Mayor John Borrowman and council to reject Three Sisters Mountain Village's latest development proposal as well as the tired list of broken promises that come with it.
I believe that it is an act of utmost selfishness on our part to deny the incredible experience of living a life of adventure in this mountain paradise to the next generation that will inherit it from us.
At at some point we were led to believe that short-term gain is more important than the long-term ecological welfare of our valley, obviously this defies logic.
It is too late to correct past mistakes, but not too late prevent a new one.
Harry Roberts,
Canmore
