Editor:
The City of Surrey has declared “a climate emergency” – a meaningless statement to placate its gullible followers and brain-washed children. Do they even have a plan, other than to tax us more?
City council could better use its time by focusing on specific things that might actually help the climate. Have they looked around them and noticed how many beautiful trees are being felled to make way for huge houses? This is happening all over the neighbourhood. One mansion now under construction in my area is around 20,000 square feet in size, concreting over what was once a beautiful green lot.
While destroying a valuable carbon sink, these huge homes also bring many more polluting vehicles and consume more energy.
Transit is another problem. There is very little bus service, if any, through local subdivisions. At the start of the school day and in mid-afternoon huge numbers of cars, many of them SUVs, are lining up to either deposit or collect one or two children from school. Where are the school buses? It doesn’t make sense to have each child picked up by a different vehicle, which has often sat idling. At least encourage parents to car-pool. Or better yet, maybe promote a program where parents could take it in turns to walk a group of children to school in good weather, thus improving everyone’s fitness.
There are more and more people moving into Surrey each month with a resulting increase in the number of vehicles, energy use and pollution.
Why not solicit ideas from the public on what could be done to improve the climate, encourage people to plant trees and take care of those that are already part of our heritage, and put a limit on the size of buildings in proportion to the size of the lot to allow the preservation of green space?
Valerie L. Towler, Surrey
