Dear Editor:
After reading City Residents to Ponder Gas Pump Warning Labels on page A11 of the July 24 North Shore News, I was left aghast. The implication of putting endangered species labels on gas pumps, of course, is that motorized vehicle users will feel guilty and drive their vehicles less. Good idea, except that much of the greenhouse gas emission challenge in the Lower Mainland lies elsewhere.
Construction, as is rampant in our lovely corner of the world, is a more significant contributor here to GHG emissions than is personal motorized vehicle use, when the analysis is done properly. At every stage of the process involved to put up a new building, whether a multi-thousand-square-foot residential monstrosity, a steel-and-glass replica of the many dozens of other skyscrapers already jutting toward the Pacific coast sky, or massive strip malls on otherwise pristine animal habitats, fossil fuels in vast amounts are being burned.
Logging, the processing of wood, making concrete, the transportation of wood, concrete and other building materials by gas/diesel guzzling construction trucks to the construction sites, not to mention the transportation of workers to these sites, all produce incredible amounts of GHG emissions.
If we’re going to put futile stickers on gas pumps, maybe we should first seriously consider how mass profit-driven construction is destroying our local environment, and ultimately adversely affecting endangered species everywhere.
Think, for example, about the trees being torn down on the slopes of Cypress Mountain to make room for more houses, where motorized vehicles need to drive uphill (thus burning even more gasoline) to bring their residents home — animal habitats were destroyed when colonies of houses started arriving here. Hypocrisy has never led society to a good place.
Walter Cicha
West Vancouver
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