Duncan - In a recent news release, Duncan city council announced it would be turning the lights off at City Hall to acknowledge Earth Hour.
This self-righteous gesture of turning off a few lights for a trivial amount of time is nothing more than a distraction from real life problems and solutions.The news release went on to state: climate change is the biggest environmental threat to our planet and the number one concern of Canadians.The first part of this statement is blatantly false. There is no evidence that would indicate climate change is the biggest environmental threat to our planet and I would be happy to provide Duncan city council with a list of scientists that disagree with their statement.The second part also appears to be false.Although I searched, there wasn't a single poll or survey to be found that would indicate climate change is the number one concern of Canadians.I did manage to find new surveys on the U.S. and Europe, and climate change isn't even in the top 10 list of concerns for those places; in fact a new Gallup poll from the U.S. lists climate change as 14th on a list of 16 concerns.On a local level, the lack of concern about climate change was very evident at the last rally held by Peter Nix in City Square. This event, with speeches given by City of Duncan Mayor Phil Kent, and Municipality of North Cowichan Mayor Jon Lefebure garnered a mere 100-150 attendees out of a population base of over 33,000.Put another way, less than half of one per cent of the local population were concerned enough about climate change to attend the rally.As a Canadian I'm not the least bit concerned about climate change, but, like most other Canadians I'm concerned about the economy, high taxes, unemployment, dishonest government, crime, pollution (real pollution) and things like that.I'm also concerned about the billions of dollars worldwide, being funneled down the climate change rat hole, while 1.3 billion people in developing countries live without electricity every day. Is this where we want to go? No thanks.Issuing a press release such as this is highly irresponsible, and calls into question the ability of Duncan city council to make well-reasoned and informed decisions on behalf of our community.Mark WilliamsDuncan