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Who are we? Council considering track expansion

What possible environmental benefit could there be?
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Who are we? Council considering track expansion

I’m a bit mystified and write in hope of answers.

National and local news media report that almost 90 per cent of Canadians are concerned about climate change and know we need to do something to respond to it. (Another six per cent see an opportunity to get a rise out of their neighbours by writing letters of denial…but they’re still only six per cent.)

Given those numbers and the growing impact of climate change in our area, why is the Municipality of North Cowichan (having recently acknowledged we face a climate emergency) holding hearings on the racetrack expansion? What possible environmental benefit could there be?

I can only see a loss. Not just to the air we breathe, or the silence of a summer afternoon, the watershed or the forest, but to our way of knowing ourselves.

Are we caretakers, guardians, relations of and with the living world, or are we a platform upon which those who have amassed a far greater share than they need of the world’s resources get to roar out their greatness?

I believe this is the crux of the matter. Who are we? What are we about? Are we part of the web of creation, doing our best to ensure the viability of all life, including our own, or are we building a stage upon which the precious, hard-won resources of creation are spilled on ground and air in an unfathomable display of plumage, sound and fury?

Is this who we are? Paving the land that nurtures us to sustain the practices that are killing us? Using the world’s wealth to amuse its wealthiest, in hopes a crumb or two might be washed down the mountain to feed those who starve for food, shelter, clothing and love?

Perhaps you can enlighten me.

Keith Simmonds

North Cowichan