Sprawl is an Issue Everywhere!
The Summer 2005 issue of Saturday Night has an interesting article on the population explosion in Alberta. With few topographical constraints, urban sprawl has been given free reign. How much longer can this continue? Where is the water going to come from? Check out The New Ontario: Corridor of Power.
Urban sprawl is a national issue, even a global issue, but we can make a difference right here in our little town. I think we need to wake up and face the fact that we can't plant a house on every square inch of this planet! Yeah, we all want to live in that comfortable house with a yard; hey, I live in one right now! But something's going to give, eventually. Will it be a lack of water? a dessimated environment? climate change due to all the polluting traffic? or the inability to feed ourselves because there's no land left to farm? I know this sounds like doom and gloom and seems so far off in the future that we couldn't possibly need to worry about it yet, but can't we read the writing on the wall?
As the saying goes, "Think Globally, Act Locally". The town of Summerland is trudging along down the same well worn path of giving up our precious resources of water and land to the almighty dollar. These resources, which belong to the public now, are being sold to private interests, foreign interests, at that.
A passage from the Saturday Night article is startling, "Henry Vaux Jr., a Berkeley economist, recently observed that groundwater depletion in Asia could leave 150 million Chinese high and dry in 20 years. “It blows my mind,” he says, “that we are creating the same circumstances here.” No matter. Growth never looks forward or back, even as it consumes promised lands."
This course of action needs to change. We can do better than this.
Urban sprawl is a national issue, even a global issue, but we can make a difference right here in our little town. I think we need to wake up and face the fact that we can't plant a house on every square inch of this planet! Yeah, we all want to live in that comfortable house with a yard; hey, I live in one right now! But something's going to give, eventually. Will it be a lack of water? a dessimated environment? climate change due to all the polluting traffic? or the inability to feed ourselves because there's no land left to farm? I know this sounds like doom and gloom and seems so far off in the future that we couldn't possibly need to worry about it yet, but can't we read the writing on the wall?
As the saying goes, "Think Globally, Act Locally". The town of Summerland is trudging along down the same well worn path of giving up our precious resources of water and land to the almighty dollar. These resources, which belong to the public now, are being sold to private interests, foreign interests, at that.
A passage from the Saturday Night article is startling, "Henry Vaux Jr., a Berkeley economist, recently observed that groundwater depletion in Asia could leave 150 million Chinese high and dry in 20 years. “It blows my mind,” he says, “that we are creating the same circumstances here.” No matter. Growth never looks forward or back, even as it consumes promised lands."
This course of action needs to change. We can do better than this.
posted by Amie |
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1 Comments:
Our Mayor is on record as saying he is for "smart growth" & to "think globally & act locally".
In view of the fact that having a community develop some several miles from the core of town & costly infrastructure, that he is apposed to this development which of course is the opposite of smart growth.
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Anonymous, at 7:38 p.m.
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