I saw this quote in a CTV article about Kyoto rallies and it exemplified perfectly my thoughts regarding the environmental debates and plans.
At the Montreal rally, McInnis said she’s noticed the many little ways governments discourage people from putting the environment first, since her family decided to go without a car.
The price of using Montreal’s subway system has steadily rose while she discovered how inaccessible the subway is. Each trip she must drag her stroller and 15-kilogram baby up and down dozens of stairs.
“It’s disgusting,” she said. “It’s bad with a stroller, imagine if you’re elderly or in a wheelchair.
“When you make environmentalism a priority in your life, that’s when you begin to see how the government puts up barriers.”
Yes we need governments to actually and properly regulate business to ensure they are taking responsible efforts to use less energy and create less pollution, but we also need real incentives to allow and encourage the average citizen to make better environmental choices.
Regulating light bulbs is all very well, but creating greater access to transit, planning “self contained” communities, keeping community hospitals (instead of expecting people to drive hundreds of miles to a hospital which has been chosen to specialize in a procedure) creating bike lanes, helping low income home owners and renters to make homes more energy efficient, creating more accessible recycling facilities for toxic waste products, creating community gardens and composting areas, these are the types of things that help divert from landfill, use less energy and make everyday choices which are environmentally friendly.
It is easy to talk about light bulbs, and carbon credits and targets and goals most people don’t really understand, it is another thing to actually implement programs that make a real difference, have real life consequences and allow the voter to see clearly where their tax dollars are being spent.
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