It's not too late

Letter to the Editor
By Peter Moody, Kimberley
Invermere Valley Echo
September 29, 2009

It’s not too late for the RDEK Board to reverse its August decision to ask the provincial government to establish a municipality in the Jumbo Valley.

The prospects for our planet have changed dramatically for the worse in the 20 years since Glacier Resorts Ltd. conceived the idea of developing a substantial permanent settlement and accompanying infrastructure in the upper Jumbo and surrounding glaciers.

The world my seven young grandchildren will live in 30 or 40 years from now will not be the world I was fortunate to grow up in. The days of post-World War II prosperity based on unchecked growth and consumption are long gone.

We know now that the economic, ecological and societal trajectories we set then are no longer viable.

If my grandchildren are to have anything like the life I’ve enjoyed for 70-odd years, then we have to stop doing things the way we’ve always done them.

Yet many of our RDEK directors think business as usual is the best way forward.

They are wrong. It may have been possible to rationalize the Jumbo complex two decades ago but the rationale no longer holds up.

We need to protect and conserve our diminishing natural resources, for the day is coming when we will need them for something more fundamental to our well-being than real estate speculation.

It’s time the aging adults who wield the decision-making power today think beyond the next election, think beyond the span of their own lives, and make wise decisions on behalf of those who come after them.