The Village of Pemberton offers you an opportunity to WIN! and to Have Your Say on the Village Community Climate Action Plan.

Complete the online survey on Community Climate Action. Today! It’s the last day!

Your name will be entered into a draw to win a $25 gift certificate to a Pemberton business of your choice!

Visit https://haveyoursay.pemberton.ca/climate-action-plan/survey_tools/community-climate-action-plan-survey to complete the survey.

It is not as easy as answering: do you like chard or kale? (At least, not once you’re past the first two questions that ask: are you a resident of Pemberton? Do you work in Pemberton?) But turning towards the climate crisis is not a walk in the park either.

We need to do everything within our power, individually, collectively, institutionally, politically – to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees to avoid the most severe consequences of climate change.

It took me 30 minutes to fill it out, but that’s because I’m an over-achiever and I wanted to present about 30 different ideas on how our community could be more low-carbon. It could probably be as efficient as 15 minutes, as many of the questions are about heating of homes and how much you want an electric car. Yes please!

Here’s a little context:

1. over the past 150 years, as we’ve powered our lives (cars and trucks, lights, refrigerators, laptops, etc.) from burning coal, natural gas, and oil (fossil fuels), the level of greenhouse gases (GHG) released into the atmosphere has increased dramatically.
2. locally we can see the effects in the Pemberton icecap retreating, the glacier atop Mount Meagre shrinking and permafrost deep within Mount Currie melting. Receding glaciers increase landslide risk. Wildfires ravage our province every summer and flooding is a growing, although familiar, threat.
3. A Community Climate Action Plan (CCAP) is a plan to mitigate, or reduce, a community’s territorial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

I might be reading the information inaccurately, but from what I can see, a huge part of our climate footprint stems from being a bedroom community to Whistler, with hundreds of passenger vehicles commuting back and forth every single day.

We also need to adapt to climate change. But this plan focusses on mitigating actions – let’s slow down the damage in whatever ways we can and set Pemberton on a low-carbon path.

The issue is massive and global. But let’s start where we’re at. That’s what the kids are asking us to do.