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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
Aside from being a stupid, meaningless bit of moral grandstanding, that approach actually concerns the hell out of me. In the lower mainland, having everything the municipality does filtered through the lens of "climate emergency" language really just hurts people who aren't already settled. Try to get a house built there and the changes to building code explicitly for climate-change-oriented reasons has basically increased the cost of building to approximately double what it was ten years ago, in exchange for dubious or negligible environmental impact. You see municipalities demanding that solar panels be installed on city buildings even when the costs and recovered energy don't justify it because they want to "set an example". It is not a good mode for a municipal government to be in.
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It’s a symptom of a bigger problem with politics. As the media and tools we engage with become global, the common touchstones of citizens - especially the extremely online ones - become these big value issues. In the U.S. it’s called the
nationalization of politics. As these big issues that people from Seattle and Boston and Omaha argue over with one another take up all of the oxygen, local issues fall to the wayside. Which is not a good thing. It’s the local issues that directly affect people, especially those less advantaged.
I don’t want my councillors and mayors contending over high-level issues and cultural battlegrounds. We have other levels of government for that. I want my councillor to dedicate herself to acting on behalf of my neighbours and myself on the practical, day-to-day workings of our neighbourhood: roads and infrastructure, parks, public transport, waste collection, property zoning, and bylaw enforcement. Take our concerns to city administration and advocate on our behalf. That’s all.