If we can do it, so can you
I just read your recent column ("Snow joke," Dec 12, www.piquenewsmagazine.com) about taking a closer look at consumption habits and the connection to climate change.
As you may know, Blackcomb Helicopters recently made the decision to offset all of its operations. If you fly with us, all emissions are offset—full stop.
It is not an opt-in model and it applies to all our industrial and first-response work as well (which remains larger than our tourism operations).
We do not have the prospect of medium-term technological options to reduce the use of jet fuel, so we decided to make this significant move now.
The response from staff, customers, and community has been very positive and, quite apart from the ethical considerations, we believe it is in our long-term financial interests to make this investment.
It was something of a shock for us to learn that we are the first helicopter company in the world to take this step.
I hope others—particularly business owners with less carbon-intensive businesses—will heed your advice.
If we can do it in a capital-intensive, extremely competitive, high-carbon business, so can they.
Jason McLean // Whistler
Director/Owner Blackcomb Helicopters
We must reduce our carbon footprints
This unimaginative, defeatist and cynical article was not worthy of re-publication in a magazine as progressive as Pique ("What we need to do to cut 45% by 2030," Dec. 12, www.piquenewsmagazine.com).
I appreciate that the public media has to forever bow to the edict of "presenting both sides," but in doing so for the past 30 years regarding climate change, I feel that the media is partially to blame for the disturbing degree of inaction regarding the greatest issue in world history.
Public opinion may be two-sided on the matter but the science is not.
I think our media could do a better job respecting scientific fact, regardless of how inconvenient its truths may be for some people.
[The feature's author Nelson] Bennett not only mocks any personal efforts to reduce carbon dioxide production, but he makes no attempt whatsoever to calculate the costs of not achieving rapid and drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
How much money will be lost if B.C. loses its forests to wildfires? What are the financial implications of [Vancouver International Airport] and Richmond disappearing under the waves of rising sea levels? What impact would snow-less winters have on the Whistler economy? How would 500,000,000 global climate refugees affect world markets?
Collectively and individually reducing our carbon footprint by 50 per cent is not only eminently achievable, but absolutely necessary.
Thomas DeMarco // Whistler
