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Physiotherapists big winners in sustainability initiative

Riddle o’ the Week: How is Whistler preaching sustainability like a paedophile priest preaching piety? Well, while you either fret or fume over that question, let’s consider the sorry, sorry state of language.

Riddle o’ the Week: How is Whistler preaching sustainability like a paedophile priest preaching piety?

Well, while you either fret or fume over that question, let’s consider the sorry, sorry state of language. No, I’m not referring to the supposed inability of Little Johnny to speak in whole sentences, let alone string a few together into a coherent paragraph. Neither am I referring to the profane degradation wrought by trash talkin’ homeys cum rap stars.

I’m feeling personally insulted by most of what passes for political and business rhetoric any more. Alfonso Gagliano plays bagman for the Liberal Party in Quebec and Big Jean, when confronted with what any one of us would consider an arsenal of smoking guns, says, "Tut, tut. It’s only a few hundred million bucks. A drop in the trough, so to speak. Look at how much more Quebeckers like us now."

In times of crisis – read mismanagement – business leaders reach into their toolbox of euphemisms and "rationalize operations," fire lesser staff like there’s no tomorrow, "realize efficiencies," reduce service, "seek a level playing field," go hat in hand to government for a bailout, and my personal favourite "explore strategic alliances," look around for someone to bail their sorry butts out ASAP.

Which leads us, circuitously, back to this week’s riddle. Clearly, the similarity between Whistler preaching sustainability and a diddling padre quacking on about piety is this: Neither is standing on very firm moral footing and, in all probability, neither is sure of whence they speak.

There being no real reason to beat up any further on priests – an occupation whose trustworthiness rating is testing the depths of politicians, lawyers and telemarketers – let’s beat up on Whistler’s take on sustainability instead.

To be fair, this self-flagellation may be a bit premature. After all, we have, at great expense, hired consultants to determine what sustainability really means. In true Whistler fashion, we engaged the engagable among our populace, ruined what could have been a perfectly good afternoon for them, let them express their preferences among the consulting firms asked to bid on this gravytrain and then ignored them because their decision didn’t meet the thinly hidden agenda of Messrs. Davies and Milner, to wit, the consultants chosen by da people didn’t seem to give enough credence to the larger bidniz interests. Clever that.

But starting at the top, the highest level of abstraction so to speak, the idea of sustainability in a North American context – and most assuredly a Canadian context – is absurd. The way we live is unsustainable. Period. Our cars, our homes, our heating requirements, our perverse predilection to light up the night sky, our diets and the monstrous refrigerators we lard at home, our consumption choices, our sprawl, our dependence on the mercantile colonization of the Third World... all of it unsustainable. At least in any sense of the word embracing the concept of ongoing viability in perpetuity.

Shining the spotlight on Whistler, what are we? We are a town whose sole function is to suck up vast quantities of energy to allow pampered people to ride to the tops of mountains, without any exertion on their part, so they can SLIDE BACK DOWN on clearcuts. FOR FUN! The very existence of this town tilts the frivolitymeter and makes a mockery of the concept of sustainability.

If the earth’s ecosystem – tortured metaphor coming up, folks – were akin to the human body, Whistler would be the first spot to lose circulation in a crisis. That’s how unnecessary our function is.

During the Great Debate over the World Economic Forum, a mild wave of nausea swept across me every time someone would suggest one of the benefits of hosting the Forum’s conference would be our opportunity to press upon them our vision of and commitment to sustainability. Seems to me the WEF has already bought into what’s starting to be called sustainability around here.

Whistler – as embodied by our elected leaders with one notable exception – likes people to come to town, drop a small fortune, build a 5,000 or 7,500 square foot house, leave it vacant, albeit heated, most of the year and pony up their taxes without making too many day to day demands. The Dark, Empty Town model, if you will.

Whistler is unwilling to protect its existing neighbourhoods from encroaching McMansion Mania. Each spring, along with skunk cabbage and hungry bears, come demo teams to tear down more cabins and replace them with maximum-buildable-allowable, post and beam vacation homes.

Having reclaimed – a euphemism for destroyed – most of its wetlands for parks and golf courses, Whistler is now touting the sanctity of what’s left as if an epiphany had left the town born again and saved, oh Lordy, saved.

Whistler is both party to and cheerleader for the expenditure of $30 million – 40, 50? – of mostly public money to bid on the chance to spend several hundred million more to host an Olympics when it wasn’t that many years ago the infrastructure to do exactly the same thing was built next door in Alberta. Even assuming this province could afford such trifling luxuries as, oh, hospitals, rural doctors, road improvements, affordable public transit, would a true sustainability junkie be party to such wanton duplication of admittedly important public amenities like luge runs?

In the name of sustainability, Whistler will probably substantially expand its municipal footprint in the near future to bring the Callaghan valley under its planning umbrella. In most parts of the world, this is called a "growth," not a sustainability, initiative. Better the development of the Callaghan come under Whistler’s control – true – but let’s not kid ourselves. This growth, like so many other instances of growth, has more to do with ameliorating our inability to sustain ourselves within our existing footprint than colonizing some new utopia of sustainability.

This is about the point when someone usually says, "Well, isn’t embracing sustainability better than doing nothing?" Yes it is. And saying you’re sorry you ran over someone’s dog with your SUV is better than driving off laughing. That’s not the point.

We can fix our drippy faucets, tune up our Toyotas, spread manure instead of chemicals, wear more post-consumer recycled fleece, buy local produce in season, turn off unnecessary lights, use push mowers instead of gas-powered ones, override automatic sprinklers when it’s raining, coerce retailers to shut their doors instead of heating the great outdoors during winter, recycle everything we’ve ever touched and it’s all good. Admirable even.

But as long as we – and our elected leaders – lack the courage to embrace simple, unvarnished sustainability in its untortured meaning, we’re just growing like the big boys and calling it something different. The next sound you hear will be our former OCP being twisted into a sustainability initiative designed to double our size.

Right now, it seems the only real winners in Whistler’s Sustainability Saga are the physiotherapists. Ought to be lots of business for those angels of mercy fixing arms and shoulders twisted out of shape from too much pattin’ ourselves on the back.