Peak oil not piquing the interest of CVRD board

A motion put forward at the Cowichan Valley Regional District board meeting last week, “That staff prepare a report regarding ‘Global Peak Oil’ as it pertains to the CVRD and local government issues and solutions …” ran into vituperative, scornful, disparaging comments from nearly all of the regional directors.

The substance of the motion, the looming fossil fuel crisis and its corollary global climate change, barely got through to most directors. Instead they followed administrator Frank Raimondo’s jocular but serious threat to forbid any staff members from attending meetings of the CVRD’s roundtable on the environment. Purportedly the staff have no time to spend gathering information and writing reports on such a distant topic. Instead they spend their time turning out 50-page documents covering huge development proposals in Mill Bay, Cowichan Bay, Youbou, and Paldi.

North Cowichan Councillor Glen Ridgway voiced the feelings of many when he laughingly explained that even if there is a crisis, and he wasn’t too sure about that, there is absolutely nothing we can do locally that would address the problem. Ridgway is a lawyer so he ought to know.

When the vote came it was 13 to 1 or 12 to 2 against the motion. It all happened so fast it was hard to tell and, of course, the CVRD does not keep a record of how politicians vote. Apparently our politicians don’t want their voting records to be public when election time rolls around.

Cowichan News-Leader