We appear to be currently in drought or pre-drought conditions. My concern is that municipally and provincially we continue to produce day-light conditions on our streets at night, rather than really changing the mind-set and conserving electricity. It appears that governments are far happier spending billions of dollars building more dams rather than taking real steps to conserve power. If it's true that the glaciers are melting, and we are going to be living in a dryer climate with potentially only spring rivers, how much power is going to be produced from the declining resource of water? So, for how much longer are our current dams going to be effective power producers? I have driven around Vancouver and Prince George on empty streets at three in the morning, I was the only vehicle in sight. Locally, drive in any newer section of town, or newer road. I think that governments should all make a concerted effort to reduce their wasteful consumption as they advise all consumers to "turn off the lights". How many houses could be lit if some of those street-lights were eliminated anyway? It might be a good idea to charge commercial and institutional users higher rates to discourage lighting empty parking lots after-hours and other wasteful, and should be more expensive, habits. I understand that having many lights may increase security, but maybe we need to exchange "more security" for "better security". I feel that eliminating this blind spot might also give us at least one more advantage of reducing light pollution and give us back our starry sky. Now is the time to start making these changes before the water runs out and more dams make no difference. These changes will be forced on us.
Don Elliott
Prince George
