Letters of Hope: A green deal for Revelstoke

This letter was first published in print in the January 2020 issue of Revelstoke Mountaineer Magazine.

How will Revelstoke residents shape our community in the 2020s? For our first issue of the decade, we asked Revelstoke Mountaineer Magazine readers to contribute Letters of Hope for the coming decade. We asked them to express their positive visions for the future of our community. What challenges will we face this decade and how can we thrive in our response? Please enjoy the ideas and visions from our readers expressed in our Letters of Hope. We will be publishing the stories over the next few weeks. 

A green deal for Revelstoke

Forest are burning around the globe and the Arctic is warming at an unprecedented rate. We are facing an existential threat and B.C. is not being spared. In the last years, we have seen floods in the Okanagan in May and forest fires in June. We know about the damages and costs extreme weather events can cause.

Yet, or because of this, I am hopeful that Revelstoke will become a model community for local energy and food production. As an outdoor and resource community, we have a close connection to the land around us. Moreover, our unmatched natural and human resources make it a lot easier to wean ourselves off fossil fuels and imported food than densely populated urban centers.

Revelstoke needs a vision for the next decade, one that looks beyond the day-to-day challenges of a fast-growing community. A green deal for Revelstoke will pour significant funds into our community, demonstrating that we can exceed the carbon mitigation goals of the provincial CleanBC plan — a made in Revelstoke approach.

My letter of hope for the future: By 2030, wind turbines on top of Mount Mackenzie will produce 100 per cent of Revelstoke Mountain Resort’s electricity. There will be more electric charging stations per capita than anywhere else in the province, powered by the Revelstoke Dam. We will have regained agricultural land by building a dyke along the Columbia River. Revelstoke Community Energy Corporation will have doubled the number of clients it provides with renewable district heating. All new houses will be built to a net zero standard. We will no longer truck out wood fuel and truck in fossil fuel — instead, the propane distribution system will run on renewable gas produced from forestry waste. And subsidies for fossil fuels will have long been phased out as economically and socially irresponsible.

A dream, maybe, yet a necessary one.

Cornelius Suchy