By Guy Dauncey

A green recovery! But wait – why green? At such a time of crisis, shouldn’t any kind of recovery be welcome?

The argument for a green recovery is that while the dangers from Covid are clear and immediate, lurking in the wings are other crises some of which hold just as much danger – the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, the affordable housing crisis, and the low-income debt crisis, which is placing people in miserable poverty. 

If we continue to operate our economy the way we have for the past many years, here’s what will happen. We’ll lose much more of our forests. We’ll experience more flooding, as the winter rains pour off the forest clearcuts. We’ll lose more forest topsoil, as storms wash it away, turning the Salish Sea brown with mud. We’ll lose the beauty of the Cowichan Valley to tediously awful suburban sprawl. We’ll see steadily increasing rents and homelessness, with ever more people living in cars, vans and tents.