CVRD’s wood stove exchange program — are you kidding me?
After declaring climate change an “emergency” last fall, the Citizen is reporting that CVRD is now encouraging citizens to trade in old wood stoves for new ones. Oh, my goodness!
Yes, wood fires release particles into the air which damage human lungs. And so CVRD will replace old smoky wood stoves with heat pumps. This is good. But their wood stove program also allows replacements to include newer wood or pellet stoves or even worse, gas furnaces. This is much less than good.
The CVRD has declared climate change to be an “emergency”. And it must know that burning one kilogram of wood releases more toxic greenhouse gases into the air than even coal. So it makes no sense to declare this emergency and then subsidize citizens by $250 to $400 to continue burning anything — any wood, any fossil fuel, any time, in any type of stove or furnace.
So please CVRD, keep your subsidy only for the heat pumps. Oh, if we need more cheap electricity to operate them, you could install a solar farm.
Peter Nix
Cowichan Carbon Buster
Maple Bay