Regardless of whether a person accepts climate science, no one is likely to refute the fact that emissions caused by our vehicles and industry are polluting the air.
There's a lot more than just CO2 in those emissions.
Aside from merely being unpleasant to breathe in, this pollution more importantly causes health problems, often exacerbating respiratory conditions and driving up health-care costs, which we all end up paying for.
During the course of 2009-2013, the Parkland Airshed Management Zone's monitoring efforts in the Red Deer region revealed that the level of fine particulate matter had exceeded national standards. See this week's Mountain View Gazette for a story on the provincial government's recently announced plan to address the issue.
While it should come as a relief to area residents that a monitoring station in the region shows levels in this area are well within acceptable limits, the Red Deer area is not altogether that far away and the decrease in ambient air quality there should be a concern to us all.
Although it might be easy to point the finger at industry, everyone who drives a motor vehicle contributes to the problem. Obviously in a country like Canada, which has great distances between communities, people often rely on motor transportation for work and recreation and cannot be blamed for needing to get around.
But until such a time as we find an alternative source of fuel, we would in the long run be doing ourselves and our descendants a great favour by at least trying to reduce our consumption.
That could mean finding efficiencies in our daily routines to eliminate needless trips. It would for some people certainly mean no longer idling their vehicles for extended periods of time.
Canadians might contribute overall a tiny portion of global emissions, but we per capita create almost double the amount of pollution compared with our Chinese counterparts. In other words, if there were more than a billion of us, Canada would be a far, far worse contributor of global pollution than China. That means we've certainly got plenty of room for improvement.
So it's time to start asking ourselves whether our cars really need to be as cold as fridges during the summer and as hot as saunas during the winter, especially when we're not even in them.
Combined with the government's plan to see what steps can be taken with stakeholder groups and industry members to improve ambient air quality in Central Alberta, our own efforts will undoubtedly contribute to returning to national standards sooner rather than later.
Simon Ducatel is the editor of the Sundre Round Up.
