GINTA – Climate change challenges will never be solved with cat doors

IF YOU WANT A CHUCKLE, check out the amusing story of how a $2,000 cat door installed in a West Vancouver home can help fight climate change (embedded in the $3 million home it belongs to).

To be fair, the article has some good information on passive houses, or net-zero homes, but you might find yourself jaded by the time you get to the part where the 11-foot windows are described. (Shipped from Europe, they were.) Carbon footprint applies to the whole product and the processes involved in building it, no?

A good conversation starter nonetheless. Climate change requires action, and energy efficient homes are a good start. They need not cost millions, though; financially feasible ones already exist, including here in Kamloops, so the conversation will only get better from here on.

The difficult part is having the majority of us think the same: believing climate action is needed, to make things happen. Online, people wrestle and often insult each other over their political sympathies and, lately, on where they stand on the climate change issue, forgetting that should the worst predictions become reality, we’re all going to feel it the same way.

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Daniela Ginta, MSc, is a Kamloops-based freelance writer and columnist who blogs at www.danielaginta.com.