Here’s Kelowna’s explanation of their success at mitigating climate change.

See that? 20% of sensitive ecosystem land is protected. Given that sensitive ecosystems make up 28% of Kelowna, and Kelowna covers 214 square kilometres, that comes to 59.9 square kilometres of sensitive land, of which 11.98 square kilometres is protected. Bear with me here for a sec.

In comparison, Kelowna has 17 square kilometres of road surface and 0.618 square kilometres of sidewalks (not even including parking lots), which make up 17.618 square kilometres of area or 47% more area than the protected areas. On the other hand, Kelowna has an admirable environment policy, which states:

That’s funny. Richard Branson is, of course, the British billionaire who owns airlines, trains and spacecraft. What’s funny is that Kelowna has a university, chock full of local artists, writers and scholars who could have come up with a more appropriate quote, but, no, Richard Branson it is.

What’s also funny is that Kelowna and the Okanagan it fills with smoke, roads and noise used to be incredibly beautiful, in my own lifetime, and now is a dirty crevasse in the plateau, full of traffic and smog, with 47% more roads and sidewalks than protected areas, an increase in developed area between 1971 and 2011 (not to mention since) of 1200%, and an environmental policy that is about transportation and global emissions, rather than local environmental needs. Here’s how the people at Kelowna illustrate it:

That’s funny, because the actual planning for the environment’s energy needs itself looks like this:

In other words, this city, given 214 square kilometres of formerly beautiful land, acts on the principle that energy is a series of fuels for getting humans from one place to another, across, I guess, that beautiful land. Come on, that’s plain funny. The land is not being protected for its own values but protected against human incursion, and not so well at that. This makes Kelowna a teensy bit frustrated, so their official community plans include this little bit of grrrnnnnghhhh:

Not like this, it can’t. A little glimpse at Kelowna’s thinking process in its agricultural plan reveals why not:

It makes the mind whirl, but to cut through all the traffic within it, nobody asked the experts.

That’s so funny, I could cry.