Monday 13 September 2010

Toronto Municipal Election - How we make decisions, not just what's decided, is an environmental issue too

How We Make Decisions, Not Just What's Decided, is an Environmental Issue Too - Torontoist
Excerpts:
The way we make decisions and policies can be as important as the decisions themselves.


One issue that has been largely neglected in the upcoming municipal
election is how we make decisions that end up affecting the environment.
Consider: if a decision-making process increases the chance of making
bad environmental policies, shouldn't we avoid this process?



Some candidates hoping to become Toronto's next mayor are promising
to change key decision-making processes, which could lead to bad
environmental policies. The best example of this is changing how the TTC
makes decisions.

...

As voters consider which mayoral candidate has the best environmental
platform, it's important to look beyond what they say about specific
environmental issues like transit, climate change, smog, and waste
management. We also need to look at how the candidates propose to make
decisions about those issues. Those who want to replace democratically
elected councillors with appointed private experts are not doing the
environment a favour; privatizing decision-making of public bodies is a
recipe for future environmental failure. For those who say, "Yes, but
the current model isn't working properly," remember the famous words of
Winston Churchill, paraphrased here: democracy sucks, but every other
decision-making process sucks even more.



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