Your letters for Feb. 14

In praise of concrete

Re: Mass timber towers up to 12 storeys approved for Alberta, Feb. 8

So Alberta has approved mass timber towers up to 12 storeys. Bigger buildings, more units. They are rated for fire resistance of 50 minutes to two hours. That gives the residents more time to escape. What about after the fire? With a wood structure building, the building is shut down while they deconstruct the portion above the burned part and rebuild. All the tenants in the deconstructed part of the building lose everything. Those below can’t return until reconstruction is finished. Bigger building, longer time to move back in.

In a concrete building, the unit that caught fire needs to be renovated. Perhaps the units above, below and beside. The rest of the building is fine and the tenants can move back in shortly after the fire is investigated. The renovations on the damaged units will not take that long because the structure is still in place. Wood is a false saving.

Glenn P. Davies, Calgary

Facts persuade more than opinion

Re: Powerful forces unite to meet Canada’s greenhouse gas targets, Opinion, Feb. 7

David Staples makes some good points about the potential for smaller, cheaper, safer nuclear plants that would operate without greenhouse gas emissions. He also ignores entirely some of the things that “old school green groups” with their “mouldy anti-nuclear fallacies” would not ignore.

These days, environmentalists consider the full life-cycle of production. What does it take to produce the materials that go into building and operating these next-generation nuclear plants? And what becomes of the radioactive waste they produce?

I may be an old environmentalist, but I’m open to considering new approaches to nuclear energy. No way am I going to be persuaded by something that reads like an advertisement.

Susan Stratton, Calgary

What’s important to Calgarians?

The Feb. 8 edition of the Calgary Herald is filled with examples of our misplaced priorities.

Consider the Opinion piece on Page A19. It’s a call for affordable housing. The community must step up and help those one paycheque away from homelessness. A worthy call to action.

Then we read of a couple building a 3,000-square-foot home with four bedrooms and three bathrooms. For two people! It’s their money. They can do with it as they choose.

But the clincher is on Page A12. The local Humane Society is handing out a surplus of bunnies. And a Humane Society representative states “We do not want rabbits living in cages. So a spare bedroom, for example, is what we need for them to have.”

A bunny, affordable housing or 3,000 square feet. What’s really important to us as a society? Choose one. We can’t have it all!

Bill Watson, Calgary

Council silent on expense debacle

Kudos to Councillor Jeromy Farkas for bringing forward a motion improving accountability and setting limits on conference attendance and spending. He seems to be the only council member who cares about out these matters, which is disturbing.

Robert Dixon, Calgary