Eco-loons will try to suck the joy out of anything

Every December Victoria truck drivers decorate their trucks and parade them through the streets to raise donations for the Mustard Seed food bank. It’s really a sight to behold!
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Naturally the local daily supports the parade. Also, naturally, in these loony-toon times of climate hysteria, there are those who’ll rain on it with all the joy of a KGB political enforcer. For a warming freak like Daphne Dunbar it’s all CO2, all the time:

I find the editorial support for the Truck Light Parade amazing (Dec. 4). Eighty decorated trucks drive around the city, spewing exhaust for nearly three hours.

There are plenty of other light displays that bring delight and wonder and where collections can be made for the food banks. Let's make sure that this unnecessary contribution to global warming is not repeated next year.

Daphne Dunbar, Victoria

But the truckers were having none of it:

As a past president of the Island Equipment Owners Association, which organizes the Truck Light Parade, I take exception to the litany of attacks we put up with year after year from armchair environmentalists.

Many of the trucks cost thousands of dollars to decorate, and all this is done to create an amazing charity event that is most likely a bigger event than any other in the district. We collect and deliver thousands of pounds of food to the food
banks.

Why don't you attack the Victoria Day Parade, the Oak Bay Tea Party or the Santa Claus Parade? We bring the Truck Light Parade to the communities rather than asking everyone to drive to it.

When the couch environmentalists can show me that they are living in mud huts they built by hand and light and heat by burning dried cowpies, drawing water by hand from a hand-dug well to clean the rabbit they are skinning for dinner, then they can come with their complaints.

Until you are so pure, the next time you see the Truck Light Parade, stop and say thanks for the nice house you live in, the parks you use, the school your child attends, the recreation centre that you swim at.

Also, you should thank us for helping all those people that the Truck Light Parade fed through donations brought out for the occasion.

Mike Cownden,
Past president, Island Equipment Owners Association

Bravo, Mike (and Harold and Dennis)!