B.C. Wildfires now Triple the Ten Year Average.

 

310,000 hectares burned. That's 200,000 hectares above the 10 year average for this point in the fire season.

Premier John Horgan has finally declared a state of emergency. Well, duh.

Wildfire expert Mike Flannigan at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops said Wednesday he is "scared" of this season, not only in B.C., but across the western United States as well.

"We still have another six to seven weeks of fire activity ahead of us and there's no relief in sight," he said.

A stark warning from the B.C. Wildfire Service:

The Service says strong winds are predicted to come up from the U.S., fanning the flames in the province's Interior over the next 48 hours. No moisture is expected, and the southeast could see another batch of lightning that could ignite more fires.

Horgan chimes in, asking vacationers to pack up and go home if possible to make more room for wild fire evacuees:

"So if you're going to be travelling to those areas, check with the local providers, check with whoever you booked accommodation with, and see what advice they're giving you. In the end, people will make their choices. That's entirely up to them. There will be closures in the backcountry. There are now and there will be more coming as fires continue to ignite.

"We have a bad stretch of weather ahead of us. We have winds picking up. These are all bad, bad, bad news."

Comments

  1. Bill MalcolmJuly 21, 2021 at 3:55 PM

    And I am watching a deep orange burning sun setting here in Halifax, with the faint smell of environmental destruction hanging in the still air. All the while, the latest plutocratic imposition on people is the forced Olympics in Tokyo. I'm a track and field fan, but that nonsense in the middle of a pandemic is too much.

    I guess it's almost time to grab my ankles, put my head down and wait for the crash. There's not much hope left. And the Green Party is taking Anamie to court over the arbitration decision with which it cannot agree.

    SNAFU

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibJuly 22, 2021 at 12:35 AM

      Bill, all I can say is that we have to look beyond ourselves. It may cost us a lot but we have to help our grandkids and their kids weather their storm. We know what some of that involves. Check out Dark Mountain.

      Delete
  2. Bill MalcolmJuly 21, 2021 at 3:57 PM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Navigating the Minefield of Short-Termism

Image
Its disappearance went largely unnoticed. There was no post mortem, no eulogy, no deep sighs for what had been lost. Posterity slipped from our consciousness as we ushered in the neoliberal era 40 years ago. Populations would now be administered, not led. Grand vision was a quaint artifact of generations past. Besides, the invisible hand of the marketplace would see to all our needs today, tomorrow, forever. Politicians grew smaller and smaller until they shrunk to fit the mold of technocracy.  Like sheep being dipped we were plunged into a world of supply-side economics in which lower taxation and deregulation would deliver manna from heaven. We focused on skinning the economy, and society, right to the bone. Everything would be maximized, nothing would be wasted, not even the offal.  We were surrendered to a world of short-termism. We elected governments of technocrats - grey suits stuffed with wet cardboard - whose horizons were measured in electoral cycles. They would do what they
Read more

The Gun We Point at Our Own Heads

Image
  If you're sitting at a table and there's a loaded pistol in front of you, do you pick it up and point it at your own head?  Probably not, unless something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. How would you feel if someone else was holding that pistol to your head? But there is a pistol pointed at our heads and, unless we do something about it, we're goners. It's not a Glock. It's fossil fuels and the industry is slowly squeezing the trigger. Proven fossil fuel reserves are sufficient to generate 3.5 trillion tons of greenhouse gas emissions .  Russia and the United States each have massive reserves of fossil energy sufficient to push humanity through the 1.5C heating limit, sometimes called the "carbon budget."  I have it on reliable authority that Washington and the Kremlin aren't getting along very well these days. After all, if you won't hold the line on nuclear proliferation, you might not be inclined to voluntarily give up a major source of na
Read more

The Cognoscenti Syndrome

  There is a group of people I think of as the Cognoscenti, people who are well educated, very informed and of rapidly diminishing relevance. Their ranks include writers such as Chris Hedges and Glen Greenwald. These are people who have honed an almost Puritanical value system, readily finding fault in any direction. They are scathing in their attacks on Republicans and Democrats alike to the point where they become nihilists. They don't endorse. They prescribe. This is where they fail. They're unable to advocate for anything that might resonate with the public whose interests they argue are being trammeled. Donald Trump was bad but Joe Biden is scarcely better. This is where their elitism comes in.  74 million may have voted for Trump but, hey, they didn't know any better. The mob that stormed the Capitol. They were just victims of the system venting their frustrations. All the racism, bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, white nationalism - inevitable side effects of their oppr
Read more