Do You Think We Should Tell Him? Climate Change is Real. It's Now.
Maybe it's time the Dauphin stopped screwing around with pipelines the world doesn't need and put that money to better use, such as getting Canada ready for climate change.
This summer we set three, Canada-wide, heat records - on three consecutive days no less - and then the town where it happened was erased the next day by fire. What does that tell you?
This summer, while the West endured months of wildfires and deadly smoke that spread all the way to eastern Canada, BC lost hundreds of people who fell victim to heat domes as the prairies underwent yet another year of severe drought. That must say something.
Now we're beset by atmospheric rivers that are washing out highways, causing flooding, and leaving motorists stranded to be rescued by Armed Forces helicopters. They've had to evacuate the entire city of Merrit, B.C.
Tell me, is that idiot still building that damned pipeline?
| Barge smashes into Stanley Park seawall. |
At COP26 the over-represented coal and oil lobbies, USA, (China MIA), India, Australia and of course dear old Canada signed off on a mutual suicide pact. Look at the weather now with just 1.1 C rise over "pre-industrial levels"!
ReplyDeleteBC and Washington State seem to have born the brunt of the double whammy of fire and rain this year in North America. The entire world wobbles with plague. And still the global wackadoodle elite are more concerned with their pocketbooks than reality. "Frankly, I don't give a flying ratfuck, my dear," they collectively said. Why don't people want part-time jobs at minimum wage? "Because they're lazy", say these complete mountebanks, ignoring that employers offer maybe 20 hours of work a week to avoid paying benefits.
Trudeau, a man at sea on almost every issue, was happy when the nations decrying the fossil fuel producers and large consumer countries didn't dredge up the tarsands by name. Now he and the pernicious twat of an Alberta premier kenney, must feel free to pump poison to Vancouver in ever increasing quantities over their shiny new pipeline. Trudeau is capable of soaring speeches signifying absolutely fuck all, because he outright lies, like 95% of Canadian politicians. Scott Morrison, the pudgeball Australian PM is more honestly idiotically pro-coal, egged on by that lunatic rabid tigress of world coal mining from Perth WA, Gina Reinhart, who could also stand to lose some weight. She's the sociopath who wants to descrate the Alberta foothills for luvverly "thermal" coal. And the rest of us opposed are wimps she says.
Somehow all these asinine people have inveigled their way into positions of power. Sure, the world's overpopulated, and could stand a cull -- let's start with the ones who got us into this jam.
Extinction Rebellion BC is reporting this morning that Vancouver is now cut off from road access to the rest of Canada. At first I thought, no wait a minute, they can go up by Whistler, Pemberton, and Lytton to hook into Hwy 16 en route to Edmonton. Then I remembered that Lytton, the summer's "burnt offering" to the climate spirits also got cut off by mud slides yesterday.
DeleteThe question I'm mulling over is whether this is a glass half empty or a glass half full. We fortify the passes and invite Justin to take his pipeline and shove it.
This story inevitably relates to a recent discussion we had about the folly of building the new St. Paul's in a flood zone.
ReplyDelete"“This new hospital presents an important opportunity for a state-of-the art facility built to withstand inevitable hazards,” Hoese stated. “Given that the New St. Paul’s Hospital is located in a flood plain and high-risk seismic and liquefaction zone, staff have provided conditions requiring comprehensive all-hazard risk and vulnerability assessments be completed, and that climate and seismic resilience measures be incorporated into the design of the building.”" ~The Straight
The current St. Paul's located at the center of the huge downtown population has excellent 'flood control' ie it is 25 m above sea level. But just think of the condo profits!
btw - while it is the same seawall that runs around Stanley Park, this barge is beached at Sunset Beach.
I think the events of the past six months have taught us some invaluable lessons about the state of our resilience and the uselessness of our governments to deal with these challenges.
DeleteMadness, pure and simple.
ReplyDeleteAnd so, Owen, Canada is no longer connected to its largest sea port, its portal to Asia Pacific. These photos suggest it won't be an easy fix to restore road or rail links.
DeleteWe cannot afford to confront climate change but we can afford to repair its consequences!
ReplyDeleteTB
Yes, TB, but for how long? Neither federal nor provincial treasuries are bottomless wells. As the costs of these impacts grow and become more frequent we may begin to resemble some poorer nations where essential infrastructure becomes beyond the government's means to repair and maintain.
ReplyDeleteOne example of this sticks out in my mind. The Dominican Republic. There were rotating water outages in Puerto Plata. Each zone would be without water supply for three or four hours every day. Yet, when you went to the main drag there were torrents of fresh water coming up out of the asphalt and running into storm sewers. There simply wasn't enough money to tear up the streets and replace the mains.
We ought to be putting our governments through stress tests similar to those we subjected banks to during the 2008 recession. Identify the risky sectors and either find workarounds or prepare to do without. Only I don't think we're willing to do that. It might embarrass our political caste that, for decades, has been kicking problems down the road for the next bunch even as the problems worsen.
a timelapse of the logging activity that took place prior to the landslide near Agassiz
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/peter_j_wood/status/1460734132586045442