Did You Ever Get That Feeling?
Up in Smoke. 300 Sq. Mi. of Amazon Rainforest Lost Every Day.
The Amazon rainforest is disappearing at what should be an alarming rate. 312 sq. mi. or 808 sq. kms. every day. Over the past 30 years humans have destroyed a patch of the Amazon equal in area to the states of Texas and New Mexico . The Amazon – historically a great carbon absorber, since trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen – now releases more carbon than it stores, which adds to, rather helps to reduce, our global climate crisis. Deforestation rates decreased slightly from 2004 to 2012. But since then, they’re back on the rise, especially in the past couple of years, since Jair Bolsonaro became president of Brazil. In 2018, as Bolsonaro campaigned as a patriotic man of the people, scientists predicted that once the Amazon lost more than 25% of its tree cover, it would become a drier ecosystem, all because deforestation changes weather patterns (due to how trees respire), which in turn reduces rainfall. Furthermore, as the forest becomes fragmented, areas surrounded by
Today's Nat Post has one of those 'Poor little Alberta' epistles.
ReplyDeleteIt ends with a self-own, boom/bust delusional and oblivious bit:
“No one in Alberta cared much about slagging Ottawa, because we were having a big party.”
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/alienation-is-fuelling-a-new-bigger-alberta-agenda-we-wasted-the-last-20-years
I came across that headline the other day but decided it probably wasn't worth my time. It wasn't. It's the now standard Alberta drivel. Their grief and woes are all the work of "the other" - i.e. Ottawa.
DeleteOttawa can't fix what Albertans broke. They chose not to adopt Peter Lougheed's prescription for petro-prosperity in favour of the "pigs at the trough" policy under Klein and all of his successors. If they're looking for their 20 lost years, there it is.
From the energy giants' perspective it's a bit like that Gordon Lightfoot song, "That's what you get for loving me." It's that line, "Everything you had is gone, as you can see. That's what you get for loving me."
What are they left with? About 8,000 abandoned oil wells and those magnificent bitumen tailing ponds visible to the naked eye from space. There's your 20 lost years. A classic 'boom and bust' economy that has sucked the life out of the province.
Now they're snapping and snarling like a pit bull. Only it's a dog with no teeth, none.
What are they going to do, leave? And go where? They keep their fantasy alive by assuming British Columbia would throw in with them. Why? Perhaps they imagine that the US would be a better suitor because it needs a supersized Love Canal. Who cares? Not I.