[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf9BZOZuoLI[/embedyt]
There is a growing sadness on the South Coast, and across British Columbia.
It has to do with our forests, habitat and the health of our natural ecosystems. People look out at their backyards with a sense of despair.
They watch the alarming liquidation of the special places they visit to reconnect with nature, escape to clear their minds, and enjoy for recreation.
The frustration grows as ancient forests are cut down and dragged down the highway on the back of trucks for export.
“Big trees” are an important focus for me and my colleagues. During my time as an elected Member of the Legislative Assembly, no issue has generated as much email traffic. People are passionate about old-growth forests.
Like the issues facing salmon, our relationship with the forestry industry goes back a long way. It is a foundational part of British Columbia and our economy.
Over the past two decades, we lost between 30-40,000 jobs in the forestry sector. Mills closed. Forestry dependent communities struggled.
Looking for a long view
This short-sighted approach continues, even with the change in government.
We continue to raise these issues. I, and my colleagues, bring the voices of people from forestry dependent communities into the Legislature.
Academics, advocates, stakeholders, community leaders are all desperately sounding the alarm bells. Above all, we need a new approach because we cannot tinker our way to better resource management.
Indeed, we may not yet be standing on the edge of the cliff. But, according to the dozens of very qualified people who have come through our office, we are exceptionally close.
As a result, habitats and ecosystems are collapsing. Species are at risk of extinction. That is about as definitive as it gets.
So, over the coming weeks, I and my colleague Sonia Furstenau, are going to be asking many questions in budget estimates for the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resources and Rural Development.
This is a file that requires full time attention. And, it is definitely time we shone as bright a light as we can on what is going on in our forests.
Happening this evening? Guy Dauncey sent this link along.
https://www.wheredowestand.ca
Old Growth Forests
The natural cycle of trees is to grow old… really really old!
Then they nourish the seeds cast before they fall.
we can’t interrupt this cycle anymore.
Science can measure the changes in our body as we slow down and connect with the old growth. Perhaps we all need this slowing down.
**Scroll on by…we’ll FRY AND DIE… in a Global Cooking, intolerable to life +5°C world, of 2100!
Let the children lead! Swedish 16 y.o. autistic Climate Change activist, Greta Thunberg, inspired this international “student school strike,” with her “solo sit in protest” at her gov’t offices. The 22 students’ Court Case in Oregon: Our Children’s Trust: claiming (rightly!), that Oil & Gas “Corps”…and complicit governments, KNEW for over 50 years, of the catastrophic consequences of their Carbon Dioxide, Methane gas, Nitrous Oxides pollution! (yet “fuelled” Climate Change Deniers/Liars propaganda; killed the electric car in 1970’s; O&G subsidies of $trillion annually; $50 billion in Canada…discouraged Green Energy investment and production; bailed on expensive environmental cleanup costs!)
BIG O&G should be held accountable… and many cities are now claiming costs, for C.C. mitigation, prevention, damages! 300 students from small town Nelson, B.C. Canada…joined their international counterparts to “change Climate Change”…in order to have healthy lives on our beautiful planet, Earth!
The 2018 IPCC report of 3,000 Climate Scientists experts, said that this is the “turn around…or go down decade!” (Even the Trump C.C. report agreed!)
“2030 DEADline to HALF fossil fuel emissions; (Forests…are our “best Carbon sucking technology,” that we have to REDUCE catastrophic CARBON… at a deadly 410 ppm now!”); hold Global Warming to 1.5°C! (Canada is the 2nd worst F.F. emitter/capita; U.S is #1: 3.5 % INCREASE in Carbon emissions in 2018, with Trump’s “fracking frenzy!”)
We traumatize, and destroy wildlife in scarce Old Growth Forests habitat, that are barely surviving 2 seasons, of 3 times our unaccounted for, B.C. budget of Carbon emissions, from deadly, smoky, health, and summer recreation wrecking B.C. wildfires! (Worse, more intense global wildfires predicted, with Climate Change!)
A MORATORIUM on all Old Growth forests and community watershed logging: until an inventory is done of forest fires and wildlife losses; pine beetle and drought killed forests; “success”(NOT!) of second growth harvestable tree plantations, (treeplanters replant the same clear cuts sites multiple times. Forestry sprays toxic glyphosate pesticides, destroying natural regeneration, killing healing fireweed and berry bushes which are soil erosion prevention and wildlife food; deciduous fire retardant species, such as Birch, Alder, protects desired Conifers from sun and snow, then dies in 25 years!, and…beating/defeating Nature, fails!); our global carbon sequestering forests commitments; what economically viable and accessible logging is left in B.C.! (i.e. they wouldn’t be logging in contentious formerly protected domestic watersheds; visual (Tourism/asthetics) highways/landslide safety corridors…unless there’s nothing viable left in the back country!) That is responsible Forest Management… planning/harvesting/selecting, for the future!
Soon forests, wildlife, and us…will have more C.C. trouble: 50°+C deadly heat waves, (i.e. now in Australia, where dead bats, koalas fell from trees; wild horses died when drinking water holes evaporated! Years of drought, bush fires, followed by 3 years worth of rain in 10 days: drowned cattle herds, wildlife in Queensland… from Climate Change! Ditto: California!) Global food and water shortages; sea level rising from melting Arctic ice, Methane gas (80Xs worse than Carbon Dioxide pollution!) from global permafrost, Antartica’s icebergs, glaciers, (our river/water sources!), all melting… then rising oceans from1-60 metres, violent storms and more hurricanes, flooding coastal major population global cities, with a billion dead and C.C. refugees from mass starvation, clean water shortages, wars, and migration! (NY, LA, London, Shanghai, Mombai, the “Lower” Mainland…!), islands and beautiful beaches; acidic oceans’ bleaches/dead coral reefs; plastics eaten by, entangling ocean life; oxygen-depleted, algae dead zones; Florida Red Tide; whale beaching; massive fish and ocean life die offs! 20/22 past years are the globally hottest on record…yet people STILL DENY, “Global Warming”; mock Al Gore, David Suzuki, Noam Chomsky, David Attenborough…97% consensus of Scientists!
There’s an estimated $11-70 trillion in global mitigation and economic damages losses, from O&G “Corps.” : their $trillions in profits from oil, gas, and coal exploitation! This is despite Oil and Gas Corporations KNOWING,… and governments’ in their big donations $$/CAPP lobbyists’ pockets… since 1960, that Climate Change was REAL…and would REALLY RUIN our beautiful planet! Some people, are still too blind to see the CRISIS… right in front of us! They talk of $$/ “economy;” our “hypocrisy…as we still use oil,” building of NEW KILLER F.F. infrastructure: LNG”Canada,” CGL, (with terrible trespass and jailing, on Wet’suet’en land!), Kinder-Trudeau, Keystone XL, etc. pipelines, and ludicrous expansion of “dying, stranded assets, “fossil industry” …instead of Green energy transitions NOW! Our conveniences, comforts, resistance to “change…Climate Change” today…means we will sacrifice our (grand) children!
GOOGLE: human-caused Anthropocene geologic era/6th great mass extinction age that we’re entering now…and weep for (apologize to!), your (grand) children!
A massive revolution of fossil fuel eradication/global GREEN NEW DEALS/Green energy (JOBS!) boom….are the only things that can save humans with only a decade left…and all other undeserving species…like Mt. Caribou, we’d take down with us!
Thank you to the ? 300 school children who participated in the March 4th international “school strike for their future” protest, at Nelson City Hall, (and we pray for the mayor and councils’ good guidance on Climate Change initiatives; that the NDP will wake up and rediscover who they are/what they are doing to our Earth/their supporters’ disgust!)…
After the students’ rally, thanks for the supportive adults’ protest, (special thanks to some organizers, who attended the whole day, in the freezing cold wind, and that night’s Council Meeting!)…WHO CARE and are EDUCATED about the realities of CLIMATE CHANGE!
All old-growth forests must be saved. We must galvanize our lawyers to take action and legally change the legal status of old-growth forests to personhood.
Adam Olsen we support you. Continue to have your voice heard loud and clear in parliament. Wake up, everybody! Save the old growth before it is no more.