By Elizabeth Payne, reposted from the OTTAWA CITIZEN, June 28,2013
Planners should learn from the Calgary floods and prepare better for devastating weather-related events, experts say. Photograph by: JONATHAN HAYWARD , THE CANADIAN PRESS
OTTAWA — The Alberta floods are Canada’s Hurricane Sandy moment, and should be a catalyst for badly needed changes to limit future damage from extreme weather, say experts on climate change adaptation.
“In many cases, the standards for where and how we build are completely out of date with a climatically changed future,” said Ian Mauro, Canada Research Chair in human dimension and environmental change at Mount Allison University. The Alberta floods, he said, should be a wake-up call that “we need to seriously rethink how we build structures, where we build structures and how we manage in emergency situations.”
Not only do cities and towns need to stop building in flood-prone areas, but infrastructure such as bridges need to be reassessed with extreme weather events in mind. The failing railway bridge over Calgary’s Bow River underlined the catastrophic potential of doing nothing, said Mauro.
“This is just the beginning,” he said. “this isn’t fearmongering, this is a call to action to inspire people to build resilient communities to be able to deal with impending superstorms of the future.” MORE
Our blue planet and refuge. Earth photo via Shutterstock.
One of the most powerful photographic images of our time shows the gauzy ball of planet Earth hovering weightless in the velvet dark of space.
That is all we have. This one planet is our Eden, our space capsule, and if we fail to maintain it, it will be our species’ coffin. iPods and 3-D television do not exempt our big-brained, thumb-wielding race of primates from the laws of biology.
On this planet, water is necessary to everything that matters. In many faiths, water is a sacred essence. In the empirical eye of science, it is the elemental prerequisite of life. Without water, there are no crops. Without water, not one of our modern miracles of technology could be manufactured. Essence of the Creator’s spirit, essential molecule of organic chemistry, water is no less the essential solvent, lubricant, and medium of transport for the modern industrial economy. What we do with water affects what it can do for us and for the rest of creation later.
For that reason, we cannot discuss the safety of tap water without also discussing the security of the natural climate and ecosystems that are its ultimate source. Correspondingly, the state of water — revealed in qualities such as temperature and oxygen content — is often our best clue to the health of the ecosystems it flows through.
Wealth in a garden
Our view of “wealth” is similarly inclusive. We do not mean only the number of digits in an individual’s financial worth or a nation’s gross domestic product. MORE
Join us and call upon Pedro Merizalde, Ecuador’s new Minister of Non-Renewable Natural Resources, to reconsider his plans to auction off the southern Ecuadorian Amazon, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet.
Tropical rainforests are a key natural defense against climate change, yet the world’s rainforests are being destroyed for short-term profit and extractive industries at an alarming rate. In Ecuador, the government is proposing to keep oil in the ground beneath an 180,000-hectare swath of the Yasuní National Park, meanwhile auctioning off an area of forest over 16 times that size.
Last month, we saw the future of the Ecuadorian Amazon flash before our eyes with a massive oil spill that wreaked havoc on communities and ecosystems throughout the Amazon Basin. If the Ecuadorian government’s oil round moves forward, oil spills could become a daily occurrence, threatening the sacred headwaters of the Amazon and the indigenous communities that depend on a clean and intact forest for survival.
Please TAKE ACTION NOW to urge the new Ecuadorian Minister of Non-Renewable Resources to respect indigenous rights and the rights of nature by not auctioning off the southern Ecuadorian Amazon.
For the Amazon,
Adam Zuckerman
Environmental and Human Rights Campaigner
by David Suzuki, reposted from HuffingtonPost, June 22, 2013
“In many ways, climate change is about water change.” 1997 flood at Fort McMurray AB
It seems hardly a week goes by when we don’t hear some climatologist or other expert say, “it’s difficult to connect one particular weather event to global warming, but…” We heard it this week as communities in Calgary and Southern Alberta were evacuated in the face of extreme rainfall and rising floodwaters.
The “but,” of course, is that we know burning fossil fuels and pumping carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere causes the Earth’s average surface temperatures to rise. That warming leads to climate change, which generates increased extreme weather-related events. Those events, according to the World Meteorological Organisation’s “Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 2012,” include “major heatwaves and extreme high temperatures, drought and wildfires, extreme precipitation and floods, snow and extreme cold, and tropical cyclones.”
As the report points out, “Natural climate variability has always resulted in such extremes, but the physical characteristics of extreme weather and climate events are being increasingly shaped by climate change.”
In many ways, climate change is about water change. For every one degree increase in temperature, the atmosphere’s ability to hold water increases seven per cent. Massive amounts of water from melting ice sheets are being liberated while evaporation increases from oceans that cover 70 per cent of Earth’s surface. Meanwhile greater turbulence and instability of the atmosphere and jet stream dump heavier loads of water and increase the frequency of extreme events like tornadoes and hurricanes. MORE
Record flooding in the heart of the Alberta tar sands dramatically illustrates their threat to Canada’s ‘Serengeti’, the Mackenzie River basin. Only days before this week’s flooding in Fort McMurray, a panel of international science experts warned that the nearly 200 square kilometres of toxic wastewater lakes near rivers like the Athabasca pose a direct threat one of the world’s most important ecosystems.
“What happens in the Mackenzie River Basin has global consequences,” Henry Vaux, a resource economist at the University of California told this reporter.
Three days of flooding in the Fort McMurray region has damaged roads, homes and eroded the ground around a main gas line causing a rupture according to media reports. A breach in the tailing ponds would be virtually impossible to remediate or clean-up.
The largest single threat to the Basin is a potential breach in one of the many tailings or wastewater lakes sending the toxic water into the Athabasca River, a major tributary of the Mackenzie said nine Canadian, US and UK scientists convened by the US-based Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy.
A breach in one of the wastewater impoundments in winter “would be virtually impossible to remediate or clean-up,” they also warned in their report released Sunday June 9.
Canada will get plenty of international pressure if it does not begin to protect and properly manage this vast region that comprises 20 percent of the entire country Vaux told DeSmog.
That pressure could come very soon. Three days of flooding in the Fort McMurray region has damaged roads, homes and eroded the ground around a main gas line causing a rupture according to media reports. Government and industry officials continue to say the wastewater lakes that the industry calls “tailings ponds” that cover an area that’s getting close to twice the size of the City of Vancouver are unaffected.
More rain is forecast in the region over the next few days.
“Extractive industries should be required to post a substantial performance bond which would be used to cover the costs of site clean-up should the enterprise fail financially or otherwise fail to fully remediate damage and destruction at the site in question,” the report recommends.
That recommendation comes just days before the Alberta government acknowledged that oil sands companies have been unable to meet regulations requiring a decrease in the size of the wastewater tailings ponds. These sites have increased in size but Alberta will not impose any penalties and said the rules were too ambitious.
Researchers have compared the Mackenzie Basin to Africa’s Serengeti Plain, an area of comparable size. Both ecosystems harbour high biodiversity and biological productivity the experts report. The Basin’s global importance is reflected in its role in hemispheric bird migrations — many South American birds nest in the region. It is also important region in helping to stabilize the climate and plays a role in the health of the Arctic Ocean.
The Mackenzie is Canada’s longest river, beginning in the Columbia Icefield in the Canadian Rockies and runs 1,800 km to the Arctic Ocean. Major tributary rivers, include the Peace, Athabasca, Liard, Hay, Peel, South Nahanni and Slave. Some 45,000 lakes are in the Mackenzie Basin including the Great Slave, Great Bear and Athabasca.
The Mackenzie Basin’s global importance is reflected in its role in hemispheric bird migrations — many South American birds nest in the region. It is also important region in helping to stabilize the climate and plays a role in the health of the Arctic Ocean.
The Mackenzie Basin is undergoing major changes with temperatures 2C warmer than 30 years ago. Permafrost soils containing hundreds of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases are thawing, releasing those gases. The region’s extensive peatlands are drying out. Lightning strikes lead to peatland fires that can smoulder for months and even years releasing huge volumes of CO2, said Vaux, who is also Chair of the Rosenberg Forum.
The local climate is additionally affected by the loss of Arctic sea ice. In 2012, the sea ice declined a record 11.83 million square kilometers by September — an area larger than Canada’s 10 million sq km. There is about one month less snow cover now and glaciers in the Canadian Rockies have lost 25 percent of their ice. All of these changes are affecting the amount of water available for the Basin’s rivers and lakes.
Though these changes are already significant, “and in some cases border on catastrophic,” the report says, climate simulations suggest increased warming will lead to even higher temperatures of a level not seen on Earth in more than 10,000 years.
“Most participating stakeholders believe the region could adapt if the changes occur slowly,” says the report. “However, rapid warming will make adaptation considerably more difficult.”
Since the Basin encompasses three provinces and two territories it has a history of fragmented governance. The Mackenzie River Basin Board established in the 1990s was supposed to solve that problem but it had little support or funding said Vaux.
The River Basin Board needs to be reinvigorated with an independent scientific advisory council, receive full participation by First Nations and operate independent of governments and industry he said.
“This is the window of opportunity to act before the Mackenzie Basin degrades and becomes more difficult to manage,” he said.
“We hope Canadians will be proactive rather than reactive.”
About Stephen Leahy
Stephen Leahy is an environmental journalist based in Uxbridge, Ontario.
His writing has been published in dozens of publications around the world including New Scientist, The London Sunday Times, Maclean’s Magazine, The Toronto Star, Wired News, Audubon, BBC Wildlife, and Canadian Geographic.
For the past few years he has been the science and environment correspondent for Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), a wire service headquartered in Rome that covers global issues, and its Latin American affiliate, Tierramerica, located in Mexico City.
Stephen Leahy graciously allows Straight Goods to reprint his articles. However, he earns very little compensation for his valuable work. His solution is Community Supported Journalism.
If you’d like to invest in environmental journalism, contributions can be made safely and easily via PayPal or Credit Card online or by mail:
Stephen Leahy, 50 Enzo Crescent, Uxbridge, ON L9P 1M1
Please contact Stephen if you have any questions. This article previously appeared on the InterPress Service wire. Website: https://stephenleahy.net
Our new report shows that even in the mothers’ womb, the developing fetus is exposed to a slew of dangerous chemicals.
A pregnant mother often wonders “Will my baby have my eyes? Her father’s nose?” But she probably doesn’t think too much about whether her baby will be born with her grandmother’s DDT or PCBs. Nor should she have to.
But our new report shows that even in the mothers’ womb, the developing fetus is exposed to a slew of dangerous chemicals – chemicals that might have health effects like cancer, lower IQ or thyroid problems later in life. We cannot see with the naked eye that Canadian children are born pre-polluted, but our latest results demonstrate just that. This isn’t about what mothers are doing wrong, but that government and industry are allowing these chemicals to pollute our homes, environment and our bodies.
Environmental Defence tested the umbilical cord blood of three newborn babies from the GTA and Hamilton, and found each child was born with 55 to 121 toxic compounds and possible cancer-causing chemicals in their bodies. We tested for, and found at low levels,PBDEs (flame retardants), PCBs, PFCs, Organochlorine pesticides, dioxins and furans and mercury and lead – chemicals that are pervasive and persistent in our environment.Of the 137 chemicals found in the umbilical cord blood, 132 are reported to cause cancer in humans or animals.
All Canadians have a right to live in a clean, healthy environment. If evidence that babies – who are especially vulnerable – are burdened with a toxic chemical load before they are born is not enough to signal a change must be made, we don’t know what is.
Environmental Defence is asking the federal government to move towards improving chemical regulation in Canada, to protect the health of all Canadians. We’re asking companies to proactively remove toxic chemicals from their products ahead of government plans to phase them out.
There is an article in the Washington Post by a Sufi teacher and author Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee that I would like to draw to your attention.
Every so often a talented writer reminds us of a profound truth-one that reaches below our social self and speaks to who we really are. The scales fall from our eyes. We see the world and our part in it with fierce clarity.
We regain our response ability to be responsible and true to ourselves, congruent with all living things that share Mother Earth. We regain a sense of awe.
Here is the article:
Earth isn’t just home, it’s holy
By Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, reposted from the Washington Post, June 14, 2013
Full disc satellite image of Earth from Russian Electro-L satellite (Russian Earth Observation centre)
There is now a single issue before us: survival. Not merely physical survival, but survival in a world of fulfillment, survival in a living world, where the violets bloom in the springtime, where the stars shine down in all their mystery, survival in a world of meaning. —The Rev. Thomas Berry
Finally we are waking up to our ecological imbalance, to the realities of global warming and its catastrophic consequences. It is also beginning to dawn upon us that these environmental changes are accelerating more quickly than we may realize. Behind our present ecological crisis, caused by industrial pollution—the chemicals, toxins, and particularly the carbon that our civilization emits—lies the demon of consumerism that walks with heavy boots over the Earth. Materialism is the driving force of our present self-destructive global culture, a myth that places short-term constant economic growth above any long-term environmental considerations.
This disregard for the environment is the product of a consciousness that is disconnected from the natural world and its interconnectedness. We appear frighteningly disconnected from real awareness of the effects of our materialistic culture upon the very ecosystem that supports us. And at the root of this disconnection is a forgetfulness of the sacred nature of creation, in a way unthinkable to any indigenous person. We are not only a part of a living Earth, but of a sacred Earth, an Earth that nourishes our souls as well as our bodies.
But collectively we have forgotten the sacred nature of the Earth. Just as there is an ecological need to reclaim our relationship to the Earth as a living whole—to come to know how we are part of a mutually interdependent ecosystem—so also there is call to reconnect with the sacred within creation. If the Earth is just a resource then there is no real responsibility. We can use and abuse it, as we are doing at the present time. If it is sacred then how can we justify our present attitude towards the environment, our acts of ecocide?
I deeply feel that we need to reclaim our spiritual relationship with this beautiful and suffering planet, feel it within our hearts and souls. We need to develop an awareness that the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the energy we use, are not just commodities to be consumed, but part of the living fabric of a sacred Earth. Then we are making a real relationship with our environment, respecting the land on which we live, the air we breathe.
We still carry the seed of this primal relationship to the Earth within our consciousness, even if we have long forgotten it. It is a recognition of the wonder, beauty, and divine nature of the Earth. It is a felt reverence for all that exists. Once we bring this foundational quality into our consciousness and life, we will be able to respond to our present man-made crisis from a place of balance, in which our actions will be grounded in an attitude of respect for all of life. This is the nature of real sustainability. To quote the Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki:
The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity—then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D., is a Sufi teacher and author. Editor of the anthologySpiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth, he has been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey on Super Soul Sunday, and featured on the Global Spirit Series shown on PBS. For further resources visit: www.spiritualecology.org
Stephen Leahy is an environmental journalist based in Uxbridge, Ontario.
A pregnant mother often wonders “Will my baby have my eyes? Her father’s nose?” But she probably doesn’t think too much about whether her baby will be born with her grandmother’s 