Canada is burning; Protesters visit MP’s office
By David Rapaport
On Wednesday, June 28, climate activists from British Columbia to Newfoundland spoke loudly and nationally against the silence and inadequate response that they perceive to the growing climate catastrophe in Canada and everywhere. The climate action group, 350.org, organized and coordinated protests at the constituency offices of over 30 MPs across Canada. Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock was one of those ridings. Over 25 local activists, mostly from Kawartha Lakes, showed up at the Lindsay office of their Member of Parliament, Jamie Schmale.
The theme for the day’s events was ‘Canada is Burning.’ According to a press release issued by protest organizers, that should be evident to any breathing person in southern Ontario (and Quebec and New York State and New England). Over 500 forest fires are now burning across Canada and most of them are out of control. These fires are unseasonably strong, large and many. Meteorologists and climatologists believe they are the results of climate change.
Protest attendee Glenda Morris says that “along with heat domes, flooding, more and stronger hurricanes (that even make their way to the Canadian Maritimes), rising sea levels and melting polar ice caps, these extreme forest fires all indicate that climate change is a real existential threat to all of us.” Morris expects her MP “to take the climate crisis seriously, to hold the government to account and to get his party to come up with a real climate change program.”
Another protester, David Robertson, argues that “the severity of the forest fires this early in the season is a clear sign that we have entered the danger zone of climate breakdown. This is not accidental. This is climate arson.” The press release issued by the Kawartha-Lakes protest organizers notes that currently over 100,000 Canadians have had to flee their homes and over 19 million acres of forest have been affected by the fires.
The 350.org web site (https://350.org/canada-burning/) points out that “it is only June and Canada has already experienced the worst wildfire season on record. Major wildfires are sweeping through almost every province and territory. Thousands have been evacuated and tens of millions experienced dangerously toxic smoke-filled air.” They then issued two demands. The first calls for a stop to the fossil fuel industry “by ending subsidies, hard caps for emissions and no more industry influence over our politics.” The second demand calls for a “Just Transition; meaning urgently shifting us to 100% renewable energy while generating millions of jobs.”
The main organizer for the Lindsay protest was Minden MD Nell Thomas. “We are watching the acceleration of our planet’s environmental deterioration as the systems that influence the earth’s weather patterns are destabilizing in a domino effect. Nature is a balancing act — a multitude of interconnected systems seeking homeostasis (equilibrium). A few degrees off in one system can be compensated by other systems. We see this in the human body: the kidneys reduce urine if you are dehydrated; the heart speeds up if your blood pressure is low.”
“But as the number of systems failures increases, and as the degree of failure increases, the accommodations and compensations will start to fail. Each one that fails burdens the others and they all falter and fail. Our world is in crisis mode. It is on life support, and we are not responding fast enough. We need to be loud and clear with our expectations of government leaders. Transforming the energy sector is critical. The fragile equilibrium of our planet requires investment in clean renewable energy and the end of all investment in fossil fuel, oil, gas, petroleum. Now.”
350.org is busy planning more climate protests.
Fire has, does, and always will play an important ecological role in maintaining a healthy boreal forest in Canada.
https://natural-resources.canada.ca/our-natural-resources/forests/wildland-fires-insects-disturbances/forest-fires/fire-ecology/13149
The Indigenous of Canada set forests on fire regularly to create safe spaces and to help renew grasslands to attract game and to grow berries and tubers and shoots that require sunlight.
Prescribed fires have gone in and out of fashion in Canada. According to Natural Resources Canada, British Columbia does them and the rest of Canada may take a look at doing more especially near developing communities.
There are many threats to human survival including that there are now 8 billion of us and among us, more displaced persons than ever before in human history. It is not as easy as it once was for our species to migrate about the earth in search of safety and sustenance.
As Noam Chomsky, 94, told Piers Morgan recently, the ongoing arms race and escalating conflicts about the world aren’t very good for climate change, especially given the possible nuclear component should escalations continue.
https://youtu.be/TQ-Crh3rdQA
The fuel used by residents of Kawartha Lakes to get to work in their used cars is infinitesimal compared to the fuels used in war. So far as that goes, the fuel the 350.org activists want KL residents to sacrifice, the fuel they need to get to medical appointments and to work, is insignificant compared to that burned by politicians using private jets to fly higher and yon to discuss how best to compensate green investors.
That is what the protests come down to; the investors in the green movement want as big a return as they can get.
Yes, the climate is changing, just as it did when the glaciers melted and the Holocene epoch began. A lot of species became extinct at that time. It was once thought the Holocene climate was stable but more recent studies show it has never been. We humans may have reached our limit, not because of how we get around and heat our homes but because of evolution.
Carpe diem, my friends. Don’t blame your friends and family for their humanity but hold them close lest today is our last.
What message are we sending to those that start them? It’s not your fault?
So, better to do nothing and let future generations suffer for our apathy and laziness?
It’s always encouraging to see young idealistic citizens expressing concerns re the future of our planet. I support a gradual reduction in the use of fossil fuels over the next number of decades, providing we are able to develop reasonable economic alternatives. However, given Canada’s small footprint on GHG emissions on the world stage, would it not be more prudent to protest at the doors of the largest emitters, namely China, India, Russia, USA to name a few, rather than adding tax after tax to the average Canadian citizen, trying to find affordable housing, & feed their families?
Yeah the forests are spontaneously combusting because of ‘climate change’ —- lololololol ya ok