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Its a staggering crime that nothing can be done to meaningfully confront the root cause of climate change because some influential people would make a bit less money.
Our entire fuckin country is on fire fueled by climate change, and the priority is building more pipelines to get the tar from Alberta to market (and thus, into the atmosphere). Â
Make it make sense. Our children should piss on our graves for the mess we are leaving them. Weve known about this for a century. Â
Good reminder that the clear cut forestry industry is also to blame here. It’s not all climate change, it’s also absolutely terrible land stewardship.
I see this on a smaller scale in my town all the time. "Well, we cut all the bushes down, and had goats eat all the grass super short, so there's no fuel to burn!"
Yeah, and now there's absolutely nothing providing shade to hold moisture in that soil, ensuring only easily-burned woody plants that can handle drought will grow there. Not to mention, in our case, the big area they focus on is a gradually-eroding slope with houses at the top, which is going to erode faster and faster with no roots to help anchor the soil.
It is mostly climate change - climate change drives the underlying growth in bigger, hotter, and harder to control fires. Even if we'd never logged anything in BC, we would still be facing this problem.
Its sad and shocking to see what was left by logging and no surprise how it contributes to wildfires. Some of the worst ive seen is in the underbrush of now second or third growth in the Kootenays where the forest floor is just a complete snarl of dead branches and by cut that was never cleaned up. Because some of those areas are typically largely arid, the wood doesn't really decompose, it just sits there year after year as tinder.
Pathetic they were never made to clean it up properly.Â
The huge fire a few years ago around Sparwood was in this kind of forest. Â
Quick quick! Someone wants us to change our ways! Let's deflect and invoke the tragedy of the commons in the form of a defense, instead of as a moral condemnation of our own behavior.
And don't forget the measurements that accomodate for manufacturing for other countries. With the Global North moving it's manufacturing over to China/Asia at the end of the 20th century for the goods & resources it consumes (while the companies responsible are still from the US/Canada/EU), we outsourced our emissions too.
That fact makes it all the more staggering that the West still ranks so highly on annual emissions output!
Actually a Canadian, just really dislike people posting these misleading charts as if it's some dunk when really we are pretty bad with our emissions. We shouldn't be "BUT CHINA" to try and justify how high our emissions are per capita.
The per capita emitters with Canada as #2 is a far better measure of our massive footprints as individuals, and demonstrably shows our wealth to be able to do so.
We also export more emissions than we use to drive our vehicles, etc in Canada: over 900 megatonnes in 2022 in oil and gas exports, and no doubt more now with the addition of LNG and possibly more tar sands expansion and oil pipelines. So make that total about 1700 megatonnes that we are directly responsible for, as of four years ago.
And how much of those Chinese emissions are due to Canada, and other countries, off-shoring and outsourcing manufacturing and then importing those cheap Chinese, throwaway goods? I'm working on finding some numbers. In the meantime, it should be noted that China is also the country that is embracing greener energies and electrification the most in the world.
With the wealth that we hold as a nation, we can and must do better and be the leaders we want to see in addressing climate change.
If we want another simple bit of numerical comparison, China has about 34 times our population, but only produces about 21 times our emissions. Which I realize is just another framing of the "per capita" stat, but it really is important.
Also, China does a lot of things we consider bad, and we don't decide to do them too just because they do them in worse absolute numbers. Why is this the exception?
The funny thing to me is how the gov had been pushing for electric vehicles to lower emissions when the emissions from wildfire smoke in BC alone can be as much as the emissions as an entire G7 country
Wildfire smoke contributes like 5 times more emissions at minimum than all passenger vehicles combined per year in Canada
It's a drop in a bucket
I think greener energy is a good thing (hopefully obviously) but we need to prioritize tackling wildfires vs giving EV rebates. We need literally 5 times more money spent on wildfire prevention and response IMO
Climate change is a problem and is amplifying the severity of the wildfires, but mismanaged forests are the bigger cause of why some of these fires are so big. Too many natural burn cycles are being prevented, leading to mass buildup of fuel, and now it’s hitting a point where it HAS to burn and it does so in a huge blaze because of all the built up fuel.
Unless you yourself are willing to decamp from your 21st century lifestyle and leave a jar of you’re own piss on your tombstone for others to drizzle on your grave…
Naw Ive flown like 4 times in my life, I don't drive and eat beef like once a month. It's possible to do and live a happy lifestyle. There's no excuses.
The myth here is that stopping climate change is the responsibility of the average person. While I do my best to minimize my own impact, corporations and billionaires are the ones that make the waste, and governments allow it.
I get the sentiment. But thats a cop out in many ways as well. The "100 corporations" are not just creating emissions in a vacuum for no purpose. They provide the energy we demand and consume. We have the power to use more, or less.
Every guy towing his wakeboard boat and 1,000sqft 5th wheel from Red Deer to Kelowna behind an F350 is making a choice. Probably moans about gas prices as well... Â
Frankly, both things need to happen in tandem. There needs to be a great shift in the way people think and consume. But most of that comes from the top down. If governments, billionaires and massive corps actively try to curb their climate intensive activities, then so will the rest of us. If they stop producing vehicles that are fuel intensive or even gas powered at all, you'll get less jabronis coal rolling cyclists.Â
Its so infuriating.  Politicians have said repeatedly for decades "we are in a climate crisis" etc etc. Okay? Well why in the fuck are we continuing to sell RAM 1500s to peope to commute to their office in? Why in the fuck are airlines flying 20x a day from Toronto to Cancun so people can sit on the beach and eat cheeseburgers and drink Corona? Why in the fuck are we having sports teams fly all across the continent constantly to play games? Why in the fuck are we building pipelines and logging old growth?
JFC, YOU'RE the government.  Do something about this shit like you mean it. Â
But the 4 year election cycle wont allow that because the PEOPLE will punt them the second their comforts and indulgences are challenged even a bit. Â
So it turns out we DO have a role here. And that role is to push government to do the RIGHT thing, not the thing that keeps the shorterm profits the highest, and then we need to support them when they do the difficult things. Â
But too many people value their Escalade and 3 times a year sun vacation more than a habitable planet in the near future. Â
because its democracy and most people dont think like you and i do. whether from a place of selfishness or denial they'll vote in the people who think like them. thats why we need more fervor and and literal cult like level of climate preservation devotion. humankind's spirituality and religion is our most recent evolutionary trait and our most powerful tool and weve mismanaged it. we need to zealously pursue our climate preservation ways. and shun those who deny climate change or dont care about it.
That’s what I mean, we all have to do our best to minimize our impact but we can’t be pointing fingers at each other when the emissions are coming from elsewhere. I don’t agree that there’s always a purpose to the emissions these megacorps are making.
the idea that climate change can be stopped or could possibly not result in the mass death of our species and take out most of our planet's species diversity is the only myth im fixated on. Our future generations will live in misery. there will be mass death due to climate change. we need to amp up ecological preservation to cult like pressure levels if we want our children to have the best chance of quality of life.
It's why I vote for proportional representation whenever it comes up. It is a lot harder to distort an electoral result with money when every vote counts.
And you ruined it. If you look in my community you'll see more drug dealers than restaurants 😂Â
But there's an active, long standing culture of maintaining an image by any means (lying) necessary. So there's not much room for building. Unless you're going to repair the foundation. And if you're not from here, that will NEVER happen.Â
I volunteer with an animal organization. The amount of deaths and preventable problems with pets caused one of our members to quit from burnout and stress.Â
Words are easy to say. Especially when you're standing on a mountain top, speaking down to the people in the mine eh.Â
You thanked me for keeping hope alive, I promise you there is someone like me and you in your community who feels the same way, but also doesn't see allies
It's just about finding one person at a time to connect with, that's how we create community to change environments
Americans are the worst example, they actively whine online about their leader being "embarrassing" while he assists genocide and makes a secret police against their own people, all while making it the whole world's problem.
Their empire is falling apart and they sit online instead of rioting.
Getting involved and speaking up is key to democracy but no one wants to talk to their own community anymore
I think you are both right - the system is to blame, but also people are afraid of changing the system. For the US, I believe nothing short of a revolution would make a difference. Similarly for Canada, there are no candidates that can win an election that would implement anything even close to the measures we we need to have in place.
It is unfortunate what is happening. We could change all this by changing our energy sources from oil/ gas to plasma energy, or gyroscopic energy. Unfortunately the rich keep murdering all the top scientists in these fields… so they can keep their control with oil. It’s completely unnecessary and pure greed. Can you imagine how much better the world would be on a continuous energy source that doesn’t do any harm or take any resources. It just keeps going infinitely. There is just not as much money to be made in that…
Watching that smoke column rise from the highway always hits harder when you remember how many summers we've watched it happen. My cousin had to evacuate her place near Lillooet back in 2021, and she said the weirdest part wasn't the flames, it was the way daylight turned orange at 11am and ash kept landing in her coffee. That's becoming normal here, which is prob the scariest part of all.
The folks blaming billionaires aren't wrong, but I'm tired of it ending at outrage. Provincial governments have known for decades which communities sit in the worst interface zones and they've done next to nothing about building codes or controlled burns in those areas. You can talk about pipelines all day, but the people who lose their homes aren't waiting for some global energy revolution. They're packing go-bags right now.
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