Tag Archives: Climate Change

Related to climate change

Not waiting for Noah

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“Planning is best done in advance.” – Anonymous

Neighborhood on the South Saskatchewan river, June 2013

Flying into Calgary at the end of June, everyone on the plane was glued to the windows, staring at the mess of mud and debris from the Great Flood.

Eventually, rivers always have their own way.

Embarrassingly, I was there to speak at the Canadian Water Summit about collaborative drought planning. By a miracle of organization, the Summit was hastily relocated from the flooded Stampede grounds to a nearby airport hotel. I gave my talk as planned, with some blushing and a few words about unpredictable extreme events.

One of many outrageous pictures from the recent flooding in Colorado

One of many outrageous pictures from the recent flooding in Colorado

A drought could come next year.

The situation was made even more ironic, because I’d just spent several months getting my head around collaborative flood planning, much more topical under the circumstances. The deadly mudslides in BC last year had left me feeling that we are even less prepared for floods than water shortages. Continue reading →

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Lessons from Sandy: disaster isn’t our only option

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“Do we renovate? Of course we renovate,” Ms. Fisher said. “But what if it happens again, next year and the year after?” – NY Times, 11/23/2012.

Unpleasant Weather: Mother Nature gave us a good smacking in 2012, as if to say “Smarten up! Get your act together!” Here in B.C., outrageous spring rainfall brought terrible mud-slides. All summer in the U.S. and Central Canada, there were devastating droughts. Windstorms knocked out power for millions of people during record heat waves.

Not everyone in Manhattan was taking Hurricane Sandy seriously.

When Hurricane Sandy came around, the Onion, a satirical newspaper, published an article headlined, “Nation suddenly realizes this is just going to be a thing that happens from now on.” FEMA appealed for extra flood-relief funds from Congress, President Obama called for insurance companies to do their part, and clean-up efforts began.

If we really accept that “this is just going to be a thing that happens,” now is a good time to revisit our development planning. We really don’t have to live like this. Change is daunting, but doable.

. Continue reading →

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The Dirt Makes the Difference.

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“Political stability, environmental quality, hunger, and poverty all have the same root. In the long run, the solution to each is restoring…the soil.” Rattan Lal

Soil/Water Conservation: Coming in from the garden this weekend, I went straight to the sink to wash my hands. Carefully turning off the tap while soaping, I readjusted the faucet, and rinsed off the gritty brown lather.

Ironically, it is the dirt, not the act of turning off the tap, that really saves water. Yes, my friends, some of the most effective things for water conservation are not the most intuitive. The soil in our yards and gardens is one of the most powerful forces we have for water conservation and pollution prevention.

Not that I shouldn’t wash my hands regularly and with care.

Continue reading →

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Mud-bogging and other ways we love the land too hard

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 “And now you can’t even take your rubber off the road without getting a fine or be accused of tearing up delicate marshland water sheds or creeks… some people love driving a truck thru the mud getting stuck. And having someone of the same let’s call it sport pulling them out.” – Kelowna mudbogging forum

Mud bogging trucks in a drinking water reservoir - photo courtesy of Greater Vernon Water

When I start counting up the complex issues in watersheds, I run out of numbers. 

In a province of 4,618,777 people (as of today), our love of the great outdoors is wearing heavy on the landscape.

My last post was about people, climate change, and water use – with perhaps 30-45% population growth within the next generation. The cummulative effect of having more people depends on where and how we live.

It’s a similar story with people and pollution. Continue reading →

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Weddings, weird weather, and where to fit everyone

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“Do not compute the totality of your poultry population until all the manifestations of incubation have been entirely completed.” – William Jennings Bryan

I’m calling 2012 “the year of weddings and babies” – there are dozens popping up on my facebook.  It’s also the year of the dragon, and my friend from China says many couples purposely plan and wait to have “dragon babies.” There’s a feeling of exuberance in the air.

Flower girl Noli, at a June wedding.

And so, with celebration, the population grows. Much has been written about global carrying capacity, but we are human, here and now.

Where will everyone live? Some are moving here – BC Stats says 45% more for the Central Okanagan by 2036 – maybe 70,000 or 80,000 new people. Other regional districts may grow more slowly, but this seems like a good proxy for growth up and down the urban core of the valley.

It’s a beautiful place to be. We actively try to attract young families and workers; and the retirees come with little coaxing. It’s part of a great global migration.

And what about the water? This year there is no lack of rain, but it always pays to be thoughtful about essential resources. As we have more people, we’ll need more clean drinking water, and more fresh fruit and vegetables.We’ll have more neighbours to feel the effects of floods and shortages, and more of us will be out hiking and biking in the watershed. We’ll have bigger demands for lumber and gravel, more boats on the lake, more everything. Continue reading →

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Think globally – get insurance locally

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“…and chaos in the elements. The temperatures unbalanced, grand snow mountains – hard firm glaciers – will melt and disappear. Rivers and lakes becoming scarce …” – Tibetan poem on global warming

The weather is changing globally, but it’s the sewer backed-up that will bring climate change home to many Canadians.

Refueling the donkey - posted on Facebook.

Lately, I’ve been struggling with the implications and magnitude of global warming. It’s hard to absorb something this vast, although I know it’s important to make a shift in the scale of my perspective.

Sea level change is a good example. Tides are rising because of simple physics: global temperatures are rising, water expands as it gets warmer, and melting ice caps grow the pool. It’s dramatic but totally predictable. Coastal communities are weighing options for higher dikes, raising homes on stilts, or relocating neighbourhoods. The island nation of Kiribati is considering a move to Fiji.

This is big. Continue reading →

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A Parable of Weeds: change, adaptation and leadership

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“For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy

It’s startling (and creepy) to swim into a milfoil bed – an unexpected brush against your side, a light tug at your ankles …Yikes! Is that a fish?... Some people won’t swim in the lake; and American newspapers even publish stories about “milfoil-related” panics and fatalities.  We don’t want lakes to be like swimming pools, but it’s disconcerting to know that this invasive plant is here to stay, and we have to learn to live with it.

Cleaning the beaches, circa 1974

This post is about living with change – changing landscapes, changing water supplies, changing culture and population. We have to be ready and able to change too. What can we save? Where should we throw the greatest effort? Who will lead?

The globalization of weeds (and weedy animals) seems unstoppable, coming wave after wave.  As a student, I felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility and occasional despair. I imagine it’s the same for students of glaciology – watching the melt. Invasive species are a lot like climate change. Continue reading →

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No vacation in the Salmon Nation

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“All men are equal before fish.” – Herbert Hoover

Last week, I attended a workshop in Portland, Oregon, on the future of salmon under climate change.  Our delegation had been invited to talk about the resurgence of sockeye in the Okanagan River, and our experiences with collaboration. Scientists, managers, fishers, First Nations, and other friends of fish, gathered from around the north Pacific to talk about good news, bad news, and what’s possible. It was a diverse group from far-flung geography,  bound together by the need to manage salmon under rapidly changing conditions.

And while much of the conversation was focused on science, there was an important thread about values. What we protect and care for depends strongly on what we value as communities.

While there is uncertainty about the impacts of climate change in specific salmon areas, almost all models project the same outcome: warming waters, summer and winter. Warmer summer waters interfere with spawning, rearing, and migration – and can lead to fish kills in oxygen-poor water.  Warmer waters in winter (particularly in the ocean) could expand the range of salmon to the north as the sea ice breaks up; but this wouldn’t replace the loss of salmon to southern ecosystems and communities. Continue reading →

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Water leadership in changing times: trials and innovations

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“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”  – African proverb, quoted by Al Gore

I got fairly hot under the collar at a Bill Rees’ talk last fall – in my mild-mannered Canadian way.  He’s a UBC professor famous for his work on ecological footprints – great stuff, that I’ve used to teach classes in the past.  Where I took issue was the tenor of Bill’s talk. To begin with, I never do well with extremely grim forecasts. Being in the environmental field, the future can easily be cast in a dim light, but fearless optimism is more to my taste. We start with the premise that the situation is workable.

World population from 1800 to 2100, based on UN 2004 projections and US Census Bureau historical estimates - by Loren Cobb

Bill’s subject was climate change and population growth, the likely tides of environmental refugees, and how we needed to draw the line in some way on our own growth and development.

I grant that we need to change our approach to the growth of our cities, but as the world approaches 7 billion people this year, we have to accept that some will move here. We even welcome them – Canadians are aging, and we need workers of all kinds and levels of education.  Canada is one of the world’s great immigrant nations.

Although climate change is likely to be gentler to western Canada than many other parts of the world, we won’t be untouched.  Climate adaptation is, as they say, all about the water.  I’m often asked, “When will we run out of water? Should we stop all growth and development?” Continue reading →

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Adapting to climate change – Part 1 of many

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This farm, in New South Wales, has a whole array of soil moisture probes, linked to a computer monitor. The grower adjusts the irrigation system to keep the soil moisture at the optimum level.

As Mark Twain said: “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody ever does anything about it”.  This is wonderfully absurd at first blush, but lately it has been making me think. Suddenly, we are all having serious discussions about the weather and what actions we can take. And it isn’t just policy wonks: last week, I even heard some body builders at the gym talking about it.

There are two sides to climate change –  mitigation (to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and climate change overall) and adaptation (to deal with whatever comes down the pipe: from droughts to floods). When response to climate change really began to enter the public discourse (at the local level) in the early 2000’s, adaptation was viewed as appeasement – or giving in – and the action was all around mitigation strategies. Increasingly, it seems grossly irresponsible to not prepare in advance for potentially serious outcomes. Continue reading →

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