Glass Half Empty, Glass Half Full

Adrift

We've had a chilly, rainy August. And a cool July. Not for the first time; BC's weather is generally unpredictable.

But this year, it seems, has been a little more out of kilter than usual. There were severe storms last winter, flooding in November, a severe windstorm in December, when thousands of trees were blown down; not only Stanley Park suffered, but all our green spaces. I blogged about the damage in Watershed Park last spring; we passed a big downed tree just last week in the SAMWMA.

Add to that, a record (for this area) snowfall (I measured 18 inches on my birdbath), a 5-metre high tide plus winds that washed out a section of Boundary Bay's seawall, storm-caused power outages (50,000 homes here, 200,000 just across the border), flooding in the upper Fraser River this June leading to sandbagging as far south as New Westminster, and more. The Lower Mainland's reputation as a laid-back paradise may not recover.

The storm that swamped Ladner's harbour was just one of these events, but a significant one. Not in terms of the immediate damage, but possibly as an advance warning.

Natural Resources Canada, in a page on climate change impacts, focuses on the Fraser Delta.

Even today, parts of the coastline of the Strait of Georgia are eroded by waves during winter storms. Higher seas may also flood deltas, tidal marshes, and other low-lying coastal areas. Dykes may have to be built or upgraded to protect these areas.


Fraser Delta tidal marshes are critical habitats for waterfowl, shorebirds, and salmon fry. A rise in sea level may drown the marshes or squeeze them against sea dykes that protect Richmond, Ladner, and Delta.

...
What impact would the loss of Fraser Delta marshes have on ducks, geese, and shorebirds that migrate along the Pacific Flyway?

Climate change. We experience it as a local series of events, but we know it is happening around the globe. Flooding on the Thames, calving icebergs in northern waters, hurricanes in the Pacific not following their own rules, drought in the US, typhoons in China, a heatwave in Hungary ... Bird flu and malaria, HIV and the latest viral mutations ... Extinct dolphins and invasive snails ...

And nothing we can do about it. Or is there?

It certainly feels as if nothing I can do will make any difference. Sure, I can avoid useless consumption, eat local foods, keep the car tuned up, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". But so what? The roads are still jammed with SUVs, the grocery still sells fruit and veggies from the other end of the globe. What good is my little bit?

And here is my pessimistic, glass-half-empty, outlook: some of us, quite a few of us, see what's happening and want to make any changes necessary to at least ameliorate the impact. But many people, important, influential people, do not see this. Or do not care. And the majority will go along in their happy cloud, "eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage", as the Bible puts it, until disaster slaps them in the face.

Then, oh, then; there will be an uproar, a hullabaloo; "We've got to do something!" And people will pursue solutions -- any solutions, possible or not -- with great energy. But it will be too late by then.

Really, it is already too late for our best efforts to have much effect. We should have been working at this back in the 1950s.* We knew at least some of the dangers, even then. We have been inexcusably lax.

Painted cement block, Ladner Harbour Pub

But ... I am not always pessimistic. My glass might be half-full.

This old earth, and we two-legged, chattering inhabitants with it, have weathered many storms before. Not easily, not comfortably; but we made it. And provided we don't blow ourselves into clouds of hot dust, we will possibly make it through again.

Our children and grandchildren are in for a rough ride. And their world will not be the one we know. But they will see the clouds in the sky, the green of growing things; they will feel the warmth of the sun. They will look at the fruit of their efforts, they will look into smiling eyes, and they will feel joy.

One can hope.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Update: GrrlScientist has a video from 1953 that is a must-see in this context. Quite exaggerated, with a 150-foot rise in sea levels, but the basic idea was there. Did people ignore it because it was just too unpleasant to live with? Or because it was a SEP? I know that I knew about the "Greenhouse effect", as it was called back then, in the 1960s.