This month of November has witnessed an especially abundant series of worrisome events, from local to global. These include billions of dollars of catastrophic damages from newly emerging wildfires, flooding, and storms. Warfare is on the increase, not only in the Ukraine and Palestine but in surrounding countries, with the rising ominous threat of nuclear annihilation . Globally whole ecosystems are collapsing as fish, birds, large mammals, insects, and forests are undergoing catastrophic declines. Humanity appears to be mired on the brink of self-destruction, in what deep thinker Thomas Homer-Dixon (Cascade Institute, Royal Roads University) terms a ‘polycrisis’. The recent elections in the United States and provincially here in British Columbia are pivotal and invite careful comparisons.
Both provincially and in the United States, there has been a marked shift to the far right of the political spectrum, with a turning away from reason and factual information. British Columbia has apparently escaped majority rule by the almost instant rise of the BC Conservative Party, and in the United States with a substantial win of the Republican Party led by a pathologically crazed liar. Magical thinking and false narratives are being favoured over basic scientific facts, especially with regard to climate change. In BC we are still highly dependent upon the export of fossil fuels. Clearcutting and old growth deforestation, and export of raw logs in BC continues unabated. In 2023 BC’s four top exports were metallurgic coal ($9.44 B), natural gas ($5.25 B), coniferous (SPF) wood ($2.06 B), and wood pulp ($2.29 B), with most exports going to the US (57.5%), China (13.1%), Japan (9.3%), and other Asia (10.7%).
One of the most concerning aspects of these human-caused events has been the virtual absence at the political level of actions to address the effects of climate change on living species of plants, animals, and fungi. There has been no detailed accounting of what is happening to the once-richest biological diversity of the terrestrial and marine life in British Columbia. BC has yet to enact endangered species legislation. A BC Conservative government would eliminate or ‘re-write’ the 30 by 30 Tripartite Agreement between Canada, British Columbia, and the Indigenous Tribal Council, to conserve 30% of BC ecosystems by 2030. Failure to enact a ‘Carbon Tax’ will impoverish more BC taxpayers. With the assistance of the Green party, British Columbia may be able to devise a new means to a truly healthy and sustainable future. Humanity is absolutely dependent upon the functions of intact species in healthy ecosystems (think for example of the fundamental role of photosynthesis in providing oxygen and nutrition for all life). It is the ultimate of hubris and wilful ignorance to think we can survive without nature and a healthy environment. We can and must do better, very soon.