2021
In 1852, two Indigenous men were accused of killing a colonist. Knowing they would not receive a fair trial, or a trial at all, they fled down the Kulwulton River in Nanaimo, BC. They were chased, caught and hung on the same day, without trial, at Execution Point on Douglas Island. The Kulwulton would later be renamed Chase River by the colonists, Execution Point would be obfuscated to Gallows Point, and Douglas Island renamed Protection Island. So it goes with colonialism: we name places with pride based on our crimes or those who committed them, and decades later we are ignorant of their meaning along with most of our history. Few white people have ever heard the name Kulwulton.
This weekend the rains came. I live on a property that borders hundreds of feet of the Kulwulton. Across the 20’ wide river, my neighbor’s property is several feet below the top of my bank. In the several years I have lived here, I have watched the river come disturbingly close to the level of my neighbor’s land. This usually happens in the spring, when snow melt combines with spring rains. Despite coming close several times, I have never seen the water crest the top of their bank. Until today.
This summer, in my city of Nanaimo on the east coast of Vancouver Island, BC, we experienced an unparalleled drought. We experienced almost six weeks with no rain, something wholly new for our temperate rain forest region, even in summer. Most days were without any cloud cover. The accompanying heat wave was the hottest in BC since records began in 1892. Forest fires were rampant throughout BC and down the west coast of the US. A town in BC recorded the hottest temperature ever in Canada (almost 50° C), then literally combusted and burned to the ground. Even in our privileged province, nearly 600 people died of causes directly due to heat as 2021 shattered all records throughout BC. Globally, 2021 is likely to be the hottest ever, surpassing 2020 which surpassed 2016, followed in order by 2019, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2014, 2010 and 2013. To a layperson such as myself, I would call that a very clear trend.
And now the rains. And the wind. I have spoken with several friends who have flooded basements, as is mine. Water vapor, a term that most people may be unfamiliar with in relation to climate change, is crucial to understand in the context of climate change. Even more than CO2, it may be the most impactful greenhouse gas in our future climate. Our lack of knowledge of this topic represents the failure of science to communicate the severity of the crisis, the under-reporting by our media of what is actually happening and what is coming, and the criminal lack of response by our governments.
If you need a primer on the realities of climate change, start with this excellent Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/oct/14/climate-change-happening-now-stats-graphs-maps-cop26
Read about water vapor here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vapor-storms-are-threatening-people-and-property/
Today as I watch my neighbor’s property flooding, as I recall the terror I felt during the summer heat wave, I watch the world coming out of covid with a desire to return to the waste and excess that is considered “normal.” People are rushing to again fly all over the world for casual trips and unnecessary business, either ignorant to the direct causal effects of these actions or simply not caring. As someone who has chosen not to have kids, it is terribly ironic that so many with kids seem to not care about the world being left to future generations.
In Scotland, we see again how pathetic our elected rulers are. They set targets that are all in some distant future, never taking any meaningful action immediately. As Greta rightly points out, they continue their “blah blah blah” while the mostly complicit media report on the insignificant “progress.” And we continue to elect these leaders. In my province of BC, the areas most hard hit by extreme weather and raging forest fires are the ridings who most decidedly vote for the least environmental parties. In my riding, we could not even re-elect one of only two Green MPs in Canada, a man who has spent decades fighting for climate action, food security and water preservation. He came in third place, behind the middle-of-the-road NDP and the climate-denying Conservatives.
The truth is that capitalism, in its current form, is killing our planet’s capacity for us to exist. All modelling shows this, and we have seen on almost all occasions that the rapidity of climate change and severity of resulting problems are worse than the most extreme models predict. Yet most of us don’t recognize this as an existential crises. As one of the few honest major media writers, George Monbiot accurately describes how the media will talk about “cake” exponentially more than the pending end of our species, and how we must “cease to consent” if we are to endure. It is why many of my friends continue to brave the weather and police violence protesting logging at Fairy Creek. The protest is, at its core, not about those rare and precious trees. It is about refusing to consent to the ongoing status quo that is killing us.
So today as I watch the Kulwulton rage as never before, knowing this rain and this summer’s heat will only get more frequent and more severe, I ask this question to myself and to you:
What changes are you prepared to make, here and now, in how you think, in how you vote, in how you spend, and in how we relate to one another?