“Perceptions, “by Gerry warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Count your blessings.

Unlike our scorched neighbours to the west in Lytton, we’re safe and only a few fires have yet burst into life here sending us fleeing from our homes. We’re okay. At least for the time being, But, if you have any friends who are climate change deniers you might ask them to reconsider.

Not only does climate change exist, but it’s changing faster than most of us realize and like COVID-19 it means we’re living in a different world now. Much different. Take it from the Environment Canada weather warning issued Friday: “A dangerous, long duration heat wave continues.” And get this. It’s not called Environment Canada anymore. The agency is now officially called, “Environment and Climate Change Canada.”

Climate change has even caused a normally slow-moving government to change its act.

In fact, the rate of climate change is faster in northern Canada than anywhere in the world and our geographic location is snuggled right up to it. A recent BBC story, based on a Canadian federal government report, says the Canadian arctic is warming the fastest followed by the northern prairies and northern B.C., which have warmed 1.7 C (3 F) since 1948 when nation-wide temperatures were first recorded.

“It’s likely that more than half the observed temperature warming in Canada is due to the influence of human activities,” the report states. Human activities. Yikes, that’s us! But are we changing our activities in any significant way? Hardly.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole dismisses climate change as “the obsession of many people on Twitter.” Former US President Donald Trump calls it a “Chinese hoax” and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, or “Captain Chain Saw” as he’s sometimes called, ignores it as he continues to encourage burning the Amazon rain forest.

Meanwhile Lytton has burned and many British Columbians fear that this could be our worst forest fire season yet.

It’s odd the way the reality of climate change can hit you.

I was driving up Victoria Street about 8 p.m. Tuesday and I glanced over at the electronic weather sign by Western Canada Place. It said 40 degrees Celsius and I almost drove off the road!

I’ve been driving past that sign for years and it’s rare to see it read above 30 C. “Something is wrong,” I said to myself. “Surely the sign is broken.” But it wasn’t broken. That was the actual temperature on a scorching Cranbrook evening.

So, I searched the meteorological records to see what the record warm temperature in Cranbrook was supposed to be. Until this week, the record high for Cranbrook at the airport was 36.8 C July 21, 1985. Now it’s 40 C (103 F) recorded at the airport June 29.

Well, something is broken all right. And that’s us. In our manic rush to consume ever more material things, our society is pushing the natural limits of Mother Earth to the breaking point. We are, as they say, at the tipping point.

We could pull back just in time or go over the edge into the abyss of who knows where and what but it won’t be a walk in the park. Unofficially, scientists call the geological epoch we’re living in now the Anthropocene because our over-producing and wasteful industrial civilization is now the biggest change agent and polluter on the planet. And most of the changes wrought by man are harmful to the environment and our ever-suffering earth.

In the future, will we curb our material greed and be kinder to Gaia, mother of us all? Or will it be business as usual in a post-Covid world? Something you might want to contemplate as we sit on the brink of another dangerous planetary summer.

The choice is ours.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who’s not sure what way it’s going to go.

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