My last flight north took me first over green near PHL, then mottled round MSP, then fully brown and gold and ripe over YEG. Oats, canola, wheat, buckwheat all radiating the fall color pallet dominate the pocked surface north and west of here. It occurred to me at an altitude of 30,000 feet, in a CRJ 900, that another year had nearly passed - a summer so filled and yet so fleeting, it still leaves me spinning.
It has been some time since my last post. Months, even, and I was on a frivolous bent. While I struggle with time management issues, this particular urge to write is inspired by something that is important to me.
Typically, these fall field research trips to Alberta are my favorites. I love the temperatures, lack of bugs, blazing yellow leaves against strikingly blue skies. The field station is quiet and it is ours. This trip, the spidery images of oil pads and roads dotting and fracturing the landscape across Saskatchewan and Alberta bump me out of my happy autumn field work thoughts and into, instead, thoughts of oil sands, corruption, and pollution. I find no way to avoid it. In Alberta, even though we wander through beautiful wetlands when not driving around in our F150, we marinade in bigger thoughts of environmental destruction as we contend with road construction, pollution, massive constructs being pushed and pulled up 63, stench, haze, and blatant destruction. We are out in the middle of 'nowhere' and yet are accosted. Sadly, I've seen the direct and indirect effects of the oil sands industry, and in all reality, no one can deny the catastrophe in Alberta, already.
Stopping the XL pipeline will not stop the destruction in the Oil Sands Region or in any way improve the 'dirty' inefficient aspect of the crude production up there, but it is a damn fine line to draw. For me it has become symbolic: a symbol of our dependence, our corrupted politics, our myopia at the very least. Overwhelming evidence indicates the pipeline is an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen for more reasons than one, there is precedent, but my faith in Obama is small in this regard. His environmental issues track-record is woefully unsatisfactory. And yet, there is always hope, even when the skies are tinged with an unnatural hue somewhere between orange and red. The pipeline can still move forward, the oil sands can and will still be mined, but in the end, how long can we abuse the environment with our use of fossil fuels? The world is in serious flux not just in Alberta or in the prairies in peril. And the spiral widens.
It has been some time since my last post. Months, even, and I was on a frivolous bent. While I struggle with time management issues, this particular urge to write is inspired by something that is important to me.
Typically, these fall field research trips to Alberta are my favorites. I love the temperatures, lack of bugs, blazing yellow leaves against strikingly blue skies. The field station is quiet and it is ours. This trip, the spidery images of oil pads and roads dotting and fracturing the landscape across Saskatchewan and Alberta bump me out of my happy autumn field work thoughts and into, instead, thoughts of oil sands, corruption, and pollution. I find no way to avoid it. In Alberta, even though we wander through beautiful wetlands when not driving around in our F150, we marinade in bigger thoughts of environmental destruction as we contend with road construction, pollution, massive constructs being pushed and pulled up 63, stench, haze, and blatant destruction. We are out in the middle of 'nowhere' and yet are accosted. Sadly, I've seen the direct and indirect effects of the oil sands industry, and in all reality, no one can deny the catastrophe in Alberta, already.
1,253 people were arrested on the stoop of the White House last month. Protesting the XL Pipeline, their presence made news and drew support world-wide. I can only think that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have been proud of the civil protests occurring during the unveiling of his monument. Instead of joining them and experiencing the DC criminal justice system, I supported the cause through signed petitions and letters to my representatives, senators, and Barack Obama. Not quite as dramatic, and my voice is still small in this fight, but I am joined by Greats like Desmond Tutu and 7 other Nobel Peace Prize winners. Al Gore, Robert Redford, Mark Ruffalo, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Hansen, Darryl Hannah, Margot Kidder, the NY Times, LA Times, David Suzuki, and countless others also join the anti-XL chorus. Time is running short, and in the shadow of fracking in my own back yard and the stench lingering in my nose from tailings ponds and stack efflux near where we work in Alberta, how can I stay silent.
Stopping the XL pipeline will not stop the destruction in the Oil Sands Region or in any way improve the 'dirty' inefficient aspect of the crude production up there, but it is a damn fine line to draw. For me it has become symbolic: a symbol of our dependence, our corrupted politics, our myopia at the very least. Overwhelming evidence indicates the pipeline is an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen for more reasons than one, there is precedent, but my faith in Obama is small in this regard. His environmental issues track-record is woefully unsatisfactory. And yet, there is always hope, even when the skies are tinged with an unnatural hue somewhere between orange and red. The pipeline can still move forward, the oil sands can and will still be mined, but in the end, how long can we abuse the environment with our use of fossil fuels? The world is in serious flux not just in Alberta or in the prairies in peril. And the spiral widens.The world needs a new paradigm.
No comments:
Post a Comment