Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Alberta: floods, oil and politics

Last week Alberta got a first-hand taste of increasing climate weirdness. There is some irony here: the economy of the province, and increasingly of the country, is driven by putting  more carbon into the atmosphere.

Honesty moment: even though my own life is quite green, I admit that I depend on government pensions. My hands are not as clean as I would like them to be.

The city of Calgary coped magnificently. Natural disasters  seem to bring out the best in people. Community spirit abounds, volunteers are plentiful, and so on. For more on this phenomenon, see Rebecca Solnit's "A Paradise built in hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster."

The government piped in with lavish promises and "never mind the deficit". 

Now, I am all in favour of giving people a hand up after a natural disaster. But I can't help thinking of other people who have been made homeless in Alberta. Where is the compensation when the loss is caused not by nature, but by industry?
http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/03/02/Tar-Sand-Pollution-Refugees/


1 comment:

troutbirder said...

The small uproar here is over "fracking". So the billionairs can extract oil from North Dakota, Eastern Montana and Canada.