Brantford-The Expositor-Editorial: "Our survival depends on changes to lifestyle, values"

Our survival depends on changes to lifestyle, values
Posted By BARRY HILL
Posted 6 days ago


I recently had the privilege to attend a conference entitled "A Trans boundary dialogue on Climate Change and Water in the Great Lakes Basin." The aim of the symposium was to understand the impacts of climate change within the Great Lakes Basin and its ensuing impacts on aboriginal communities within that discussion area.

However, as one examines facts put forth by learned experts in the area of climatology, the impacts can and most likely will be felt by everyone, regardless of home community, in that watershed.

An underlying theme to the day's discussions revolved around the impacts that both nature and man have wrought upon the habitat of aboriginal peoples that have forced them to become acculturated to continual change. Has this experience prepared them for the future?

First of all, let's examine some of the facts.

Environment Canada has prepared a report, "Coastal Zone Management under a Changing Climate in the Great Lakes," which outlined anticipated impacts in the Great Lakes basin based on observations taken at various times over the 20th century.

Generally speaking, for all areas, air temperature is expected to increase, both annually and seasonally. Precipitation will increase, combined with an increase in intensity and frequency of heavy rainfall events. Wind speeds will possibly be higher, leading to an increase in extreme weather events, including more frequent and more intense winter storms. Finally, water temperatures will increase and lake levels will decline.

For the Lake Erie Coastal Zone, the area closest to us both physically and emotionally, as air temperatures increase, we will see longer summers, longer growing seasons, leading to a wider range of locally grown foods. On the opposite end, however, storms will bring erosion and floods, possibly more

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frequent and severe droughts with possible reduction in available water for irrigation. New crop varieties may be developed to offset some of these variabilities.

While a longer ice-free season can expand shipping, lack of ice cover will lead to increased evaporation, lowering lake levels by as much as 15 to 81 centimetres annually, negatively impacting shipping at the same time as abetting it. But what about our ecology?

A one-metre drop in lake levels could, according to Environment Canada, result in a lakeward movement of the shoreline by as much as six kilometres, due to the shallowness of the lake. According to Linda Mortsch, senior researcher with Environment Canada, a 1.5-metre drop in Lake Erie water level could reduce the inner bay at Long Point by 32%, resulting in lost bird and fish habitat and the development of a dryland vegetation profile.

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So what can we do? Is there a response that can be developed? How do we build the capacity to respond to climate change and the impacts that may be imposed upon us in our own part of the world?

Professor Rob de Loe of Laurier University proposed a strategy for building capacity to adapt. It begins with all of us agreeing that there is a problem and that we must assume and assign clearly defined roles and responsibilities for action.

Until the problems are part of mainstream awareness, developing an adequate response will be difficult.

Which brings us back to the beginning of this discussion. What can we do to prepare ourselves to adapt and what can we learn from the aboriginal peoples who have a long history of adapting to changing circumstances?

We must begin by realizing we are not separate from nature, we are part of nature. Like it or not, we are part of a continuum, often expressed as being at least seven generations in duration. We have lost respect for nature and think only in terms of nature's bounty as resources -- the very name, resources, inspires exploitation.

A quotation included in the Environment Canada booklet I cited earlier states "Climate Change isn't coming. It's here and it's in our own backyard. We need to find ways to adapt to it; we need to find ways to win."

While the statement is true to a point, it's assuming we can design our way out of this predicament, that we can "win." As a person who looks to solutions from an engineering viewpoint, I can recognize now the flaws in this statement. We cannot install a bigger pipe or larger pump to fix our predicament. Our capacity for change must come from within.

We must make a profound shift in the way we deal with our natural world. We must begin be realizing the only true change we can make is in ourselves.

Only by working together in the right frame of mind can we bring about the capacity to create the changes we need to undertake in our lifestyle.

Climate change is the end result of our energy rich over-consuming society.

Lifestyle and values must change. Our survival may well depend on it.

Barry Hill is a member of The Expositor's Community Editorial Board.

Distributed without profit to ESA Great Lakes District members for environmental education.