We all breathe the same air.
We drink the same water.
We live on the same land.
Earth is one system, home to a myriad of living organisms from the tiniest toad to the tallest tree. Every living thing is part of it and, for that matter, even the non-living entities are part of it. We are constantly exchanging atoms with our surroundings.
And while we may draw lines on a map and say “this is my country” or “this is my province” or even “this is my land,” those lines don’t really matter to the physical world. Rivers run across borders. Landscapes are not marked by dotted lines.
I say this because what happens here affects there and what happens there affects here.
A forest fire in B.C. can produce smoke across the prairies. A forest fire in Siberia can result in health consequences for people in Prince George. Dust from the Sahara is picked up and deposited on the islands of the Caribbean. Pesticides from China blow onto the west coast.
We live on one planet and we have to share. (Something we were all supposed to learn in Kindergarten!)
When people say they aren’t an environmentalist, they are ignoring that fact.
But perhaps more troubling is the dichotomy which has developed both at a social level and a political level where we juxtapose the environment with the economy.
We can’t have an economy if we don’t have an environment. This has been made apparent in Prince George over the past 30 years.
Climate change allowed the pine beetles to infest forests and destroy large tracts of land. The bitter cold snaps of November and/or January necessary to kill the beetles have disappeared.
The consequence was a lot of dead pine beetle infected wood and so, in response, the government ramped up the allowable cut, knowing full well the environment was not going to regrow trees fast enough to replace the excess cut.
I had a conversation about this years ago with the chief forester. The plan and predictions were shared with everyone involved.
But we are only now seeing the impacts of climate change on the forest industry as there are curtailments in cuts and a lack of fibre.
Environmental impacts can take a long time to manifest in the economy, which is why it is sometimes hard to see the connections.
But we will need to grow more trees. And preferably not monocultures. We will need to be good stewards of the environment in order to have a sustainable economy for the future.
And yes, the above is a simplistic analysis but even a more thorough analysis comes to the same conclusions. Further, similar arguments can be made for any industry.
We all need to think about both the environment and the economy because they depend on each other.
Todd Whitcombe is a chemistry professor at UNBC.
