4 — Wednesday, Jane 21, 1989 - North Shore News THE FIVE warmest years in the last century have all been in the 1980s, including 3987 and 1988. There is, therefore, a very good chance that the summer of 1989 will be hot too. It might not be. But for the first time, weather has become man-made, like just about everything else in our en- vironment. This means it has also become political. That is, there is a con- nection between what we do here on Earth and what happens to the weather. ee H., umanity’s activities affect the weather. Climate has become interactive. It is as though a tremendous wave of karma was Sollowing in our wake, disrupting the entire worid.’’ We ure responsible. Until now, weuther just was. It might be the work of the gods, but if so, they didn’t tip their hand much to the poor souls below. At the very least, the weather had a mind of its own. Nobody really thought about the framework of weather: climate. Climate was just the way certain places or eras were. Either hot or wet or cold. Climate was alt the seasons strung together over im- mense expanses of time. But now climate itself is becom- ing as Nuid and unpredictable as weather used to be. And weather has been caught in the grip of in- dustrial side-effects — pulled from the sky, as it were. Humanity’s activities affect the weather. Climate has become in- teractive. It is as though a tremen- dous wave of karma was following in our wake, disrupting the entire world. { have been active in the en- vironmental movement, one way or another, since the late sixties, and I do not remember a time when catastrophe seemed to loom on so many horizons. I can see the wave coming in: mountain ranges of garbage, a boiling smogbank on the move, beams of X-rays breaking through the holes in the sky, a weird radio- active glow on the horizon. And dust. Dust from drought. From deserts overwhelming the jungles. From topsoil loose and blowing across parched prairies. This is the side-effect of the worldwide temperature having risen just one degree Farenheit in the last century. For a while there, as the threat Ardagh 986-4366 Personal Injury Hunter Barristers & Solicitors #300-1401 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver Free initial Consultation of nuclear war began to recede, | went through an optimistic phase. This mood, alas, has been badly shaken by the discoveries in the last year about rising ocean Ieveis, a rotting ozone layer, holes in the ionosphere, the extent of the dam- age already inflicted on the world’s tropical rain forests, and the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Two major oil spills along the Pacific coast did little to revive my waning good spirits this last year. When the oi] came up on Wickanninish, it felt almost deja vu. We had known it would come. T expect that as the other predicted disasters come on stream, we'll have that feeling again and again. In New Zealand, doctors already report an increase in skin cancer as the expanding Antarctic ozone hole reaches closer and closer to the nearest populated area. If the ozone hole had opened over Europe or the U.S.A., a state of emergency would have been declared a decade ago. But no. The last 20 years have been characterized by indifference, foot-dragging, intransigence and pig-headedness by most levels of government. Everyone seems determined to carry on business as usual, despite the mounting evidence of a terrible ecological crash coming. Some- times it feels 1 am caught up ina mass sleep-walk. We face the very real possibility of turning our planet into a replica of Venus, an uninhabitable hot- house. Yet here in Canada, we continue to drive to work in cars, to squander energy more carelessly than any people on earth. We have a vested psychological interest in pretending that everything is normal. We really don't want to face the fact that there are going to have to be con- crete changes in lifestyle if we are to survive. In California, the fossil fuel- burning car is to be banned by the year 2009, replaced by electric cars. So far as I know, no politi- cians in Canada are even talking about any such an initiative. And when you think about it, the California plan is not exactly a declaration of an emergency either. Between now and 2009, the Earth’s temperature could rise another degree or two quite easily. Fur- thermore, the rise might be ex- ponential. For Canada not to even have begun to formulate a plan of serious action to deal with the greenhouse c ‘fect is an awful commentary on our state of paral- ysis. Actually, it is worse than parai- ysis. We are moving backwards, the federal government having seen fit to maintain its subsidies for the big energy projects that suck the fossil fuels out of the ground in the first place, therefore spewing their poisonous toxins into the air@ Turner Ferry back in service "B.C. FERRIES’ Queen of Alberni was back in service Sunday on its . Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo run following Friday’s accident in which the vessel crashed into * Nanaimo’s Departure Bay dock. Six people suffered minor inju- ries in the crash. The ferry was carrying a full load of vehicles and passengers when it hit the Nanaimo dock at approximately 2:50 p.m. Friday. B.C. Ferries officials have said, following initial investigation into the incident, that the cause of the accident was mechanical, and no human error was involved. Details of the investigation had not been released to press time. 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