Some stories just make a person want to jump on her 2-stroke and burn circles in the street.
Environmentalist David Suzuki, best known for his television programs on nature and the environment, is ready to step out of spotlight and live the simple life, lamenting that he has not had a greater impact.
I admit, though, the news has this one-time “Nature of Things environmentalist” feeling a little nostalgic…
I recall the summer of my epiphany and the moment I backed away from the doomsday cultists.
It happened during a sermon delivered to the helpless residents of Southeast Saskatchewan on the disaster about to befall them, if someone – anyone – did not throw their bodies of legislative work before the bulldozers destroying the fragile ecosystem of the Moose Mountain waterway.
The province was national news. We were glued to our sets as the Rafferty-Alameda dam project was hotly debated by personalities and premiers, reporters and researchers, lawyers and locals – often standing with endless seas of prairie grass in the background.
What the television cameras never showed was the glorious Moose Mountain.
I grew up a mile from the river of the damned. I had splashed in it with friends, ridden the banks on horseback. Each spring the snow melt in the hills of its headwaters flooded the banks, and you could catch the brave little jackfish that raced up from the Souris. Small and not worth eating, they were still good for a bit of sport on a warm summer day. Catch and release.
Not that it mattered – the creek froze to the bottom every winter.
When his speech was over, Dr. David Suzuki drove back to the airport, climbed in a jet and flew to his next performance; the national media packed up the cameras, and the great destroyer Grant Devine just went ahead and built the thing anyway.
Left in privacy, the water behind a dam that opponents declared would never fill collected into a lake in the space of a few months.
Today, Dr. Suzuki’s one-time congregation in the dry Southeast enjoys a recreation area and water reservoir, the good people of North Dakota are protected from flooding, while a new generation of “greenies” proselytize the religion of “sustainable agriculture” to farmers who have successfully cropped land for over a century.
And upstream from the Rafferty-Alameda dam, “Moose Creek” still floods its banks in the spring and goes stale by late summer, as it has for thousands of years.
Background – Against the flow – Rafferty-Alameda and Politics of the Environment
“I once stood with a member of the local chapter of the Wildlife Federation, watching fish trying to swim up the sheet of flowing water over the concrete low-level crossing in your photo. She commented about the “stupid fish, trying to go upstream.”
LOL
You do realize you were witnessing those fish swim at “Haddow’s” after the Alameda dam construction downstream was long completed? That was the point of my piece – nothing changed on that creek, other than the creation of a lake and recreation area near Alameda.
(Besides, those were suckers. Not sport fish)
Re environment – NDP want to bring down the govt, so place your vote at globalnationsltv.com and give Jack a headache.
Me No Dhimmi:
That lunatic lady you’re referring to is Rachel Marsden.
She didn’t long with the NP (Lord be praised). I believe she’s now writing for the Toronto Sun. I’ve read her a few times. She’s not worth reading IMHO.
rabbit: Isn’t that what (who) I said? 😉
“We still don’t get it, that the simple acts of eating a pizza reverberates around the world.”
Sounds like he’s had a falling out with Michael Moore, as well.
Nemo2:
Yeah, but I said it with far more elegance. Real panache, I thought, except for that missing word.
Screw DAVID SUZUKI and the rest of the tree hugging eco-freaks that he assoctiates with
David Suzuki cant be that smart. he worked for CBC long enough that if he had retired sooner he could have become Governor General.
David Suzuki cant be that smart. he worked for CBC long enough that if he had retired sooner he could have become Governor General.
Davids retiring??
Oh-no the sky is falling!
Yes, Kate, I know that was long after the dam was completed and the reservoir was full and the recreation area on it was busy with people fishing. You’ll note that I’m not criticizing the dam, nor cheering Suzuki. Just mentioning that the creek may be more important to fish and wildlife than many of us realize, in spite of the fact that it dries up and the remaining ponds freeze to the bottom. And I would also mention: if so many of us don’t even know how the fish use the creek, how can we be so sure that our agroecosystem isn’t using those suckers somehow?
(Cue joke about me being a sucker…)
Jema54 – I don’t have cattle, but my folks did, and I know cattle ranchers take far better care of land than the Wildlife Federation did for many years, just buying land and idling it. I don’t know the situation in the Yukon, but I agree, there is harm done by environmentalists who just want to seal off land into “parks” and “reserves.” Like the Buffalograss Reserve by Estevan, where the Environment Department killed off much of the buffalograss they were trying to protect. They fenced it out of the pasture, and the other grasses grew a heavy thatch and choked it out.
David Suzuki: “I feel like we are in a giant car heading for a brick wall at 100 miles an hour and everyone in the car is arguing where they want to sit. For God’s sake, someone has to say put the brakes on and turn the wheel.”
Having said that, I think it’s time to retire! Someone else will stop the car.
I can’t believe that commie trool saskboy is still trying to get people that visit this site to go over to his, must be tuff to have no traffic.
From CBCpravda–man they should have edited these, these are too good to be true.
On Global Warming.
The report says Canada would initially see positive effects if the temperature rises between 2 and 3 C, including:
A higher agricultural output as a result of a longer growing season.
During the cold months, there would be a lower winter mortality rate. Also, there would be lower heating costs in the winter because of the warmer temperatures, but hotter summers would offset those savings.
Higher temperatures would also be seen as a potential boost to tourism.
Shorter winters and a smaller amount of “sea-ice” would increase summer Arctic transportation that would allow access to natural resources.
On the negative end, the report notes:
North America may experience the “most rapid rates of warming with serious consequences for biodiversity and local livelihoods.”
The cost of extreme weather events — storms, floods, droughts, heat waves — could cost up to one per cent of world GDP by 2050.
“Melting permafrost raises the cost of protecting infrastructure and oil and gas installations from summer subsidence.”
Warmer weather would threaten polar bears and other Arctic mammals and the people who rely on them.
Canada would have a longer growing season, but thinner snow cover “risks making winter wheat crops vulnerable.”
Did Dr. Dave ever …well you know …do anything useful ??
Anything?
Did Dr. Dave ever …well you know …do anything useful ??
Anything?
Other than groundbreaking research into the mechanisms of genetic mutations (and the effect of environmental change on mutation)? Other than writing a leading text in genetics that has educated tens of thousands of researchers? Other than being a relentless proponent of science and scientific ideas, something we have so little of?
I know that around here (outside the reality-based community) stuff like concrete research achievements and the real benefits that science brings to humanity matter a lot less than what your political affiliations are, but try to think of it from the point of view of someone who’s not a zealot.