On the Road Again 2014 interium

Last year, when I headed west, I ended up going through Jasper because of the extensive flooding from Canmore to Calgary. While perhaps I could have got through by going south through Lethbridge, It seemed to me that the last thing anyone needed was one more person passing through a region that was experiencing such stress. By the time the flooding was finished, hundreds of people had been displaced for a period of time, some had lost their homes completely and millions of dollars of damage had been done by the raging river. The Calgary Stampede, in large measure because of the good flood planning of the City of Calgary, the leadership of the administration of the city and the hard work of thousands of volunteers happened on schedule.

The Bow River did not this year overflow its banks. Canmore, High River and Calgary did not experience any flooding, but the residents of Brandon, Winnipeg and other smaller communities have experienced the trauma of anticipating and then living through their homes and livelihood  being put at risk. For a small handful of farms, their fields have been flooded intentionally so that other more populated areas could be saved.

While the destruction to property and the resultant chaos in peoples lives should be of concern to everyone, of more significance is how some people are starting to discuss how to resolve the problem of flooding. While there is a general acceptance that the change in weather patterns is a direct result of the amount of pollutants humans are putting into the environment, some people are now arguing that there is nothing we can do about reversing the trend; that we have missed that window of opportunity to start to resolve the problem; that all we can do now is to find ways of living with the changes in the climate and mediate the consequences as best we are able.

It seems to me that if this attitude starts to assume dominance within government circles, we will spend billions and billions of infrastructure dollars building improved flood gates, dikes and diversion lanes. We will create and staff complex emergency response systems that will, as much as possible, reduce the stress on people, their property and their businesses. While these are worthy projects, they should not be the priority.  To do so is to give up. To focus on strategies and structures of how to live with the increase in extreme weather is to accept that we have no responsibility in creating the problem.  If we refuse to accept responsibility of having created the problem - we will never accept the obligation to fix it. If our focus becomes on how to live with the change as opposed to stopping and then reversing the change, then we will be at war with our environment forever.

No one ever really ever wins a war.