Musings and observations from an old timer
I have observed climate change! We don’t get such cold temperatures anymore. When I was 14, living northeast of Edmonton, the school was closed only once, for one week. The temperature was -67 F, warming up to -50 F. At the same time in Snag, Yukon, the temperature was -83 F. This was in the 1940s.
Since the ice age we have had climate change. The whole country was covered with ice a mile thick. The axis of the Earth is tilting slightly as it orbits the sun so we are getting a little more warmth in the northern hemisphere and less in the south. Just recently in Australia for the first time in living memory, kangaroos were hopping about in snow covered landscape. While no one can deny changes are taking place over a long period of time, we have to take care of our planet. In the meantime our oceans produce about 70 per cent of our oxygen and we definitely are ont looking after the oceans. Plastic in all sizes, from large pieces to minuscule particles as it breaks down, proliferates in our waters.
We, in Canada, are quite good at doing things for our environment but we only produce just over 1.5 per cent of pollution in the world, but at the same time we are transporting train loads of coal to other countries to be burned in electric power plants! We should be doing a lot more fostering LNG, which, while not a total answer, would be replacing coal-fired power plants, dropping the pollution by 70 per cent. More problems? When my wife and I were married in 1951 the world’s population was two billion, now it is 7 1/3 billion. Talk about a strain on our resources. On a brighter note, with the longer growing season in the north, Canada could become one of the major food producers of the world.
Lorne Combs
Duncan