Fire

Trying to stay sane. Trying to find something effective to do. There are wildfires all over the province and no rain in the forecast...The smoke is surreal. Our fate depends on which way the wind blows.

All I feel capable of is taking care of myself, keeping the kids happy, making sure the gardens are well watered, and having an evacuation bag ready, just in case.

BC has declared a State of Emergency. From our windows, we can see smoke from the fire at Trozzo Creek just over the mountain ridge to our East.

And through all the smoke and strangeness, there's only one question worth asking in this terrifying moment: Do we want a future for our kids or not? And if we do, what are we going to do about it?

Yesterday afternoon I attended a Zoom meeting put on by 350 Canada. You can find the recording here.

The organizers point out that we are in a powerful moment. In Canada a federal election is expected to be called and, with extreme weather everywhere, the climate emergency is top of mind for so many of us.

The intense heat and forest fires have caused over 500 recent deaths. People are losing their homes and many are on evacuation alert. 

Decades of government inaction on climate change got us here. Not once have we reached a Paris climate target. And still, our governments are planning expansion of  fossil fuel industries, subsidized with our tax dollars. And against this backdrop, our genocidal history and abuses of aboriginal people are in our faces. Our government has failed us.

Hopefully voters have reached a tipping point. It's beyond time to put the pressure on our politicians.

On July 29th, 350 Canada is urging us to take action big or small all across Canada, and I hope you'll participate. Whether you demonstrate outside your MP's office or post to social media, it's time to let our politicians know that fossil fuel expansion must stop now. We need to get serious about a just transition to the green future we want.

In the upcoming federal election, please pledge to vote for authentic climate champions. Not the ones who say the right words while they buy pipelines, give the fossil fuel industry billions of our tax dollars, and fight the regulation of our logging industry. Not the ones who missed every Paris climate target. Or the ones who can't even agree that climate change is real. 

We're all in this together. If we're concerned about the future the kids in our lives will inherit, it's time to act. It doesn't matter what we do for a living, we've all participated in the mess we've created. We also haven't had much of a choice. When the fossil fuel industry pumps the media full of misinformation and lobbies our politicians, the reality they paint for us is a lot different from what we have on the ground.

In honour of a better future, I'm going to take action and I'm going to vote for climate champions. I hope you will too.