Those of us in rural British Columbia are bracing for the ravages of climate change that will bear down upon us with a vengeance this year (if the government and its experts are to be believed).
We brace knowing that the Emperor Wears No Clothes.
The premier and the ministers (Ralston of Forests, Ma of Emergency Management & Climate Readiness, Cullen of Land, Water Resource Stewardship, and Heyman, Environment) present publicly with compassion and concern.
They wear the cloak of legitimacy.
All are urging citizen proactivity — firesmarting, purchasing water storage capacity, upgrading irrigation methods.
Funding is announced for this or that “resiliency-building” endeavour, all of which must be applied for through complex bureaucratic structures and grant applications that do not and cannot ensure “resiliency” before the crunch and crisis we will see.
Every single emperor in the tacit service of timber, with loyalty to timber, is refusing to audibly and publicly acknowledge that in private, at the cabinet table and in their own ministerial offices, each one knows that poor forestry practices, and “forest stewardship” (absent rigorous checks and balances and the absent any concern for conflicts of interests - fox guarding the henhouse stuff) has exacerbated every single risk that rural British Columbians face: fire, drought and flood.
The experts have spoken for decades.
Rural British Columbians have spoken.
Poor forestry stewardship exacerbates existential risks to rural British Columbians.
And yet, although we are shouting and sounding the alarms, speaking to what we witness and experience while living close to the land, coping as best as we can with the ravages that bear down upon us and threaten our homes and quality of life, our leaders, the emperors, pretend that there is zero connection between poor forestry practice and our elevated risks.
Never does the premier or minister of forests acknowledge that the ministry of forests knows the risks associated with practices such as clearcutting in watersheds or adjacent to communities.
They will not acknowledge that forestry practices alter the humidity levels within the fine fuels, soils, humus, and coarse fuels, ramping up the intensity of the inevitable fires.
Never do they acknowledge that forestry practices in watersheds alter the movement and volume of water to both aquifers and water bodies down valley.
Nor do they acknowledge that changing the vegetation of the land’s surface alters rates of evapotranspiration.
Never is there an admission that savaging the understory plants and mosses of the land’s surface undermine the capacity of the forest to hold back the waters of the atmospheric rivers or rapid “never before seen” melts of the snowpack.
In short, the emperors maintain a pretence that the forest practices they embrace to bolster government coffers (disproportionately to be spent ensuring quality of life in urban/metropolitan British Columbia) does not jeopardize quality of life, and our existence ‘in the sticks,’ up close and personal to our beautiful, resource-rich Crown lands.
Let us face the reality: Rural British Columbia exists to service the Kingdom built on the exploitation of the Crown resources on the Crown lands amongst which we have constructed our lives.
If our communities burn along the way, well, that is a price the emperors decided should be paid for the greater good, and by that I mean the vote rich Lower Mainland and Southern Vancouver Island, and their need for great hospitals, affordable housing, safe injection sites, transit, bike lanes, parks, public safety, bridges and highways, museums, and universities.
Urban British Columbia matters most, full stop.
If our farms and homes run out of water, again, whatever, we can finance the purchase of water storage tanks and drilling new deeper wells, on our own dime, rather than on the taxpayer’s dime.
If there are flood events from water pouring off logged slopes, up valley, again, there is private insurance secured on our individual dime, and if climate change makes our lands and homes uninsurable, well that is the price that we in rural British Columbia must bear for the greater good.
We bear the risks of resource exploitation, and urban British Columbia reaps the rewards.
Truth be told the premier and cabinet could choose to protect rural British Columbia from amplified risks rooted in climate change by shutting down forestry practices absolutely determined to compromise the land’s resiliency, and yet, the calculus has been done, both political and financial, that more is to be gained off that shoddy forestry than will be spent, in the long run coping with fire, drought and flood.
The emperor knows that in the main, it is individuals who bear the personally experienced costs and losses borne of shoddy forestry practices, not the province.
Their job is done, social licence achieved. All it takes is a photogenic wringing of their hands in front of the cameras at the fire storm edge, on sodden flooded grounds, or in parched hayfields.
Danica Djordjevich
