Connecting the Dots: More Oil Out-Faster Climate Change

From time beyond memory, rivers and streams have created networks across this land. In recent centuries roads and rails have woven new networks crossing over, and sometimes under, these rivers and streams. Today, a whole new network is being created. It is a network of pipelines that will criss-cross nearly every province and territory. Perhaps you have heard of the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline in British Columbia, the Keystone XL line through Alberta and Saskatchewan extending into to the United States, the risky reversal of Line 9 from Sarnia eastward, or the proposed Energy East Pipeline project. The later will convert Trans -Canada’s 40 year old gas pipeline to an oil pipeline to carry diluted oil to ports in eastern Canada and beyond that to other countries. New pipelines are being considered to travel through parts of the three Prairie Provinces, southern Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. This proposed and already- partially- existing network will create a greater threat to our streams, rivers, lakes, underground aquifers, and oceans than anything previously developed.   We need only to connect the dots to see this network. All of the earth community, including humans, are increasingly at risk.

• We, Sisters of St. Joseph, value the sacredness of creation in all its life-forms.
• We acknowledge our call to tend to creation with respect, love and honour.
• We recognize that every form of life offers its own unique gifts and vulnerability.
• We recognize our responsibility to protect water, land, plant, animal, and human life.

Despite promises of effective new technology for prevention and clean-up of spills or leaks, we believe that increased oil production and transportation threaten to pollute and destroy life.  We call ourselves and others to connect the dots. Doing so will reveal the relationships between this network of pipelines, the consequent increased tar sands/oil sands development, increased global carbon emissions and more rapid and potentially destructive climate change.

We live in a society that values personal material profit and benefits over the common good and over the principles of equality and the sacredness of life. As a society we do not know or acknowledge when enough is enough. Neither do we recognize the reality of limitations to the earth’s physical resources. We accept behaviour that ignores the needs of future generations and dismiss the incredible, irreversible extinction of life currently occurring.

When will we have the wisdom and courage to really connect the dots, to limit our use of oil and oil-based products, to recognize ‘enough’?

Priscilla Solomon CSJ
Federation Ecology Committee

Wing Beats of Hope

Monarchs ~ our Fragile Prophets

At Villa St. Joseph Retreat & Ecology Centre in Cobourg we would always look forward to the arrival of the Monarchs in late summer and early fall. Their orange and black wings, exquisitely patterned, would be everywhere. If you walked near the Mountain Ash tree by the verandah the branches would suddenly flutter alive in a breathtaking dance of winged beauty and dazzling life.  Each year their numbers have been dwindling and we have had the sense something was deeply out of balance

The recent Mexican postings reveal that the forest hibernation colonies have once again sharply decreased. There remain only nine hibernating colonies. Last year there was a total area of 7.4 acres and this year it dropped to 2.94 acres. This is a 59% decrease in population in one year. In 1997 there was 44 acres of colonies.

Why does it matter?

Monarchs lead the most spectacular and incredible migration journey of any species, traversing thousands of kilometres navigating territory they have never seen. These iconic butterflies are key pollinators for many species besides milkweeds. And as the same habitats for monarchs, are essential for other pollinators, they are fragile prophets we need to heed. Without pollinators our own food sources will come under risk. What can we do?

What Can We Do?

There is a day of Action and Contemplation for the Monarchs and Other Imperilled Pollinators from dusk on Sunday, April 13^th (Palm Sunday) to dusk on Monday April 14^th (Rachel Carson’s death anniversary). See: http://www.makewayformonarchs.org

Monarch Waystations:   At Villa St. Joseph Ecology Centre we have left significant parts of our fields uncut to preserve the milkweeds for the nurture of monarchs .We are now a designated Monarch Waystation with signage, bearing witness. But anyone can create a designated Waystation, in a backyard, a congregational home, a church. There are lots of other plants that provide sustenance for monarchs. Check out: http://monarchwatch.org

Let us make wing beats of hope this Easter and heed our fragile prophets. Rachel Carson will surely bless us and the monarchs!

Linda Gregg, CSJ

Photo: Margaret Magee

Wacky Weather's Wake-Up Warning

We’ve all witnessed the spring and summer temperature highs and lows this year, with weather swings up and down in quick succession from below seasonal to above seasonal. News of global flooding occurs more frequently, dramatically touching us recently in Calgary and Toronto. Weather events give credence and prompt personal wondering and perhaps worrying about the impending impact of climate change.

Daily newscasts alert us to the on-going phenomenon of unusual weather patterns. “Global weather patterns seem to get stranger and stranger with each passing year. Almost every day now, the news is telling us about some bizarre weather event that hasn’t happened ‘in 100 years’ going on in some area of the globe.” Michael Snyder American Dream June 5, 2013

A thought provoking article, entitled Food shortage looms for entire world, by the world published independent journalist Gwynne Dwer appeared in the Saturday, June 20, 2013 issue of the London Free Press in its comment section. In his article, Gwynne Dwer’s asserts, in a reader friendly manner, how extreme weather threatens the world’s food supply.

One of the best definitions of food security is provided by The Food and Agricultural Organization. The FAO is a specialized UN organization whose mission is to defeat hunger defines food security.                                                                                             

“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, [social] and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”. (FAO, 1996). The term “Social” was added to the 1996 definition in 2002.

The Environment and Climate Change

Climate change is just one expression of how our unbridled consumption of oil is harming people and the planet. More widely, our dependence on fossil fuels is connected to human rights abuses, conflicts, and economic inequality.

Climate change is an ominous reminder that there are limits to what human beings should be doing in earth community. Unfortunately, at this point, the impacts of climate change are occurring primarily in the global South, and they are too easily ignored by the societies of the global North, which are primarily responsible for causing it. The 2009 Global Humanitarian Report, The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis, notes that every year climate change leaves over 300,000 people dead, forces some 50 million additional people to go hungry and drives over 10 million additional people into extreme poverty.

As such, climate change is a critical moral issue for the people of the global North, including Canada. We must learn to live within the limits of what is sustainable for all in earth community, and we must look to the people of the global South to help us to see what needs to change in our patterns of living.

The United Nations conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen, December 2009 failed to take any significant steps forward in terms of addressing climate change. In response to this failure, President Evo Morales of Bolivia initiated The Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, April 19-22, 2010. Close to 35,000 people (Indigenous Peoples, NGOs, political leaders and citizens from every continent) met in Cochabamba, Bolivia to identify and begin working toward the deep transformations that are needed if we are to find solutions to climate change.