when a majority of the people who have had "direct lived experience that has been demolished as a consequence of our poor environmental stewardship" decide they won't put up with the abuse anymore.
if past is prologue, tht will not be any time soon.
@boris Howe Sound is a little less at risk I think/hope. But yeah, if a fire got going on one of the islands I suspect it'd probably take almost every square inch.
@timbray@boris places like Hoh Rainforest in Washington have a scary amount of material when they dry out. a few years back they had, effectively, huge sprinklers running to keep it damp when there were fires nearby. doesn't work with seawater though.
@timbray@boris there was a fire here on Galiano in 2006 that, amazingly, was limited to burning 100 acres or so of forest. Not eager to see what happens next time.
@timbray Never. I was visiting my hard-right infowars/etc listening parents yesterday and it seems the narrative has shifted from "there is no such thing as global warming" to "They(tm)* are geoengineering and controlling the weather. They have been doing a bit too much lately though." All reason is lost.
*They being some kind of conspiracy theorist amalgamation of antisemitism, hate towards Democrats, and etc.
@timbray this creates such an awful tension for me as a twenty-something, the desire to see all the gorgeous far away places before they’re all burned down or washed away, and the dire need to stop doing unnecessary and silly things that create massive pollution. There’s no winning, only bad compromises and losing from here on out…
@timbray I spent so many years visiting and passing through Lytton, from hitchhiking through to hike the Stein, to the kitten we nearly adopted at the café, to farmer friends living up the road or across the river... it was always a marker of the northern desert rim, friendly and generous people, and a hard history that lingered like the dust.
The day that it was the hottest spot on the planet --49.5-- and the fire raced through in minutes, gutted nearly the whole town, struck very close to home and made me realize how volatile BC weather will be. How it was not a complete wake-up call to the government is bewildering.
@timbray It’s absolutely hitting me hard too. We visit there 1-2 times a year. Have a bunch of locals that are now good friends, and this hurts. It hurts that no one listened about the power lines. It hurts that our elected officials have done next to nothing about climate change. It hurts that my people are now in pain.
It shouldn’t take something horrible like this to make change, but I hope we do see some change come from this.
@timbray We have several friends in Lahaina who survived but have lost everything. Many of the favorite places we’ve eaten at or visited are gone. We lived there for all of last Jan/Feb and are in the middle of selling our house (a mile from the fire) to a local family. No idea what happens next. No cell, internet or power…
Almost all of them are the people determined to NOT stop. (E.g., Alberta and renewables this year.)
The not-yet-present realization—it's been factual for decades, but is as yet true in the understanding of few—that we're dead anyway could be where useful change begins, but that means bloody revolution. And we're not there yet.
@timbray Sending you ... what? Support, sympathy, hugs? It all feels so inadequate. Just want to acknowledge that I've heard you and agree that we need to say stop - but even that feels inadequate. I'm sorry you're feeling bruised. It must be horrible.
@timbray Previously I'd felt it would take the US experiencing NEW "foreign" disasters to get them to take action, eg not just more tornados etc but previously unheard of stuff.
This year they've had a taste of what we've been getting with >400 air quality and towns burning down... but I don't get the feeling anything's going to change.
I guess Covid should have taught me not to expect... they could politicize a paper bag.
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