December 22, 2014

I’ve always had a desire to get out and experience the wild – from early in my youth until today, through the choices I’ve made as an adult. My work at the Wilderness Committee is a continuation of my love of nature, and of my realization that it is at risk and needs defenders.

In my work, I’ve seen how a changing climate is causing serious problems in the wild, and  I understand that nature is part of the solution.

In Minnesota, moose populations plunged at an extraordinary rate because ticks are more prevalent in a warming world. In Manitoba, deer populations all but disappeared because of two extremely cold springs. Polar bears are getting progressively lighter in weight, as they have less time to hunt on sea ice that is forming later and melting earlier in the season.

The boreal forest I call home has traditionally been renewed by forest fires, but increasingly prevalent wildfires will have effects on the boreal ecosystem that we have yet to comprehend. As noted ecologist Frank Egler aptly said in the 1970s, “Ecosystems are not only more complex than we think, they are more complex than we can think.”

In our cities and towns, flooding is a tremendous concern. The rain that hit Reston, Manitoba in 2013 was record-breaking – about 150 mm in just six hours. Unfortunately, despite the number of times the term “flood of the century” has been trotted out in the last decade, Reston’s rain record wasn’t a one-off. In 2014 Reston flooded again, with over 100 mm falling in a weekend.

Winnipeg basements flood as a result of more intense downpours, and water lines freeze with more extreme cold. People’s security – their homes and property – is at risk, and it is frighteningly outside their control.

This is climate change, and we are causing it by releasing carbon through the burning of fossil fuels.

In 2012, the campaign to stop the peat mine rush in Manitoba landed on my desk, with five new peat mine projects looking to start up. After some research, it became apparent that our natural peat bogs and muskeg are a valuable tool for Manitoba – they are incredibly carbon rich. If we open up those bogs to development, such as peat mining, the carbon is released.

The Manitoba government made a smart move by passing legislation to halt most of the new peat mines. By protecting our wilderness, we combat climate chaos.

In August 2013, a plan was announced to ship crude oil by rail through Churchill, northern Manitoba and Hudson Bay. We knew through our research that shipping crude oil through these fragile northern environments was way too risky. But we also found that melting permafrost in the north was wreaking havoc on the rail line, and that melting permafrost was a result of global warming. Stopping the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure is an important step in the process of limiting our burning of fossil fuels.

All this leads me to why wilderness-loving folks like me are fighting the Energy East pipeline proposal. I don’t do this work to fight oil, but there is no way a reasonable person can look at the situation our world is in and support fossil fuel expansion.

Energy East, which is proposed to transport tar sands oil from Alberta to Quebec and New Brunswick, is a major expansion of our fossil fuel infrastructure. Expanding fossil fuel infrastructure leads to more extraction and exports from the tar sands, which facilitates the release of more climate-changing greenhouse gases, like carbon. Releasing more carbon into the atmosphere leads to climate chaos.

Energy East is a direct link to the climate crisis, and it’s hitting us right here at home in Manitoba.

Please check out our Energy East page to find out more about the proposed project, and see how you can help keep this tar sands pipeline from pushing our planet further into peril.

For the wild,

Eric