As a regional lifestyle publication we generally avoid the doom, gloom and negativity of what’s known in the business as “hard news.” In fact, we rather pride ourselves on offering a respite from the nerve-jangling reports in the morning newspaper and on supper-hour television.

But global warming is different. It threatens to impact lifestyle: a bit of a Hobson’s choice really—our lifestyles will be impacted if we deal with it; and our lifestyles will be impacted if we don’t.

And so, in addition to all the media hype and political hyperbole you’ve been hearing and reading, we (almost apologetically) offer a regional look at the issue, a straightforward attempt to give you some sense of what your grandchildren will face (assuming they’re not all growing up in Calgary).

Not surprisingly for a place surrounded by water, the major regional issue relates to coastline erosion. Specifically, the north coast of PEI, the east coast of New Brunswick, the Atlantic coastline of Nova Scotia, the inner Bay of Fundy, and a few isolated sensitive areas in both Newfoundland and Labrador.

What is projected is really an accelerating exacerbation of what has already been happening, for most of Atlantic Canada has been sinking for a very long time with the corresponding rise in sea level.

So that’s what will impact people for the most part.

But those of us who like to remain close to nature see other ominous signs, mainly with regard to fish and forests. We know that the southerly extremes of habitat for Atlantic salmon, for instance, have been moving north for several decades. We know that our indigenous cold-water salmonid species are already in decline and being steadily displaced by non-indigenous warm-water species. We also know that warming temperatures will impact annual spring runoff, around which a great many natural systems function. And we know that the forest fire threat will increase, and species mix will change.
These natural changes will also touch our lives.

What we are seeing currently is an issue capturing the public imagination. Global warming has replaced the global communicable disease threat, which replaced the global terrorism threat, which replaced the global overpopulation threat, which replaced the global nuclear annihilation threat…

The risk is that it will become a mere trend, likely to last only until the next trend. We saw a flurry of panic into smaller vehicles when gasoline prices spiked—then it abated when prices stabilized.

Human nature is fickle. Global warming is real.

~ Linda & Jim Gourlay
e-mail: gourlays@saltscapes.com
 

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