David Schindler, one of Canada’s top water researchers, is wondering why water and climate change are not election issues with the growing challenges and problems Canada is facing.
And what politicians do say, how they’ll curb greenhouse gases is “utter nonsense,” Schindler told a group of people attending the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies’s symposium In Deep: A Conservation About Water held at The Banff Centre, Saturday (Oct. 3).
“The news was preoccupied with forest fires, drought, smoke; most of us felt like we were living in Beijing for the month of August, and of course we’ve known for a long time that we are just starting on this path to greenhouse warming and that it is going to be way more pronounced over the continents, particularly the northern continents as we get on to doubling and quadrupling CO2, something we are well on our way to do.
“We passed 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere about a year and a half ago and we show no signs of slowing up,” said Schindler, Killam Memorial Chair and emeritus professor of ecology at University of Alberta.
“As a matter of fact, if you look at these 10-year averages over time, the last decade is the highest of all, so when our leaders huff and puff about cutting greenhouse gases, it is absolute nonsense.”
He hoped the three party leaders would have shared their plans to cut emissions, however, they have so far offered little. The reason for that, Schindler said, is Canadians don’t know enough or don’t care enough to make it an issue.
“If we were more literate and more officious, instead of acting like ‘sheeple’, maybe they’d be discussing this.”
Schindler said he’s noticed three reasons for why this happening: the economy dominates debates and the conversations, environmental groups have been effectively silenced and there is myth that Canada is awash in water.
“We have three million lakes and three Great Lakes,” Schindler said. “Lake Superior alone, which we can claim half of, has 10 per cent of the world’s water in it. The Great Lakes together have about 20 (per cent), but what we forgot is if we start drawing on that water it is pretty hard to do it sustainably.”
He compared drawing water from a lake to a bank account with a huge balance, but low interest.
“That’s the story with water,” he said. “The water which we can use sustainably is only what is replaced each year and if you look at the long-term average for Canada, the replacement rate is very low.”
The water in Lake Superior, for example, is replaced at a rate of half a per cent per year, he added. Overall, Canada has low precipitation rates and high evaporation rates, which doesn’t leave much to recharge lakes and rivers.
“If you look at Canada in that regard, it’s not the global water superpower anymore than it is a global superpower in oil. We’re right down there with the U.S. and China in average runoff. We’re not up there with Brazil or the Russian federation or Finland.”
And a portion of that precious runoff passes through the southern Prairies, an area of land known as the Palliser Triangle that sees high water use and yet little overall rain or snowfall.
“This is the Empire of Dust, where there is almost no water generated. It includes cities like Calgary and Regina and Medicine Hat,” said Schindler.
The only reasons those cities are where they are is because the Bow and South Saskatchewan Rivers carry water from to them from the mountains.
“Very little of the water they use is generated locally,” he said.
These southern prairie rivers also provide 70 per cent of the water for irrigation in Canada, despite the fact the Palliser Triangle is an arid landscape prone to large-scale droughts that range from over a decade in length to several years.
The drought that personified the Dirty Thirties was a relatively small event in comparison.
“What we think of as a horrible drought was pretty puny by historical standards,” said Schindler. “When you look at the long-term history, water usage from this system and climate change, you can see what is coming. It is simple if you know the ingredients. We know what is going to happen with the water, it’s just a question of when and where.”
Along with decreased water flow in rivers and lakes, the snowpack and, of course, glaciers are also suffering.
“And then there is the glacial flows,” said Schindler. “If you talk to politicians or engineers, they’ll say they’re not important, only three or four per cent of annual flows. That is true, but the Bow Glacier in a warm dry July-August can be 50 per cent of the water in the river right here.”
Along with lower rainfall, a lower snowpack, higher glacier melt and lower overall runoff, comes a higher rate of forest fire and more days like Calgary experienced on Aug. 25, when air quality monitors registered fine particulate matter at 186 micrograms per cubic metre; that’s three times higher than average and on par with any of the most polluted cities in the world.
At the core of all of this, said Schindler, is water and politics.
“I would say very little of climate change cannot be explained without invoking water somewhere in it. It’s essential for growing crops, fighting forest fires, producing hydro. It’s almost always going to be an ingredient in the climate energy strategy and a very important ingredient.
“The lack of strong political leadership is a big problem. It is evidenced in the debates we are having right now. We are beyond the point where we could have a half-way solution. In 1970, we could have. Most scientists could see all this coming that early. I remember in my textbooks in the 1950s I was told the oceans could absorb all this stuff. I was put straight in 1968.
“Everything that has happened since then has been very predictable. This is what we should do; we should be demanding that this question be asked of our three candidates. We still have time to ask this question and demand they give us an honest answer.”
