A Moment of Silence….

Rabbit_damage.jpg
Hungry rabbit teeth render many trees barkless and, eventually, dead.

Tree_support_when_it_all_gets_too_much.jpg
We support tree life however sometimes it all gets a bit too much!

Michael (ace photographer) from near Edmonton, Alberta Canada left a comment to this posting. Spring (where is it) and lamantations on the sub-zero temperatures. It must be cold up at Fort McMurry the epicenter of the Athabasca Oil Sands mining operation. Read and weep!

Also see March 2009 National Geographic article, The Canadian Oil Boom, Scraping Bottom. Read and weep also.

Spare a thought.

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3 thoughts on “A Moment of Silence….”

  1. 1) Took a look at the Canadian link. “Rape of the Fair Country” is what comes to mind. I have a friend in Iceland who has shown me similar photos of what is being done there in the name of progress.

    2) Just shows how old we’re all becoming, I remember when I helped plant some of those trees. First the spruces around the car park back in the 1970s and those in your latest pics, planted in the 1980s.

    Norman

  2. Thanks for dropping by once again Norman. So you were a tree planting original then! As you know the spruce have turned into a mini forest which we can walk under and the ones ‘up the hill’ are starting to get that way too. Some of them anyway. It’s a tough place to make a living, tree wise, you have to take your hat off to them for their tenacity. Something to learn there. Will I ever complain about the wind again? Probably yes. However I intend to refrain.

  3. Related but invisible is the inexorable rise in the level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere as we release millions of years’ sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in the space of a century. Were CO2 an intensely purple or foul smelling gas, we might react more urgently, but alas it’s neither. The oceans take up a lot but are becoming increasingly acidic with resulting changes in micro-flora, and should the permafrost regions thaw the the additional methane load may cause a runaway effect that no amount of carbon trading or technical “fixes” can halt. This may be underway already and all my instincts cry out to err on the side of caution. Maybe it will be survivable or maybe not, but as a species we have no privileged position on the planet.

    The Gethsemani III conference last year (at which Rev Master Eko spoke) addresses some of the underlying issues. I have listened many times to the talk (http://www.monasticdialog.com/a.php?id=847) by Ajahn Punnadhammo on “Dependent Origination: A Buddhist Analysis of the Causes and Conditions behind the Climate Crisis”. It’s direct and relevant to what’s happening in Alberta. But it’s not simple.

    Thank you for the post and comment.

    In gassho

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