Canada's forests in peril.......A series documenting the impact of a changing climate on Canada's forests and what people are doing to protect species at risk. A forest has a unique kind of energy that anyone who ventures into it can feel. There are sounds, scents and so much visual beauty. Even our skin is stimulated by the wind, the rain or brushing against the understory. Ancient forests are abundant with this kind of energy, which is why many consider them spiritual places. When we defile these great cathedrals, we bring silence where there once was an abundance of life. Has modern society become disconnected from nature? Urbanization is often blamed for isolating us from the forests and waters that once created wonder and adventure for us as children. But one doesn’t have to live in a rural setting to be thrilled by a trip to the mountains, a day at the beach or a stroll along a woodland trail. People travel from cities around the world to visit wilderness treasures like Banff National Park. Tourists are ecstatic when they see a bear, a moose or a bighorn sheep. Our love for nature still exists. Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson defined “biophilia” as an innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms. Think about a time when you spotted a majestic bird like a bald eagle, akingfisher, or a pileated woodpecker. Did you stop and watch while the constant chatter of your thoughts paused for a brief and beautiful moment? It’s a tragedy when people are unable to connect with their natural affiliation with forests, waters and wild creatures. Targeted information floods in from social media, designed to capture our thoughts and addict us to a “meta” world. The constant flow of advertising drives us to consume and treat nature like a playground where we can try out our most expensive toys. All this modern-day background noise weakens our solemn respect for the wild, enabling remorseless acts of destruction, like the felling of an ancient grove of giant cedars. Some of us feel nothing when forests that have existed for thousands of years are reduced to desolate clearings and slash piles waiting to be burned. Many scientific studies indicate the natural world has a significant impact on our health and well-being. Is it possible that we are adversely affected by the loss of species, the polluting of pristine watersheds and the elimination of wildlife habitat? We are now in the midst of the sixth major extinction event. Could this be a factor contributing to the increase in depression, anger and polarization in society? A paradigm shift is required in our economic, financial and legal systems or the unsustainable consumption of nature will continue until every last old-growth forest has been replaced by tree farms lacking in biodiversity, soil health and mother trees. However, hope lies with Indigenous communities fighting for a larger role in the management of our remaining old-growth forests.The Protect Our Elder Trees Declaration aims to bring about a transformation in ecosystem management based on Indigenous leadership and guidance.       Watch the video  https://youtu.be/BAZT9-rOq_c               https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/04/19/opinion/spiritual-qualities-ancient-forests       and               A warming climate is sending more tree-destroying pests north      According to Environment Canada, the overall economic impact of invasive species in Canada, including plants and living creatures, is staggering: about $7.5 billion annually.    Can Canada's forests survive climate change? Ten thousand years ago, when the last ice age gave way to the Holocene, a great migration was triggered in North America: trees began travelling northward, colonizing newly thawed landscapes at a pace of up to 500 metres a year. In a geoclimatic blink of an eye, trees colonized 38 per cent of the landmass now known as Canada, ultimately giving us nearly a 10th of all the forest in the world.            One of Canada’s biggest carbon sinks is circling the drain         Canada's continent-spanning forest used to remove massive amounts of CO2 from the air each year. It was a hugely valuable "carbon sink", slowing the pace of climate change and benefiting our logging industry.      

Tissue products such as toilet paper, paper towels, and facial tissue are cheap and convenient—but they cost the planet a great deal. The vast majority of the tissue products found in our homes are made from wood pulp, the use of which drives the degradation of forests around the world. Their everyday consumption facilitates a “tree-to-toilet pipeline,” whereby centuries-old trees are hewn from the ground, converted into tissue pulp, rolled into perforated sheets or stuffed into boxes, and flushed or thrown away. The consequences for Indigenous Peoples, treasured wildlife, and the global climate are devastating. These impacts are compounded by the fact that the United States is a particularly voracious consumer of tissue products. The U.S. tissue market generates $31 billion in revenue every year, second only to China, and Americans, who make up just over 4 percent of the world’s population, account for over 20 percent of global tissue consumption.1,2 Much of the tissue pulp in the United States comes from the boreal forest of Canada. This vast landscape of coniferous, birch, and aspen trees contains some of the last of the world’s remaining intact forests, and is home to over 600 Indigenous communities, as well as boreal caribou, pine marten, and billions of songbirds. Yet, industrial logging claims more than a million acres of boreal forest every year, equivalent to seven National Hockey League rinks each minute, in part to meet demand for tissue products in the United States.3 This loss of intact boreal forest is impacting Indigenous Peoples’ ways of life. It is also driving the decline of species including boreal caribou, which, as an “indicator species,” serves as a barometer for the health of the boreal forest more broadly.4,5 Maintaining an intact boreal forest, which acts as a massive storehouse for climate-altering carbon, is also vital to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change. Tissue products made from virgin fiber pulp, which comes from trees, are a clear threat to our climate. When the boreal and other forests are degraded, their capacity to absorb man-made greenhouse gas emissions declines. In addition, the carbon that had been safely stored in the forests’ soil and vegetation is released into the atmosphere, dramatically undermining international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Fortunately, solutions to the tree-to-toilet pipeline already exist. Instead of relying on virgin pulp, tissue companies can use recycled content or sustainably sourced alternative fibers such as wheat straw and bamboo. Use of these materials to create tissue can dramatically reduce our destructive impact on the boreal and other forests around the world. Some companies have already begun incorporating these far more sustainable materials into their products.                 https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/issue-tissue-how-americans-are-flushing-forests-down-toilet-report.pdf     

Fifteen years ago, or so, the scales fell from my eyes and I looked at the world anew. What I saw was insanity; a society – at least here in the industrialised world – hell bent on mindless never-ending growth, at the expense of both its own well-being and the health of our small, vulnerable, planet and its sensitive ecosystems. I am pretty certain that this revelation is something to do with getting older, although growing maturity is no guarantee of its appearance. Some recognise the madness in the way we live while still in the classroom. Others journey from cradle to grave without once questioning the lifestyle they have been conditioned to accept. Unfettered capitalism – a system predicated upon private ownership of the means of production and its operation for profit – has arranged things so that we live to consume; so that we work to earn money that we can spend on ever more stuff, regardless of whether we need it or not; a pizza oven, the latest i-phone.In a crazy, vicious circle, some of us work to afford child care, so that we can go to work. Others buy to feel good; to experience that little – if brief and ultimately unsatisfying – buzz that comes with a shiny new purchase. A buzz that rapidly fades in the face of the relentless struggle that is modern life. We are aided and encouraged in our consumerist efforts by a constant bombardment of adverts. Everywhere we look, the message is buy, buy, buy. So immersed are we in this environment, so caught up in the lifestyle, that we can't see the wood for the trees; can't see that it is a way of living that is simply absurd; a way of life that leaves us exhausted, unsatisfied and unfulfilled. It has taken quite a while to get to where we are today.                                                                                                                      The roots of capitalism go back at least as far as the 16th century, when land began to become concentrated in fewer hands and merchant-driven global trade started to burgeon. Only since World War Two, however, has it really taken off. This period - defined as the great acceleration - saw the explosive growth of technology and a wide range of other human activities, which continues today. This was driven largely by private capital and required a parallel explosion in consumption in order to maintain the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut. No-one born since the second world war can recall anything different, and can't even imagine any other way of passing the time between the maternity suite and the cemetery. Astonishingly, so ingrained, now, is the obsession with consumption that – instead of agitating for change – many of those with minimal disposable income, who are struggling at the bottom of the economic pile, are completely in thrall. Refusing to recognise that the system is failing them, they instead insist on being part of it and are often the most vociferous in dismissing any alternative, more progressive, way of living. Rather, their hopes and aspirations are focused on a lucky break, perhaps a lottery win, that will shower them with the cash they need to big up their contribution to the consumerist society and join those higher up the greasy pole. The truth is that we are all in a rat-race [and only the wealthy can afford it!]                    https://billmcguire.substack.com/p/it-doesnt-have-to-be-like-this?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozODQ4ODM1NCwicG9zdF9pZCI6NTMwOTA2ODYsIl8iOiIvVXZJVyIsImlhdCI6MTY1MTQzNDQ2NiwiZXhwIjoxNjUxNDM4MDY2LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjQ2ODU1Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.Qa5vRu3noBfsk_uM-y7QlEImG_H3zhe0IRRN30dgGs8&s=r                         

 It’s easy to hate on consumption. It turns otherwise intelligent people into manipulable drones, leads to rampant privacy violations, helps people like Jeff Bezos and Sam Walton get disgustingly rich and powerful, encourages advertisers to shove garbage like this in our faces, and culminates every year in a tradition so degrading and horrific that it forces us to question whether we all really did die after Y2K and this is actually hell. But here’s one more thing: A newstudy published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology shows that the stuff we consume — from food to knick-knacks — is responsible for up to 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and between 50 and 80 percent of total land, material, and water use. So, you know, get that Amazon trigger finger ready, because you’re gonna want to do some comfort shopping after this.“We all like to put the blame on someone else, the government, or businesses. … But between 60-80 percent of the impacts on the planet come from household consumption. If we change our consumption habits, this would have a drastic effect on our environmental footprint as well,” Diana Ivanova, a PhD candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and lead author on the study, said in a press release. According to the study, about four-fifths of the environmental impact of consumerism comes not from direct behaviours like driving cars or taking long showers, but rather from sources further down our products’ supply chains. The amount of water that goes into a hamburger or frozen pizza, for example, proved much more significant than showering and dishwashing habits. This is great news, of course, because everyone knows how easy it is to track products from the obscure mines that they sprang from to the local Bed Bath & Beyond (not). To figure this all out, Ivanova and her colleagues used economic data from most of the world and looked at different product sectors, including supply chain information. They found that consumerism was much higher in rich countries than in poor countries (surprise!) and that those with the highest rates of consumerism had up to 5.5 times the environmental impact as the world average.                                      https://grist.org/living/consumerism-plays-a-huge-role-in-climate-change/