Jasper

Properties are engulfed in flames at the corner of Cabin Creek Drive and Patricia Street in Jasper, Alta., on Wednesday, July 24, 2024. (Name withheld)

I am of two minds watching the premier of Alberta react to the destruction of the historic and iconic town of Jasper, Alberta that was devastated by fire on Thursday July 24, 2024. Distraught and overcome by emotion, through a cloud of tears, she grieves openly for what she calls “one of the most beautiful places on earth.” News has spread far and wide to the front pages of the New York Times and elsewhere. I am genuinely sorry for her loss, as much as I am when working with families preparing funeral liturgies for loved ones. Her loss is palpable, impactful, truly heart-felt and human.

Watching her speak, I also think about the may ways she has steadfastly denied the effects of global and local climate change. I am acutely aware of how she continues to silence any opposition to a “business-as-usual” approach to fossil fuel extraction, transmission, and eventual combustion here in North America and abroad. Her unwillingness to speak to the issue—apart from criticizing any federal government or NGO sustainable approach—is to me, unfathomable and unconscionable. She frames everything as a threat to Alberta’s sovereignty, constantly avoiding any constructive plan to move away from fossil fuel dependence.

She sides completely with the “ethical oil” argument of Ezra Lavant and others, which suggests that “we do it better than anyone else” (including Venezuela) and that “we can continue to do as we have always done awaiting large-scale carbon sequestration and nuclear power development to power expensive and energy consuming band aid solutions.”

As Alberta continues to pin its future on increased expansion of tar sands production,  thus increasing the amount of CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gas emissions, her grief is real, but mute on any realistic solutions and deaf to advice plainly offered by science, environmental groups (all are labelled “extremists”), opposition politicians, the federal government, and the United Nations.

Her failure, and of those in her political circle to make the connection between climate change and the present climate crisis—a crisis that has already visited destruction upon Fort MacMurray AB, Slave Lake NYT, Lytton BC, Churchill Falls and  Labrador City NFLD and Labrador, and which continues to threaten Golden, 108 Mile House and Williams Lake all in BC, (and let us not forget California, Australia, and so many other places globally)—is at best naïve, and at worst an abrogation of political leadership responsibility to her beloved province and to Canada nationally.

While we can appreciate her solidarity with the people of Jasper, I really wonder to what extent is she in sympathy of the earth, with its natural cycles and to the changed climate  mechanisms, adjusting atmospheric chemistry, changing weather patterns, and vacillating access to water and moisture. She focuses solely on the accrual of tremendous wealth for both government, industry, and the economic sector.

So I ask, as profits continue to accrue in unimaginably large amounts, where does the message of scientists, the true prophets of our day, find its voice. An article in THE TYEE is prescient in naming Jasper as “a warning to us all.”

“Perhaps, just perhaps, Jasper will be the disaster that forces us to real behavioral change on climate. But if it does not, we can hope that the next disaster will be the clincher. And there will assuredly be next disasters for the rest of our lives.”