The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.
THE battle between industry and the environment — between progress and pollution — is being waged across Canada and around the world. A generation ago, the modern environmental movement was born to fight specific threats — against whales in the world’s oceans, old growth forests in Ontario and British Columbia, air and water surrounding industrial sites and populous shoreline areas. Lake Erie once was declared “dead” and the restoration of its water quality is an important measure of the ability of governments to jointly act in the public interest on issues that can seem overwhelming.
Since then, global economic challenges have intensified the battle between industry and environment. But this time, governments have to contend with the fact that in order to revive economies and reinstate people’s futures, new industrial activity is essential now despite environmental concerns.
Thus, in Canada we have oilsands and shale gas developments that cause unprecedented environmental disruption, and plans to ship the products in new pipelines despite growing accounts of pipeline spills — all of it encouraged by a federal government that is stripping Canada of parts of its regulatory catalogue.
Yet, without this new industrial activity and others like potash and an imminent mining boom here in Northern Ontario, our economic prospects would be much dimmer and that is not something Canadians are used to or, for the most part, willing to accept.
We depend on government to balance the economy and the environment. But lately — Ontario being an exception as it phases out coal and encourages green energy — the environment is at times taking second place at cabinet tables in Ottawa and many provinces.
On a much wider scale, industrial activity is actually changing the Earth’s climate, or so the vast majority of relevant scientists tell us. A few doubters fight the seemingly obvious but across the globe, mounting climactic catastrophes are proving to be more than natural weather variations and most governments accept the theory that they are mostly if not entirely man-made.
In Canada, a gradually warming climate has helped lead to a lowering of the Great Lakes, the largest surface freshwater system on the Earth comprising more than 20 per cent of the world’s supply. This has led to an argument over how to manage lake levels. Powerful political forces on Lake Huron say the outflow from Lake Superior should be increased so they can have their docks back on Georgian Bay.
If the Great Lakes are evaporating faster, so are the great oceans and the ramifications there are immense. Polar ice melting is just one of the results of global warming that threaten to inundate low-lying areas from Bangladesh to New York.
Canada and the United States have just renewed a 40-year-old Great Lakes water quality agreement that commits both countries to continue pursuing water improvements they agreed to back in 1972. There has been some progress but much more remains to be done.
Meanwhile, both countries are rushing to develop huge new fossil fuel sources while a quiet battle looms over how to share fresh water among two of the highest per-capita users on Earth.
Balancing the economy and the environment has never been more important. We need equal attention to both necessities.