This summer, a full one third of the entire country of Pakistan is under water after experiencing rainfall at 780% of what's normal, 4.6 million people are affected, 300,000 have been rendered homeless, over a thousand are dead, 90% of crops in one of their biggest province have been ravaged and 80% of Pakistan's livestock have been killed. Flooding is one of many ongoing extreme climate enhanced weather disasters impacting entire swaths of countries across the planet right now.
It was just under a year ago that was British Columbia's turn to be underwater, crippling for a time. Our prime port in Vancouver leaving our critical western Canadian supply chain infrastructure our lifeline in rubble. When all is said and done, it may well be the most expensive disaster in Canada's history. Of course, it wasn't all that long ago that the previous record was held right here in Calgary when it was our turn to be underwater in 2013.
Many things have changed since then in the city, but at the same time many things haven't changed. Calgary has declared a climate emergency. We know for a fact we headed for more and bigger extreme weather events than we've ever experienced in our lifetimes, which most certainly includes more flooding. We know that we live on a flood plain. We know that in addition to being one of nature's most efficient carbon capture systems, wetlands also act like great big sponges that can soak up floodwaters as well as releasing them in times of drought making wetlands among the best climate fighters we've got.
According to the City of Calgary website, around 90% of the pre settlement wetlands in Calgary have been lost development. In spite of all this. City Council voted 10 to 5 to allow developers to sprawl once again, encroaching a river valley and endangering some of the very few wetlands that remain to us. One area under increasing scrutiny in this regard is known as Ricardo Ranch.
To help break this all down, we reached out to Alberta Wilderness Association board member Nathaniel Schmidt, former City of Calgary Parks Urban Conservation Lead Chris Manderson and former City Council staffer, campaigner and owner-operator of Calgary’s one-of-a-kind Good News Coffee in Inglewood, Jordan Stein.
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