Gene McGuckin, Member of the Vancouver Ecosocialists
After the Heat Dome Killings, What Is to Be Done?
Thursday, July 22, 2021
Greetings,
I am speaking to you this evening from the traditional territories of the Quay Quayt and Kwikwetlem First Nations in a place otherwise known as New Westminster, BC.
We mobilize to put fires out, but — so far, at least — not to prevent them.
British Columbia is having its summer of reckoning with the climate emergency. Like other places before — California, Australia, Honduras, the Philippines — the province in which I reside is now experiencing a shift in the popular zeitgeist. With a jolt to our collective consciousness, most of us now understand the emergency is well and truly upon us.
Vancouver Island fish and forests are in greater peril than ever as the B.C. government issues widespread drought warnings after a record-breaking heat wave and an explosion of wildfires across the province.
Drought is impacting much of southern British Columbia and the central Interior due to very low rainfall, exacerbated by the recent extreme heat wave, according to the province.
