California is on the burning edge of climate breakdown. Record temperatures are teaming up with record droughts to turn the Golden State into a tinderbox. The megafires have followed, erupting with stunning speed and ferocity across forests, grasslands, rural areas and city neighbourhoods.
These megafires, each burning more than 100,000 acres, are rising exponentially — both in frequency and size.
British Columbia is at the confluence of several crises: the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn; the ongoing housing, homelessness, and drug overdose crises; the climate and ecological crises; and the crisis of colonialism for indigenous peoples, which has been ongoing since the beginnings of settler society.
British Columbia is also in the throes of an election campaign. The election pits the BC NDP led by Premier John Horgan, against the BC Liberals led by Andrew Wilkinson, and the BC Green Party led by Sonia Furstenau.
Harrison Johnston remembers standing in a little coffee shop last September, watching in awe as a massive crowd marched from Vancouver City Hall to the Central Library downtown.
Then a lead organizer with Sustainabiliteens, a youth-led climate movement in Metro Vancouver that coordinated the Sept. 27, 2019, climate strike, he said he had only expected up to 20,000 people. Instead, the protest became the largest in the city’s history, with over 100,000 people filling the streets.
On November 3, Canadians will no doubt be transfixed by the historical American presidential election, but gig workers in Canada and those working to organize them will also be paying attention to a voter referendum taking place in California.
On Oct. 15, members of the We, the Secwépemc Unity Camp to Stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline walked across Canadian Pacific Railway tracks and onto the Trans Mountain site. There, at least one protester, a woman, sat on an excavator and called for others opposed to the pipeline expansion project to help stop the work being done.
Several people were arrested on Thursday (Oct. 15) at the Trans Mountain construction site on Mission Flats in Kamloops.
"Ultimately, we believe it evident that the Trans Mountain Expansion project is economically unviable and environmentally precarious. For the federal government to continue to push through its construction during a global pandemic that has seen oil prices plunge into the negatives is foolhardy and unconscionable."
