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Originally Posted by worldlyhaligonian
You're off your rocker... most cities don't even have a compost program, let alone most of the waste diversion Halifax has.
Furthermore, the dirtiest part of Halfax's history is over.
Take Halifax's population, industrial output and compare that to other places in the world. I can almost guarantee that its small for Canada and much cleaner than other places (see tar sands or even more NS, the Sydney tar ponds). In addition, all of the worst offenders are emerging markets and the US.
Don't buy into all this nonsense like we are the problem. The structural changes to move away from a petroleum based economy are in motion.
We may in fact be lucky that many developing nations are creating green industries and hadn't industrialized when dirty tech was the only option.
What I hear out of Haligonians is this doomsday bullshit and its fucking annoying.
I grew up sailing Halifax harbour... trust me when I tell you its like night and day and its probably continuing to get better.
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Doomsday bullshit won’t happen to you or me. We will experience mounting inconveniences: higher food prices because of failing crops; more national debt (higher taxes) allocated to disaster relief because of the increased number and strength of natural disasters; a weakened global economy because of the large number of countries that exist TODAY that are all experiencing record breaking droughts, record breaking floods, and record breaking heat waves TODAY.
Most thinking people, even if they happen to only be casual views of weather forecasts, must at the very least feel suspect toward the increasing number of record breaking weather events happening closer and closer together.
Mounting inconveniences today will, at some point, be somewhat of a doomsday for someone down the line. I realise that older generations tend to be climate change deniers in order to protect themselves from feeling guilty, having contributed to this problem their whole life. I certainly feel guilty.
We haven’t the technology to significantly remove the CO2 from our atmosphere, which on its own will remain in our atmosphere for tens of thousands of years. Considering CO2 has never been higher – even compared to all previous warming events on Earth – this will be a long-term problem for whoever is eventually forced into dealing with this. At some point enough people will die frequently enough to push politics into working toward a solution.
The biggest concern is that rapid climate change brings severe stress on natural ecosystems, which normally contend with climate change at a pace that is greatly slower than the warming we’ve seen in the last few decades. Climate change is actually a fuel for the process of evolution – but it must occur slowly enough so that the variability of an organism’s offspring can survive in the changing metrics of the environment.
We haven’t any species of trees that can survive in prolonged drought, and then prolonged flooding from torrential rains, and then severe tornados and hurricanes, and while being eaten by pine beetles and other southern insects – all while we continue deforesting. As the Earth’s filtration system dies there is less of a carbon sink in which CO2 is stored and this further emphasises global warming.
By your own admission, most cities apparently don’t even have a compost program. Though I disagree with that claim, and am actually curious enough for some googling, I will at least use your own admission in revealing to you why Halifax’s success shouldn’t be calculated on a mere comparison of other cities – because most cities are behind in developing toward carbon-neutral.
The idea of a greenbelt isn’t being sought after because Halifax lags behind other cities; it’s being fought for because it’s necessary in order to slow down climate change. Every city is responsible.