Sunday August 1, 2004
Rushing from crisis to crisis
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Earlier this year, volunteers from the local Fish and Game Club and the Okanagan Indian Band built a weir across the mouth of Duck Lake, to control the flow of water down Middle Vernon Creek. Middle Vernon Creek is the spawning ground for the kokanee (landlocked salmon) of Wood Lake and Kalamalka Lake.
The last two years, the flow down Middle Vernon Creek has fallen disastrously low, threatening the kokanee\’s survival.
The weir is a way of retaining enough water in Duck Lake to sustain the creek\’s flow during the critical fall spawning season.
“It\’s working,” said the provincial government\’s technical officer for Land and Water B.C. Inc., Duane Wells.
“Every time I drive by Duck Lake and see how full it is, it feels pretty good,” said Okanagan Indian Band fisheries technician Keith Louis. “There\’s a chance we have saved enough water for the kokanee spawning run this fall.”
Mind changing
\”Times New Roman\”> Maybe. Or maybe not.
Because right after that the provincial authorities told the Fish and Game Club that the weir would have to be removed unless the proper paperwork is filled out.
“It is highly recommended,” the same Duane Wells wrote in classic bureaucratese, “that the club make immediate application for this work or we will request that the works be removed.”
Both the club and the Indian Band had previously been assured no such application was needed. They did the paperwork to save the weir.
“I find it a bit odd,” said Louis. “With the government, they can change their mind in the blink of an eye.”
Wells explained to the Lake Country Calendar that the government has a responsibility to look out for downstream water licence holders.
The kokanee, unfortunately for their survival, were not invited to sign up for a downstream licence.
Unlike Keith Louis, I\’m don\’t find it at all odd that the provincial government should reverse itself. Governments are founded on lofty ideals, but like all institutions they inevitably degenerate into protecting their own backsides.
Kokanee cannot sue. Licence holders can. That\’s the difference.
Downstream effects
\”Times New Roman\”> I do, however, find it odd that we humans can calculate precisely the economic risks and benefits of downstream water flows, but seem incapable of even visualizing other effects that happen “downstream.”
For example, the Columbia River Treaty did a remarkable job of calculating what a series of dams on the Columbia River and its tributaries in Canada would do for irrigation and hydroelectric power generation in the United States.
But it gave minimal consideration to the social upheavals resulting from the flooding of river valleys. Or the effect irrigation in Washington State would have on Canadian apple growers.
About the same time period, we introduced the birth control pill, Thalidomide, and the space race. I recall next to nothing about any evaluation of the downstream implications of those technological developments.
Let me put it this way. If you alter the flow of a stream, even temporarily, the water surplus or shortage will work its way downstream. The resulting flood or the drought will inevitably affect the life of river dwellers positively or negatively.
Similarly, whenever we change any social structure, that change will ripple along, affecting lives in the future.
Reacting after the fact
\”Times New Roman\”> Today, we have entered a period when we no longer need to ask whether something can be done or not. If we can imagine it, we will eventually be able to do it.
Scientists and technologists tend only to ask “how.” Governments should be asking “why” and “what if.” Typically, however, they react after the fact – like calling for removal of an already-built weir.
A recent issue of Discover magazine claimed that we will soon be able to build a space elevator. Instead of blasting people into orbit using hideously expensive – and explosive – rockets, space travellers could be hoisted up to a geosynchronous satellite on a carbon nanotube “rail.” From there, freed of earth\’s gravity, travel to other planets or to asteroids would be relatively easy.
That\’s far out. And perhaps far off. But face it, space colonization will happen. If not sooner, then later.
Today, we consider only whether it\’s possible. Not what effect it will have on social conditions here on earth. Because in fact only a small proportion of the earth\’s population will ever inhabit an asteroid. The rest of us will somehow have to come to terms with intelligent life that is NOT earth-based.
I\’m not saying we shouldn\’t attempt space colonization. The effects may be beneficial. Or they may not. That\’s the problem. We don\’t think about these things, and then they catch us flatfooted.
Look first, then leap
\”Times New Roman\”> You\’d expect, for instance, that we could calculate from birth statistics and housing starts how many schoolrooms we will need in six years, when those births reach Grade One. Yet school districts are forever rushing to find portables or to mothball unused space, to hire teachers or to fire them… Barring an epidemic that decimates the population the way the Black Death did in the Middle Ages, seniors\’ facilities and geriatric clinics have 70 years to prepare for a demographic bulge or slump. Yet we\’re never prepared…
Rather, we bounce from crisis to crisis, always trying to catch up.
Perhaps we are victims of the accelerating pace of change. Previous generations saw little need to evaluate downstream effects, because things changed so slowly that they didn\’t perceive any of those effects in their lifetimes.
That\’s no longer true. Within the memory of people still living, there were no cars, no telephones, no radio or television, no organ transplants, no antibiotics, no computers, no PCBs, no airlines, no nuclear weapons, no AIDS, no genetic engineering…
Every one of these has had profound effects on the way we humans live together – some good, some not.
Changing circumstances mean we need to do much more thinking about downstream effects before we plunge into uncharted waters.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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