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What we wrought

The open pit coal mines in southeastern BC.


The Highland Copper mine between Ashcroft and Merritt.


How about the logging patches and Highland Copper? Looks like a bad skin disease.


The Cliffs on Mt. Tzouhalem are big by Cowichan Valley standards. Bear Mountain is amazing by any standard. But Whistler is bigger still, yet somehow more "normal" or acceptable. Why is that? And the urban concentration in the Lower Mainland. Almost too big to even register with us. Or it's been around so long we've acclimatised.


Why do Whistler and Vancouver get under the radar that Naomi is focussing on? Is there really a way for any of us to live on this planet and with justification get huffy about the way others live on it? Even if we all scaled back and lived like so many earthworms in my compost, would the earth tolerate us?

Lake Williston. It wasn't there forty years ago, then we built the first and second dams on the Peace River and we were like God. You wanna lake? We can make you one. A really big one. Site C is next.

Logging and roads and transmission lines and pipelines all converge at Summit Lake, just north of Prince George. When the Premier's "energy corridor," mentioned in the Throne Speech, is realized, Summit Lake will play an expanded role for
- a new natural gas pipeline from Kitimat, the Kitimat - Summit Lake, bringing imported LNG to the continent and/or the oilsands from across the Pacific Ocean
- rest stop for oil from the oilsands and diluent from the coast travelling to/from Kitimat and the oilsands via Enbridge's Gateway pipelines

Play around with Google's mapping facilities. Zoom in, zoom out. We are everywhere. Our roads, transmission lines, mines, clearcuts, housing developments are like so many cancers, mange, stints, and colostomy bags on the land and waters of BC. Do lice feel badly about the role they play on a kid's head?

That was fun. Thanks for asking, Naomi.