daphne bramham: shorter showers and brown grass won't solve our increasingly dire water problem
opinion: despite water concerns, we continue to build like crazy and reservoir expansion keeps being delayed
4 minute read
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there are times that climate change seems to have come as a great surprise to the people in charge. it plays out in little ways, such as cracked earth in ponds that only a few months ago were filled with drinking water and teeming with ducks and geese, fountains that no longer spout water, and the rising (but largely unspoken) risk of grass fires in neighbourhoods and parks that can’t get enough water.
but it’s also starting to play out in bigger ways. in b.c., four of 34 water basins — including west and east vancouver island — are at drought level 5. another 18 — including the lower mainland and the sunshine coast — are at level 4.
level 5 means that the water shortage will almost certainly have adverse effects on communities and ecosystems. level 4 means that adverse impacts are likely.
the other communities at level 5 are fort nelson and bulkley lake. the other level 4 communities are east and west upper fraser river, lower columbia, west and east kootenay, middle fraser, haida gwaii, coldwater river, east, north and south peace river, finlay, north and south thompson, parsnip, and salmon river.
this is a country with the third-largest amount of fresh water on earth, a province that boasts of its rainforests, and a metropolitan area that mostly used to drip with rain in all seasons.
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yet british columbians are no longer just having to choose between water for ducks and shorter showers, but are having to consider rationing.
since may, when metro vancouver reservoirs were at their highest level in close to a decade, the region has been under stage 1 water restrictions. by the beginning of this past week, the levels had dropped by nearly 33 billion litres. it is water that will not be substantially replenished until the winter rains come. and that’s assuming they will come.
it means that currently, there is less water available this year than there was in 2021, when a heat dome killed 619 british columbians and fire destroyed lytton within hours. in 2021, metro vancouver had 50,000 fewer residents.
despite water concerns, we continue to build like crazy (even though it’s still not likely to be enough to house the 400,000 immigrants expected to come to canada this year, and the next, and the next).
two developments currently underway in vancouver alone — oakridge and sen̓áḵw — will add close to 20,000 new residents. a few weeks ago, the development proposal for the jericho lands was upped to 13,000 new homes, potentially adding close to 30,000 residents.
in every one of those new homes, people will want to turn on their taps and have water. they will probably appreciate it, too, if there’s a park nearby with a water feature.
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for now, metro’s problem isn’t a shortage of water. there’s just a shortage of water available to be treated and turned into drinking water, and there’s no system in place to capture and use rainwater and run-off for things like watering lawns, washing driveways and power-washing buildings.
there are plans. but reservoir expansion in particular keeps being delayed in the hope that shorter showers and brown grass will solve an increasingly dire problem.
cracked earth, wildfires and atmospheric rivers are now normal, not just here but everywhere.
it’s not only ducks that are being inconvenienced. all of the world’s largest animals are battling to survive in their changed land, sea and air habitats.
this past week, as record-high temperatures were recorded on three consecutive days around the globe, it snowed in johannesburg, south africa. parts of quebec, bologna and new delhi are under water. california is bracing for a triple-digit heat dome this weekend. perhaps the only good thing about fahrenheit is that 100 degrees-plus sounds much worse than temperatures “only” in the 40s.
of course, the solutions are complicated. but it’s been more than a century since swedish scientist svante arrhenius first imagined the anthropocene, an epoch in which humans would change the climate on a global scale. his 1896 calculations on the likely size of “man-made greenhouse gases” are not much different than the modern models.
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when he made that prediction, the human population was less than two billion.
in 1960, the population hit three billion. five years later, the u.s. president’s advisory committee warned that the “greenhouse gas effect” was “a matter of real concern.”
in 1975, the population hit four billion. it’s now nine billion and the earth is one degree warmer than it was a century ago. two-thirds of that warming occurred since 1975.
since the 1980s, dire warnings have come fast and furious even from conservatives such as margaret thatcher, who called for a global treaty in 1989, former american vice-president al gore, a democrat and co-winner of the nobel prize in 2007, and swedish child activist greta thunberg.
brilliant with warnings, humans are now belatedly flailing about for solutions with geniuses such as elon musk spending billions trying to figure out how to abandon the planet in favour of new worlds to despoil.
what is it about humans? when countries, including canada, miss their goals for reducing carbon emissions, we mostly shrug, with fingers crossed behind our backs that it won’t be as bad as the experts say.
it has come to the point that i may not be betting on ducks being better at adapting than we are. but i’m not ruling out crows, rats and cockroaches coming up with survival strategies faster than we do.
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