On Monday, researchers at the University of Texas published a study that found that warming ocean water was reaching Antarctica’s Totten Glacier. This is troubling because the glacier’s ice alone is sufficient to raise global sea level by at least 11 feet.
The next day, Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Todd Stone revealed the province’s 10-year transportation plan. There’s money for bike lanes and $312 million for transit funding elsewhere in the province but the gist of the plan is $2.5 billion to be spent on widening highways and rehabilitating roads and bridges.
The plan and its timing have no doubt been a poke in the eye for the Lower Mainland’s mayors who have been handed the staggering task of winning a plebiscite on funding expansion of our own transit system.
Just under one-third of North America’s greenhouse gases comes from our transportation sector — much of that from the tailpipes of people commuting long distances.
Our urban landscape was largely planned when fossil fuels were in seemingly endless and cheap supply, there was plenty of elbow room on our roads and tax dollars to build more when they filled up, and climate change was something debated by science nerds.
Now we know better. Or at least we should.
Contending with the costly and damaging effects of climate change is likely going to be the defining challenge of our time and it’s certainly going to be a legacy future generations judge us by. This plan encourages sprawl and shows little interest in addressing the problem.
