Westerners, as a whole, have a harder time understanding the impact pollution has on our environment. This is due to a combination of things (not really our education system in relation to elsewhere). One factor is that a lot of our jobs are based on resource extraction and agriculture. These jobs require heavy equipment with diesel engines, and people don’t want to feel shame about their ‘office’ equipment. They didn’t build the equipment anyway (they just repair it). If it was so bad, no one would build it, right?
Another factor is that unless an entire forest is on fire, we just don’t SEE pollution in the air like more urban-dwelling Canadians do. Calgary and Edmonton get smoggy, at least they have in the Summer when I’ve been through, but it’s not a year round problem. Regina and Saskatoon tend to get foggy at worst. Smog in those two cities is usually attributable to stubble burning, or a forest fire. Our water sources are not so great as it is in Toronto, to raise our humidity to the point where we can’t breath from the mixture of moisture and muck.
And so a combination of economic induced denial sets into people. It especially settles in people who have no grasp on chemistry, history, or physics because they lack the logic defenses their mind needs to shrug off propaganda fed from other people who depend on our broken systems not being changed.
If your skies looked like this, would you have 2nd thoughts to the seriousness of air pollution too? For some people out here, it’s the last straw they need to give up on logic, and to give in to denial and complacency.
- Museum with ship and a “new” elevator, 2 minutes south of Moose Jaw on Highway #2. There’s a NFB film about this ship, and the poor man who built it. He wanted to sail it back home to Europe, but was committed and died. He tried to tow it across the prairie with animal and human power, to sail it up to Hudson’s Bay via our river systems. In a way he’s a metaphor for people of this country who don’t understand or even acknowledge we have an air pollution problem. They build too many of the wrong vehicles, and mis-use them until they go crazy and die, defeated. Hard working, but in a role that can’t last. Instead of finding a new way to live where we are, we’d rather destroy ourselves on the chance that we can get back to how things used to be; Back to better times.
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Wandering Coyote | 31-Mar-08 at 10:11 pm | Permalink
Forest fires near Regina or Saskatoon? Really?
I love the term “resource extraction.” Never heard of it before, but it’s so…descriptive, and to the point!
Saskboy | 31-Mar-08 at 10:40 pm | Permalink
Saskatoon is less than 100km from parkland. And Regina gets smoke exposed from the northern forest fires too, 300km to the south.
leftdog | 31-Mar-08 at 11:44 pm | Permalink
Great post SB.
I particularly like our deep blue summer skies - nice pics!
jm elis | 01-Apr-08 at 12:11 am | Permalink
I have to say Saskboy that I was quite shocked with your take on Tom Lukanen. Funny how people that know nothing other than what you are told or read, can draw their own conclusions.
Saskboy | 01-Apr-08 at 12:38 am | Permalink
You mean Sukanen?
http://www.sukanenmuseum.ca/tomi/tomi3.html
My description is only a metaphor. It’s one way of seeing what he did, and associating it with the madness of today’s “ship” builders. Dreams like his are romanticized, I decided to instead express it in another light to perhaps shock people into the potentially grim reality of what we’re building in this province.
Saskatchewan Politics - Why We Don’t Think of Pollution as Much In Saskatchewan | Saskapedia | 01-Apr-08 at 7:15 am | Permalink
[...] engines, and people don’t want to feel shame about their ‘office’ equipment. They didn’t Read More… RSS Trackback URL admin | April 1, 2008 (6:15 [...]
Sean S. | 01-Apr-08 at 7:36 am | Permalink
I would also add that the low population density is a big factor…..the ability to dump garbage without having to see it everyday (unless you already mentioned that?)
gf | 01-Apr-08 at 3:03 pm | Permalink
Yeah, I’d have to agree with Sean. More densely populated regions in the richer countries tend to be pretty efficient about waste reduction. It often also leads to less pollution because more people means higher demand for products that cause pollution (gasoline, cars), making those products more expensive. I suppose there’s also a higher human health and political impact in a densely populated polluted area than in a more sparsely populated area. Unfortunately some Saskatchewan people seem to revel in “inefficient ways”. Just this weekend I heard comments about how I should burn my cardboard rather than waste gas driving to the recycling depot (I just finished moving), the city should just “find a pit and dump the garbage in” if they can’t site a new landfill, and an unwanted desk could be simply dropped off the balcony and broken. (The desk was donated, not broken for entertainment.)
zoom | 01-Apr-08 at 6:13 pm | Permalink
I haven’t been out there for awhile, but your photos reminded me of why I love Saskatchewan.
jm elis | 01-Apr-08 at 11:09 pm | Permalink
Sorry about the typo, Saskboy. I grew up listening to storys from my grandfather and my mother about the Sukanen’s. Romancing seems to be happing from all sides.
Gingembre | 02-Apr-08 at 9:07 pm | Permalink
The Tom Sukanen story is tragic and fascinating. He was an amazing man. Thanks for the link and for the photos.
I hope to visit Saskatchewan someday.
Tim | 05-Apr-08 at 2:57 pm | Permalink
These are valid points. A lot of the time at my job, we are out there with our Komatsu 155 dozers on the prairie, or in the bush. There are no people for miles. One of these machines might use up to 400 L of fuel in a day. In so much clean air, you can’t even see the smoke past a certain distance from the stack. And I don’t even work with the big equipment which of course uses even more fuel.
Is society as a whole going to come up with a solution? If I quit my job, someone from Newfoudland will have it in a flash, so obviously that’s not much of a solution.
Biodiesel sounds like a great replacement, until you figure out how much corn one 155 Komatsu can burn in a day. You could feed whole villages from what it would take to run one dozer. And you still have to mix it with petroleum diesel, it isn’t 100% renewable.
The problem is our whole infrastructure. It goes all the way from vehicles, to equipment, to how we manufacture, to how we waste personally. We need to change, all right.
Saskboy | 05-Apr-08 at 5:51 pm | Permalink
You’re right Tim, it’s very complicated, and difficult for one person to change the system that is set up. We take many things for granted, and some things might not be possible to do as cheaply in the future, because we will begin to account for that smoke blowing “away” in the wind.
Sarah | 06-Apr-08 at 7:17 am | Permalink
So, funny story. I’m from Glenavon (an “even-if-you’re-from-Saskatchewan-you’ve-probably-never-heard-of-it” kind of village), and I moved to Waterloo, Ontario to attend university here three years ago. Well, after about a week of wondering why it was so hazy all of the time (and why the sun had an eerie orange glow to it), I finally asked someone. The look on their face was priceless! Explaining to a 20-year-old what smog is is not something they did on a regular basis, I’m guessing…hahaha…but you’re totally right- any time there’s smog, it’s due to a specific, transient cause. (Oh that? It’s from the forest fires up north. It’s because so-and-so is burning their flax straw and the wind is from the east…) Great pics- I can’t wait to be back home!
Saskboy | 06-Apr-08 at 11:49 am | Permalink
I was through Glenavon just two weeks ago on the way to Winnipeg via Langbank.