For a lot of years I’ve been growing vegetables at several locations on the peninsula between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay in southern Ontario, Canada. I’ve grown accustomed to being able to rely on getting certain ‘hardy’ crops planted by mid-April with the snow gone, and the ground dry enough to cultivate. So, peas, onion sets are, or were, I should say, planted by now; and some time this week in previous years, a few rows of potatoes. That especially is my ‘official’ confirmation spring has arrived.

I had my doubts after our experience in these parts last April, when the temperature dropped again, the snows came back, and spring was sorely delayed, that last year was just an anomaly. Still, I had my hopes up this year for a return to normalcy. But yesterday’s ‘snowfall warning’ weather advisory, and then waking up this morning to the reality of winter returned with a vengeance was more food for thought about the impact of climate change; not just here in little Hope Ness, but on North America and the world.

There are global warming/climate change deniers who will seize on these prolonged winter conditions as further proof it’s a hoax. One of them happens to be the current President of the United States of America, who made much of a prolonged, sub-zero cold spell this past winter that enveloped Washington, D.C. and reached deep into the American south-east.

Now, I’m not a climate expert, far from it. But I try to keep myself well-informed about matters touching on the fate of our world, not just climate change, but that especially.  (I’m Canadian after all, eh? We love to talk about the weather for fairly obvious reasons.)

There is ample evidence already of the destructive potential of climate change: the disastrous Fort McMurray/Boreal forest fire two summers ago, widespread, deadly brush fires in California, extreme weather events more frequent and destructive. And that’s just North America.

I can explain to anyone who care to listen the basics of what’s happening to our weather in central and eastern North America. The Arctic region is warming at a relatively faster rate than areas much further south. As a result, the stability of high-altitude winds, especially the Jet Stream has been disrupted, causing large nodes of the Jet Stream to dip much further south, bringing cold Arctic air with it. (Yes, it’s still pretty darn cold up there, especially in the eastern Arctic).

See for yourself: keep a regular eye on Jet Stream maps on internet weather sites. It’s an eye-opener. Meanwhile, the Pacific Ocean is a vast heat-collector. The warm waters of the Pacific reach into the coastal waters of north-west Canada and Alaska. One of the most remarkable things to see this past winter and early spring is how frequently the north-west, including Whitehorse in the Yukon, has been warmer than southern Ontario.

Most recently, there have been reports based on scientific evidence that North America’s arctic region is warmer than it’s been in 10,000 years, that on average Canada is warming at twice the rate of other parts of the world; and before that, a report that the world in general may already have reached an unstoppable, ‘point of no return’ regarding the effects of global warming and climate change. And that’s even if we suddenly stop in a big way burning so much fossil fuel, which is highly unlikely.

Some key,  political jurisdictions in the world are still hung up in the continuing discussion, fueled by big, climate-change-denial money, about the validity of climate-change science. Here in Canada, the Alberta provincial election is being fought over the need to build more pipelines to get Alberta’s crude, including oil-sands bitumen, to new international markets, to eastern Canada, and even to the U.S. which already gets Alberta crude at bargain-basement wholesale prices. It’s not a question of whether or not to build more pipelines, but how many. And for so-called conservative voters that means as many as possible. So, what are conservatives trying to conserve, if not the future?

The economically smartest people know the future is about developing new economies on the basis of a new, sustainable energy paradigm. That should now be the focus of human imagination, ingenuity, and enterprise, not the building of many more pipelines. That writing is on the wall. Some can read it — China, I suspect — but others can’t, including in Alberta, where a United Conservative Party government is poised this day to be elected. And yet, there is no better place to get the new paradigm humming than Alberta, arguably Canada’s energy-industry focal point. The failure to take that bull by the horns is a provincial as well as national tragedy.

And then there’s Ontario, once Canada’s industrial engine, and now where a populist ‘For the People’ conservative government is fighting  the Canadian, federal government’s carbon tax tooth-and-nail; it’s even demanding that oil and gas companies post anti-carbon-tax notices on their retail pumps.

Spring will come in some way, shape or form; and then something resembling summer, too hot sometimes, or too cool, for periods of time. Someone will try to plant a garden here for many years to come, I hope. I wish them well, and trust they will keep themselves well-enough informed to make a difference. It really is up to us, after all, to plant the seeds and help them grow.

This post shared on the Hope Ness Facebook site