Tag Archives: Venezuela

Cost of Climate Change

Canada’s eastern Rockies risk becoming a carbon bomb

By Natasha Bulowski, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Oil, gas and coal extraction projects located in Canadian protected areas could unleash a potential 2.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a global analysis found.

Alberta’s iconic coal-bearing Rocky Mountains are among the nearly 800 protected areas under threat of fossil fuel development worldwide, according to the analysis by LINGO, a.k.a. the Leave It In the Ground Initiative. The Germany-based non-profit’s stated mission is to “leave fossil fuels in the ground and learn to live without them,” and accelerate the world’s transformation to 100 per cent renewable energy. The research was done in collaboration with Oil Change International.

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Animals

George Sirk: Frog Stories 

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Cortes Island naturalist George Sirk knows a lot about frogs.  

GS: “A lot of people know me because of my interest in birds, which is really an addiction, isn’t it?  I’m just hopeless when it comes to birds.  I’m just totally into them. They’re so fascinating.  I came from Venezuela when I was 10. My parents immigrated to Vancouver and I couldn’t speak English. I could speak Spanish and I knew a little Estonian and I could understand German because my parents argued in German.”  

“So there I was in Vancouver, a little weird guy 10-years-old, and I met some other weird young people too, what we would call nerds.” 

“They were into frogs. Jim Palmer was one,  Lowell Orchid, that’s another.  Jim just passed away actually in December, but Lowell’s still with us all here. We used to collect frogs  very close to Kits Beach, the Lacarno beach area. It used to be a military base at one time.  So there used to be a lot of empty properties,  fields and it  got very wet in the wintertime. The tree frogs would all go in there and have a great time.” 

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