Season 1, Episode 11: What are our dilemmas?

with Colin Smith

In Episode 11, you hear discussion centered around the critical issue of water security in Southern Alberta, focusing on the degradation of headwaters due to industrial activities such as logging, coal mining, and oil and gas extraction. Colin, Jenny, and Alex highlight the importance of restoring ecosystems to ensure long-term water availability and ecological health. They emphasize the need for public engagement, policy changes, and the creation of action-oriented groups to address these challenges. The conversation also touches on the broader implications of water management, including the impact on agriculture, industry, and biodiversity. You hear advocacy for a shift from doom and gloom narratives to inspiring and mobilizing communities to take tangible actions towards ecological restoration and sustainability.

Preamble on Fossil Fuel Industry Greenwashing

Alex:

Hey Colin, I was watching a video about carbon mapper. I found it quite interesting to learn about the longstanding propaganda that the energy sector has been infiltrating our society with. Providing biased information and privately funded studies that are in-house. I knew that it was going on, but the approach was not only entertaining but informative. Jenny had sent me a link earlier and I subscribed to the channel. I like the cut of the guy’s gist. He’s like a young Ron Burgundy, but on the environmental front, and you make some salient points when it comes to how these industries just twist the narrative state, the realities, but they’re professional at it.

Colin:

They have billions of dollars riding on it.

Alex:

I don’t know if you ever watched the movie called No Smoking, it was about a tobacco lobbyist who said, “There’s nothing to see here.” He would go around, be very friendly, hand out free cigarettes to people, and say, “This is good for you,” “Most doctors prefer Virginia Slims,” and things like that. The correlation between what the lobbying that the tobacco industry and the sugar industry have done throughout history, and still does, and the oil and gas industry as a whole continues to do. It is almost as if they never changed their objectives. They just change venues. They think, “Oh, this has a stigma attached.” “Look over here. This is great. This is green.” This is a new term. This is something you can accept. It’s friendlier and dah, dah, dah. Nevertheless, they’re still practicing things the same way in terms of methane emissions, for instance, I found that funny [that] the EPA just says, “Oh, we’ll just ask the companies how much methane they’re losing.” They never did their own investigations. [And the companies say], “Oh, we’re not losing any.” “Okay. All right, good.”

Jenny:

What he’s referring to Colin, just so you know, the new Climate Town video, is called Natural Gas Is Scamming America, and it is excellent. Funny, quick, have you watched it? Do you know what we’re talking about? No. Okay. It’s a clear, really succinct walk through the whole history in terms of the shale gas boom or let’s say the horizontal fracking boom. We’ll have to have a conversation about it. I just think it is a great summary that is easy for anybody to understand. Really good. Thanks for watching that, Alex, that’s awesome.

Alex:

I watched another one that they produced too, and it goes into cleanup denial in children’s books that are in elementary schools. It’s a sad state, right? In the United States, for instance, schools are funded by their districts. Poor districts can’t afford to fund schools adequately. These oil companies will come in and they’ll say, “Hey, we’ll give your school $7 or $8 million as long as you include these things in your curriculum.” They focus specifically on grades one through four, like the most formidable years, and they have their own version of Bill Nye the Science Guy, and they have these cartoon children’s books where it’s like a bunch of rabbits and prairie dogs discovered that the human beings are digging the ground up again and threatening their home. Then they have the lobbyist animal with a hard hat who comes on. He says, “Don’t worry, humans have learned their lessons this time. They’re going to clean up their mess. It’s all good.” And then everyone’s like, “Yay, humans are awesome.” And that’s the end of the book. It’s just so blatant.

Jenny:

That’s great. We will have to dive into that. Thank you so much, Alex.

Alex:

I’ll send you the link to that one.

Jenny:

Thank you. If anything, we have to be able to listen to the realities of this stuff in a way that it’s not so heart-wrenching. Right, Colin? We’ve talked about that in the past. It’s really hard to be real in this world right now. They do a good job of making it light like, Hey, we’re screwed if we don’t do anything about this bank. Okay, shall we get started? Alex, if you are ready, take it away.

Welcome, Updates, and Reintroduction to Colin

Alex:

Welcome to The Gravity Well where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets anyone can handle. Our mission is simple to set aside our differences and collaborate with others through conversation and process so we can face dilemmas to make our world a better place for all. A healthy living and relationship with our homeland and each other is our guide In the spirit of reconciliation. We acknowledge we are in Treaty Seven territory and Metis District 15 lands. We take Reconcili-action by seeking the wisdom of elders, individuals, and communities and share that knowledge and concern for clean water, air, land, life, and our resource needs.

Jenny:

The evolving mission statement. The good news is it’s getting closer. I can hear a few hiccups in there, we’ll get it a little cleaner. Alex and I have been working hard to get the website finally at a base level where we’re ready to have an official launch. Really excited that we’re close to that. That’s why the welcome message has been evolving as we talk to people and learn better and better what it is that we’re doing. Because this is a learning process for us. I’m just going to do some reflections and I’ll let you both do the same. We’re back with our friend Colin Smith. Colin and I met back in, I think November last year. We were brought together through the Calgary Climate Hub in our both concerns with the health of the Eastern slopes and the logging that was planned in the Highwood.

We had a win since our last meeting, which was that the Highwood logging did not go through. Though it’s like a tube of toothpaste. Unfortunately, some other areas were logged because the Highwood wasn’t, which we learned about. A bit of a reason why we’re taking another round at our efforts in terms of helping the Eastern Slopes. We’re going to dive into that today, what we’re working on, what our concerns are, and what that looks like. But I’m just going to reflect on the last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, we learned a lot about gravel mining and water, the interaction and the impacts. We have a ton of gratitude to the Bighill Creek Preservation Society and the group that I’ve been talking to the South McDougal Flats community. They’ve been sharing their stories and efforts in terms of trying to preserve water and make sure that gravel extraction is not going too far, especially in this time of drought.

It’s a really important issue that they’re helping us not only bring to light, but also get everyone else aware, and if they’re seeing the same problems, realize that these are similar things that we need to address. And after that, we were joined by our friends from the Polluter Pay Federation, and we spoke about this model that we’ve put forward. It’s a rock model that I threw together to try and start thinking about what is the framework of our system in Alberta. We’re using this round two of conversations to work through this model as we have conversations. Where are we at, how do we make decisions, and how do things move forward? What I took away from the discussion with the Polluter Pay Federation is the “Who’s who”. It’s stakeholders, its government, its regulators, and its institutions.

What are the key relationships? The ones that are aligned or in opposition with each other. What are the goals? It’s both shared and competing objectives or gaps. We talked a lot about beliefs being key to being able to come together. People have very strong beliefs, for example, that oil and gas are the heart of our province, and [combating] that requires relationship building. Eventually, we have to work together that requires a ton of humility and what are the alternatives to what we’re doing? I think about being in collaboration, cooperation, and communication. Then we spoke with Mark McCormick, who’s working with a philosophical group out of the University of Alberta. They’re hosting meetings, ever-living meetings they’re called, and the group is the New World Spirit. And so the point of the conversations is to break down concepts of universal truth. And so they’re doing that by identifying its components, and those components are logic, spirit, and nature.

And then using those, allowing the participants to consider those components and how they interact with one another to build wisdom. People whose logical style is similar feel like they have a group in which they can work through issues together. That’s the concept of the work they’re doing. We’re trying to unlock human potential. We’re trying to come together as well with people. We see a lot of, so we’re pulling in some of the styles, some of Mark’s ever-living meeting style into these meetings. We’re now trying to have four rounds [of discussions]. This is round two. We’ll dive into our work in round three, we’ll do some reflection with this model, and then we’ll wrap up in round four. So I’ve probably done enough talking. I’m just going to leave the model here.

I’ll just touch on it quickly. We’re looking at [our structure] we have governments on one side, plural, all levels working in terms of decision making, and then we have the actual laws of the land, things that limit potentially what our governments want to do or are things outside of our government’s purview like wildlife, for the most part, and other things like that. Trying to look at this in terms of what are the opposing forces, and how can we try and come together? That’s the idea of this. I’m going to stop there. I’m going to let Alex do some updates and then perhaps Colin, as well.

Alex:

Thanks. Once again, I think Jenny gave an accurate synopsis of where we’re at, so we’ll keep it short and sweet. We want to make sure that we get to what you have to contribute. I just want to recap on some of the things that you touched on in the last interview specific to overshoot and how industry and society seem to be crossing thresholds and boundaries. And since the last time that we spoke, have you seen any progress or have you seen further regression in terms of that?

Colin:

Wow, that was short and sweet. Thanks for the reminder of our conversation last time I went over the Stockholm Institute’s Planetary Boundaries, which are nine different areas of the planetary system that if we cross thresholds, imperils the stability and the future of essentially modern civilization. I hate to say it, but yeah, I see very little progress from modernity as a whole on any of those thresholds. It seems like we’re distracted by conflict and wars and consumerism on things like the planetary boundaries, talking about those things. It’s hard to have much hope for our collective willpower to deal with the big challenging complex questions. And I think that’s maybe why it’s challenging because it is so complex. These are wicked problems that are interlinked. You can’t just tease out one issue, continue to see the carbon tunnel vision to be a lot of the conversation in solution spaces.

Sequestering carbon or reducing our carbon footprint individually or collectively is just one piece of a very, very complex puzzle. There are still reasons to be hopeful. There are still beautiful days and the robins have returned to Calgary. Some things are right in the world, but unfortunately don’t see much progress on addressing our planetary boundary front. You mentioned in our pre-conversation about methane and how the solution was to get companies to self-report their methane methane emissions. It made me think of the term apocalypse or think the root word is the Greek word apocalypses, which I think in most people’s modern minds thinks like you think fire and brimstone or the end of the world. But I’ve been told that that word means “lifting of the veil”. That made me think about the methane satellite, Google’s methane special satellite that can image methane emissions from space. Companies have been originally tasked with self-reporting their methane emissions. Now the veil is being lifted thanks to new technology solutions and tipping points can come from unexpected places in positive ways. There are lots of interesting ways that solutions awareness and action can come. We live in interesting times and it’s only going to get more interesting.

The Status of Alberta’s Eastern Slopes and The Planet

Jenny:

Ain’t that the truth? Reality is the most interesting thing [happening], nothing better than the real thing. This conversation is to be a [summary] of what we’re doing about our frustrations because thank you for asking that great question about the [planetary] boundaries. We’re still moving in the wrong direction. We’re still moving forward with development.

We had this win. As I said, we had this logging program get paused, and it is a relief. Please hear, I’m very grateful, but it made me realize that to call for it to stop isn’t enough. We’ve been attending all of these watershed meetings, council meetings and things and coming up with what was an underlying concern of mine, which is it does not feel like the public is being adequately represented in any of the decision-making. That’s one of the problems. I’ll say having equal representation of the public, and when I say the public, I mean First Nations, Metis, Albertans, landowners, you name it.

Whoever is there facing this issue needs to be represented. Yes, we need to have the regulator in that discussion. We need to have industry in that discussion to some degree. And then we do need all levels of government to be responsible to the public in all decision-making. This is a public collaboration. That’s one of the aspects. This is one of five things that I’m seeing in this problem split into. It’s not just about logging, it’s also about coal mining, right? We have way too much development in our headwaters and a bunch of the work we’ve been doing is to look to the experts, Kevin Van Tighem, who is an Ecologist right by background, and he had worked as the head of The Banff National Park for decades. This is an extremely knowledgeable man and very passionate about history. He said back in the 1870s, we knew full well that developing in the headwaters was a terrible thing to do.

Jenny:

In other words, our headwaters are so small and serve such a large area that the risk to any population downstream if we were to get after that area, in terms of development, was a risk to everyone between here and ultimately the Mississippi River or the Hudson’s Bay from anywhere that [is downstream] of Southern Alberta. We have this small stretch, I’m going to let Colin explain. You can get into that, Colin, the size of it and everything. There’s an investment in safety risk that’s not being appreciated by the size of this water crisis. Please hear this isn’t just an Eastern Slopes problem, this is a widespread drought issue, water shortages and now risks to other things like contamination based on water shortages. There is not only investment risk in terms of both agriculture and resource extraction.

Industry uses, what came out from the CBC this week, just over 50% of our groundwater historically. Hear that that’s historically, we’re moving forward with less water access right now. That’s a large number to be handing over to the industry. With that agriculture as well is at risk when we’re giving that water to industry and not agriculture. That’s a big waste of that precious resource because please hear, once we give water to industry, it’s not coming back. It’s being removed from the system either through a tailings pond contamination or it’s being injected by way of fracking. When rivers go dry, we have species, critical species that do not prevail, and those species feed the food chain. This is what Colin was talking about in our last discussion, how everything is interconnected. When we lose keystone species like trout, it can mean ecological devastation instead of still plucking away in various areas.

We need to stop logging unless it is to thin out spaces to save homes and stuff from forest fires. We don’t want a fire risk because certain forests do need thinning out. There is value for some level of logging, but certainly no coal mining. We need roads to be removed. We need sites to be restored from both oil and gas and coal mining. This is risking and potentially irreversible loss of our source water. So I think people need to understand that this isn’t just critical for Alberta, but this is critical, like I said, for everyone downstream of us that we start restoring our headwaters and making sure that we have the storage capacity to keep our water where it needs to be. So I’m going to stop there. I would love both of your thoughts. I don’t know who wants to start next.

Alex:

Tapping the underground wells is increasingly becoming my concern because when you tap these wells and some of these wells they’ll take like 10,000 years to replenish, and that’s if the land above isn’t disturbed. So when you tap these wells, you’re lowering the water table and then even no matter how much rain you get, it won’t sink to replenish. That water table won’t go through its natural filtration process, so you end up with a ratification. In addition to that, when I was at the cabin meeting, I posed a question to them.

Jenny:

Can you expand on that a bit again, Alex, can you remind us what CABIN is and what you were doing?

Alex:

It’s a co-op of people: geologists, geophysicists, geoscientists, geotechnical engineers, analysts, ecologists, or biologists who assemble their data into multiple accessible, real-time databases that you can contribute to if you go to these sites and do your samples. They were talking about low flow for the past five years and how it’s affecting the flora and the fauna in these watersheds and these river valleys. I had done an independent study that was based on something that David Suzuki had done over a decade ago on blue-green algae and blue-green algae typically in low flow or stagnant warm water. Now, initially, it’s good for the fish population, but eventually, it removes all the oxygen from the water and starves the fish. My question was basically as a result of these blue-green algae formulations, are they going to produce microcystins as a result?

Microcystins are a brain toxin. If that land completely dries out, those toxins can become airborne. And according to the GSC, they have been responsible for the past five major land base extinctions. It’s a pause for major concern and unfortunately at the CABIN meeting, none of these people were able to pinpoint any answer, though they did attempt to brainstorm on the coffee break a little bit, but this is a concern not only a risk of mass extinction of the fauna due to microcystins and airborne toxins as a result of aridification. That was some of the stuff that I picked up at the cabin meeting, and it’s quite a serious issue. We need to keep that water moving and make sure that it’s protected. That’s my contribution to the discussion.

Jenny:

What Alex is talking about makes me think about this problem a little differently. Like you were touching on, Colin, this is such a complex thing. It grows arms and legs every time you think about it. But this piece though, about evaporation, and we haven’t really talked about air contamination in terms of like he’s saying as we dry up these potential toxins are also airborne, and we’re not even, are we measuring that? Are we looking for it? Are we understanding that risk? I think it’s just another leg that I didn’t think about, and I think that’s the limitation when we focus within compartments, as we tend to do in our world, we’re not thinking about these things holistically anyway. Colin, can you expand on our five concerns or if you word them differently or anything around how you see this problem and our effort?

Land Use and Colonialism are the Central Issues

Colin:

Where to start on this broad complex issue? I just see overall the activities that were in the land use decisions that are enabled by current legislation and industry are essentially slowly killing the ecology that life in this part of the planet relies on. And this is not an isolated issue. This is happening in every corner of the world to varying scales. It’s like we can’t help ourselves collectively, and there’s no reciprocity. And something that I just wrote down that you were talking about public engagement and public representation, I think part of the challenge and the self-reinforcing system that capitalism is, is that people that are even concerned don’t even have the time or the energy to be involved in these public consultation or voicing their concerns because most people are busy working a job and doing all the things in their nuclear families that it’s very hard to get involved in these things without being one extremely passionate or two having or both having more free time.

There are many challenges. I want to get back to that term reciprocity for the last hundred, well, you could even say like 300 years. I’ve been thinking a lot about beavers lately. This country, this entire land, Rupert’s Land, was essentially a beaver farm. That’s all that the colonial power of Britain saw in this entire country of so-called Canada. PreCanada was essentially a source for beaver pelts for making freaking hats. That’s the history that our culture is rooted in. It’s ridiculous. But before settlers and Western civilization arrived here, we were already extracting a keystone species from this land. When Palmer did his exhibition across Canada and came to Southern Alberta, calling this place desolate and no good for farming, it was shown in tree ring data that was a period of extreme drought. They’re looking at Douglas Fir tree rings in Southern Alberta.

These trees live four or 500 years old, so they essentially in their tree rings have climatic data that show that prolonged drought is an irregular occurrence here without climate change. These patterns that we’re experiencing are a part of the natural weather and climatic cycles here, but we are putting further pressure on our watersheds through forestry and land use practices. And when paler arrived, or before settles even arrived, there was already a lack of beavers who essentially are a key part of storing and yeah, just overall watershed health because they build dams that essentially force the water instead of running off down the river and to the Hudson Bay, force that water to stay held and seep into the groundwater. And the wells that you’re talking about, Alex, many of them, groundwater is there because of slow infiltration of water through geographic features on the land. And as you say, 10,000 years to recharge these aquifers or these wells, you can look at most resources that we deal with, be it oil and gas or forest.

We are spending our savings account rapidly and we will have nothing to back it up. Something that was said, I went to the Dried Up documentary, which is a short 30-minute film about the state of the drought in Southern Alberta made by Kevin Van Tighem and a few others, the best long-term investment we can make is in the water security of the Eastern slopes and Southern Alberta.

I’ve been reflecting on these terms, “If we have no water, we have no beer, we have no beef, we have no oil, we have no economy and no life” if we damage our water sources. Jenny, you asked me to talk about this 10-kilometer strip that is essentially the source of 95% of all of the water in Southern Alberta and areas like Banff and Kananaskis, there’s no resource extraction. Those forests are intact, almost too intact.

The other areas are over-disturbed forestry. There’s oil and gas, there’s roads, there’s cattle, and all these things drastically affect the ecological services that watersheds to store and filter water for our major cities, for agriculture, for oil and gas extraction, for making beer with climate change, with land use decisions, we are on a trajectory to have a lot less water. I don’t think your average Albertan is feeling it, but farmers, ranchers, municipal decision-makers, the oil and gas industry, and all these people who require water to make their jobs and their responsibilities work are worried. We were originally calling for a moratorium and policy, but we are now advocating for the restoration of headwaters and ecosystem services and the headwaters. All this stuff I’ve said is a lot of doom and gloom, but I think the key part to shifting the tide is inspiring people with a vision of a brighter future and how they can get involved.

There’s a lot of work to be done, actual hands-on work, but also organizing and changing our mindsets and speaking with our friends and family about the situation, but also providing them opportunities. Something that I would’ve been inspired by over the movement of ecosystem restoration camps all over the world where essentially you go to areas that need to be restored and you create a temporary restoration camp to restore watershed and ecosystem health and function, tens to hundreds of people there that are fed and stay there and are there for a whole season doing the heavy lifting, building community, enjoying their time. And that’s something that I’m hoping we can do in Southern Alberta’s headwater.

Alex:

Have you seen the Green Wall project in Africa?

Colin:

Yeah, I have.

Alex:

They built this forest from coast to coast right across Africa, and they stopped the expansion of the Sahara Desert. It’s incredible when people just get the shovels in the ground and they come together and they do this, it’s not beyond hope at all. It requires a bit of a shift in thinking.

Colin:

It makes me think of another presentation I recently watched, which was essentially about large-scale ecosystem restoration, and being able to change weather patterns. The Sahara, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Amazon Rainforest are all at different stages of degradation. But the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt used to be a rainforest and used to the interaction of transpiration of the forest. The Amazon is called the lungs of the Earth, but it’s now approaching or has crossed a tipping point from being a carbon sink to being a carbon source because of it being cut down and burned so we can graze more cattle. But that’s essentially what happened thousands of years ago in the Sinai Peninsula. Nine historic rivers flow through there. But because of population expansion and the increase in the invention and implementation of agriculture and grazing, those trees were slowly cut down.

The people who were doing it probably had no idea of the long-term effects of that, it was just natural human survival. But that now is like a dead desert where dead rivers and the wind blow in essentially a different direction because of it being a desert and not a rainforest. And you can apply that to British Columbia and Alberta. It’s the weather patterns. Pacific moisture comes across BC, and I’m not a scientist, but I can see how because of the degradation made across BC by forestry and other land use decisions. There is a lot more exposed dry air and less green forest the entire way. And green forests provide evapotranspiration, fungal spores, and pollen, all those things are nuclei for rain. If those systems have been disrupted over the last hundred years, there could be a connection to why Alberta has less rainfall and is in more prolonged droughts. But again, you can’t simplify these things. These are complex dynamic systems, but you can, by just looking at the choices that we’re making on our land, tell that we are degrading it for sure. And yeah, we need to play a role in reciprocity and giving back to the land and stewarding the land with positive actions that could be a source of inspiration to generations of young people who are faced with a pretty dire future.

Objectives of Headwater Advocacy: Advancing Restoration

Jenny:

Okay, so I want to reflect on a couple of things back there for you. I love that you brought up land use. Thank you for reflecting on that. One of the key things that we can lean on in terms of policy is that we have two legal documents [Cold Lake and Bistcho Lake sub-regional plans] that have been approved through cabinet back in 2022, which call for sites on timeline. Essentially the concept is is it looks at species at risk as Alex was alluding to this methane story. Well, the whole reason why we’re only talking about emissions is so that we can step over this massive land use problem, this extraction that’s happened over many decades. That’s just been adding to the landscape and taking away from it. We have not restored, we have not given back, we have not had this reciprocity that’s necessary to have balance in an ecosystem.

Now we need to be aiming for that. I think that one of the things I’ve talked about is leaning on that. But I think something you said here is important about inspiring Colin and an opportunity. I was in a meeting with another group that I’m working with, which will hopefully swing into these conversations Markham Hislop’s Energy Circle that he’s started and we’re talking about having a western renewable intertie grid across all the western provinces. What would a great grid look like? Renewable sourced and clean. And what comes with that is a bunch of inspiration. He talked about how some of the renewable companies are looking at advancing [oil and gas] sites through closure because they want to reuse these spots and reduce the harm to the landscape. So there’s an opportunity, from what I just heard you say, for us to, as you said, inspire…

Colin:

Ecosystem Restoration Camps.

Jenny:

What I was thinking about is for us to try to get that going. Maybe we go to the Orphan Well Association and say, “Hey, we’re going to do this work, help fund it.” You know what I mean? There are lots of creative ways if we can show the path to jobs and good jobs. The one thing I keep saying to my industry friends whenever I get a chance lately is, “I would be back in the industry in a heartbeat if it was centered on restoring the ecology.” What a feel-good industry to be a part of, what an amazing thing to be to contribute to. I think that we’ve got a lot of doom and gloom as Colin said, and we’re trying to now look to inspire. I’m just going to quickly offer what we’re doing next. First of all, we’re hosting a little gathering in Calgary on April 20th.

The Gravity Well is sponsoring it with the Calgary Climate Hub. We’re gathering people to talk about these concerns we have and how we’re trying to inform the public. As Colin said, everybody is head down in our busy “modernity” world and there’s no time to understand this stuff. But instead, we’re going to go to where people go through basically May and June. We’re going to go to the places where people hike or the places where people fish, where they canoe, where they want to be in nature, and they’re surprised to see the state of it. And we’re going to meet them there with understanding and some opportunities to get involved and feel good about moving us in the right direction. I’m excited about all of that. Colin, do you have any comments concerning our plans and how to get people involved, engaged, or anything like that?

Colin:

I think there are lots of ways, I spent most of the day reflecting on changes or our new approach after the pause of the Highwood and our clarity of how we now need to ask for restoration. Like you said, the work that we’re doing. Maybe I’ll just read some of the objectives that I drafted this morning. Going to trailheads and to the places where we’re meeting people who enjoy these spaces is all about raising awareness about the history, the current state, and the future potential of Southern Alberta’s Headwaters and feeding into the next objective of why we want to raise that awareness is because we want to increase public pressure on the current provincial government and opposition for changes to the Water Act and Forest Act and land use operating ground rules in the Southern Alberta Headwaters.

These are some of the new objectives. They’re very similar to what we’ve talked about in the past. But organising a diverse coalition for action advocacy and inspiration regarding the protection and restoration of Southern Alberta’s headwaters. The next one is just a play on words. Currently, every watershed in Southern Alberta or even across Alberta has WPAC, which stands for Watershed Participation and Advisory Councils, and that’s like Bow River Basin Council and Old Man Watershed Council. And these organisations are funded by industry and essentially have their hands tied. They’re allowed to do studies and advocate, but they’re not allowed to advocate or stick their neck out there. And it’s quite frustrating that they have diverse boards and can do things, but they’re not doing anything. I shouldn’t say that they are doing meaningful work, but they’re not. We could go so much further. And so I came up with they’re not…

Jenny:

Changing the scope. That’s what I want to highlight they are not operating under, they’re not able to say, Hey, we should not be modelling as if water in equals water out in the system. We need to look at the fact that there is evapotranspiration happening, which means we are losing more water to the atmosphere than what is being deposited in rain or snow. And we need to acknowledge that in terms of risk, immediate risk. And the other thing is, when you build something, they’re focused on building reservoirs, building dams, well in an open area that gives more opportunity for evapotranspiration. And we’re seeing that in two of the dams we have the St. Mary and the Old Man are at all-time lows and it’s really low, like 15% in the St. Mary reservoir. These watershed groups are not powerful enough to back up and say, Nope, that’s not what we should be doing. That’s the key thing.

Alex:

Are these people under the impression that water that evaporates from a certain geophysical location is automatically going to come back down in that same geophysical location? Is that where they’re missing the message here? Or are they at risk of losing their funding from their sponsoring organisations if they do speak to these truths truthfully, responsibly, and ethically, the way that they were supposedly designed to do?

Colin:

Well, to your first question, I don’t think they plan or are anticipating the water’s going to just return. Kevin Van Tighem said last night that the Old Man Reservoir was built in 1989, I believe, and it was the first water licence. That dam is owned and operated by the Alberta government, and the first water licence for that dam was given to the Alberta government for the evaporation of two Olympic-sized swimming pools on a pretty regular basis. I think it might be annually, but it could be when you have just a river that’s flowing naturally and doesn’t go into a big manmade lake or reservoir, essentially. It doesn’t evaporate as much as it does when you have a large surface area of reservoir. In the big scheme of things, that’s a minor loss of water but speaks to our current thinking of not thinking about the source of this water, just thinking about capturing that water and storing it so we can easily do with it what we want.

Current Limitations of Watershed Councils

Colin:

Your second question, these watershed participation advisory councils are quasi-government entities. They have no real authority, but they’re created and funded with some provincial government money, but then they also have partnerships and board members who are industry representatives. They’re muddy organisations, well-intentioned people there, but they really, I’m on the legislation and policy committee recently, new member of the Beau River Basin Council Legislation and Policy Committee. They don’t want to do any, all they’re going to do is write one letter that outlines their perspective nicely and not to piss anybody off, and they’re going to send it to one government ministry. And that’s the extent of their work. Out of an eight-hour workshop that a hundred people attended and gave passion to help support watershed health, support the fish, speak for the environment, they channel this and they take all that energy. They hosted this workshop, gave everybody lunch, all these smart people gave presentations, and then they were going to write one letter that likely will get read by the government, but my opinion is not going to change anything, and there’s so much work to be done that’s actually on the ground.

And so back to the objectives of our headwaters advocacy, this new one that I wrote today is to organise a local watershed restoration action committee. These would be WRAC instead of WPACS and not just advisory councils. They’re actions based around essentially doing those ecosystem restoration camps. So they’re boots, not suits, exactly. Undertake ecosystem restoration activities in Southern Alberta. Headwaters, some of the wacks are doing good work. I don’t want to paint them all with the same brush, but Old Man Watershed Council has been extremely frustrating, not willing to support or essentially brush us off as if we’re dumb people from the city. They’re doing some good things. They host good events that get people together and they build Beaver Dam analogues and do, they’re doing some things, but it’s like, “Can’t you see the train we are on right now is headed off the cliff?” They have their jobs that are funded and they don’t want to lose their jobs by sticking their neck out. That’s essentially how I see it.

Jenny:

I’ll just add just from somebody who has been in the industry trap directly, the challenge is it’s hard to gain perspective because you’re in it for so long. They’ve been doing this game for years, decades, so it’s really hard to appreciate that the pace has changed underneath their feet. And the sense of business as usual is not something that’s limited to the oil and gas industry. And that’s what was been eyeopening for me, is that business as usual is a problem. You talked about it early on in this consumerism, right? But this concept of Oh, yeah, yeah, we host meetings and we tell things and then we do it again next quarter, right? We need action groups. Yes, we have got to change. I keep saying is we’re no longer wondering. We know what the problem is. We’ve gone through the five Ws of the issue. We know it’s ecological and social instability. We know all of the pieces. It’s now into “how are we acting moving forward.” I love that you’re talking about action. That’s fantastic.

Alex:

I’d like to circle back to the beginning of the conversation when you were speaking about there’s a lot of doom and gloom out there, but you’re moving more towards the inspiration side. It’s amazing what can be accomplished. I don’t know if you got the link that I put into the chats there on Clubhouse, but it’s the Great Green Wall. It’s a Nat Geo documentary, but it’s also a project that was initiated through worldwide organisations. And there are a lot of stories like this happening all across the planet. Our generation has raised a group of children telling them that the world’s going to end in 12 years. There’s nothing we can do about it. They’re going to go without. There’s no hope. There’s no reason for them to exist. It’s all been destroyed preemptively, and they’re going to be left with nothing. And then we wonder why these kids are rebelling and yelling and screaming and saying and going insane.

If you raise a whole generation of people with absolutely no hope, no sense of purpose, and no direction, what do you think is going to happen? So what’s important is to bring that hope back to this generation and to galvanise them with a sense of purpose that doesn’t cause harm, doesn’t destroy property, but gives back to the community and gives back to the world and the environment. And I think that is a task that can be done, and there are enough of them that would if they were given the opportunity, would put those shovels in the ground and help make some progress there in real tactile ways instead of just being an influencer on YouTube.

Colin:

I fully agree. I think there’s a lot of intersectionality to giving people opportunities to restore ecosystems. And it could address the housing crisis. It could address poverty. It can address essentially the trajectory we’re on. It heals the ecosystems that we rely on. It could be a gateway where universal basic income can be provided to these people working on landscape restoration.

Alex:

And the politicians should love that because they can say, look at how many jobs I created. Look at how amazing I am. These jobs are crucial, and there are more than enough of them because even though with technology, we have the entire planet at the push of a button, and these projects are huge, you know what I mean? And there’s a real opportunity to create jobs and tasks for everyone if we can just inspire people to see that fundamental truth.

Ecosystem Restoration Education and Strategies

Colin:

It’s very much a green new deal. But yeah, I want to highlight one of the links I put in the chat. It’s to Common Land, which is an organisation that I’ve been following for a while, an online deep dive course with them. And they have this four-returns model. And so it’s all about investing in landscape restoration. And so the process, I’ll just walk through it quickly. It has five elements. The first element of the process of establishing landscape partnerships. They advocate for industry needs to be involved. They have the money to do it, which is the main part, but they also might have some expertise. And their business model relies on ecosystem services. They have a reason to be investing back into landscape restoration. They advocate for public-private partnerships. So that would be government, be it municipal or provincial or federal and then industry or private business and then nonprofit.

It’s like a public-private three-way triangle partnership. And the nonprofit essentially implements on the ground, be it our ecosystem restoration camp or something like that. So it involves building a landscape plan, implementing the plan, and then monitoring and learning. And then they say that this leads to four types of returns. One is a financial return, like long-term value in the ecosystem, natural returns, so the prosperity of the landscape, social return being creating jobs, social prosperity and networks. And then finally, the return of inspiration, opening people’s eyes to the possibility of a better future. And that’s one thing I’ve been inspired about how they do this work. So an economic zone. So essentially that would be in and around Calgary or around the city centres in southern Albert, a combined zone where it’s just maybe more like the rural farmland where you’re creating food and fibre, but you’re also integrating biodiversity and landscape functions of water in the combined zone.

The natural zone, which would be the headwaters or the protected areas where there’s not a lot of people living or no people living. But there are the ones that are very key to providing our landscape and services. And then they advocate for this 20-year model. You need a minimum of 20 years or one generation to successfully implement large-scale landscape generation. And to me, this whole model’s very inspiring and I want to do more to bring it to say, these watershed restoration action committees or go on a tour to share this knowledge or this model implemented it successfully on over a hundred projects all over the world, be it China or Spain or Africa.

Jenny:

Can you speak a little bit about the course that you took? Is that something that they do ongoing?

Colin:

They are free online courses through Coursera. They have two. One is a Business Model Innovation Sustainable Landscape Restoration, and the other is Landscape Restoration Sustainable Development. If you go to Common Land and I think it’s under [join our learning network], it will lead you to Coursera and you can sign up and take this course for free at your own pace. I highly recommend it.

Jenny:

I think that’s something we should add to our information. We’re going to provide anybody who volunteers with us. Colin, just so you know, we’ll share this video with our volunteers so that they can know what we’re thinking in terms of advocacy. In that, I think we should include a card with a QR code and it’ll have Colin said, a request of government, but also we want to be able to reach other people in that, perhaps the media or some other branches when we send it out. But we’re going to have backup data, we’ll refer to some Lorne Finch and Kevin Van Tighen stuff. We’ll have a study that just was completed on forest harvesting that is a documented explanation of how deforestation is hurting our Eastern Slopes. There’s some scientific evidence that came to light on that as well as on coal mining. We’ll include all those juicy knowledge bits, but also inspiration bits I think would be awesome to have. If you want to learn, go this way. If you want to get involved, come this way. If you want to be on an action committee. I love this. The South McDougal Flats group wants to make a society, and maybe I should suggest it be an action committee. That’s a perfect start. We can start right there. Use the one in action. Amazing. Okay, anything before we wrap up this general activity? Cool beans.

Key Takeaways

Jenny:

I see we’re close to the hour. I don’t want to keep everybody, but I do want to reflect on this model and just think about what we talked about today. And we can use this as our closing thoughts if that’s okay. But I’m just looking at that model, which is the rock model, and it shows this concept of, like I said, with these opposing forces on either side of the aisle, I’ve used Mark’s three concepts of trust at the top here.

We need to honour everybody’s spirit in terms of how they see and perceive the world. We need to honour that balance in nature. And with that comes a universal logic and trust. So that’s how this is taking shape for me. It’s not just about the opposing forces that I put at the bottom there, we talked about governments and the laws of the land earlier, but we’ve got authority. But on the other side of that coin, we’ve got approval. So as Colin’s saying, we need to gain more disapproval so that the authorities understand the issues that we’re seeing. We have regulations, but we also have limits. So these regulations which are failing us, as you’ve described, Colin, we have this set up for just extracting type behaviour. Well, we’ve got limits that are forcing us to look at those regulations so we can be ready with some recommendations.

We’ve got corporations on one side and corporations are supposed to have a level of governance. So that’s a new one for me in this model. I put that on and I thought, interesting. There’s governance on two sides of this equation when I think of it in my mind, but I’m open to other thoughts. And then a couple of other things I have on here is there’s obligations, but there’s also rights, right? So we have obligations to industry or investors, things like that. But people have human rights. And so when we talk about resource extraction, as Kevin Van Tighem highlighted, we can’t have oil and gas without water, so we have to have a balance there to make sure we’re restoring that thing. And the last thing I put in here was schools versus stories. So we have these schools of thought, is what I was thinking is people lean into this. It’s a school of thought rather than an evolving story, an unwritten story that can still change. So anyway, those are some of the concepts that I put in here in terms of how we construct the forces that are at play here. This is just a thought process, as Alex was saying earlier today, we’re a think tank man. What do you guys think? Any final thoughts on this before we wrap up?

Alex:

I think history has proven that anytime there’s an unregulated marriage between corporations and governance, we end up with something looking like Mussolini, and that’s never good for the people. Then again, history’s also proven if we have a centralised government that’s supposed to be for all the people, it’s the same thing. It’s like communism versus fascism. Coke versus Pepsi. It’s all bad for you. We need something else. And I think inspiration is the name of the game. We need to give each other a dream again. And one of the issues I’ve found when I go to these council meetings is no disrespect to the experts in their fields, but they’re using terminology and dry boring presentations that are highly detailed if you know what they’re talking about. But if you’re just a civilian who’s trying to understand what the challenges are, it’s going to be extremely difficult to understand that.

What I’m trying to figure out how to do is maybe find a way to translate those complex things into a simpler form so that people can still stay informed and feel like they’re doing their part without having to go get a PhD in geotechnical engineering. You know what I mean? Everyone can pick up a shovel if they feel like they’re doing it for the right reason. And that’s my takeaway from this, and that’s the direction that I’m choosing to go forward with. I went to this big seed bank and I gathered a whole bunch of seeds and I’m landscaping my whole property with indigenous plants and growing food, and I’m going to photo document and video document the whole process to show that by grading the land and allowing the water to work for it, I can prevent lots of wastewater from going into the storm drain.

But I can also grow indigenous plants, contribute to the water table, use less water, capture more water and grow food on a very small parcel that I have. And maybe that can be a way that I can inspire other people to do the same and they can ditch their lawns that just suck up the water and don’t do anything good for the water table. And I think if I can show other people that they can do the same thing, with minimal effort, and minimal cost, that can be something of inspiration for them to make a difference too. With that, I’ll just, I’ll leave it at inspiration. I’m inspired and I like that you’re inspired if you use it effectively in the right direction. Thanks for having this conversation and trusting us with your time, sir.

Colin:

Thanks for having me. The doom and gloom is only part of the equation. We all have our unique gifts, what’s the saying? Our passions are linked to a thirst in the world. If we can find those things that light a fire in us, there’s part of the world that needs them and there’s a lot of problems that need solving. One of the few that I have is I’m very passionate about composting, and over the last couple of years that’s led me to host a weekly meetup in the summertime at Highfield farm called Compost Club. That’s been very inspirational. What time,

Jenny:

When is it, Colin? How can people join if they want?

Colin:

It starts in May, the first week in May. On Tuesdays. It’ll be every Tuesday for the summer from 5 pm at Highfield Regenerative Farm. It’s a casual meetup where you can come and essentially pick up a shovel or we make compost, we make a compost pile a week, and there’s a diverse community of like-minded people that show up, and it’s all about soil health, making compost to improve gardens and soil, and it’s a mini microcosm of what I want to see these ecosystem restoration camps or watershed restoration action groups be. That’s where I’ve seen the positive connections and mental health benefits, not just for myself, but other people that come to these groups where you can essentially get your hands dirty, get those microbes that make you feel good and feel you’re doing something positive. Inspiration is such a key part of it as an antidote or an answer to the doom and gloom, that people want to feel they’re able to do something. Tapping away on your computer or playing video games doesn’t feed it the same way as hanging out with other people and getting your hands dirty in the dirt.

Jenny:

That’s so true. We will visit and maybe do a little video with you too, Colin, so that we can help.

Alex:

Love, my wife is super into gardening. We’ll be there, and my neighbour, Laurie, she’s super into gardening, so she’ll be there. We’ll start recruiting people to come on out.

Colin:

We make a hot composting pile. Compost Club is the hottest club in town, and I love it. It is growing. It’s drawing a lot of people in lots to learn there from the patterns of community gathering around that that want to apply to new spaces as well. So thanks for having me tonight.

Jenny:

Let’s wrap it there. Really appreciate you always, Colin. I’m so glad that I’ve had the opportunity to work with you and now Alex too. This is just, we’re getting stronger together and there’s momentum definitely in our understanding of what this looks like for us is getting clearer and clearer. So lots more to talk about this year.

Colin:

Thank you.