2011 floods underscore our changing reality

So, this must be the year that the bottom end of Saskatchewan tries to emulate the top end of Australia: half a year dry (we call it winter) and half a year of seemingly endless rain, washed out roads, flooded creeks and rivers, and quiet streams replaced by raging torrents.

At the Top End of the Land Down Under, they get used to it; in fact, the ecosystem there demands The Wet, as it is called, for its very survival. In southern Saskatchewan it’s a different story. We have been caught totally off-guard by what nature has wrought upon us, and are left puzzled – and often angry – as more water than this generation has ever witnessed inundates our fields, homes and businesses. It is not very surprising that we are puzzled, and being puzzled is a good thing because it may trigger our desire to learn about why this is happening to us, understand why we were so ill-prepared to cope, and maybe even adopt new patterns of survival for the future.

We could start with remembering that some 10,000 years ago there were no rivers or lakes or creeks or farmlands. There was just ice, hundreds of feet thick. If you think it’s wet this year, imagine how wet it was when all that ice melted and eventually carved out the prairies, lakes and rivers which we now consider ageless, and the fertile farmland from which our farmers wrest a living today.

As a wiser person than I once wrote, “the only constant is change”. Unfortunately, despite being the one species on this planet which is intellectually equipped to grapple with change, like most living creatures we do not handle change well. In fact, as a society we are quick to deny change, perhaps because embracing that reality requires us to invest our energy and our money on things which do not gratify our immediate needs. Our social (and therefore political) reality is that research into the health of our environment and the sustainability of our infrastructure is trumped by research into markets and growth – every time.

With heartfelt compassion for people whose lives have been shattered by this year’s events, perhaps as prairie people we have just received a wake-up call, a chance to examine our future in light of what we already know, and all the things we must learn. When it comes to floods, for example, what we have considered a “one-in-fifty-year event” is beginning to look more like, say, a “one-in-twenty-year event”. That consideration alone moves the planning horizon from our grandchildren’s future to our own very real present!

With that in mind, will we continue to discourage our leaders from developing forward-thinking, research-based policies? Is it logical to blame governments and agencies for our troubles today, when we have steadfastly refused them sufficient funding to do the necessary research to plan and build properly for the future? Can we really still afford to cheap out on our taxes and build roads and culverts which only match our 100-year-old paradigm?

Let’s hope that – while we may yet be somewhat ignorant – we are not totally stupid!