And the Moon Became as Blood

A recent trip to my cottage, Golden Mile Chalet, in the Okanagan a couple weeks ago was unfortunately overshadowed by out-of-control forest fires in the neighboring Similkameen Valley.  The skies were fine until mid-afternoon and then gradually became choke-filled with smoke.  Fortunately it was fairly high in the atmosphere and thus didn't really affect our ability to breathe.  An odd side effect was the beautiful but eerie blood red moon in the evening.  We didn't know what to attribute this to and Dirk postulated that it was a sign of the apocalypse.  Dan thought it was a sign of love.  Dirk was correct in that it is one of the signs.  Dan I think was drunk ;) 

In any event after turning the cottage upside to find a bible to verify our impending doom, one could not be found. So the next day I went with Dirk to purchase a bible at the local flea market in OK Falls.  It felt rather unseemingly to buy a used bible and to haggle over one with vendors.  But there's no nearby bookstores, and I found a Gideon in relatively good condition for $3.  Ironicially the inside cover states that this bible should not be sold. 

Back at the cabin over a bottle of wine on the deck, Dirk read aloud from Revelations.  He has a fabulous knowledge of the bible and a great reading voice.  That being said, it was pretty trippy and I would think a literal interpretation is not the best, given how implausible it all sounded.  Involving four horsemen bringing death, famine, and war.  We'll be plagued by locusts, earthquakes, and stars will fall from the sky.  And only 177,000 people will be saved, the rest will face horrible suffering.  The particular passage regarding the blood moon is from Revelation, 6:12,

“And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;”

On the Road to Armageddon?

This got me thinking, first of Stephen Colbert's hilarious sendup.  And secondly of what we're doing to our planet.  Earlier this summer we did a Sxip movie night and all went to see An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's brilliant but depressing movie, about global warming. 

According to scientists if the warming continues, we can expect the following catastrophic consequences:

• global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide
• heat waves will be more frequent and more intense
• droughts and wildfires will occur more often
• the Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050
• more than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050
• tens of millions of additional people at risk from coastal flooding and hunger, hundreds of millions from malaria and billions from water shortage
• destruction of more than half of the world’s coral reefs
• in Canada, reduced water quantities from the Great Lakes to the Rockies

Checkout the predicted effect on downtown Vancouver courtesy of a google mashup.  Glad I live in Gastown and not False Creek!

Not surprisingly big oil has launched a counter-offensive with their "You call it pollution, we call it life" ad campaign which would be funny since it's ridiculous, if it weren't so disturbing in its attempt at deception.

Which brings me back to the "moon as blood".  The cause?  Apparently a high concentration of dust particles in the air from the raging nearby forest fires.  The cause of those?  We've had a hot, dry summer with little rain.  The fires were burning out of control in a heavily forested, mountainous area ravaged by the pine beetle.  According to the Canadian Government Forest Service, the pine beetle has proven to be uncontainable, since it no longer gets cold enough in the winter to kill it.  The beetle has destroyed the forests in southern BC and is making its way east :(

The spectacular western Canadian wilderness is rapidly being annihilated by a bug.  Hmm, another sign?  Pine beetle (modern day locusts?)  And what are we doing?  Supporting Kyoto?  Uh, nope.  Decreasing our greenhouse gas emissions?  Nope. Canada's emissions are up by 24% since 1990 (we had committed to reducing them by 6%).  According to the UN Kyoto Progress Report, we have the sixth worst ranking in the developed world.  (The US was only up by 13%).  Canadians produce 16.84 tonnes of carbon dioxide, per person, per year, 48% above the OECD average of 11.41 tonnes and more than four times the global average.

Given this are we pouring resources into alternative energy?  Nope.  We're increasing oil sands development in Alberta - which is predicted to triple by 2020. Currently, oil sands production is responsible for about three percent of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions, but it could account for up to 30 percent of our GHGs as development increases.

Next post will be on another sunny topic --war, genocide and the carnage in Darfur.  Yet another sign?...