Whale deaths a harbinger?

The recent deaths of whales at opposite ends of the world shook me up, bringing to the surface emotional moments from my childhood, my professional life and my new role as a father.

In early June a Humpback whale died after being hit by an oil tanker bound for Port Valdez, Alaska. Images of a magnificent whale T-boned on the front of an oil tanker reinforced for me the importance of Dogwood Initiative efforts to secure a permanent oil tanker ban in northern BC’s inside coastal waters.  However, it was the horrifying images of 55 Pilot Whales (called mock Killer Whales) inexplicably beaching themselves on Kommetjie Beach in South Africa that linked together the challenges of childhood and fatherhood.

I have always been fascinated by whales. Some of my earliest memories as a child are school field trips to see Blue Whales off the coast of California. The box lunches, the rocking boat and the magnificent whales breeching off the bow are burned into my memory signifying a more serene time.

Most of all I remember a frantically trying to save a beached Humpback Whale when I was a kid. It was my first experience of death. A huge smelly, slippery, but beautiful mass of flesh slowly wheezing its way to death despite heroic attempts to move it back in the water and to keep it wet. Along with countless others, I hauled buckets of water and wet towels until I was exhausted. I remember asking why it was happening, and a no one could answer. My questions seemed to confuse the adults. Was the whale sick or hurt? No one knew. Why had the whale come on the beach? All I got were hesitant stuttering answers. At the time I couldn’t explain it, perhaps I sensed what many of the adults were hiding from me, the fear that perhaps the magnificent whale had purposefully beached itself effectively committing suicide. Why? No one knew or knows.

Whales have once again become a focus for me. This spring Dogwood Initiative joined with other groups in lawsuits against the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to force the government to protect Orca Killer Whales and their critical habitat on BC’s coast. . As the keystone species of British Columbia’s coastal waters, the fate of Orcas mirrors our own. More importantly, the Orca’s survival depends on our ability to protect its habitat and food supply (salmon) from our excesses.

However instead of igniting my activist fervor the beached Pilot Whales in South Africa took me right back to the helpless feelings I had as a child watching the dying Humpback take its last breaths. Childhood questions resurfaced with difficult corollaries.  Why did the whales beach themselves? Was there something in the environment that was poisoning them? Has global warming already made their lives unlivable?

The helplessness I felt as a child with unanswered questions renewed as the sickening photos of the dying whales collided with my struggle to figure out how to confront climate change as an activist and a father. New twists on old questions emerged.

As I read daily reports of human activity knowingly pushing our life support system to the brink, I am often confronted by a similar feeling. Why?

Why do we collectively continue to follow what is essentially a suicidal path? Global warming threatens the lives of millions of people yet we seem unwilling to change course. Are we just following misguided leaders? Are we too attached to the comforts of the fossil fuel driven economy to give up an addiction that is killing us? Or are we manifesting a secret desire to throw ourselves on the rocks in perverse atonement for past sins?

Perhaps the leading whale in South Africa miscalculated the risk and beached his followers. Perhaps our political leaders are underestimating the existential threats of global warming as well.

I don’t have answers to these questions.  As a father of an infant I have been haunted by these whale deaths. How can I answer my daughter’s inevitable questions about our country’s (our world’s) continued addiction to fossil fuels while heat-trapping gasses threaten to end life as we know it? How can I explain the inexplicable?

The $64,000 question facing people concerned about global warming is how to get a majority of Canadians out of their comfort zone; making sacrifices to reduce their personal polluting emissions, but more importantly pushing our political leaders to take strong actions on climate change. Voluntary personal measures like changing light bulbs are akin to my well intentioned, but ultimately ineffective, efforts as a child dumping buckets of water on the dying whale. It made me feel better but didn’t save the whale’s life. We need a massive overhaul of how we use and produce energy. We need to transform how we feed, clothe, house and transport ourselves. Individuals can’t do this by themselves at the scale and pace necessary; we need government intervention.

I get up every morning thinking about how to mobilize people politically, to catalyze a movement that forces our leaders to take meaningful actions against global warming. I don’t have the answers. There is no obvious path; there is no slick campaign that can trick people into recognizing the potentially suicidal consequences of the status quo.

I keep trying to test new ways of connecting with people to have a dialogue about these existential issues. I make mistakes, but keep trying different approaches so least I can say to my daughter that I did the best that I could.

The clock is ticking. Ecosystems are collapsing, emissions are rising, and Ice caps are melting. But more and more people are beginning to understand the suicidal path we are on. Is it enough people, can we organize fast enough to become formidable? No one knows. But the only option left is to get out of bed every morning and do our best and hope.

My daughter is beginning to verbalize words; soon she will be asking questions. I hope I can tell her about how humanity woke up and avoided calamity. I hope I can tell her about how some whales beach themselves, but the rest survive.