I mourn for Fort Mac.

The stories and the images coming out of northern Alberta are devastating and scary. I can’t imagine what the people of Fort McMurray and the surrounding areas are going through, and everything they will continue to go through as they try to recover and rebuild homes, businesses, and communities they loved. I mourn for them.

Over the last couple of days, there are many others I have been thinking about, people that I had the honour and privilege of visiting, and the good fortune to be able to head back to my safe and secure home in Canada.

I remember the Maasai people, living in southern Kenya in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. They have lived a semi-nomadic life for centuries, moving season by season to find places for their cattle to graze and drink. When I visited them, despite all the collective, cultural knowledge held in their communities, their cattle were dying because they could not find enough food and water for them. No elder I spoke with had seen the land so altered as by the ongoing drought. The Kenyan government, in desperation, sent mechanical diggers throughout the region to dig down until they hit groundwater. Some of these pits, where water used to be available at the surface, were 20 or 30 feet deep. I mourn for them.

Read the rest of this column here:
Climate Hawk Mourns for Fort Mac…and Many Others