By: Jhona Binos, Grade 12
If you were given time to prepare for an encroaching typhoon, what would 
you do first? Would you be grabbing your iPod, clothes, food, or important papers perhaps? That’s not the case with many citizens in the Philippines who went through a sudden flash flood that changed their lives forever. Even though the people were given a heads up of an approaching storm, they were overwhelmed of how quickly the water built up in a short amount of time.
By: Puneet Riar, Grade 12
“The objective of the Summit on Climate Change, which I am convening on 22 September, is to mobilize the political will and vision needed to reach an ambitious agreed outcome based on science at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen.” – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
When you put environment and politics together, it can’t be a good thing. This was the case for the main theme of the day-long UN Summit on Climate Change. Over 100 heads of government attended the summit on September 22nd, which was intended to get all the leaders thinking on the same page before the major climate change summit in Copenhagen (the Copenhagen meeting will replace the Kyoto Protocol). Ki-moon urged world leaders to work on a draft proposal that would work with developing countries.
By Soraya Parwani, Grade 9
Sockeye salmon are one of the world’s brightest red fish. When they reach maturity at the age of four, and weigh in at five to twelve pounds, they are ready to spawn. They travel long distances to reach their spawning ground. The most important spawning areas in British Columbia are the Fraser, Nass, and Skeena Rivers.
A female sockeye salmon lays about 2000-5000 eggs in a shallow red. The eggs, which mature in pebbly gravel, hatch after two months. After the eggs hatch, the sockeye salmon begin life as an alevin. Alevin’s are tiny with huge eyes, and carry an orange sac, filled with nutrients. Approximately after two months, the alevins lose their egg sacs and emerge from the gravel, no longer alevins. Instead, they are fingerlings; at this stage they make their way downstream toward the sea. The last and final stage of sockeye salmon is the adult spawners, as during this period the salmon make their way back upstream towards the river to spawn. After the female lays the eggs, the male fertilizes them by covering them with a milky substance called milt. Several days later, the spawning salmon will die.
By Cassandra Ly, Grade 10
As you walk to the cashier of the supermarket with your hands full of groceries, place it down onto the conveyor belt, and pay for the total, it is rare for the cashier to ask paper or plastic. Instead, they would ask, “Would you like any bags?” The majority of supermarkets give out plastic bags that customers usually use only once or twice. Where do they end up after that? Most of the bags end up in the landfills with other garbage that cannot decompose for thousands of years. If they don’t go into landfills, they’re literally floating around in huge masses in the sea. The plastic that ends up there cannot be easily scooped out, as it means extracting all the smaller organisms as well. Burning plastic bags is one solution, but pollutes the environment and increases the greenhouse gas emissions in the process. On top of that, plastic bags are mistaken as food by animals, such as turtles. They clog their airways or intestines, causing animals to suffer painful deaths.
By Mitchell Agostinho
Ever since the release of Al Gore’s powerful environmental documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” I can’t turn on the TV without seeing a commercial for “going green.” It would seem that everyone, including their grandmothers, is going ga ga over reducing their carbon footprint. Now don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing; but when it’s commercialized and treated like a product then it’s a bad thing. Before the release of the movie, no one cared a bit about green house gases or CO2 or the ozone layer. After it won the Oscar it deserved, the planet was suddenly everyone’s hot button.
People who have been doing ravine clean ups and tree plantings a full year before the movie was released – are they band wagon jumpers? I don’t think so. Bono, Jennifer Aniston, Leonardo DiCaprio – some of the hugest names in their field of work – are not bandwagon jumpers. Some have been doing their part for years to be environmentally friendly. For the past two years though, other celebrities have been trying to hop on the band wagon and take some of the glory. It’s for mostly the right reasons that they take shorter showers and use reusable shopping bags but is it really and truthfully honest to turn on a dime like that?
by Alyssa Goncalves
Garbage on land is accumulating at an alarming rate therefore people are now starting to pay close attention to the waste they produce and how it is affecting our environment. Unfortunately the garbage we have on land isn’t our only problem, as we are now beginning to realize the affects of waste in our oceans.
Out at sea, most of the debris that scientists are finding come from the fishing industry; things like fishing floats, ropes net fragments and various other fishing gear. The majority is made up of plastic and plastic particles. Not to mention eighty percent of debris that washes up on beaches originates from land-based sources, such as street litter that washes out to sea through storm drains.
In addition, a ten mile wide discovery of plastic Taco Bell bags was made in 2000, floating in the ocean as a result of a spill. This one spill contributed 6 million bags alone. Fast forward eight years later and we now have a “plastic soup” of waste bubbling in the Pacific Ocean, continuing to grow. This same “soup” now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.
All this plastic debris kills more than a million seabirds every year, as well as 100000 marine mammals a year. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds that have mistaken them for food. “Ghost nets” – fishing nets that have been left or lost in the ocean by fishermen – continue to act as killing machines, catching fish and various other marine creatures. In 1980, scientists recovered a 1.5km piece of net that had 99 seabirds, 2 sharks, and 75 salmon. The net was estimated to have been adrift for 90 days and had traveled 60 miles.
by Emily Chan
With our world slowly dying from the affects of global warming, some things get pushed aside. For example, we all know about the melting glaciers, the dying polar bears, and the natural disasters that have killed and ruined many people. But how about pine beetles?
Pine beetles are attacking pine trees all around us. Now that they have killed many trees in B.C., they are going after their newest victim; Alberta.
The economy will be hurt drastically. With the average price of lumber being $73 for one cubic metre, the forest industry can expect a loss of $32.5 BILLION dollars! If the infestation continues this strongly, we’ll lose 445 million cubic meters of pine trees in just 20 years. To put this into perspective, a telephone pole takes up one cubic metre. That’s a LOT of telephone poles for just 20 years.
It’s hard to miss the affect that the pine beetles are taking on our forests. This summer, I went up to a cabin for vacation, and the change was startling! Even if you hadn’t heard about pine beetles before, it is pretty hard to turn a blind eye. The luscious green trees that I had expected to see turned to the red, dead trees that have begun to engulf the forests. In fact, by 2013, over 80% of mature pine trees in BC will have been killed. It’s no less than an epidemic.
by Kevin Chan
As a follow up to Peggy Lam’s article based on the Gateway Project (see Think Translink)…
Kevin attended a Gateway Project protest on Sept. 27th. Below is some background information followed by his experience at the rally.
WE DON’T WANT NO TRUCKIN’ FREEWAYS!
You might remember an article from last month’s issue about the Provincial Government’s proposed ‘Gateway Project.’ For those of you that don’t, the ‘Gateway Project’ is B.C.’s plan to increase economic growth and decrease congestion by building and expanding freeways (Highway 1), twinning the Port Mann Bridge, and expanding the Delta Port shipping terminal. They plan to develop a major freeway between Port Moody and Maple Ridge to be known as the North Fraser Perimetre Road (NFPR). A brand new freeway (SFPR) with travel from Delta Port terminal and travel along the South side of the Fraser cutting through the ecological area of Burns Bog before connecting to the new Golden Ears Bridge.
This project has been named “the most environmentally threatening highway mega-project in the history of British Columbia” by activists from gatewaysucks.org and has been likened to BC’s equivalent of the Alberta Tar Sands. Provincial Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon has claimed that “Gateway is a done deal,” and that the project is going ahead. Unfortunately for the Provincial Liberals’ upcoming election, hundreds if not thousands of citizens from across the Lower Mainland would disagree with that statement.
Now, for the protest…
by Peggy Lam
Have you ever ridden public transit buses and complained about the gigantic crowd that’s been stuffed on one single bus? Or do you get upset over the outrageous amount of money that your ticket [now] costs you? Unfortunately for us, things do not get better from here.
In 2006, the Provincial Government with Premier Gordon Campbell and Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon released a ‘Gateway’ Plan to solve the problem of overcrowding cars and clogged-up traffic during the rush hours, or so they said. This plan includes widening Highway 1, doubling the Port Mann Bridge, and most of all, adding 8 lanes from Vancouver to Langley! And not only does this ‘Gateway’ project cost $4-6 BILLION dollars, but it’s also coming from the money of our own pockets. The federal government refused to pour money into this project, and so the provincial government declared that it must come from tax payers, public-private partnerships, and private corporations. That’s right folks, the taxes that we pay when we consume is being used for projects like this.
by The Ninja Twins
Parks and scenic views are two of the major reasons why tourists visit Vancouver. Earlier this summer, the Vancouver Park Board made a decision that enraged some local residents over an issue involving both of these. It began with a decision to remove 70 trees from a particular viewing area in Queen Elizabeth Park. This decision was made because the current height of these particular trees was obscuring the scenic view popular with tourists. The issue was immediately brought to the attention of some people concerned with the local tree situation. They promptly reacted by sending letters of protest to the Park Board and the local media. Their main complaint was that these trees selected for removal were old-growth trees. However, the Vancouver Park Board informed them that even though the trees were going to be removed, they were planting 140 brand new baby trees, two for every tree cut in areas that were less dense. Still, the protesters complained that the trees shouldn’t be cut down. Their main complaint was, “Why destroy 70 perfectly healthy trees for something as unimportant as scenery?”
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