Bound to extinction: Alberta's caribou

Watching the documentation “Being Caribou” last autumn, sequences of both Bush presidents were shown with a 10 year lapse in between where both of them said that they did not care about protecting the caribou and their habitat, they only cared about the American people and jobs for these people. The issue was that the USA wanted to drill for oil in the calving grounds of the caribou in North-East Alaska. Why I am mentioning this? I think that attitude also applies to the Alberta government – it neither protects the caribou nor the caribou's habitat despite the fact that scientists have long realised and asked for a protection of both. You have to read the following article There's something fishy about Alberta's caribou because paragraph for paragraph it's a great article. It does mention an earlier article from February that did not go down well with politicians and the Edmonton Journal was apparently forced to apologize and  rephrase it. Here's the link:  Conservatives not conserving our caribou.

I don't think as long as this Conservative government exists anything in favour of the caribou is going to happen. It took 8 years to start protecting the grizzly bear in Alberta. The caribou might need to have more patience, or survival skill as for that. 

The first article clearly states that the reason why the government avoids protection of endangered species and their habitat is due to certain industries, obviously forestry and oil & gas, ever the same culprits. I watched The Story of Citizens United versus F.E.C. http://www.truth-out.org/story-citizens-united-v-fec68121 last night, a project from The Story of Stuff producer Annie Leonard. It's about the USA and how corporations and big industries happily pay money to political parties in order to get their way, no matter what the people want ("the people" must be those citizens that do not work for the corporations). I don't think it's quite that bad in Alberta (and Canada) but sure enough politicians listen too closely to industry ignoring what the people want and what independent scientists say. But then again, most people just can't be bothered to do anything about it  - so who do we want to blame if everything goes downhill from now on? Ourselves.

I also wonder: Who do politicians want to create jobs for when people suffer from floods and droughts & when people come down with cancers, pulmonary and heart diseases because all warnings about climate change, air and water pollution, toxins released by industry etc. have been ignored and denied; when people are so obese or ill that they can’t move? I don’t think they think that far!