4 A new deal


Canadians were driving Bennett buggies – the famous horse-drawn motor cars that became emblematic of the poverty brought about by the Great Depression – when the US elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932. Within a hundred days, Roosevelt had launched his New Deal and the period became a benchmark and byword for the success of governments to come. BC’s new government made sure to acknowledge the completion of its first


100 days on October 26 with an op-ed by Premier John Horgan that began circulating the previous week. Horgan called attention to the various initiatives made to put BC residents first, and to focus on more than one sector of the economy (take that, LNG!) and support traditional industries like agriculture. While the opening days of the BC Liberals brought news of a core review of


government services and a tattle line where the average citizen could complain about government waste, it ended with the disastrous roll-out of the groundwater licensing initiative and the brief tenure of former BC Agriculture Council executive director Steve Thomson in the hot – er, speaker’s – seat in the legislature. Cut back to Horgan’s op-ed: “We’re going to fix those mistakes and make life


better for people.” The first 100 days of the new NDP government unleashed announcements aimed at reviewing what the previous government did but also making the most of the former government’s commitments. The rapid response to more than three million acres of wildfire was undoubtedly helped by the BC Liberals’ pledge of $100 million in relief, which the NDP immediately tapped to boost support for evacuees based on the duration of their evacuation. This was also the cornerstone of a $20 million relief package the province hammered out with Ottawa in a mere three weeks. The former government’s Buy Local program is also providing the


foundation for the revival of Buy BC, although the full details of this and other initiatives have yet to be worked out. Changes to governance and management of the Agricultural Land Reserve have been announced, with details to follow.


Of course, not all the news is good: early missteps have resulted from an abundance of ambition to show that the government is in motion while it takes stock of affairs. Delivery of a report on aquifer contamination in the North Okanagan is behind schedule, and the government’s language about the way it’s going to go about defending wild salmon has those granted tenures across the province on edge. Many city-dwellers seem to agree with the aims of the new government, or at least to support its efforts to correct the shortcomings of the previous government. What agriculture is anxious to see is what unfolds when the initial reviews complete and become the foundation for the agenda allocated funds in the February budget.


The good, the bad, the disturbing: climate change


The Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO) is one of the oldest and largest oceanographic and earth sciences centres in the world. The institute was founded in La Jolla, California in 1903 with


The Back Forty BOB COLLINS


funding donated


by members of the Scripps family of US newspaper fame and fortune. The institute became a department of the University of California, San Diego in 1925. The institute has a long history of conducting prolific, cutting-edge earth, ocean and climate science research. One of SOI’s most famous affiliates was Charles


David Keeling, who studied the geochemistry of oxygen and carbon and atmospheric chemistry – particularly the natural carbon cycle and the nature and abundance of carbon dioxide (CO2). Some of Keeling’s early research showed that both the level and the makeup of CO2 fluctuated daily. The fluctuation was the result of plants and soil taking in CO2 – essentially the biosphere breathing in during the day and stopping overnight. This conclusion was supported by synchronous changes in the ratio of the C12 and C13 isotopes in the CO2


.


(Photosynthesis favours C12.) Eventually, the research also showed that there is a seasonal fluctuation as well. Global CO2 levels drop during spring and summer in the northern hemisphere and rise during the fall and winter when


photosynthesis slows and plant matter dies and releases the CO2 they contain back into the atmosphere.


During his postdoctoral studies, Keeling found


that CO2 levels, long thought to be widely variable, tended to be very similar everywhere. In 1958, Keeling initiated atmospheric CO2 testing and discovered an “atmospheric background” level of CO2. The theory that CO2 was rising and might eventually cause climate change suggested by Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in the early 1900s motivated Keeling to begin long term testing. In 1958, Keeling initiated daily CO2 testing at the


Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii and a location in Antarctica. The Antarctic testing fell victim to budget cuts in the mid 1960s but the Mauna Loa program is still running. The test results immediately verified earlier findings and soon gave rise to the Keeling Curve which plots the test results and has become the gold standard of verified atmospheric CO2 levels. In 1958, atmospheric CO2 was measured at 317 parts per million (ppm). On May 4, 2017, the reading was 410.52 ppm. Analysis of air bubbles from South Pole ice cores revealed CO2 levels of 275 to 285 ppm for the past 12,000 years. Scientists estimate CO2 last reached 400 ppm more than three to five million years ago.


Keeling died in 2005 but his work lives on at SOI.


His son Ralph – also a Scripps professor and climate researcher – is the director of the Scripps CO2 program started by his father. Research led by Ralph Scripps has revealed that atmospheric oxygen levels have been falling as CO2 rises. It is not a balanced


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equation, however, and further research indicates that plant behaviour has and is changing around the globe in response to rising CO2. Plants take in CO2 through minute holes in their


leaves called stomata. The stomata also allow water to evaporate out of the plant. As CO2 levels increase, plants fill their needs with fewer and smaller stomata. They can breathe easy, in other words, and optimize their response to rising CO2: more photosynthesis with less water. There are obvious implications for agriculture.


Greenhouse growers have long understood the benefits of supplemental CO2. As CO2 levels continue to rise in the atmosphere, planetary warming will continue. The corn belt, long considered to be the US mid-


west, has migrated northward onto the Canadian Prairies, and the grain belt is pushing northward. There is an increasing potential to grow more crops in more places. Coupled with enhanced plant performance, thanks to abundant CO2 that decreases the amount of water needed, it sounds a little like an agricultural dream come true. And what is the downside to plants removing more CO2 and using less water? Rising CO2 and climate change are a broad and


urgent issue. The fact that oxygen levels are declining should give us all some pause. The rapid melt of ice that has been stable for thousands of years should concern everyone. What is obvious from the Scripps discovery in broader terms is, from a biological perspective, the future is looking better for flora than it does for fauna.


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