If you discount the Toronto Blue Jays playoff聽 run as not counting because it is sporting news, then surely the biggest news of late, at least in Saskatchewan, is the idea of climate change and carbon tax.
Premier Brad Wall has never exactly gotten around to admitting that the climate is changing. That reluctance is at best narrow-minded.
It really should only take a quick perusal of the funds funnelled through Saskatchewan鈥檚 Provincial Disaster Assistance Program in recent years to know weather extremes, in particular massive rain events, are impacting the province.
There may be wiggle room for those in denial of climate change to argue its cause. It might just be some natural cycle played out of decades, or even centuries, a part of a long term norm.
But a more reasonable explanation would seem to be the impact man, and the various toxins we spew into the atmosphere as part of our daily lives, are beginning to have an impact.
And therein lies the issue. What can we do to reduce our collective impact on climate patterns?
Having lived through two floods of a basement suite, and watching the skies as a third heavy rain this year threatened to make it three floods in a decade, I know the weather is more extreme that has been the norm for most of my 56 years.
So in general terms we do need to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we allow into the atmosphere. It needs to be a worldwide approach, but that said we can鈥檛 delay a Canadian response based on what another country is doing either.
Which brings us back to how to best reduce the emissions?
Certainly various sectors are responsible for the emissions, including agriculture.
In Saskatchewan 16 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture according to Environment Canada. That鈥檚 not too far behind oil and gas at 34 per cent and electricity at 21 per cent.
In some respects farming has gotten better at how it does things.
The switch to zero till has certainly contributed to reducing agriculture鈥檚 carbon footprint, but that improvement was a by-product of the change, which was made primarily to reduce soil erosion and to facilitate continuous cropping systems. Thoughts of reducing greenhouse gases was not the reason farming shifted to zero till.
A recent study completed by the University of Alberta found out there is another step agriculture could take to reduce its carbon footprint. The study looked into how much carbon grasslands, particularly that native grasslands store.
The study started in 2014 and studied 114 locations across Alberta. It was found that native grasslands store the most carbon out of annual crop land, tame and introduced forage, and native grassland.
That is an interesting finding, although how it might fit into the larger answer of reducing emissions is unclear.
Native grasslands are increasingly rare, and while efforts could be made to re-establish native stands, the long term requirement of farmland to be utilized to grow food for our growing world population limits the ability to do that.
However, it does go back to the growing idea that the public may want to be involved in funding the maintenance of native grasslands to aid the atmosphere much as finding wetlands could mitigate some of the issues of rainfall flooding.
Certainly whatever is done, it will be driven by government policy.
Moves can be made provincially, or will be imposed from the federal level.
Ideally, it should be a negotiated plan, one that sets reasonable reduction targets with an eye to not hamstringing any sector鈥檚 ability to be competitive. It is a razor鈥檚 edge to balance but it is our future we are protecting in achieving that balance.
Calvin Daniels is Editor with Yorkton This Week
