Hello and welcome to the Borealis experience. I'm

delighted to have Kevin Van Tighem with me today. He's a

native born calgarian naturalist, and writer. He

published several books in the past decade that are so

incredibly inspiring. And I feel he has a big message to share

today. We need to protect our headwaters. We need to reconnect

to nature, there is more and more people committing suicide

there is more and more people struggling with finances and

depression. And we want to give you hope, that there is

solutions to this recession to this depression that I Berta

Canada, the world is going through right now. And we want

to share with you our thoughts on the future. And yeah, again,

give you hope, and love and appreciation for mother nature

that is constantly supporting us and nurturing us. Thank you so

much for listening.

Also, a

little disclaimer in the second part of the interview, we were

sitting together at a distance outside and the wind was blowing

quiet, noisy Lee. So yeah, please don't mind the wind in

the background. It is not background noise. It is Mother

Nature being present with us. Thanks for listening. Hello

there.

Kevin.

So nice to have you here today. I would love to start out this

conversation and ask you to explain a little bit on how

connected the water is to plants and to the animals around us.

Um, well, you know, everything is connected in this world. I

mean, that's one thing you discover, the more time you

spend in it, every everything you do, has an effect on on many

other things and everything that happens in nature has multiple

effects on so in Alberta, we are a very water short region. And

we've always valued water. And you know, you were saying

earlier that Alberta is not full of tree huggers. I'm not

convinced That's true. I just don't think we've ever looked

closely enough in the mirror I I think we're starting to look in

the mirror now that our headwaters are are being

threatened by proposed coal strip mines. If you look at

Alberta as a water short region, we use a lot of water we got two

thirds of Alberta's of Canada's irrigated agriculture in Alberta

as a real water consumer, every industry that that that makes

our economy run relies to one degree or another on freshwater

resources. And yet we have very small rivers. I mean, if you've

been anywhere else in the world, you know, what we call a river

most places would call a creek, you know that the Old Man River,

the bow river and our southern rivers are the smallest ones.

And yet they go to the part of the province that has the most

people and the most water demands. So, so water is

critical. It's critical to our present. But it's also very

critical to our future. You can live without oil. There are

those in Alberta that think you can. But you can live without

oil, but you can't live without water. And you can have an

economy without oil. But you can't have an economy without

water. So if you think about that, then you got to say, well,

where does that water come from? What what's, how do we make sure

that we will have as much water as we possibly can, given the

nature of this place we live in which is, you know, the lee side

of the Rocky Mountains, the part that gets the least moisture bc

gets all the water, you know, that's why they're all green. We

turn brown in July because everything dries out. But all of

our water more well more than 80% of the water that we rely on

for our towns and our communities and our economy and

our farms comes from the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains

that that strip of green that you see on the highway map of

Alberta, running up the west side of the province at an angle

because it's following the mountains. That's where almost

all our water comes from. It comes mostly to us as snow in

the winter. And also as a lot you know, usually we get a lot

of rain in late May and early June, June and that's the other

source of water. And you know whereas out in the prairies, you

know Calgary Medicine Hat Lethbridge way east of red deer,

you don't see a lot of spring rains and you don't get a lot of

winter snow. You get a lot in the Rockies and all that snow

melt in the spring and all the rain goes into the ground.

Because it's well vegetated there's lots of roots providing

channels for that water to get into the ground, and then it

seeps slowly through the ground until they It comes out in the

springs comes out in the bottoms of rivers and creeks as base

flow, sometimes weeks, sometimes months later. And so it's this

Matt marvelous system where we got all this precipitation at

this high elevation, beautiful Rocky Mountains strip and the

foothills along the edges of the Rockies, we get all this

precipitation that goes into a well vegetated landscape and

comes out as clean, cold spring water into trout streams that

then come together and become the rivers that support our

province. So we take that for granted though, like, like we're

sitting in the cities, are we sitting out in the farms, and we

turn on the tap, or we fire up the irrigation system, or we

would look out the window with a river, maybe go tubing in this

on a Saturday afternoon. ends there, right, we just take it

for granted, the waters always going to be there. But it's not

always going to be that you only get as much as nature provides.

And you can waste a lot of what nature provides. And that's what

we've done.

When when it comes to us as groundwater is purified and

filtered by the ground, and it's slowed down. So we get all that

that that precipitation in the spring. But we most need water

in the summer. That's when we're growing crops. And then we also

need water in those rivers year round, because that's how

ecosystems stay alive is that they have to stay watered,

right. So that groundwater post is wonderful. It gives us good

clean water, and it gives us throughout the year. It's the

perfect storage system, Mother Nature stores most of our water

in incredibly beautiful scenery. You couldn't ask for anything

better, right? Go there all summer long enjoy that green

landscape, walking on the reservoir that is feeding our

economy and our society and our communities. But when you start

to muck around with those eastern slopes, that's when

everything changes. And we've been mucking around with those

eastern slopes for probably 30 or 40 years and created what

looks like an industrialized landscape. People go up there

now and they see roads, they see well sites, they see big clear

cuts. And they look at it and they say well, this is a place

for you know, extracting resources, that's obviously what

this is all about. They don't see it as a water reservoir,

they don't see its incredible function and keeping our water

supply secure. They just see what we've done to it. And they

think that that defines the landscape. And that's why today

we have a government that actually thinks that would be

appropriate to strip mining coal from those eastern slopes,

because they look at and they say, Well, you know, it's just

another resource. And that's what we do out here. But every

time you measure those other resources, you're affecting the

critical resource, which is water, we can live without coal,

we can live without trees cut from our eastern slopes, we can

live without playing around on motorized vehicles that create a

big erosion funnels on the landscape. But we can never live

without water. So that's how it sort of all comes together. Hmm.

I'm wondering like if people knew about this, like people

being educated, when it comes to headwaters and water resources,

because I feel, especially people in this big cities, they

open up the tab and they just see water right and running all

day long. But if they knew how precious it was, then they

wouldn't take it as granted. I don't want to say that city

people are, you know, ignorant and don't know anything about

ecology, but I feel if they knew more about it, they would

appreciate it more and destroy dry less and be like totally

awake that Yeah, of course a coal mine is going to create a

couple jobs, but it's going to destroy

our water resource.

Did you like Do you notice that there is a lack of communication

or misinformation or what or do people know about this

ecological literacy? A lot of us live in our own little bubbles.

You know, we're, we're all busy. We're all distracted, because

it's a digital media era. And we're getting bombarded with

information and entertainments and things and so. So it's

really hard to be connected to nature or to be connected to

place. We're just too busy, we're just too distracted and

and we also were conditioned to take a lot of things for

granted. And so that water in the tap is one of those things

we take for granted. I think there's a couple I think a lot

of people are waking up are are generally aware of the fact that

the water comes down soon from the mountains in the foothills,

but what they don't understand is the processes that sustain

that water supply. We I really do believe we need to understand

better the nature of the places that we live in Because that

makes us more authentically a part of those places, which is

good for us culturally. But it also means that we can be more

attentive and more effective at actually sustaining the things

that are important to us. And, and that certainly includes

nature. But sitting within that is our water security. So even

if you don't care about nature, you've got to have water at some

point.

Exactly, exactly. And when it comes to the ecosystem, around

the rivers around the headwaters, can you talk a

little bit about the animals and the plants, the trees, but also

I think I heard a story about wolves and deer influencing the

water, how the water comes down from the mountains and into into

the river. Can we talk a little bit about the ecosystem around?

Sure.

You know, and we talk about riparian ecosystems. And those

are the ecosystems that are influenced throughout most of

the Year by the presence of water, so that so there's a

little green, you know, if everything in the Alberta

foothills turns brown, they're still green strips, and that's

the well watered portions of the landscape. That's the riparian

area. And we think of those as being very biologically

important. And they are, you know, I think, like 80% of the

plants and animals that are native to this part of the

world, actually rely on those little green ribbons, those

little riparian strips along streams and around ponds and,

and wetlands. But in reality, the entire landscape is part of

the river. And I think that's, that's the, that's the key piece

that gives us the this, really the solutions to our water

issues is to recognize that when we make land use decisions, we

are making water decisions, and we are actually affecting the

health of our streams. And so how that works is that we get

our winter snows and the snow lands in the landscape and it

accumulates and becomes a snowpack. And that is a

reservoir of water, that's actually most of our water,

probably 80% of our water is stored in snow through the

winter, we lose a lot of snow to evaporation because it gets

trapped in tree canopy and gets looked away by that by the wind

and things like that, but the snow that goes on the ground is

our water supply. Then in the spring, starting it's a march

depending on the elevation, that snow melts, if there's good

vegetation if the ground is covered with vegetation and, and

and if there's enough shade to sort of delay the melting of the

snow. So if it's got good forest cover the snow Well, most of

that snow will melt to end and settle into the ground, it

actually soaks in the vegetation slows its run off, and holds it

long enough to soak into the ground. And then what happens is

is snow melt is ending usually in late May or early June, we

get our peak rains. And by now this the soil is nice and soft

that the vegetation has been growing for the spring. So it's

been, you know, loosening the soil as it builds its roots. And

that rain is also able to go into the ground, some of it runs

off, some of it goes in, the more of it that soaks in, the

healthier the ecosystem because the more of it it soaks in, the

more slowly it's released, it still moves downhill, but it

moves downhill underground, where it's got friction, all

sorts of things, slowing it down, it's getting filtered. And

it when it comes out, it comes out in springs and those springs

are usually the bottoms of valleys are actually in the

bottoms of creeks and rivers. They call that base flow like

you know the water in the river, some of it isn't coming from

upstream, it's actually coming out of the ground. And that's

why streams keep getting bigger and bigger without tributaries.

Right. So so that's the good water. That's the best water

because it's coming to us year round. And we need water year

round is coming to us clean, it's coming into the rivers cold

which keeps the streams healthy for things like drought. And

it's not doing any damage. You know, it's it's, it's it's sweet

and clean and sustain. The stuff that runs off is the stuff you

got to worry about. Some water is always going to run off in

the spring. But a lot of it runs off in the summer too when

you've got an unhealthy landscape because if the soil is

hardened, the vegetation is being cut or disturbed. And so

those hardened then water is sort of soaking in runs off. And

because it runs off, it's running off fast because it's

fast. It's got energy, it's picking up dirt, so it doesn't

just run off, it runs out dirty. It picks up that silt is soil is

supposed to stay where it was. It's not doing any good once

it's in the stream. All it does is it plugs up the gravel for

the trout and the insects and everything else and then it

points up our reservoirs and then we wonder why we don't have

as much water stored as we used to So all of that sort of the

big picture of why the whole landscape is important, the

whole landscape is our water reservoir. And the underground

portion is the most critical part. And the underground

portion relies on healthy vegetation and healthy soils.

And those are the things we damage with that land use. And

certainly with coal mining,

oh, yeah. Big Sky agriculture and, and coal mining,

threatening to cut off like coal mountaintops, where snow cannot

accumulate now and, and melt and run off,

basically just just turns the landscape into rubble. Yeah, and

the rubble does not work well for streams. And so so go back

to your wolf thing. The reason that the wolf story from

Yellowstone is is significant is that when you don't have a lot

of predators in the landscape, the grazing animals go to the

best forage, and that's the riparian areas, and they they

just camp there, they just keep eating it because it's

productive, and it's really nutritious, so they just stay

there. But that kind of attention damages vegetation.

Once there's wolves in the landscape, wolves are 24, seven

predators, they're always on the on the lookout, they're always

coursing through the landscape looking for prey. And so they

make those elk and those deer very nervous. And, and and, and

it makes it very unsafe to stay in one spot, because now the

competitors can target you. So they spread out, and to try and

avoid the predators. And that takes the pressure off the

riparian areas. And that means that their vegetation gets

lesser, and that means those streams get healthier. Yeah. So

it's kind of cool. I mean, everything is connected. Yeah,

you know, whether we have the full suite of animals, the

landscape, how we're using the land, how we're how we choose to

conserve, those things all affect each other.

It's so beautiful, and we're part of it, we have to stop

thinking that we are outside of it and can manipulate and abuse

it, we are part of it. And if we don't take care of it, we will

pay the bill. At the end of the day, there's a thing about the

power of positive thinking, you know, there's the thing about

just sort of a body of theory about how one manages one same

mental health, which is that you tend to be what you believe you

are, you decide in your mind that you're a certain kind of

person. And then because you've you've seen yourself that way,

you start to model that and in fact, you become that kind of

person, so you can be as good or as bad as you choose to be. And

and that comes to this thing about connections to nature is

we have got a myth that's coming to us from some of the world's

great religions that we are separate from nature that we you

know, in the Christian tradition, you know, we have the

fall we are exiled from Eden. And that was basically our

isolation from nature. Well, the the longer that we buy into that

way of thinking about ourselves, the more we make ourselves

separate from nature. And the more we become an in effect

orphans, from everything that makes us who we are. Because we

are not separate from nature, we are totally wired into nature.

And everything we do affects it and everything in nature does

affects us. And until we can see that we derive our identity from

nature. And that we translated it onto nature, the more that

we're going to be in disharmony with it and and and the more

will create the self fulfilling prophecy that we are separate

nature. And you know, what, if you're separate from nature,

ultimately you're dead? Because nature sustains everything.

Yeah. So you know, it's worth thinking through. Oh, totally.

And

mental health, like you said, is very much tied into how much

time do you spend outdoors? And in nature? How much do you

appreciate the food that you eat? How much do you care about

your body? And?

And isn't that interesting? Like, so why is mental health

tied to that? Kind of answers itself, doesn't it? Yeah, that's

where we get our that's who we are. Yeah. And if we if we, if

somehow we fragment who we are. Yeah, there's consequences.

Yeah. mental, physical. Yeah, cultural.

Yeah. And on my show here, I invite guys that inspire others.

And so far, I observe that every, every guy mentioned

purpose, if you have a purpose, you can get out of addiction. If

you have a purpose. If you serve the big picture, if you serve

nature, or humanity, you can get out of depression. And I feel

for you, like you've been such a strong activist here in Alberta,

and so engaged and writing one book after the other, to inspire

people and to wake people up and it gives people a purpose. It

gives people a sense of living again, and that's what I said at

the beginning of the show. The episode I was so disappointed to

see that people don't really care about nature here, but

through your books and through, yeah, me going outside and

hiking, I need more and more people who care about Mother

Nature, I would like to talk a little bit about your book

because I feel that book is also about your observation like

people are changing for the better people are realizing and

waking up. And the stereotype of the oil and gas, redneck a Berta

person is maybe still present. But there's a bigger group, a

group of wildness protectors and nature friends out there that is

growing bigger and bigger.

I think, you know, it's interesting that I did write my,

my latest book is really focused on that whole idea about

creating a different, different story about what it is to be in

Alberta and of Alberta. And really, that I did create that

contrast between the stereotype The world has of us of the angry

entitled redneck in a pickup truck, with a bumper sticker bow

to tow or something like that, you know, I mean, that's the

stereotype that the world has about us. And to some degree is

the stereotype that we have about us, and certainly a

stereotype that our fingers seems to have about us. And so

again, you are what you say you are, you create these self

fulfilling prophecies and, and and to see ourselves that way is

a very small way of seeing us and really limits our potential

limit limits our, our potential socially, ecologically and a

bunch of ways. Having said that, it is part of who we are, a lot

of us probably fit that category. But that's not all

that we are as individuals, either, you know, you know,

sometimes we're angry, sometimes we're frustrated by the fact

that we don't control our feet that, you know, jobs dried up on

us, and we've got responsibilities, I mean, all

those things are our issues that we have to deal with. But they

don't have to make us just one kind of person. You know,

personally, I find that if you take somebody fishing or hunting

or for a hike, it doesn't matter what they're going to have to

return to during that period of time, they are able to connect

with nature and connect with each other in different ways, in

more productive ways, in some ways, in ways that inspire

solutions to the problems are gonna go home to so yeah. When

you look at Alberta, holistically, we are a province

of great people of really connected people we've got,

we've got in spite of everything we threw at them, the history

threw at them, we've still got First Nations was very strong

cultures and very strong connections. And they are

engaging that with the rest of society in a way that maybe

wasn't even possible 20 years ago, because of all of the the

dysfunction on both sides of that equation. We have ranchers

and farmers that are now into the third and fourth generation

of figuring out how to live on the land. We've got urban people

that have determined that their cities are no longer good just

going to be, you know, warehouses for for human labor,

but actually actually going to be places to live and create and

thinking and we've made our cities into beautiful places. I

remember as a kid like the river valley in Calgary was just a

place where you dump the old sidewalks, and all the

industrial lots back down to the river. And that was really

started the job like you nobody saw that river front as being

any part of what was important to Calgary. What was important

to Calgary was to put our imprint on the land and get

rich. You know, I'm overstating it. But now you look around and

we've got these beautiful green ribbons of parkland. And they're

full of people out there connecting with the river with

their wildlife with one another. cities have become places of

being. So these are all things that are going on while we are

letting ourselves be limited by this myth that is just about

grabbing a bunch of money from underground and using it to buy

stuff. That's a very limited perspective. And it's a

perspective that keeps us separate from each other and

keeps us separate malana keeps us separate from the future

because the future unfortunately, for Alberta is

not an oil and gas future. You know, I can get all angry, angry

and indignant when you hear that but it is simply true. That's

where the world's going like it or not, don't shoot the

messenger. This is what's happening. So what does the

future involve? Don't worry, we've got the future all around

us. We need to just refocus and see it and then the end the

future is our environment is the are the are the people that are

committed to this place and and and creating the next economy

through through various lines of work that are Not just all oil

and gas. So that's the conversations we need to have.

You know, I've heard it said that I had an instructor once at

a management course they took saying, an organization is a

product of product of its conversations. And really a

culture is a product of conversations. That's what song

and music and drama and arts are about. They're basically our

conversations with ourselves, where we simply trying to push

me into them.

So if that's the case, then we need to have the right

conversations. Yeah, we need to have kontaveit conversations

that expand the landscape of possibilities, not the trinket.

And that's what I tried to do in my book is to say, here's a

whole bunch of different ways to see the place to admire the

place to be inspired by the place to see one another. And I

tried to stop sort of prescribing, prescribing, and

I'm saying, and therefore here's what we need to do. But to be

saying, let's have these broader conversations, and what we need

to do will emerge from them, but they will not emerge from a

narrow backward looking, willing gas will save us I get yet

again. And if it doesn't, it's somebody else's fault. Yeah,

that will not save us.

Yeah. No, and this is also something I keep repeating, with

my people on the show and my listeners that we have to become

more resilient. Like we are just, we're putting all our eggs

into one basket, and it's good to be committed to something.

But if something goes wrong, like Now, a couple of times,

hitting the recession, with oil and gas, we are thrown off. So

if we become more diverse, if we become more creative, maybe even

then there's less stress on nature, but also within

ourselves, because we know, okay, if one leg breaks off, we

have three other legs, and we're going to be we're going to be

fine.

Right, and of relying on each other again, and yet creating

communities that that support each other, and not the

individual person who makes the big money and then buys the big

house and the big truck. That's,

yeah, that's interesting. In that vein, it's easy to sort of,

you know, we talk about the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you

know, that you know, that, you know, at the bottom, you just

need to have a house food. And when you don't have that, don't

talk to me about all this other airy fairy stuff, because that's

what matters to me, right. And that's true. That's, that really

is true. So so it can be really frustrating to have maybe a

conversation like this. When you know that your jobs in and next

month are ended last month, and you've got a mortgage, you got

kids that are in school, and the kids are stuck at home because

there's a pandemic and there's all these things going on,

right? Well, you know, it's at times like that it's impossible,

really, to imagine the solution and imagine that anything's

gonna get good again, you think about what it was like to be an

albertan in 1943, middle of the war, right? You just came out of

a depression. All the signs blew away. Everybody's poor. Now all

the men are overseas fighting, they're going to come back with

PTSD. Meantime, the women are trying to raise kids and keep

the economy going with the economy's just going dumping

money into the war. 1943 you look in the future, what do you

see, you see no hope at all, because everything around you

tells you there is no, in 1984, I was marched into a room with

another 30 or 40 people and told that all of our jobs ended in

coming March. We had a mortgage 16 and a half percent interest

rate. This was the 1980s the interest was other other

control. The housing market was dropping, we put every penny we

had into that house. My wife was pregnant. With our first kid, it

was bloody awful. Because all of a sudden, not only was I going

to be unemployed, but I was surrounded with other people

that would be unemployed. So was that gonna be one of those jobs?

Or were they and I was pretty young, right? It was about as

dark as it got. And now it's now 30. And 40 years later, I look

back and I say that was the best thing that ever happened to me.

It was sheer Hell, I remember the walking out of the lawyers

office broke, because we'd sold the house, signed the papers.

And now we are broke because we had to lose money on the host

and loaded. And I found a job but it was only three quarters

of the pay of the previous job. At least I found a job required

us to move. We had money for gas. So we could do that. And

that was it. It was like a total restart every assumption that

I'd ever had about my life. I'd been actually enrolled in

graduate school at the expense of my employer. It was looking

so good and then it just went the other way round. Right and

It's really actually, I would say, in our culture that's very

hard on a man in the culture I emerged from, because it really

was one of the words seen as your responsibility to support

the family and everything like that. And really, Gil was, at

that point, not going to be too employable, because she was

gonna have a baby, right. And that takes a certain amount of

time and focus. So, so that really weighs on you. And so

like I'm saying, you know, I'm just saying this sort of in

terms of what you were saying about the people that you that

you're speaking into with this podcast, at times like that, you

know, where's the future? what hope is there. And yeah, in

retrospect, looking back, that job almost saved me, I think it

got us out of Edmonton, which wasn't actually working for us

all that well, got me started on a new career path, which was

actually sustainable, took me into some really great jobs. And

then, as the years unfolded, enabled us to raise our children

back in nature, rather than in the city was a really good test

for Gil and he was one of those ones that sort of allowed us to

grow as a couple, you know, you get to grow your claps, right.

So, you know, it's the same thing with Alberta I mean, the

things that happen in our personal lives also happen in

our socialized in our cultural lives in our community lives.

And, and in the case of Alberta, right now, we're looking into a

future that's really not looking too promising, because

everything that we've always taken for granted isn't going to

be taken for granted anymore. But look at we've got more wind

than anybody else. In Canada, we've got more sun in southern

Alberta than anybody else in Canada, we've got all this

beautiful diversity, we've got the Rocky Mountains in the

foothills, the berries of the Northern forests, all these

things, we've got all the potential to be everything we

could possibly be. What we need is different compensations and a

different way of seeing ourselves. And that's really

like the answer that's very tried to go with wild roses are

worth it as I've tried to go with my previous books. I don't

know whether it's a big contribution or a small

contribution, but we all need to be trying to find the way to see

ourselves and see our place differently.

So that we can start to see possibilities differently that

may be elude us, until we get out of that little stove pipe

that we've locked ourselves thinking in about who we are and

where we are, and expanded a little bit.

So your latest book is about hope and and creating more

resilience, and making people aware of the resources we have.

And we just have to start using them responsibly. and reconnect

to nature. Did I understand that? Right?

I think so I thought the my latest book is, like I say,

well, roses are worth it, it's sort of rose on an earlier one

called our place which are collections of writing so so

they were never purpose written to be a book, they were

assembled to be a book, but when you put all these different

essays together, and so they you know, this can span like, you

know, 1520 years, but you put them together on little bundles,

and the the, the total becomes greater than the sum of the

parts, you know, because because they build on each other, and

they reinforce each other. And so there are ways of looking at

the nature of Alberta, right, like, like understanding and

seeing and being inspired by just the cool things that are

happening other than the way in which animals and plants and

seasons and cycles connect with each other. And they just the

miraculous stuff that comes out of that, like, I really do think

the world is absolutely full of magic. So it's basically saying,

so here's some of that. And then the other piece is just sort of

saying, here's some of the big issues that confound us. You

know, we've got issues around groundwater, we the issues

around oil and gas, got issues around creditors, and there's

their you know, so let's try and understand those issues a bit

better, so that we can maybe get to solutions that will work. And

then I think the other thread that turns up here is just

talking about great Albertans are some wonderful people that

they've got a big essay on Charlie Russell, who has changed

everything in terms of how in terms of what we think is

possible between us and bears. He's got a fascinating story. So

I told him, you know, so So there's all these pieces put

together.

Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, yeah. So when it comes to big decisions,

like there was a huge discussion of vaccines, and then now with

the residential schools, the horrifying news coming up. When

it comes to coal mining, when it comes to those big projects

where people say, Yeah, but it's going to create big jobs. It's

going to our community is going to flourish because so much

money is going to flow into our community.

You What would you

if you had fence sitters sitting in front of you who are still

undecided? What would you say to them? Well, I would say to them

a few things. They say three things, this won't be

easy to make sure. One of them is in terms of the economic

benefits from coal mining. It's interesting that the, you know,

the, the the communities that are most keen on new coal mines

are in the crow's nest pass in the hinten, area, grande cache

area. And these are areas with a history of coal mining. And one

of the reasons that they are so eager to see more coal mines is

because they are all economically stressed. And the

reason they're economic, these stresses, they built their local

economies around coal mining, and around the resource

industries that boom and bust as commodity cycles change in the

economy. So one of the things we know with coal mining is that it

creates a lot of money. And then, as soon as the price for

coal drops the gold global price, which we don't control

drops, the companies abandoned everybody, you know, they, they

groom us, they come into our communities before the coal

mines, and they groom us with money with trees with new golf

courses, new roads, new recreation centers, they do they

spend a lot of money upfront, to make us like them. They get

their approvals, they put in their minds, they send most of

their profits overseas. And as soon as the market dries up,

they walk away from us. And that's why these committees are

so desperate, they want another kick up that cat. But it's just

like Lucy, Lucy in the in the peanuts, cartoons with the

football. Every year, Lucy holds the football every year, Charlie

kicks it every year, Lucy pulls it away, how many times you want

to do that before you realize that you're chasing something

that's not going to work. So So don't tell me about economic

benefits. There are economic benefits to leaving the

mountains unmined. And those go to cattle ranchers that run

cattle out there, they go to Outfitters and guides and

tourism operators, they go to those of us who are trying to

make a living and other lines of work that just need to escape

once in a while into the mountains. That keeps us here

keeps us from giving up and moving somewhere else. There's

lots of economic benefits that come from the landscape. They

can come from, from it in the way of coal, they can come to it

to us in the way of water, wildlife and fish, cattle,

timber, there's lots of ways to sort of extract economic value.

The question you need to ask is what? When you extract this kind

of economic value? What are the consequences? Where does it take

us? coal is a dying market, the world is trying to move away

from it. Again, maybe you don't want to hear that. Maybe you're

going to roll roll your eyes and say that's stupid thinking.

Yeah, okay, fine. Don't shoot me for saying it. I'm just telling

you what the world's telling us. And guess what we market into

the world. So we need to pay attention to those messages. One

thing we do know is our need for water is not going away. And

bituminous coal is in the eastern slopes of the Rocky

Mountains, the foothills of the Rockies. And that's where all

our water comes from. So if it's a choice for our future between

water and coal, Think it through carefully because it is that

choice.

Very, very well said. Thank you so much for making the time and

yeah, sharing your thoughts here with us. I will make sure to put

your book in the show notes. And if people have questions, they

can contact you. You have probably like yeah, you have a

website or on Facebook.

I'm on Facebook and they've got you can always reach me at Kevin

dot bed. segamat G mail.com.

Yeah, yeah. No, that was very precious. And I'm excited to

publish this episode. Well, thank you very much for having

me. Yeah, thank you again for listening to my interview with

Kevin here. Don't hold back. If you have any questions reach out

to him, or to me is a big group out there. That is Yeah,

fighting the good fight to protect our precious waters, our

creeks and rivers and lakes. And I hope we were able to give you

hope and to raise awareness that we need to protect our

headwaters at all cost. Thank you for listening. And I will be