Usurper! That role has long been claimed by the Antarctic. Get your own!
Canada’s Mackenzie River basin needs better protection as a vast northern “refrigerator” slowing global climate change, experts said on Monday.
Canada’s longest river also needs a unifying plan to oversee water quality, wildlife and oil pollution that would be similar to European Union directives governing rivers such as the Rhine or Danube, they said.
There is now a patchwork of government and local rules for the 1,800-km-long (1,100-mile) river that flows into the Arctic Ocean through a basin of forests and tundra covering 20 percent of Canada.
“The watershed is important not just for North America but for the globe,” said Thomas Axworthy, president and CEO of the Toronto-based Gordon Foundation which is helping fund talks in Vancouver from September 5-7 about new ways to protect the river.
Two really great ideas: the River provides free carbon trapping services worth $339 billion/year and global warming has grizzlies and polar bears sleeping together. Is there a silly idea/statement contest I didn’t know about?