How Google can help protect Earth
Maps and stories change the world
Search results.
Search that? Nah, Google this. Google is a verb. The search engine’s integration in the modern world shapes the way people behave. Google can rank results based on their credibility. Google can bump down anti-Earth propaganda. So: Are forests in BC sustainably managed?
Please scroll back up and look at the size of the cedar on that truck. Seriously, scroll back up and look at it! It’s phenomenal… and gone.
The ability to sustain is sustainability.
If we have to wait hundreds to thousands of years to maybe get gigantic trees like that again while we operate in yearly quarters or in decades (at best), then we can’t call harvesting ancient forests sustainable. Further, the maybe depends on us protecting the land and mitigating the climate crisis (good luck trying to keep the climate livable that without forests).
We need forests to save forests.
B.C. has 3.75 million hectares of old-growth available for harvest. If Belgium had no developments — just pure old-growth forest — B.C. would still have 20% more on the chopping block.
So, I hope my Google search Are forests in BC sustainably managed in April 2021 was just a glitch — a bad hangover from April Fool’s Day. The terribly inaccurate op-ed belongs in a spam folder.
Maps
Google Maps is the default online map. 3.8 billion people use smartphones. Most of them are android and come with the app preinstalled. And, if I had an iPhone, I’d download Google Maps. There are awesome other maps for hiking, commuting and so on, but the majority of us primarily rely on Google Maps.
Yet, Google Maps fails to map parks and protected areas correctly. On the screenshot above, notice Garibaldi Provincial Park in the top right and Pacific Rim National Park on the west coast of Vancouver Island. What’s missing? Vancouver Island’s largest provincial park Strathcona. And much more!
How can we value what we can’t see?! All protected areas need to be on Google Maps.
Google Earth is a power tool for conservation. A recent example is Fairy Creek. An American 17-year-old, Joshua Wright, raised the alarm after seeing the Canadian ancient forest remnant on Google Earth. Fairy Creek is now best known as a blockade. Satellite images can be harnessed to help preserve land. A quick Google search tells me that as a 13-year-old Joshua Wright raised funds with art for the Ancient Forest Alliance.
