West Nile Hits Southern Alberta

there was a story on cfrn news today about a woman in southern alberta who has contracted the west nile virus. in the report, a spokesperson from alberta health services said he does not believe the situation will be as bad as it is in texas, where so far this year 16 people have lost their lives due to the virus, because as he put it, west nile is "temperature dependent".

you don't say. well thanks to industrial operations like the tar sands in the northeastern section of the province, ripping up over 600 square kilometers of boreal forest so far (nearly the size of edmonton), and continuing to dump massive amounts of co2 and methane into the atmosphere, playing a significant role in contributing to a warming climate, is it not possible, alberta health services, that this province could see more cases of west nile in the not too distant future?

author and environmentalist bill mckibben told an audience in vancouver recently,

if an alien were to view human activity from afar and take a guess at what we were trying to do with the planet, creating the perfect conditions for a worldwide mosquito ranch would be a viable hypothesis.

will alberta's answer to an increased number of mosquitoes, brought on by humans negatively impacting the delicate ecosystem balance that sustains our species, simply be to spray more insecticides like dursban and poison our environment even more? or will we take this as a warning sign and stop our ecologically damaging activities that pollute the air, water and soil that all creatures rely on, and begin to take steps to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and finally learn to live more in harmony with our natural world?

i wager 100 quatloos that alberta responds with the former.