In June, Canada’s environment ministry deployed for the first time a new “rapid extreme weather event attribution system” that aims to quickly analyze the role of human activity on recent weather conditions by comparing current data with pre-industrial data.
It appears this system may not be rapid enough.
Within a day of Toronto being hit by major rainfall this week, politicians were attributing the weather event to climate change — notwithstanding that the rainfall was only the fifth highest in a 150-year period. Both Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made statements linking the flooding to climate change and calling for further investments in climate adaptation measures.
While we agree wholeheartedly that governments need to prioritize climate adaptation, we lament the frequent failure of Canada’s political leaders and policymakers to situate climate change discussions in context.
Here are some prime examples:
Emissions
Too often, the discussion of emissions in Canada fixates on a handful of offending industries, while ignoring the natural causes and individual behaviours that should also be part of the conversation.
In particular, many federal policy measures and environmental activists target the oil and gas sector. This sector emits the most greenhouse gases of any sector in Canada, releasing about 190 megatonnes in 2021, according to Canada Energy Regulator data. All human-made sources — oil and gas, transport, agriculture, electricity, buildings and so on — released about 650 megatonnes in 2021.
But consider this: in 2023, Canadian wildfires were estimated to have released between 480 and 3,000 megatonnes of carbon dioxide — between two and 15 times the emissions of the oil and gas sector.
Canada’s policy priorities should reflect the proportionate impact of these different sources, experts told Canadian Affairs in April. Canada could do far more to minimize the outbreak of wildfires (20 per cent of which are caused by humans), limit their spread and ensure the country is well-positioned to fight them when they arise. The latter could mean establishing a national firefighter service — like Australia has — to support provincial firefighters.
On the other end of the spectrum is the individual consumer.
Policymakers and environmental advocates tend to blame industries and companies, but not individuals, for climate change. But companies exist to serve consumers. Most Canadians — including progressives — are demonstrably unwilling to change the personal behaviours, such as air travel and meat consumption, that keep “offending” companies and industries in business.
We would argue that the narrative needs to change: politicians and policymakers need to make clear — in the personal examples they set, their rhetoric and their policy decisions — that change must start with consumers if they want to see change at all.
Mitigation
Canada’s carbon tax is currently one of the country’s most contentious policy debates. This tax has come to be regarded by some as a matter of existential importance to Canada’s future.
Here again, context is essential.
The reality is that Canada’s carbon tax, whether it remains or is jettisoned, will not materially move the needle on global emissions reductions. And it is global emissions reductions that count in the climate change battle.
Currently, only 40 countries — of 195 globally — impose some form of carbon price, according to the United Nations. The worst environmental offenders in absolute terms — China, the US and India — do not currently put a price on carbon at the national level.
Practically speaking, these countries’ actions matter: they collectively accounted for about 47 per cent of global emissions in 2020, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. Canada accounted for 1.5 per cent.
Canada and other smaller countries’ actions matter, too— but mainly from a collective-action perspective, not an emissions-reduction one. This is worth keeping in mind when discussing Canada’s own climate policies and their costs and benefits.
Alarmism
Climate change is a real and serious threat. It is also, understandably, a source of serious anxiety for many, particularly young people. A survey of 10,000 children and young people, published in The Lancet journal in 2021, found “climate anxiety and dissatisfaction with government responses are widespread in children and young people in countries across the world and impact their daily functioning.”
We would argue that policymakers and educators need to strike the right balance when discussing climate change.
Frequently, climate change is presented as an existential threat, even though experts have said we are on track for two to three degrees of warning. For example, former central bank governor and environmentalist Mark Carney has stressed the importance of “underscor[ing] just how much progress is being made … today we’re headed to 2.4 degrees, but realistically it’s probably sub-two degrees given where momentum is on policy.”
Of course, even two degrees of warming has consequences. NASA’s Global Climate Change Website projects a sea-level rise of 20 centimeters for 70 per cent of the world’s coastlines at this level of warming.
Such a development must be managed and mitigated, which is precisely why clear thinking and decisive action on climate adaptation is so important.
But such a development is also not cataclysmic. Young people, and all people, should be informed and engaged on the issue of climate change, but not at the cost of losing hope in the future.
Young children to young adults should not be should not feel anxiety about climate change. It will not change so rapidly that makes adaptation difficult. The vast majority won’t even realize they are adapting. What makes warmer nights by several degrees so fearful, and that is the reason a global temperature rise is noticeable. Many believe a slightly warmer earth has more benefits than drawbacks.