Globe Climate: The Indigenous community fighting fire with fire

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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.

It’s that time of year again: Scrolling through your social media feeds will likely show a seemingly endless stream of vacation photos. If you’re itching to get away this summer, but also want to travel mindfully and sustainably, we have a few ideas.

Explore the great outdoors close to home and book through eco-friendly tourism operators, or if you’re planning to travel abroad, opt for destinations that are making their environmental practises part of their appeal. If you are flying, the David Suzuki Foundation has some valuable tips to mitigate your impact on the planet: take direct and daytime flights, choose economy and buy Gold Standard carbon offsets.

Now, let’s catch you up on other news.

Noteworthy reporting this week:

1. Conservation: Blue Jay beans had all but disappeared from Canadian gardens, until a seed saver and her grassroots network revived it. Their success illustrates how to save plants that might someday save us in a changing climate
2. Wildfires: In Nova Scotia and Alberta, wildfires continue to rage, pushing hundreds to evacuate.
3. Pollution: Air pollution from increasing wildfires could pose long-term health risks
4. Policy: Senator on a mission to make finance industry prioritize climate objectives
5. Infrastructure: As climate change threatens Canada’s infrastructure, builders look for resilient solutions
6. Ecosystems: Green space and ‘wildlife passages’ preserve urban ecosystems and health-care costs
7. Industry: Environmental groups seek judicial review of Ottawa’s approval of Vancouver container terminal
8. Mining: Ford strikes lithium deals as ‘near-shoring’ trend benefits Canadian miners
9. Podcast: How climate anxiety is shaping small and large financial decisions
10. From the Narwhal: Provinces and territories commit to national biodiversity strategy — here’s what it means for nature

A deeper dive

The Indigenous community bringing healthy fires back to the land

Jesse Winter is an award-winning visual journalist based in Vancouver. For this week’s deeper dive, he talks about photographing the prescribed burn at ?aq’am First Nation.

The jet-engine roar of trees torching in a forest fire is something you feel more than you hear. It’s terrifying, exhilarating and beautiful all at once.

In early May, I watched through my camera’s viewfinder as tree after tree caught light on the ?aq’am First Nation’s reserve lands outside Cranbrook, B.C. It was a 1,200 hectare controlled fire in partnership with the City of Cranbrook and supported by the B.C. Wildfire Service.

Nearby, a team of B.C.W.S. firefighters were refilling their drip torches. As the exploding trees grew nearer, they casually picked up their open torches (filled with a mixture of diesel fuel and gasoline) and shuffled back a few metres into the lee of a white forest service pickup truck. They chatted as they refuelled themselves along with their torches, then went back to setting the rest of the forest on fire.

In many ways, the scene felt evocative of our broader relationship with forest fires. Since colonization, the prevailing beliefs about wildfire painted it as a horrifying monster, something to be corralled, controlled and ultimately vanquished.

The truth is that in many fire-prone parts of Canada, it’s something we have to live alongside, a necessary reset to ecosystems that evolved to rely on fire. For millennia, Indigenous communities in Canada have known this, and used fire expertly to help keep forests healthy despite settler’s attempts to stamp out the practice.

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Now, as Wendy Stueck reports, Indigenous communities like ?aq’am are leading efforts to bring healthy fire back to landscapes that — in the age of climate change — desperately need it.

Watching the B.C.W.S. crews work the controlled burn alongside members of the Ktunaxa Nation and the Cranbrook fire department, I was struck by how much most of us still have to learn about fire: how it moves on the landscape, how it can be helpful, how it only becomes something to fear if we first refuse to respect it. The more Canadians understand wildfire, the better prepared we’ll be to live with it and, when necessary, stay safe from it. I hope these pictures and Wendy’s words can help build that understanding.

- Jesse

What else you missed

• Spring flood risks highlight lack of insurance for Canadian homeowners, experts say
• A United Nations committee is meeting in Paris to work on what is intended to be a landmark treaty to bring an end to global plastic pollution.
• More than half of Canada’s environmental ministers skipped out on a meeting with the federal government and Indigenous leaders to discuss halting land and water loss in Canada.
• World must rapidly ditch fossil fuels, Pope Francis says in latest climate appeal
• Tear gas taints the air as TotalEnergies AGM rejected a climate activist resolution urging faster cuts to the oil company’s greenhouse gas emissions program.

Opinion and analysis

Editorial board: How Canada’s oil production rose and emissions fell - and what it means for climate policy

Chris Turner: Danielle Smith is indifferent to the climate crisis. She’s selling an alternate reality to Albertans

Scott Stirrett: In an era of extreme heat, cooling should be required in Canadian homes

Kent Fellow: Canada’s billions to Volkswagen and Stellantis are irresponsible and inflationary

Green Investing

Leaders from low-carbon industries descend on Ottawa for an attempted show of strength

Around 45 executives from an array of low-carbon industries are gathering to form a united front on Parliament Hill this week, at a precarious point in Canada’s efforts to keep pace with the United States. The effort, which is called New Economy Canada, is something of an experiment in whether co-ordination can build cross-partisan consensus about the need to implement regulatory reforms, industrial subsidies and financing mechanisms, and other measures to expedite that transition.

• Investments in clean energy are roaring past spending on fossil fuels. But to keep up the momentum, governments will have to make up for thin shareholder returns by helping fund green projects, executives say.
• British Columbia’s environmental regulator is requesting credible plans from Ksi Lisims LNG to attain net-zero emissions as climate activists oppose the project’s quest to export liquefied natural gas.
• Solar power is due to overtake oil production investment for first time, IEA says
• Saskatchewan entrepreneur says the provincial government has thwarted his ag-plastics recycling business.

Making waves

Each week The Globe will profile a Canadian making a difference. This week we’re highlighting the work of Ashoke Mohanraj doing entertainment in climate activism.

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My name is Ashoke Mohanraj, I am 25 years old, and I currently reside on the traditional territories of the Anishinabaewaki, the Wendake-Nionwentsio, the Ho-de-no-sau-nee-ga, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

For the past seven years my journey as a climate activist has spanned from education to lobbying, to entrepreneurship. I have recently honed in on the intersection of entertainment and environmentalism. I published my first children’s book, Pollinator Man, about a superhero who is overwhelmed by the forces of evil and must recruit a team of enthusiastic “Pollinator Protectors” to help take down his enemies such as Climate Crusher, Dr. Disease, and Pesticide Boy. While on the surface the story may be about pollinator conservation, at a much deeper level it’s about showing young boys that “caring is cool”.

That is why I am excited to be working with On The Verge Productions to create a brand-new sci-fi television series aimed at weaving together climate science and pop culture entertainment. Think of the exciting, action-packed world of Stranger Things mixed with the wisdom and knowledge of David Attenborough. We hosted a free event to show investors, advocates and television buffs that “The Goldilocks Mission” is going to change the way we tackle the climate crisis. An idea is only as good as you can communicate it, and I hope that through my work I can help communicate the climate crisis in a more palatable way.

- Ashoke

Do you know an engaged individual? Someone who represents the real engines pursuing change in the country? Email us at GlobeClimate@globeandmail.com to tell us about them.

Photo of the week

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Guides and Explainers

• Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that: Green Investing 101 newsletter course for the climate-conscious investor. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
• We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
• We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills - Little Steps to Big Change.

Catch up on Globe Climate

• How climate change is fuelling a new kind of ‘fire weather’
• Wildfires are another climate change wake-up call
• The Inuit greenhouse powered by renewable energy
• Ottawa and Ontario don’t share the same vision for electricity’s future

We want to hear from you. Email us: GlobeClimate@globeandmail.com. Do you know someone who needs this newsletter? Send them to our Newsletters page.