Three years ago, when the Pacific Northwest suffered under a deadly heat dome, scientists quickly determined the central role played by climate change in one of the worst natural disasters in Canada’s history – one that killed 619 people in British Columbia.
The conclusion was unequivocal. Scientists at World Weather Attribution said the intensity of the heat dome – temperatures peaked at almost 50 degrees Celsius in B.C. – was “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.”
This work is what’s called rapid attribution analysis – and its goal is to help the public and political leaders better understand the lashings of climate change when its effects are clear yet also difficult to discern. Detailing and highlighting climate change’s role in the increasing litany of extreme weather is essential.
This is especially true as some political leaders, such as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, attempt to deny it by promoting fossil fuels, undermining clean power and attacking “climate alarmism.” In B.C., Conservative Leader John Rustad, running close in the polls with the governing NDP ahead of a fall election, insisted during a recent interview with The Globe’s editorial board that it was “false” that humans burning fossil fuels is the cause of climate change. “It doesn’t matter how much we try to reduce carbon,” Mr. Rustad claimed, “it is not going to change the weather.”
These are varying degrees of climate science denial in the mainstream of Canadian politics and all of it ignores factual reality, starting with the mountains of evidence produced by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Climate change is no longer some theoretical future. It is today’s reality. Canada is one year removed from catastrophic forest fires that burned the equivalent of one-quarter of Manitoba to the ground. Globally, over the past year, every single month has registered at 1.5 C or higher than preindustrial times, the mark at which the world aims to limit heating under the Paris Agreement. Last November, there were two days at 2 C higher than preindustrial times. This should be a five-alarm call to action.
Environment Canada recently debuted its pilot project of rapid attribution analysis. It looked at the heat wave in June this year in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada that saw peak temperatures as much as 10.7 C above average. Environment Canada, using a scale that includes a measure of uncertainty, concluded that the heat wave was “much more likely” to have happened because of climate change, a range between two times and 10 times more likely.
All countries must take greater action. In recent months, there has been a groundswell of support to push military spending in Canada to the promised 2 per cent of GDP. Canada needs the same widespread conviction behind climate action. The climate policy push has to be more than the Liberals in Ottawa. Too many provinces, save for the likes of B.C., aren’t doing enough. And the federal Conservatives, like the B.C. Conservatives, appear skeptical about climate action, with limited proposals that are in part centred on increased exports of methane gas.
Greenhouse gas emissions in Canada are down 7 per cent as of 2022, the latest official figures, from 2005. Canada’s initial Paris Agreement pledge was a 30-per-cent cut. Where did that number come from? Stephen Harper. It was then maintained by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals; in 2021, as part of the Paris Agreement’s call for escalating action, the goal was increased to 40 per cent. By Dec. 1 of this year, Ottawa is legally bound to deliver a 2035 target under the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act.
While reasonable progress has been made, there’s a long way to go to 40 per cent, never mind a new, more ambitious target. Pending policies such as Ottawa’s clean electricity regulations must be amended and finalized, and embraced across the country. Provinces need to work together and connect their power grids, instead of acting like insular fiefdoms.
In 2018, the UN warned, “Limiting global warming to 1.5 C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” Work to show how extreme weather is exacerbated by climate change is key to underscoring the urgent need for change. And most of all, remarkable advances in technology – starting with solar power and batteries – makes such change possible and realistic.