Opinion: Canada’s record-breaking temperatures are an alarm. We must act.
Opinion by
David Moscrop
Contributing columnist
The ideal number of times an 84-year-old heat record should be broken in a week is zero, not three and counting. But this is what climate change has brought us. And we knew it was coming. In 2020, a study published in Science Advances warned of rising temperatures and the risks they pose to humans. The research article, titled “The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance,” found that “reported occurrences of extreme TW [wet-bulb temperature] have increased rapidly at weather stations and in reanalysis data over the last four decades and that parts of the subtropics are very close to the 35°C survivability limit, which has likely already been reached over both sea and land. These trends highlight the magnitude of the changes that have taken place as a result of the global warming to date.”
As if on cue, thus arrived the heat dome.
Years of dire warnings about climate change and its effects may have inured some of us to the alarming idea of life on a planet so deeply altered by human behavior that it is increasingly inhospitable to our survival, but the past few days have reminded millions of us what that looks like in practice. The immediate question is how governments, organizations, families and friends can take care of folks, reduce suffering and save lives, especially those of the most vulnerable among us. Following that, we must ask ourselves how we can process these extreme weather events in a way that underwrites immediate, aggressive climate action.
It is tempting to give up. The tasks ahead of us are daunting, and some of the consequences of our slow, inadequate climate measures are locked in. But nihilism serves few of us, while hope and action will serve many.
In March 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic began to sweep the world, Damian Carrington wrote in the Guardian: “There’s no ‘deadline’ to save the world.” While “deadlines can focus efforts,” he wrote, “even if this deadline is missed, it will not be too late, because every act reduces human suffering.”
That message of possibility is essential, a necessary frame if we are to mobilize in the face of tougher, more frequent challenges induced by climate change. Strategies of mitigation and adaptation can improve and save lives; as despairing as extreme weather events are, they ought not to drive us into morbid complacency. Indeed, it is an act of privilege to give in to despair while we might still create a better world.
Creating a better world, however, takes structural changes at the level of states. While we ought to be focused on improving our climate fortunes, individual behavioral changes must be secondary to national and subnational policy that retools how we govern ourselves and how we do business. Last year, Seth Klein, in his book “A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency,” laid out a program for such change. Whether you appreciate the war frame or not — I do — or agree with each idea or not, the action outline gives plenty of suggestions for transformative adaptation and mitigation polices. At the very least, Klein outlined the scale at which we ought to be operating.
The heat wave in the Pacific Northwest should focus our minds — once those sweating through the heat can focus again, at any rate. The latest extreme weather event should impel us to demand more from our governments and should remind us that politicians will not do enough to address climate change and its effects on their own. They won’t jump; we’ll have to push them.
How do we begin? In Canada, election speculation is rampant, with an expected vote in the fall. That’s a good place to renew our efforts on climate, committing to making aggressive climate action the top issue and ensuring that breaking weather records doesn’t become our national pastime.
WASHINGTON POST
July 1, 2021 at 10:07 a.m. MDT
Residents of Canada’s westernmost province, British Columbia, have been living the opening pages of a post-apocalyptic novel for several days now, as a heat dome settled over the Pacific Northwest.
On Sunday, Lytton, B.C., set the country’s record for hottest temperature at 114.98 degrees (46.1 Celsius), displacing the previous record of 113 degrees (45 Celsius), set in 1937. On Monday, Lytton set the record again: 118.22 degrees (47.9 Celsius). On Tuesday, it set one for a third day in a row: 121.28 degrees (49.6 Celsius). On Wednesday, a wildfire forced the entire town to evacuate. Across the province, the heat wave is suspected of contributing to the loss of dozens of lives and stretched first responders thin. Several school districts have closed and crops have been stressed.
July 1, 2021 at 10:07 a.m. MDT
Residents of Canada’s westernmost province, British Columbia, have been living the opening pages of a post-apocalyptic novel for several days now, as a heat dome settled over the Pacific Northwest.
On Sunday, Lytton, B.C., set the country’s record for hottest temperature at 114.98 degrees (46.1 Celsius), displacing the previous record of 113 degrees (45 Celsius), set in 1937. On Monday, Lytton set the record again: 118.22 degrees (47.9 Celsius). On Tuesday, it set one for a third day in a row: 121.28 degrees (49.6 Celsius). On Wednesday, a wildfire forced the entire town to evacuate. Across the province, the heat wave is suspected of contributing to the loss of dozens of lives and stretched first responders thin. Several school districts have closed and crops have been stressed.
The ideal number of times an 84-year-old heat record should be broken in a week is zero, not three and counting. But this is what climate change has brought us. And we knew it was coming. In 2020, a study published in Science Advances warned of rising temperatures and the risks they pose to humans. The research article, titled “The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance,” found that “reported occurrences of extreme TW [wet-bulb temperature] have increased rapidly at weather stations and in reanalysis data over the last four decades and that parts of the subtropics are very close to the 35°C survivability limit, which has likely already been reached over both sea and land. These trends highlight the magnitude of the changes that have taken place as a result of the global warming to date.”
As if on cue, thus arrived the heat dome.
Years of dire warnings about climate change and its effects may have inured some of us to the alarming idea of life on a planet so deeply altered by human behavior that it is increasingly inhospitable to our survival, but the past few days have reminded millions of us what that looks like in practice. The immediate question is how governments, organizations, families and friends can take care of folks, reduce suffering and save lives, especially those of the most vulnerable among us. Following that, we must ask ourselves how we can process these extreme weather events in a way that underwrites immediate, aggressive climate action.
It is tempting to give up. The tasks ahead of us are daunting, and some of the consequences of our slow, inadequate climate measures are locked in. But nihilism serves few of us, while hope and action will serve many.
In March 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic began to sweep the world, Damian Carrington wrote in the Guardian: “There’s no ‘deadline’ to save the world.” While “deadlines can focus efforts,” he wrote, “even if this deadline is missed, it will not be too late, because every act reduces human suffering.”
That message of possibility is essential, a necessary frame if we are to mobilize in the face of tougher, more frequent challenges induced by climate change. Strategies of mitigation and adaptation can improve and save lives; as despairing as extreme weather events are, they ought not to drive us into morbid complacency. Indeed, it is an act of privilege to give in to despair while we might still create a better world.
Creating a better world, however, takes structural changes at the level of states. While we ought to be focused on improving our climate fortunes, individual behavioral changes must be secondary to national and subnational policy that retools how we govern ourselves and how we do business. Last year, Seth Klein, in his book “A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency,” laid out a program for such change. Whether you appreciate the war frame or not — I do — or agree with each idea or not, the action outline gives plenty of suggestions for transformative adaptation and mitigation polices. At the very least, Klein outlined the scale at which we ought to be operating.
The heat wave in the Pacific Northwest should focus our minds — once those sweating through the heat can focus again, at any rate. The latest extreme weather event should impel us to demand more from our governments and should remind us that politicians will not do enough to address climate change and its effects on their own. They won’t jump; we’ll have to push them.
How do we begin? In Canada, election speculation is rampant, with an expected vote in the fall. That’s a good place to renew our efforts on climate, committing to making aggressive climate action the top issue and ensuring that breaking weather records doesn’t become our national pastime.
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