There’s just no way around it: building codes are deeply boring documents.

The most recent National Building Code of Canada clocks in at 1,400 jargon-filled pages.

Despite being a snore fest, it’s on its way to becoming an incredibly important tool in preparing new buildings for the worst impacts of escalating climate change and extreme weather events, such as flooding, hail and rain.

That’s thanks to a brand-new $40 million federal government investment in the National Research Council, which is responsible for updating the building code every five years; the last one was released in 2015, meaning the next version will be released in 2020.

“It’s the first time that the government has talked about building code and climate change in one breath,” says Glenn McGillivray, managing director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. “It’s very important.”

Developers Oppose Big Changes

The last few years have reminded us of the potential power of extreme weather, including the catastrophic flooding in 2013 of Calgary and Toronto, resulting in insured losses of more than$1.7 billion and $850 million respectively.

Such major events are no longer the anomaly. As quoted in a recent report by the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation: “Payouts from extreme weather have more than doubled every five to 10 years since the 1980s. For each of the past six years, they have been near or above $1 billion in Canada.”

And that’s not even counting total economic impacts on cities and towns.

Signage on a Calgary property during flooding June 2013. Photo: Ricky Leong via Flickr

But little has changed in the rules of how buildings are actually constructed in Canada, despite some groups pushing for years to see climate-specific updates.

Jason Thistlethwaite, director of the University of Waterloo’s Climate Change Adaptation Project, says in an interview that many necessary changes are technically possible but often face opposition from interests in favour of the status-quo, especially residential homebuilders and professional engineers.

McGillivray agrees: “The building code process is a pretty conservative one. It’s very well established; they’re pretty rooted groups that are invested in the process and you don’t see really big changes from code to code.”

Small and Inexpensive Changes Can Reduce Impacts of Flooding, Wind

It’s not like such advocates are exactly asking for huge changes to the code.

Let’s start with flooding: it’s the the most common and costly form of natural hazard in Canada, and has a strong relationship to climate change in the likelihood of an increase in frequency.

For years, the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction has been pushing for mandatory installation of “backwater valves,” which the City of Winnipeg has mandated since 1979 and defines as “a device that prevents sewage in an overloaded main sewer line from backing up into your basement.”

Some provinces interpret the current national code in a way that makes backwater valves mandatory. But some, namely Ontario and B.C., do not.

“Right now, many existing buildings do not employ what we would consider to be internationally recognized best practices for flood protection at the property level,” Thistlethwaite says.

He says that another example of a “best practice” is Kitchener’s separate stormwater charge that people can reduce if they install certain measures that divert stormwater away from the system, such as a rain barrel, permeable pavement or rain garden.

The same goes for preparing for strong winds, including events such as tornadoes and hurricanes.

A downed tree crosses a Vancouver street after a 2015 windstorm. Photo: Jarett Kemp via Vancity Buzz

McGillivray says the solutions are small and inexpensive, including making “hurricane straps” mandatory on new buildings and using certain types of nails and nailing patterns in the roof decking, to ensure the roof doesn’t pop off in the event of extremely high winds.

Lastly, there’s the desire to see certain roofing material used to protect from hail and freezing rain, which Thistlethwaite says will increase in frequency as “shoulder seasons” (the period of time where the temperature hovers around zero) get longer due to climate change and severe convective storms increase in number; such events can result in significant damage to sidings and shingles.

“Let’s face it: if a builder doesn’t have to do something, they’re not going to do it,” McGillivray says. “We do believe that codifying it is the best way to go: it ensures that everybody has to do the same thing and that there’s no favouritism or anything of that nature. It completely removes the idea of voluntarism.”

Much More Work Needed to Prepare Existing Homes for Climate Change

But the building code — which Thistlethwaite describes as already “one of the best building codes in the world” — obviously only applies to new constructions.

That means there are millions of homes, businesses and other structures that will still be vulnerable to extreme weather events. McGillivray says that education for homeowners is key, helping them realize the risk they’re facing and the simple things they can do to protect themselves.

Such responsibilities often falls on the municipalities, which tend to have the least financial capacity and resources to pull a large public information campaign off.

That’s where Thistlethwaite suggests the feds step in more, developing and disseminating risk maps, information and incentives such as subsidies or adjusted risk-based tax rates to help change behaviour.

For instance, Thistlethwaite says the current design of the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements — which is the federal coverage program, triggered if damages surpass a certain financial threshold — means there are no conditions for people receiving assistance to alter the design or structure of the existing building.

“Effectively, the federal government doesn’t provide any incentive for people to change their behaviour, even if they are living in a very high-risk area,” he says.

Working to clear up misinformation about the program’s coverage in case of “overland” flooding — with compensation often unavailable if there are private insurers who offer homeowners the service — would likely help, as would providing more funding for cities to improve sewer and stormwater systems in order to prevent backups and flooding.

#Canada’s Buildings Will Finally Be Built With #ClimateChange In Mind https://t.co/gjqdRzpHDc @james_m_wilt #ExtremeWeather #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/XY29BN6AGb

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 8, 2017

Work on Building Codes Update Will Start in April, Concluding by 2020

Until then, we’ve got the building code updates.

Philip Rizcallah, director of Building Regulations at the National Research Council of Canada, says that “a lot of the research hasn’t been completed and a lot of the data is not available.”

That’s why his office will working with Environment Canada to obtain historical and prospective weather data — including snow loads, wind loads and rain loads — and then develop the data into “new technical solutions.” In addition, the National Research Council will consult with government, industry and academia to figure out solutions.

Come April, the National Research Council will start focusing its attention on “key priority projects” in order to complete the upgrades by 2020, which is when the next publication of the building code comes out.

In addition, he says the National Research Council will be developing new guides and engineering codes for infrastructure, including bridges, roads, sewer systems and stormwater gathering.

“The way we build homes in Canada is well established and we do build good homes in the country,” McGillivray says. “We just see gaps in the code, little tweaks that need to be fixed here and there.”

Image: High waters in the neigbhourhood of Elbow Park during the Calgary floods of 2013. Photo: Andy van der Raadt via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

No matter what anyone says during this long federal election campaign, climate change is the biggest threat to Canadians’ health, security and economy. The scientific evidence is incontrovertible, the research wide-ranging and overwhelming.

Wastefully burning fossil fuels at such a rapid rate is jeopardizing the planet’s life-support systems — harming human health, destroying landscapes and habitat, causing widespread extreme weather events and contributing less to the economy and job-creation than clean energy development. Not only that, our rate of using and exporting these fuels means reserves will be depleted before long. In the meantime, as easily accessible sources run out, fossil fuels have become more difficult, dangerous, expensive and environmentally damaging to exploit.

Canada has a long history of extracting and exporting raw resources to fuel its economy. But that’s no longer a sensible long-term plan, especially with non-renewable resources. It’s incomprehensible that a country with such a diverse, educated, innovative and caring population can’t get beyond this outdated way of doing things. The recent oil price plunge illustrates the folly of putting all our eggs in one fossil fuel basket.

As world leaders prepare for the December UN climate summit in Paris, we need our government to play a responsible, constructive role. Canada has been chastised at previous summits for obstructing progress and working to water down agreements. The summit’s goal is for all the world’s countries to reach a legally binding pact on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions to keep global average temperatures from rising more than 2 C, the threshold beyond which experts and world leaders agree could bring catastrophic consequences.

The consequences are already severe and will get worse if we don’t act. Increasing extreme weather, including heat waves, floods, droughts and storms put lives, agriculture and economies at risk. Subsequent conflicts over resources reduce global security and exacerbate refugee problems. Pollution from burning fossil fuels increases heart disease and respiratory illnesses, including asthma. Deep-sea drilling, oil sands mining and mountaintop removal destroy the ecosystems, habitat, wildlife and natural capital on which our health and survival depend.

Everyone seeking election must get serious about the climate, so no matter which party or parties form government after October 19, Canada will be part of the solution.

Continuing with business as usual will only ensure more extreme weather leading to floods and droughts; negative health impacts, including increases in premature deaths; harm to food production and security; more pipeline, rail and marine accidents; and missed opportunities to diversify the economy.

Although climate change, resource development and infrastructure have been raised in this election, the talking points don’t always match the severity of the problem. It’s up to all of us as voters to question candidates and inform ourselves about the various party platforms before casting ballots — and to make sure all the parties and their candidates listen and make climate change a priority.

Canada is a great country, an example to the world of how people with diverse views, backgrounds and cultures can live well together and take care of each other. We are blessed with spectacular nature, abundant clean water, fertile agricultural land, rich resources, an educated populace, vibrant democratic traditions and strong social programs. But we can’t take any of it for granted. We must protect what we have and strive to be better, to move beyond our outdated ways of thinking and acting.

There are numerous election issues that can’t be ignored, including health, child care, jobs and the economy, infrastructure, education, international trade and relations, and our global responsibility to confront terrorism. Addressing climate change by shifting from the short-term prospects of the polluting fossil fuel economy to a more stable, healthy, green economy would go a long way to reducing health-care costs, creating jobs, diversifying the economy and improving our international reputation.

We have an important choice, as voters and as a country. We can heed the scientists, health-care specialists, religious leaders, politicians, international organizations, business people and citizens around the world who say we no longer have time to lose when it comes to protecting the climate and ourselves. Or we can carry on as if nothing is wrong, and live with the mounting consequences.

Exercising your democratic right as a voter is a critical step.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

A little over a year ago, I wrote about a Heartland Institute conference in Las Vegas where climate change deniers engaged in a failed attempt to poke holes in the massive body of scientific evidence for human-caused climate change. I quoted Bloomberg News: “Heartland's strategy seemed to be to throw many theories at the wall and see what stuck.”

A recent study came to a similar conclusion about contrarian “scientific” efforts to do the same. “Learning from mistakes in climate research,” published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology, examined some of the tiny percentage of scientific papers that reject anthropogenic climate change, attempting to replicate their results.

In a Guardian article, co-author Dana Nuccitelli said their study found “no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming.” Instead, “Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on.”

Nuccitelli and fellow researchers Rasmus Benestad, Stephan Lewandowsky, Katharine Hayhoe, Hans Olav Hygen, Rob van Dorland and John Cook note that about 97 per cent of experts worldwide agree on a cohesive, science-based theory of global warming, but those who don’t “are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics.”

It’s astounding and tragic that, with all the evidence — from volumes of scientific research to the very real effects we are experiencing everywhere — some people stubbornly refuse to believe there’s a problem worth addressing. Sadder still: many of them are political leaders.

Part of the problem is that fossil fuel interests spend enormous amounts of money to sow doubt and confusion, often by funding or setting up organizations like the Heartland Institute in the U.S., the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the U.K., Ethical Oil and Friends of Science in Canada and the International Climate Science Coalition, based in this country but affiliated with similar organizations in Australia and New Zealand and with close ties to Heartland. A number of industry-funded websites also promote fossil fuels at the expense of human life, including Climate Depot and Watts Up With That?

These secretive organizations rarely reveal funding sources, prey on the uninformed and ignorant, and blanket the media with opinion articles, letters to editors and comments, often referring to misleading charts and graphs and bogus “studies” from organizations with names that imply they’re scientific when they’re anything but. They’re assisted by a compliant news media and politicians who also receive fossil fuel industry funding. It’s likely the people behind these organizations know they’re lying but care more about making money and preserving the lopsided benefits of a polluting sunset industry than finding ways to contribute to human health, well-being and survival.

Those who argue that seven billion people pumping massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere aren’t having a serious negative impact are out to lunch.

Fortunately, most thinking people don’t buy the lies. People from all sectors and walks of life — religious, academic, business, political, activist, social justice and citizenry — are calling for an urgent response to the greatest threat humanity faces. From Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama to Islamic scholars and Hindu, Sikh and Jewish leaders; from Volvo, Ikea and Apple to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Health Organization; from every legitimate scientific academy and institution to enlightened political leaders — all have warned about the serious nature of global warming and the urgent need to do something about it.

Polls and marches, demonstrations and citizen initiatives show that people want action. Yet, despite this tremendous recognition of the reality of our situation, governments have failed to come up with a legally binding, ambitious and universal climate agreement, thanks in part to efforts by countries like Canada, Japan and Australia to stall or water down agreements at economic summits and UN climate conferences.

As world leaders prepare for the December UN climate meeting in Paris, Canadians must impress upon all those who hope to govern us after October 19 the importance of making a positive contribution. As voters, we have the power to make a difference in this critical conversation. Let’s exercise it.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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In a sign of things to come, a report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says Ottawa should create a new “climate migrants” immigration class to prepare for the inflow of people fleeing extreme climate change.

“Estimates of the number of climate-influenced migrants range widely, but most projections agree that in the coming years climate change will compel hundreds of millions of people to relocate,” the report says. “Climate change is one factor that interacts with many others to drive population movements."

Many countries are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than Canada, said the 26-page report — Preparing BC for Climate Migration — published last week. 

“Industrialized countries like Canada have disproportionately benefitted from the combustion of fossil fuels, whereas others who have contributed least to climate change will disproportionately feel its impacts,” the report states.

Canada is the fourth highest per-capita greenhouse gas emitter in the world according to 2008 World Resources Institute climate data (this estimate does not take into account emissions resulting from the burning of exported coal, oil and gas).

Report co-author Tim Takaro, a health sciences professor at Simon Fraser University, said Canada has a moral responsibility to people who migrate due to climate change — not just as a matter of charity or generosity, but of justice and reparation as well.

“The federal and provincial governments, rather than ignoring the issue, should develop a comprehensive policy framework to manage climate migration,” Takaro said.

The world is already witnessing the impacts of climate change on lives and livelihoods, the report says.

Global damage from climate change itself and fossil fuel development is estimated at $1.2 trillion per year, or 1.6 per cent of world GDP in 2010, and is projected to rise to 3.2 per cent in 2030.

Canada has acted to thwart international negotiations on climate change, and has not supported UN-sponsored measures that would provide financial assistance to countries affected by global warming.

Canada admits about 250,000 immigrants of all classes per year, the report said, a number that has changed little since the early 1990s. New permanent residents span three major categories: family class (spouses and other family of Canadian citizens and permanent residents), economic immigrants (workers and business immigrants) and refugees.

The number of refugees has dropped from more than 50,000 in each of 1991 and 1992 to fewer than 25,000 per year since 2008, the report says. Refugees constituted 23 per cent of new immigrants to Canada in 1991, but that number had fallen to nine per cent by 2012. In contrast, about two-thirds of immigrants are now from the economic immigrant category. Most of these are skilled workers and their families, while another group includes “investor” immigrants and their families.

“While there is scope for climate migrants to be accepted under this existing framework of law, greater clarity and certainty could be provided by creating a new immigration class of ‘climate migrant’ along with targets and programs to ensure Canada lives up to its moral responsibilities,” said the report.

Key settlement services should be made accessible to climate migrants, the report recommended, adding more funding should also be allocated to reduce strain on these already-overloaded systems and to allow increased migration.

“Given that most climate migrants will remain in the Global South, Canada should substantially increase its support to developing countries shouldering the burden of climate displacement,” the report added.

“Canada owes a ‘climate debt’ to the nations bearing the greatest impacts, including countries that will assist and settle climate migrants.”

Image Credit: Villagers wade through floodwater in Bihar, India in 2008. Photo by Balazs Gardi via Flickr.

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Canadian oil and gas companies could be liable for billions of dollars of damages per year for their contribution to climate change caused by toxic greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study published Thursday.

The study looked at five oil and gas companies currently trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange — Encana, Suncor, Canadian Natural Resources, Talisman, and Husky — and found they could presently be incurring a global liability as high as $2.4 billion annually.

“Climate change is increasingly discussed not as some far-off threat but in terms of current realities,” said the 62-page study — Payback Time? What the internationalization of climate litigation could mean for Canadian oil and gas companies.

Published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL), the study found data showing the global financial cost of private and public property and other damage associated with climate change in 2010 has been estimated at $591 billion, rising to $4.2 trillion in 2030.

“That number is expected to increase dramatically in the coming years,” said the study written by Andrew Gage, WCEL staff counsel and University of British Columbia professor Michael Byers.

“In Canada, the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy has estimated that climate change will cost $5 billion annually by 2020. Given these significant costs, attention will inevitably shift to the issue of compensation and liability. In short, who will pay for the costs and damages caused by climate change, as well as the necessary adaptive measures?”

Fossil fuel companies and other large-scale greenhouse gas producers have contributed, globally, to trillions of dollars of damages related to climate change, Gage said in an accompanying media release.

“As with tobacco companies in the 1980s, these producers are confident the law will not hold them responsible for these damages,” Gage added.

“But rising levels of climate damage, increasing scientific evidence about the links between emissions and the damage they cause, and an emerging public debate about who is financially responsible for this damage, could change the situation very quickly.”

The most serious risk to Canadian companies is not litigation in Canada, the media release said. “Because the impacts and causes of climate change are global, climate damages litigation could take place in, and apply the laws of, any of the countries where damage occurs.”

Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law, said substantial shifts will be required of large-scale greenhouse gas producers and their investors if they hope to manage the risk of climate damages litigation.

Those shifts include “moving away from fossil fuels, and supporting the adoption of international agreements that could link the reduction of liability risk to the provision of financial assistance or future emission reductions.”

The study concluded that the potential for climate damages litigation is global in scope.

“Cases could be brought in a large number of countries, under a wide range of legal theories, then enforced in Canada or other countries in which greenhouse gas producing companies have assets,” the study said.

“As a result, these companies and their shareholders are exposed to significant legal and financial risks — and these risks will only grow.”

In a telephone interview, Gage told DeSmog Canada that he is not aware of any successful climate damages litigation anywhere in the world, even in the highly litigious U.S.

“This is very new and in very early days but it is evolving fairly rapidly,” he said. “I would think there would be lawsuits of this type outside the U.S. within a couple of years but we’ll have to see.”

In a related commentary in Thursday’s Globe and Mail, Gage and Byers said climate change is no longer a distant threat.

“Canadian oil and gas companies could soon find themselves on the hook for at least part of the damage,” they wrote. “For as climate change costs increase, a global debate has begun about who should pay.”

They also noted Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu recently called on global leaders to hold those responsible for climate damages accountable.

“Just 90 corporations – the so-called carbon majors – are responsible for 63 per cent of CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution,” Tutu was quoted as saying. “It is time to change the profit incentive by demanding legal liability for unsustainable environmental practices.”

Image Credit: Zack Embree

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This is a guest post by Andrew Gage, Staff Counsel and head of the Climate Change program at West Coast Environmental Law, and Michael Byers, the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia. This article originally appeared in the Globe and Mail.

Climate change is no longer a distant threat. Peer-reviewed science has already linked climate change to drought in Texas and Australia, extreme heat in Europe, Russia, Japan, and Korea, and storm-surge flooding during Hurricane Sandy and Typhoon Haiyan.

Climate change is already causing about $600-billion in damages annually. Here in Canada, the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy estimated that climate change will cost Canadians $5-billion annually by 2020.

Canadian oil and gas companies could soon find themselves on the hook for at least part of the damage. For as climate change costs increase, a global debate has begun about who should pay.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu recently called on global leaders to hold those responsible for climate damages accountable. “Just 90 corporations – the so-called carbon majors – are responsible for 63 per cent of CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution,” Tutu said. “It is time to change the profit incentive by demanding legal liability for unsustainable environmental practices.”

So far, the fossil fuel industry has successfully opposed litigation for climate damages, brought in the United States by victims of hurricanes and sea level rise. But new areas of litigation often fail at first; in the 1980s, tobacco companies were still boasting that they “have never lost a case to a consumer, have never settled, and do not expect that picture to change.” As the tobacco industry learned, changes to the interpretation and application of laws sometimes occur quite rapidly.

Nor is litigation in the U.S. or Canada the only thing the fossil fuel industry should worry about. It is becoming increasingly likely that companies could be sued by victims of climate change overseas, in countries with quite different legal systems. There, they might face lawsuits based on constitutional rights to a healthy environment, strict liability for environmental harm, or any number of other legal principles that don’t currently exist in Canadian law.

Once a foreign court has ordered a Canadian company to pay for climate damages, that order is a debt – which Canadian courts can be asked to enforce. Chevron is currently fighting court actions in Canada, the United States and Brazil that seek to enforce a $9.5-billion award handed down by the supreme court of Ecuador – for pollution caused by oil spills.

Moreover, new laws could be introduced to facilitate climate litigation. When Canadian provinces encountered impediments to their ability to sue tobacco companies for public health costs, they eliminated those impediments by passing new laws. It’s not hard to imagine countries impacted by climate change enacting new laws to clarify the liability of greenhouse gas producers.

Five companies traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange are among the “carbon majors” – Encana, Suncor, Canadian Natural Resources, Talisman, and Husky currently are collectively responsible for about $2.4-billion a year of global climate damages.

Canadians are broadly supportive of the “polluter pays” principle – the idea that those who cause pollution should pay for the harm. But because climate change has seemed far off, there has been relatively little discussion about who should pay. It has been assumed – by industry, politicians, even some environmental activists – that oil and gas companies can continue producing with impunity, at least until a global climate agreement is reached.

But rising climate costs cannot be born only by taxpayers and by those who suffer the impacts of climate change. We believe that a new global awareness of the moral and legal responsibilities of the carbon majors will lead to a wave of climate litigation. Foreign lawsuits – with damage awards that are potentially enforceable in Canada – will be difficult and expensive to defend.

Image Credit: Zack Embree

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A new poll released Friday shows the majority of Canadians assume development in the Alberta oilsands has a much larger impact on nation’s economy than it actually does.

According to the poll, conducted by Environics and commissioned by Environmental Defence, 41 per cent of Canadians believe the importance of the oilsands to the economy is six to 24 times higher than it actually is. And a full 57 per cent of Canadians overestimate the value of oilsands to the country’s economy.

The oilsands, according to Statistics Canada, account for only 2 per cent of the national GDP.

Despite the misconception, however, 66 per cent of Canadians still support a transition to a cleaner economy that would limit dependence on the oilsands.

In addition, 76 per cent of Canadians believe that, in light of climate change, the country should shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy.

A recent report from Natural Resources Canada, released quietly at the end of June, said Canadians can expect more floods, storms and other extreme weather to affect the country as climate change increases. The report also claimed governments aren’t doing enough to adapt to a destabilized climate.

The report noted in Canada there have been “relatively few examples of implementation of specific changes to reduce vulnerability to future climate change, or take advantage of potential opportunities.”

The federal government has spent millions of taxpayer dollars to advertise the important of the oil and gas sector, and especially the Alberta oilsands, to the Canadian economy and domestic energy security.

The efforts to shore up the reputation of the oilsands have been met with criticism, however, because the federal government has not released long-awaited regulations for the oil and gas sector.

The oilsands are Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Canada committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020 under the Copenhagen Accord, although a recent Environment Canada report showed Canada’s current weak emissions reduction measures will prevent us from meeting that target.

Last month Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott publicly criticized governments for taking action on climate change.

Prime Minister Harper said, “it’s not that we don’t seek to deal with climate change. But we seek to deal with it in a way that will protect and enhance our ability to create jobs and growth, not destroy jobs and growth in our countries.”

“No country is going to undertake actions on climate change, not matter what they say, no country is going to [take] actions that are going to deliberately destroy jobs and growth in their country. We are just a little more frank about that,” he said.

In late 2013 the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), the country’s largest oil and gas lobby body, claimed concerns over the oilsands were “ideological.” The claim was made in support of arguments against stronger regulations, documents released under Access to Information legislation show.

Another Environics poll released in November of 2013 showed Canadians are losing confidence that governments will take meaningful action to prevent climate change. Although Canadians feel it is the government’s responsibility to take the lead on emissions reduction, very few feel current governments will actually do so.

A poll by Ipsos Reid released in May showed 76 per cent of Albertans are in favour of stronger greenhouse gas regulations for industry facilities.

Recently in the prestigious science journal Nature a panel of experts called for a moratorium on new oilsands projects until Canada can properly assess the total environmental and climate impacts of development.

Today’s new Environics poll demonstrated Canadians might support that expert recommendation, saying the federal government should work on an economic strategy that reduces dependence on the oilsands and moves towards cleaner energy.

The poll asked 1,011 adults in an online survey the following question:

“Q1: Approximately what percentage of the overall Canadian economy do you attribute to the Alberta oil sands?”

The potential answers were: “2 per cent, 6 per cent, 12 per cent, 24 per cent, 48 per cent, Don’t Know.”

Image Credit: Alex MacLean, copyright. Used with permission.

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Climate change is already negatively affecting every region in the United States and the future looks even more dismal if coordinated mitigation and adaptation efforts are not immediately aggressively pursued, according to the third U.S. National Climate Assessment report released Tuesday.

“Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present,” notes the massive NCA report.

“Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington State, and maple syrup producers in Vermont are all observing climate-related changes that are outside of recent experience. So, too, are coastal planners in Florida, water managers in the arid Southwest, city dwellers from Phoenix to New York, and Native Peoples on tribal lands from Louisiana to Alaska.”

The report adds evidence of human-induced climate change continues to strengthen and that impacts are increasing across the nation. The report says Americans are already noticing the results of climate change, from longer and hotter summers to shorter and warmer winters. Rain falls in heavier downpours, there is more flooding, earlier snow melt, more severe wildfires and less summer sea ice in the Arctic.

“Scientists who study climate change confirm that these observations are consistent with significant changes in Earth’s climatic trends,” says the report that was prepared by hundreds of scientists for the U.S. government.

“Precipitation patterns are changing, sea level is rising, the oceans are becoming more acidic, and the frequency and intensity of some extreme weather events are increasing.”

The climatic changes are triggering wide-ranging impacts in every region of the U.S. and throughout the nation’s economy, the report says, adding that while some of the changes can be positive over the short run, most are detrimental since American society and its infrastructure was not designed for the rapidly-changing climate now being experienced.

The report analyses impacts on human health, water, energy, transportation, agriculture, forests, and ecosystems. It also assesses impacts on the country’s eight major regions.

“What is new over the last decade is that we know with increasing certainty that climate change is happening now,” the report says. “While scientists continue to refine projections of the future, observations unequivocally show that climate is changing and that the warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from burning coal, oil, and gas, with additional contributions from forest clearing and some agricultural practices.”

Noting that the climate is projected to continue to change over this century and beyond, the report says there is still time to act to limit the amount of change and its damaging impacts.

The report says U.S. average temperature has increased by 1.3°F to 1.9°F since 1895, with the most recent decade being the nation’s and the world’s hottest on record.

Temperatures are projected to rise another 2°F to 4°F in most areas of the U.S. over the next few decades. The report says by the end of this century, a roughly 3°F to 5°F rise is projected under a lower emissions scenario, which would require substantial reductions in emissions, while a higher emissions scenario assuming continued increases in emissions, predominantly from fossil fuel combustion, would result in a 5°F to 10°F rise.

Many scientists suggest that the safe and manageable level of global temperature rise due to climate change should not exceed 3.6 °F (2°C) above pre-industrial levels.

“Climate change poses a major challenge to U.S. agriculture because of the critical dependence of agricultural systems on climate,” the report says.

“The United States produces nearly $330 billion per year in agricultural commodities. This productivity is vulnerable to direct impacts on crops and livestock from changing climate conditions and extreme weather events and indirect impacts through increasing pressures from pests and pathogens.”

“Climate change will also alter the stability of food supplies and create new food security challenges for the United States as the world seeks to feed nine billion people by 2050.”

Water quality and quantity are already being affected by climate change, the report says, adding changes in precipitation and runoff, combined with changes in consumption and withdrawal, have reduced surface and groundwater supplies and increasing the likelihood of water shortages for many uses.

The report adds that climate change affects human health in many ways.

“Increasingly frequent and intense heat events lead to more heat-related illnesses and deaths and, over time, worsen drought and wildfire risks, and intensify air pollution,” the report says.

“Increasingly frequent extreme precipitation and associated flooding can lead to injuries and increases in waterborne disease. Rising sea surface temperatures have been linked with increasing levels and ranges of diseases. Rising sea levels intensify coastal flooding and storm surge, and thus exacerbate threats to public safety during storms.”

The report says that Americans face choices as the impacts of climate change are becoming more prevalent. It adds that some additional climate change impacts are now unavoidable because of past emissions of long-lived heat-trapping gases.

“The amount of future climate change, however, will still largely be determined by choices society makes about emissions. Lower emissions of heat-trapping gases and particles mean less future warming and less-severe impacts; higher emissions mean more warming and more severe impacts.”

The report may give President Barack Obama more power to deal with climate change, the environment and energy issues through administrative amendments during his last 2.5 years in office. On Tuesday, the White House issued a media release saying the report underscores “the need for urgent action to combat the threats from climate change, protect American citizens and communities today, and build a sustainable future for our kids and grandkids.”

Lou Leonard, the World Wildlife Fund’s vice president for climate change, said the report provides a pathway for Americans to choose a more beneficial future.

“We need to use this practical report as a guidebook for preparing local communities for extreme weather and other climate impacts,” Leonard said. “At the same time, we need to transform the way we produce and use energy, leaving dirty coal, oil and gas behind. There is no time to lose.”

Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune applauded the report and urged the Obama administration to promote clean energy solutions like wind and solar power. “We can create good American jobs and power homes and businesses nationwide without polluting our air, water, or climate,” Brune said.

Image Credit: Map showing consecutive dry days from NCA report website

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Food is at the heart of our cultural lives. It’s not just sustenance—it’s part of how we celebrate, how we mourn and how we come together. But what happens when the food that defines us begins to disappear?

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report released in March, climate change is already having an affect on food security. Extreme weather in “key producing regions” has already led to drastic jumps in food pricing. In cities we are padded from these effects by long supply chains, but not so in places like Hartley Bay on the northern coast of British Columbia.

“We depend on the sea so much for our food,” says Gitga’at Chief Ernie Hill, the principal of Hartley Bay Elementary/Junior High/Secondary School who has spearheaded efforts there to document and teach traditional indigenous harvesting practices.

Spring is harvest season around Hartley Bay, he says. Starting in April, when the clear weather coincides with low tides in the morning, families from the Gitga’at Nation travel to nearby islands where they collect seaweed and lay them to dry for the day in the warm sun. While the grown-ups harvest, the little ones scrape sea prunes, large shelled mollusks also known as chitons.

Now at the age of 73, Hill is no longer able to perch on the slippery rocks to harvest the seaweed, but he’s still committed to passing that tradition on to younger generations. He learned to harvest and prepare traditional foods such as seaweed, halibut and clams when he was a child, and over the years, he has passed that knowledge on to both his children and grandchildren.

Now, with the help of his students, members of the community, and “world class” videographers, he’s been steadily building a library of short documentaries that record traditional food gathering practices so they can be shared long after his generation is gone.

Through the ministrations of community elders like Hill and Helen Clifton, who just received a BC Community Achievement Award, the practices have endured as a way to bring families together much as they did before colonization disrupted lives. They also provide a respite from the rising price of importing food to the remote community, and the nutrient rich traditional diet helps to combat rising levels of diabetes caused by sugar-rich processed foods.

The trouble is that, because of climate change, nature is no longer cooperating the way it once did. According to Clifton, who co-authored a paper on the subject of environmental change with University of Victoria researcher Nancy Turner, weather in the region has been progressively less reliable over the last two decades. Unseasonable spring rains have obstructed the seaweed drying process. Frost and snow have damaged the plants.

And it’s not just seaweed—the rains have impeded the curing of halibut, disrupted pollination cycles and caused berries to grow so over ripe as to be inedible. For the last year the community has also been warned against harvesting clams because levels of toxins leading to paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) were more than twice normal. Hill says tests pinned the problem on a rise in pH level, which could be due to climate change—because the water is getting warmer, it can no longer hold as much oxygen.

Seeing that gradual decline in harvest, the Gitga’at Nation decided to contract sustainability experts from EcoPlan International to aid in the testing and planning process. Analyst Colleen Hamilton presented the work they had been doing at the most recent Livable Cities Forum in Vancouver.

Their goal, she said, was to corroborate local observations with science that would help further conversations already happening within the community. “The first thing we did when we started this project was go into the community and talk to people about all the weird things they were seeing.”

What the group found was that although the challenges were huge, the community was already making some moves to adapt by constructing buildings for drying halibut indoors and setting up freezers at the seaweed harvest sites to preserve it through the rain.

Another idea that came up was to shift focus onto other traditional foods that might better season the changes in temperature. There may be no clams this year, but there were mussels and cockles. Although the Gitga’at Nation is staunchly opposed to fisheries, which Hill says do more harm than good, the group has been experimenting with growing oysters and scallops that may deal better with the new conditions.

The resilience of the Gitga’at Nation, built up over a thousand years of observing and adapting to our planet’s shifts, may offer a road map to other communities dealing with climate change. According to a 2012 report for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), “Indigenous peoples have long and multi-generational histories of interaction with their environments that include coping with environmental uncertainty, variability and change. They have demonstrated their resourcefulness and response capacity in the face of global climate change.”

Still, it’s a slow, sometimes disheartening process, one that has been interrupted by the fight against the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal which poses a much more immediate threat to traditional waters.

Another unexpected challenge to the process has been massive funding cuts in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). Since 2013, maintaining fish habitats is no longer part of the purview of the DFO. In the region around Hartley Bay, that has meant a suspension of water testing which was providing valuable clues about future avenues for adaptation.

“It’s such a strange thing for Harper taking the habitat out of the DFO,” Hill says. “It would have been interesting if the testing had continued over time. Then we would have known exactly what is happening.”

Image Credits: miguelb via Flickr | **604*250** via Flickr

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I've always had a deep affinity for nature, having been blessed to spend my childhood summers on the idyllic and mysteriously underpopulated pristine beaches of Nova Scotia’s Northumberland shore.

During the summers, my extended family would sometimes gather around the red varnished picnic tables in our backyard, for feasts of clams, mussels and sometimes oysters that we had gathered from the shores near the cottage built by my great grandfather in 1917. These gatherings – attended by young and old, aunts, uncles, nephews, neices, siblings and parents of multiple generations – stand out as cherished highlights of my youth.

One day, quite a few summers ago, a neighbour noticed us struggling to haul our aluminium boat across the hot white sand beach, and kindly offered to lend a hand, as local beachgoing etiquite dictates. When we finally reached the water the helpful neighbour (who happened to be a family physician) asked where we were headed. I explained that we were going off to dig some clams. His demeanour changed as he warned that it was too risky to eat the wild shellfish anymore, due to the danger of potentially fatal paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP). I later learned that PSP was occurring around the entire region with increasing frequency.

The realization that my son might never experience the time honoured family tradition of clam digging greatly underscored the poignancy of this sad and unwelcome revelation.

My son Julian on the beach near my family's cottage in Nova Scotia.

This stuck in my mind long after my return to Ottawa that summer, as I pondered how something on such a scale could occur, and what it portended. I had personally and ominously been witness to the end of a traditional activity that had likely been practiced for 10,000 years.

Change is in the Air

I have been following the unfolding saga of climate change since it first started appearing in the media. For quite a few years it has been my main area of concern, and I am an abnormally avid follower of current affairs. It’s not unusual for me to read a dozen or more reports on the subject in the course of a day. Lately the deluge of articles on climate change and related events such as extreme weather has become completely overwhelming. If the frequency of media reports is at all indicative, the impacts of this phenomenon are accelerating very rapidly. But perhaps even more telling is the increasing concern of the experts.

Scientists and science journalists are alarmed. And scientists are a curiously conservative bunch. Professionally obligated to deal in evidence and not emotion, you may have read or heard statements such as "we're not in the business of making predictions." The scientific culture is one wherein statements are scrutinized or criticized if there is no credible source (typically peer-reviewed papers published in esteemed scientific journals) to support an assertion. Given that, for there to be such a vast scientific consensus on the fact that climate change is happening, and that it is almost exclusively caused by human generated greenhouse gas emissions, lends significantly more gravity to this issue than perhaps most people appreciate.  And yet, the effects of climate change, even to a casual observer, seem to be dramatically outpacing most of the predictions many are familiar with. I asked the noted scientist and author Michael Mann, who introduced the world to the famous “hockey stick graph,” about this discrepancy and the track record of underestimating the rate of climate change by the IPCC and he responded:

“The current projections (e.g. as described in the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have in many respects been too conservative, underestimating for example the rate of decline in Arctic sea ice. That may, in turn, be influencing the pattern of the jet stream, in such a way that certain effects – heat waves, floods, droughts – become more persistent. The precise impacts are uncertain. But rather than being an argument for inaction, as contrarians in the climate change debate often like to claim, it is a reason for more immediate and more concerted action. The uncertainties could well cut against us, giving us impacts that are considerably worse than what the model projections currently forecast."

I also asked acclaimed scientist Naomi Oreskes why scientists are reluctant to publicly express the full extent of their concern, as many have to me in less public venues, and she supplied the following comment on the subject:

“We call the phenomena 'erring on the side of least drama.' The culture of science also discourages scientists from talking about how they feel, so even if they feel worried, concerned, anxious, scared, terrified, these are not words that scientists will normally use. Scientists are ill-equipped, both individually and collectively, to speak clearly about things that are worrisome – or indeed, that provoke any kind of emotional response at all.”

Meanwhile, journalists, scientists and citizen groups alike have taken on the unfortunate but necessary task of combating the fossil fuel industry’s well orchestrated and heavily funded misinformation campaign. A campaign dedicated  to undermining and bringing the established science into doubt in the minds of the general public for the sole purpose of protecting their vast and grossly disproportionate financial interests. At the same time the mainstream media has been under-reporting and frequently mis-reporting the issue while the climatic stability that has facilitated the rise of civilization for millennia seems to be rapidly deteriorating before our eyes.

Given that CO2 molecules will persist in the atmosphere for a century even if all emissions ceased today we know that the trends we are witnessing will continue well into the future. If we unleash any of a number of uncontrollable tipping points, we may induce changes that will continue for thousands of years, if we haven’t done so already.

Watch Coral Reefs Die as Ocean Temperatures Rise, Water Acidifies on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Whether or not someone is familiar with – or concerned about – the mechanisms behind this phenomenon, one only need scan the headlines on any given day to appreciate how our world is changing.

Amongst the staggering volume of recent empirical evidence: unprecedented extreme weather events such as epic and life threatening heat waves, tornados, hurricanes, historic flooding,and all-around crazy weather; persistent droughts; crop failures and diminishing crop yeilds; the proliferation of invasive species; rapidly depleting aquifers; warming oceans; peak soil; dying forests; raging forest fires; disappearing coral reefs and marine ecosystems; unprecedented rates of species extinction; sea level rise and hyper expensive projects to attempt to mitigate against it; spreading diseases; severe coastal erosion; vanishing glaciers and polar ice sheets, strained cross-border relations over rapidly depleting critical resources; and ocean acidification, which could ultimately pose a mortal threat to all marine and terrestrial organisms.

Any one of the above should be cause for grave concern, in combination they represent unprecedented challenges for humanity.

The Incalculable Cost

We are now left to grapple with the incalculable risks and costs associated with a highly unstable and rapidly changing planetary biosphere: the loss of thousands of species that have contributed to nourishing and sustaining humanity for eons. And only a select few benefit from the very cause of our demise: primarily the fossil fuel industry and its political backers. It could be argued that any member of industrialized civilization contributes to climate change just by being part of modern society. However, the vast majority of us would opt for cleaner and cheaper sources of energy if we had the choice.

Yet, despite all of these outrageous offences, and decades of warnings, our governments continue to generously subsidize the fossil fuel industry. And our political affairs seem easily swayed by disproportionate wealth, power and political influence. Organized campaigns work to deceive decision-makers and the general public about the dangerous reality of climate change or the affects of highly-polluting fossil fuels. And, by and large, we tolerate their efforts to undermine and impede the development of cleaner alternative sources of energy; sources that would mitigate the effects of climate change, reduce pollution and liberate us from energy tyranny.

Climate Externalities

Ordinary people around the world, particularly the poor – now and many generations into the future – will bear the burden of this incalculable expense on behalf of the fossil fuel industry and its “externalities” – those expenses the industry outsources to the public.

These un-paid-for expenses amount to an additional subsidy of massive proportions. If the true dollar cost – not to mention the human cost – of our addiction to fossil fuels could ever be calculated, the industry would surely be insolvent many times over. Recent efforts to calculate things like the ‘social cost of carbon’ show just how expensive our continued reliance on fossil fuels really is. It's fair to say this represents the greatest ponzi scheme in human history – by far.

If our leaders were serious about resolving this problem, nations would come together and devote all resources necessary to address this crisis immediately. STAT.

Making the Transition

What we need (and I’m not the first to say this) is something akin to the Apollo program, which landed humans on the moon in 1969 – except bigger – if we are to avert catastrophic outcomes. It must, for instance, rapidly advance, and broadly implement, cheap and clean alternative sources of energy, dramatically improve energy efficiency while reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and stop unfairly subsidizing fossil fuels.

There are no silver bullets here, as many will remind you. And there likely aren’t short term answers, such as geoengineering, that don’t involve huge risks of geopolitical conflict or unpredictable outcomes. But international governments are already bracing themselves for very serious and widespread problems that are already arising from their failure to act on globally significant environmental issues.

Yet we are racing to exploit even the dirtiest and resource intensive fossil fuels while we have been warned that up to 80 per cent of reserves must stay in the ground in order to maintain a habitable planet for future generations.

It’s well past time to make the switch to cleaner sources of energy and yet we have barely begun to embrace the idea. At least not popularly. At least not yet.

In the meantime some scientists have dire warnings about how bad things could get if we do not take urgent action immediately. Paleontologist Peter Ward told me such large scale changes to Earth’s biosphere should be considered against the backdrop of the ancient history of our (one-and-only) planet:

“What is missing in the current debates about climate change and their anticipated results on both the physical and biological worlds (where in fact "anticipated" should not be interpreted in the hopeful sense sometimes attached the word, if Deep Time is any indicator) is that, like politics, we as a society cannot seem to expand our temporal view either far enough into the past or future to encompass the full effects that a rapidly warming world, with a rapidly rising sea level can wreak.

The reality is that in the deep past, the many million years old past, short term warming caused by volcanically produced carbon dioxide increases in the global atmosphere have begun chains of events ending in mass extinction.

Repeatedly.”

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Yesterday the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released an explanatory brief on the relationship between climate change and extreme weather events, saying "strong scientific evidence links climate change with increasing heat waves, coastal flooding, and other extreme weather events."

The issues has become a hot topic recently after a tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma, causing brutal damage and killing 24 people, 8 of which were children. Politicians linking the disaster to global warming were called "hard-hearted and factually ignorant vultures" by Forbes contributor James Taylor.

Although the practice of linking extreme weather events to accelerating global warming has become common place after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy topped off 2012, a record-breaking year for weather related droughts and wildfires. The storm reportedly broke the "climate silence" leading into the 2012 presidential election and ushered the warming atmosphere back into the spotlight.

Yet, says the UCS, the relationship between increased levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and apocalyptic weather is one best treated with caution. While some storms may have a more direct relationship with hotter summers, for example, other weather events, like tornados, are more tricky to blame on global warming, although "climate change [is] expected to play a role."

Here is a handy infographic that shows just where the strongest evidence lies:

Here is how they outline the particulars:

Extreme Weather and Climate Change

•   What's the connection between global warming and extreme weather? When it comes to heat waves and coastal flooding, the scientific evidence is clear: Human-caused climate change is increasing these extreme weather events.
•   Other forms of severe weather are also closely linked to climate change, including a rise in extreme precipitation events in some regions and increasingly severe droughts in others. 
•   The effect of climate change on tornadoes and hurricanes is an active area of research. Scientific confidence with observed data is currently low, though the underlying mechanisms of climate change are expected to play a role.

The infographic is based on research and evaluation coming from the Special Report on managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaption (SREX), from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment in 2012.

More information about the methodology behind the infographic can be found at the UCS explanatory note.

As Andrew Revkin reported, the UCS also released this statement to the press:

"We recently noticed a small flurry of policymaker statements on climate change that struck us as inaccurate or misleading. At the same time, we’ve received several inquiries about extreme weather, particularly in the wake of the Oklahoma tornado strike. Below, we’ve compiled some of the statements as well as blog posts and other resources that point to what the science says. Please let us know if you have any questions and if we can help identify other scientific resources.

When it comes to extreme weather, we always take the opportunity to point back to the last definitive international scientific report on extreme weather and climate change, which found strong historic links for heat waves, coastal flooding and changes in precipitation along with weaker links for tornadoes and hurricanes.

On Monday, Gov. Christie was asked for the second time in recent months if Superstorm Sandy was linked to climate change. The governor correctly said that Sandy was not “caused” by climate change, but he failed to acknowledge how sea-level rise, which is caused by climate change, increased the size of Sandy’s devastating storm surge. As the state rebuilds, it’s not clear if the governor is integrating future sea-level rise into his plans. Meanwhile, Rutgers University researchers estimate that the state can expect 1.3 feet of sea-level rise by 2050 and 3.1 feet by 2100.

Also on Monday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) included tornadoes in his discussion of extreme weather and climate change. At the time, his office says, he did not know tornadoes were hitting Oklahoma. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) also linked a number of extreme weather phenomena to climate change in a floor speech, including tornadoes. UCS climate scientist Brenda Ekwurzel writes that because the historical tornado record is spotty, scientists don’t yet have enough evidence to determine how climate change is affecting tornadoes.

Finally, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Science Committee, used a Washington Post op-ed to spread increasingly common misinformation about recent surface temperature trends. In another blog post, Ekwurzel explains how natural variability and human-induced climate change are increasing global temperatures in a step-wise pattern."

Image Credit: Eric Nguyen via NASA

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