The changes in the treeline are so gradual, one could easily mistake them for an optical illusion. Step by step, as I climb out of the valley on the famous Grizzly Lake trail in Tombstone Territorial Park, the birches and willows grow smaller around me. The plants shrink from overhead to shoulder height until, when I hit the high point of the trail, they barely rise above my ankles.

These changes represent the world’s longest ecological border, the place where the boreal forest meets the tundra. And that border is moving: slowly, inexorably, the trees are climbing, pushed up the mountain by a warming climate.

Resting at the top, gazing down from the Grizzly Creek lookout, the forest below is dark and dense, the roots of tall coniferous trees knotting the ground under the cover of thick underbrush.

In a 750-metre climb I’ve almost imperceptibly passed through three different ecosystem types, all of which are contorting to meet the new demands and opportunities of a changing climate.

“That’s a problem,” explains botanist Paul Sokoloff of the Canadian Museum of Nature, describing the process as the “shrubification” of the Arctic.

“It’s affecting the whole ecosystem there. There are trickle-down effects to other parts of the ecosystem.”

Plants are getting bigger and bushier. They’re moving up the mountainside and deeper into the tundra. And that’s squeezing what’s already there: blocking the light, changing micro-climates, habitats and food supplies and in some places phasing out local populations entirely in a microcosm of global climate change.

The gradual change masks the planetary scale disruption of which this trail is one small part. The changes cascade down throughout the ecosystem, affecting every living thing. Some of them will keep up with the pace of change, and some will not.

The author on top of Fold Mountain in Tombstone Territorial Park. Photo: Natalie Sacher

Plants, like animals, find habitats that are suitable to them and make a life there. That habitat can be determined by nutrients, such as nitrogen or phosphates, by sunlight, by water, by microbial communities, by wind, by soil depth — endless factors that can mean the difference between oak, cactus or dust.

Unlike animals, individual plants can’t move around when the water dries up or the food runs low. Over time, however, their communities do move. Plants move up and down mountains, into warmer or cooler climates. They colonize new islands and disappear from others.

The climate-determined places where plants grow have been termed “cliomes.” In the Yukon, a 2016 study in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation predicted that seven of the territory’s 18 cliomes are going to disappear by 2090. One new one will arrive.

In Tombstone Park, more than half of the land will slide into a different cliome in the next 40 years. By the end of the century, more than three-quarters will be completely different from what it is today.

Scrubby trees and hardy lichens that are centuries old will lose their habitat as new colonizers invade the mountainsides, valleys and alpine meadows. Steeper parts of the territory will be affected more, and more quickly: plants that can reproduce quickly enough will be chased up the mountain, higher and higher until there’s nowhere left to grow.

The dense boreal forest of the valley will creep its way up, its spruce and tamarack crowding out the crowberry, grasses, sedges and other diminutive plants of the tundra.

A willow shrub grows above the grasses and sedges below. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

Trekking through the alpine meadows, it’s clear that it’s already happening. Willow trees poke up from beds of grass and sedge, while low birch shrubs encroach on the trail.

This all happens in conjunction with the temperature changes already being observed. The Yukon saw a rise of between one and 2.5 degrees Celsius over the 20th century, causing permafrost to melt, glaciers to recede — famously even causing the Slims river to change course — and forcing changes in plant and animal patterns and behaviour.

This change could challenge the very raisons d’être of some parks. The Yukon Protected Areas Strategy and parks legislation stress the need to establish parks that protect representative samples of the territory’s biodiversity. But then what happens when the plants and animals move away from the park?

Arctic ground squirrels are a common species in the park, becoming so comfortable around hikers as to become a nuisance in the backcountry campgrounds. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

“The ecological representation on which protected designations were based may be altered and potentially undermine their conservation values,” write the authors of the paper on cliome changes.

Tombstone Territorial Park is home to more than 1,000 species, according to Bruce Bennett, coordinator of the Yukon Conservation Data Centre, which recently conducted a survey of all the plants and animals in the park. He’s on the lookout for invasive species of plants, new arrivals that can push out the existing plants.

Tombstone is only seeing a few of the invaders — but he says this is just the start.

“Invasive species tend to be more of an issue in the south,” says Bennett. “It’s a newly emerging issue in the north.”

The march of the plants is sounding a drumbeat for the rest of the species inhabiting the tundra margin. As they struggle to cope with the physical changes in their climate, the invertebrates, birds and mammals will also have to adapt to new habitats if they are to survive.

The plant communities of Arctic ecosystems are changing as the Arctic warms more rapidly than anywhere else on the planet. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

The shattered rocks of a talus slope — pulverized over millennia by the freezing and thawing of water in the cracks of the rocks — make a hellish ascent as I cross the steep Glissade Pass. Catching my breath to the side of one such slow-motion rockslide, I get a glimpse of a tiny fur ball zipping from rock to rock.

The collared pika is a small rabbit-like creature that lives amongst the labyrinths of steep talus slopes, its fur a mottled grey to blend in with the loose rock that covers the mountainside. It’s considered an indicator species for climate change, and a Species of Special Concern, in part because the tiny mammals live in isolated “islands” from which it isn’t always possible to migrate to another.

Like many mountain plants and animals, when the conditions in an area change beyond the limits animals like pikas can survive in, they have nowhere to go. Models show that alpine species are especially sensitive to climate change. Their environment is already so variable along the slope that they would have to migrate much more quickly to keep up with the rate of change.

This principle can be applied to the tundra, too — in the same way as a species can’t move past the peak of a mountain, there’s nowhere to go past the tundra.

Scientists looked at what this means for the tundra in a 2009 study. They found in some parts of the tundra, 90 per cent of the animal species that could survive there would change in the coming century. The animals living there, they wrote, ”will bear little resemblance to those of today.”

The tundra isn’t a monolith either: even within the tundra as a whole there are tiny micro-habitats, entire worlds unto themselves. Any one site drying up or being overgrown with newly arrived shrubs and trees would be devastating to the unique invertebrate communities that live there.

A collared pika gathers food for the winter. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

The pika darts in and out of the talus slope, gathering small plants to store in “haypiles” amongst the rocks — closely related American pikas will make about 13 trips per hour to gather enough food for the winter.

Just as squirrels in their rush to bury enough acorns for the winter will incidentally plant oak trees throughout a forest, the pika will collect a supply of food that could last about 350 days, resulting in decomposing plants throughout the talus that could help more soil form while also supporting insects, microorganisms and other plant growth.

But the pikas in Tombstone park are declining at an alarming rate: 15 per cent in four years. Their bodies don’t tolerate heat; American pikas will die from 25-degree temperatures, and there’s no reason to expect their northern relatives to fare any better.

If the pikas disappear from this slope, the entire ecology of the mountainside will change.

A willow shrub grows on the side of a slope looking toward Mount Monolith. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

“Summer lasted three weeks this year,” an interpreter lamented at the Tombstone welcome centre, nestled into the valley between Fold Mountain and Mount Robert Henderson. Clouds were gathering on both, and reports from Divide Lake were even uglier: snow, ice, rain and hail.

Lying in my tent next to Divide Lake, listening to the heavy drops pummelling the tent a few days later, I admitted to myself she hadn’t been lying. The weather hadn’t let up as my rosy outlook had assumed it would. It was August 22. Summer wasn’t supposed to be over yet, but here I was.

A day later, snow would cover my tent as well as Glissade Pass, making the loose scree and steep rock of that climb even more treacherous than usual.

The effect of climate change isn’t just increased average temperatures. It’s variability and unpredictability. Mountain weather is always hard to forecast, but weather has begun to defy even the established trends of seasons and geography: Snow in Georgia’s peach country. Drought in Vancouver’s rainforest. Ice on my hiking poles in mid-August.

Seasons are thrown out of whack, and this doesn’t just take hikers by surprise; the animals that have for eons set their biological clocks by the reliable signs of changing seasons — shifts in daylight, for example — aren’t able to do so anymore.

A bird sits on a snow-capped tree in mid-August. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

A 2008 study of Greenland caribou showed how catastrophic this mismatch can be. The caribou had evolved to time their calving season to when the plants they eat were emerging, which had always been when the daylight was approaching its maximum. But the plants were on another calendar, one tied to temperature. As the temperature increased, and the daylight remained the same, the plants emerged before the caribou were ready to eat them.

“As a consequence,” wrote the authors, “offspring mortality has risen and offspring production has dropped fourfold.”

Caribou across the Northern Hemisphere have also begun starving more and more frequently as their food gets trapped under ice that forms when spring heatwaves melt the snow then refreeze it on top of their food. Other animals, like pikas, experience the same effect.

Meanwhile the expanding shrubs are providing more cover for wolves and other predators — allowing them to close in on an unsuspecting herd without being noticed — and outcompeting the lichens the caribou depend on. Simply put, climate change is hitting the caribou in almost every way imaginable. The tundra, which had once been an almost perfect habitat suitable for herds so dense they shook the ground, is becoming a minefield.

Caribou are threatened by the shrubification of the Arctic as well as the fluctuating seasonality of Arctic plants. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

As imperceptibly as the colours are changing on their leaves, from green to yellow to orange to red, the dwarf birches begin rising overhead again as I hike back down out of the alpine valley, following the route through which Grizzly Creek drains Grizzly Lake.

The area underneath the shrubs of willow or birch contains a completely different set of plants and lichens from the area surrounding them on the tundra. The influx of these high woody plants is devastating to the rest of the plant community, according to a 2016 study, “decreasing predicted species richness, amplifying species turnover and increasing the local extinction risk for ambient vegetation.”

The micro-climate under the birch and willow shrubs that are growing across the tundra is warmer than the open plain around them. The shrubs trap heat from the sun and the wind can’t whisk it away, while at the same time the leaves and bark themselves are darker than the lichen and moss of the tundra, attracting even more heat even as they block the sunlight from reaching the ground. The result feeds back on itself, with more shrubs growing because more shrubs are growing, and on they march up the mountains and into the Arctic.

The climate conditions that once held plants like the willow and birch shrubs back are no longer doing so. A new study in Nature Climate Change has found that during the last 30 years the amount of land where the vegetation is limited by cold temperatures has decreased by 16.4 per cent — and that is only accelerating.

“Ecosystem growth is very sensitive to temperature, so as temperatures warm, we expect that plants will grow faster and be able to grow larger,” the study’s lead author, UC Berkeley assistant professor Trevor Keenan, told The Narwhal.

The study also found that by the end of the century, only 20 per cent of the land currently limited by cold will remain that way.

A mountain stream descends into Tombstone Pass. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

Shrubs grow high and bushy near Divide Lake. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

Shrubification is already overgrowing the grasslands in the southern half of the territory.

“It’s one of the largest slow-moving threats to southern Yukon grassland communities,” Bennett says.

Newly arrived plant species like sweet clover and smooth brome are successfully pushing further north than ever before. As the plants get established, they can change soil chemistry, redirect fires, change bird nesting behaviour and choke out their neighbours. Bennett’s recent biodiversity survey found smooth brome in the Grizzly Creek trail parking lot.

“It’s right at the northern end of its range,” he says.

This fundamental change in what the tundra looks like is causing chaos among the animals as well. The stunning arrival of beavers on the Arctic coast is thought to have been caused by the shrubification of the river valleys of northern Yukon. That arrival is having knock-on effects throughout the ecosystem, with lakes drying up, fish-bearing streams blocked off, and the native species left to contend with the changes.  

Fall colours emerge on dwarf birch on the Grizzly Creek trail. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

Descending back into the dark forest of the valley feels like re-entering the southern world, with its still, moist air, the fragrance of lichens and Labrador tea replaced with the more familiar scent of mossy soil and pine needles. Those worlds are colliding on the hills above, plants and their dependent animals sparring in all the ways they know how — grazing by caribou, hares, voles and lemmings has been shown to slow the invasion — in a pitched battle that will eventually see this endless boreal forest and its robust trees emerge victorious over the tiny, delicate plants of the neighbouring tundra.

The world’s longest border is moving, and the identity of the North is changing. Like the inevitable dimming of the sky as clouds roll in, the change is too slow to perceive — but once the moment has come it’s impossible to miss.

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It’s not often that an article about climate change becomes one of the most hotly debated issues on the internet — especially in the midst of a controversial G20 summit.

But that exact thing happened following the publication of a lengthy essay in New York Magazine titled “The Uninhabitable Earth: Famine, Economic Collapse, a Sun that Cooks Us: What Climate Change Could Wreak — Sooner Than You Think.”

In the course of 7,200 words, author David Wallace-Wells chronicled the possible impacts of catastrophic climate change if current emissions trends are maintained, including, but certainly not limited to: mass permafrost melt and methane leaks, mass extinctions, fatal heat waves, drought and food insecurity, diseases and viruses, “rolling death smog,” global conflict and war, economic collapse and ocean acidification.

Slate political writer Jamelle Bouie described the essay on Twitter as “something that will haunt your nightmares.”

It’s a fair assessment. Reading it feels like a series of punches in the gut, triggering emotions like despair, hopelessness and resignation.

But here’s the thing: many climate psychologists and communicators consider those feelings to be the very opposite of what will compel people to action.

“Based on my research on climate communications, this article is exactly what we don’t need,” says Per Espen Stoknes, Norwegian psychologist and author of What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action, in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“It only serves to further alarm the already alarmed segment of people. ”

Climate Psychologists Recommends ‘Positivity Ratio’ of 3:1

Let’s get one thing out of the way.

Critics of the New York Magazine article — and other instances of doomsday journalism — are not anti-science. These are all people who firmly recognize the severity of catastrophic climate change, and are certainly not petitioning for a bury-your-head-in-the-sand approach, shielding the public from the potential horrors.

Rather, they suggest that most people will only process such facts about climate change if it’s framed in an appropriate way that acknowledges how individuals and societies respond to potentially traumatic threats.

“It’s really important to understand that it’s not just about facts and numbers, but having a way for people to interpret them and know there’s something they can do,” says Kari Marie Norgaard, associate professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Oregon and author of Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life, in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

Stoknes notes there’s a well-known “positivity ratio” for optimal engagement of a 3:1 ratio of opportunities to threats. He says the New York Magazine piece was around nine threats to every one proposed solution.

In other words, a tripling of the ratio in the wrong direction.

Article Sticks to Hard Science, Ignoring Role of Social Sciences

The author of the New York Magazine article has already responded to a series of criticisms on Twitter, including on the scientific merit of some of his claims.

A rather revealing moment was when Wallace-Wells replied to a critique from renowned futurist Alex Steffen — who had described the article as “one long council of despair” — by suggesting that “my own feeling is that ignorance about what’s at stake is a much bigger problem.”

The clear implication is that Wallace-Wells assumes a confronting of ignorance about scientific facts could help compel people to action and avoid the most dangerous manifestations of climate change.

But Daniel Aldana Cohen — assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the response piece in Jacobin titled “New York Mag’s Climate Disaster Porn Gets It Painfully Wrong” — suggests in an interview with DeSmog Canada that Wallace-Well’s approach indicates a failure to engage with any questions about broader sociopolitical systems.

“I think in the politics of climate change, a narrow idea of climate science is fetishized,” says Cohen, adding that even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change largely fails to include social sciences in working group reports.

“It feels like the most realistic, the most unvarnished truth is what the science predicts,” he continues. “But the thing is that in some way, climate science registers the impact of human activity, but it’s not actually an integrated account of the dynamic feedback between social and political activities and physical events in the atmosphere.”

In other words, Wallace-Wells’ article sketches out a narrative of catastrophic climate change that assumes people don’t act on the knowledge of the situation.

But in a cruel twist, by only focusing on the science without any attempt to contextualize it in society or political systems, it could well have the reverse effect by making readers feel even more powerless.

This isn’t a new problem: Stoknes notes that as identified by James Painter of Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, about 80 per cent of media coverage on the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report used “catastrophe framing,” with less than 10 per cent using “opportunity framing.”

“It’s not just about pointing your fingers at the climate skeptics and saying that’s the problem,” Norgaard says.

“Of course, it’s a major problem. But the apathy or acquiescence of the majority of people who are aware and do care is a larger problem. It’s about how we mobilize those people.”

If Framed Correctly, Idea of Apocalypse Can Help People Imagine Alternatives

Stoknes argues that thinking about such a sobering subject as apocalypse or death, if done correctly, can actually help people conceptualize new ways of thinking and being.

“This psychological approach to the apocalypse is very important, and I found it completely absent in the article,” he says. “It is not about predicting a certain year in the future of linear time, when everything will be collapsing. Maybe this notion is more like a call in the here and now, calling attention to the urgent need for a deep rethink of where we are and letting go of some cherished Western notions that we’ve been stuck in over the last century.”

Such a sentiment is echoed by climate psychologist Renee Lertzman and author of Environmental Melancholia: Psychoanalytic Dimensions of Engagement, who emphasizes in an interview with DeSmog Canada that predictable fault lines have formed in the wake of the New York Magazine piece.

A key factor for her is how humans actually process information that may be challenging and bring up difficult feelings. She says the consensus is that we can become “cognitively impaired” when the brain’s limbic system becomes activated, resulting in reduced capacity to have functions for strategy, foresight, collaboration and tolerance.

“That goes out the window when your limbic system is activated, which arguably articles like this are going to do,” she says. “The best way to deal with that reality is to address how we can soothe and disarm our defences.”

‘We Need to Also Be Engaged in Collective Political Action and Solutions’

That’s certainly not going to be an easy feat. But there are plenty of initiatives out there that are embracing a bit more nuance.

Lertzman points to Project Drawdown — an attempt to compile the 100 top solutions to climate change — as a powerful initiative, although she suggests “even that is missing the emotional taking stock of where we are.” Cohen shouted out the work of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe.

But central to progressing beyond the gridlock of current climate discourse is likely via bringing it closer to the local level, where people feel they can actually influence things.

CBC’s new podcast 2050: Degrees of Change is a good example of this. While it paints a dramatic picture of life in B.C. under climate change, it also uses a scenario under which the world has drastically decreased greenhouse gas emissions.

“We wanted listeners to end off realizing this is a middle of the road scenario and things could be worse and they could be better depending on what we choose to do now,” Johanna Wagstaffe, podcast host and CBC senior meteorologist, told DeSmog Canada.

Norgaard says engaging with issues on a local level can give people a leverage point into even greater engagement.

“We really need to on the one hand be aware that it’s something we need to respond to as a collective,” she says. “Riding your bike is great, but we need to also be engaged in collective political action and solutions. That’s part of what helps people to do something proactive that’s real.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

“If you were to get lost in the bush, I could find you.”

It’s an oddly placed sentiment in the city heat of Marrakech, Morocco, yet an entirely appropriate one for an indigenous panel at the UN climate talks hosted by Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna.

Francois Paulette, revered Canadian indigenous leader and elder from the Dene Nation, told an international crowd of delegates, campaigners and press that back in Canada, his place is in the wild.

It is there Paulette learned from his elders the meaning of sin: “The biggest sin a man can make is to abuse the earth.”

“And now that’s why we’re in the place we’re in and why there is global warming.”

Although Paulette said he is not one for the city — he’d rather be on a riverbank back home in the Northwest Territories — he’s no stranger to international diplomacy. At his sixth UN climate summit, Paulette is more determined than ever to ensure indigenous perspectives and rights are central to international climate plans.

By all appearances Canada seems determined to do the same.

McKenna, introducing the group of high-level indigenous leaders, rearticulated Canada’s promise to strengthen its relationship with indigenous peoples.

“As the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau has said there is no more important relationship than our relationship with indigenous peoples, our First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples,” McKenna said.

“I really believe that and that’s why it’s so important we’re working together.”

Federal Approval of Site C, Proposed Pipelines Problematic for Indigenous Rights

At last year's UN climate talks in Paris, Canada’s delegation was among those leading the fight to include indigenous rights in the agreement text.

Yet indigenous leaders sitting alongside Paulette and McKenna at the panel say more has to be done to live up to promises to respect indigenous rights, both on the international stage, and domestically in Canada.

Paulette said despite clear promises to renew Canada’s relationship with indigenous people, Trudeau recently approved federal permits for the Site C dam in British Columbia despite opposition from Treaty 8 First Nations.

“We have a problem with that.”

Paulette added that because of the environmental impacts of oilsands development on water and climate, he also cannot support the construction of new pipelines.

The Trudeau government is expected to approve the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline in coming weeks and in September approved the Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal — which is projected to be Canada’s largest single point source of greenhouse gas emissions — near Prince Rupert, B.C.

The recent project approvals, which contravene Canada’s promises to indigenous peoples as well as its climate commitments, have some worried Canada isn’t prepared to walk the talk.

“If we’re going to implement the Paris Agreement, it can’t just be in words,” Paulette said. “We need to be a part of that process every step of the way.”

Canada’s Pipeline Projects Run Up Against Indigenous Rights, Climate Targets

Kevin Hart, Assembly of First Nations Manitoba Regional Chief, said environmental degradation still disproportionately impacts indigenous peoples in Canada and around the world, a problem exacerbated by new pipeline proposals.

The Trans Canada Energy East pipeline and the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline are facing intense indigenous opposition, including legal challenges. A Canadian court found the now stalled Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline was conditionally approved by a government-appointed panel without adequate consultation for First Nations, as is required by the Canadian constitution.

The proposed path for the Energy East pipeline crosses Manitoba on its route to export facilities on the east coast. The controversial pipeline, which would transport 1.1 million barrels of oil per day, has been called a threat to indigenous land and water. The project’s current route has it crossing over the territory of 50 First Nations, according to the Council of Canadians.

“Our people are right smack dab in the middle of proposed pipeline development currently on the table,” Hart said.

Hart said if Canada is to live up to its climate commitments it cannot afford to build more pipelines.

“If there’s any expansion done in Canada it will be next to impossible for Canada to meet those targets now and in the future.”

Hart, who was speaking on a stage at the Indigenous People’s Pavilion at the UN climate talks, turned to address McKenna personally.

“And Minister McKenna, you as well as your colleague [transport] Minister Carr, know full well I’ve publicly stated I cannot support any pipeline currently or in the future.”

“Indigenous peoples have known for thousands of years how to protect the land, as Trudeau pointed out in Paris last year,” Hart said. 

He added the presence of indigenous leaders at the talks is to ensure that knowledge is incorporated into the Paris Agreement and what it means for major projects back in Canada.

Canada Fought to Include #IndigenousRights in Paris Agreement But Will Those Rights Be Protected Back Home? https://t.co/ON7QWn98r2 #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 16, 2016

Canada’s Arctic Disproportionately Impacted by Climate Change

Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said Canada will actually miss out on the true rewards of climate action if it excludes indigenous perspectives.

“For the Inuit, in our homeland, we are on the forefront of climate change,” Obed said.

“When we talk about a global temperature increase of 1.5 or two degrees Celsuis, we don’t quite know what that means for the Arctic.”

Scientists have documented Arctic air temperatures warming twice as fast as elsewhere on the planet. Obed said the model his community has been using predicts the Arctic will experience two to four times the rate of warming felt elsewhere.

Inuit people in Canada’s north lay claim to a combined territory of 3.2 million square kilometres.

“That’s roughly the size of India,” Obed said.

Warmer temperatures and melting sea ice have dire consequences for the Inuit, he said.

Climate change “has a fundamental impact on our way of life and cultures as well as the way we transmit knowledge between generations.”

Obed said his people are inherently coastal people, who have carved out a unique way of life in a region of the world covered by ice for most months of the year.

“We have a connection to the ice that is beyond most cultures and societies in the world. So this issue matters to us more than anything.”

Echoing the concerns of other indigenous leaders at the panel event, Obed said these unique indigenous concerns should not be left out of Canada’s larger climate conversation.

“If we can't have policy space about an area that is most affected, that has an indigenous people whose society and way of life is threatened, then I doubt Canada will get the most it can from climate action.”

Images: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau via Prime Minister's Photo Gallery

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

On Sunday, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna announced that the federal government will stick with the previous government’s target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The news, delivered via an interview with CTV’s Evan Solomon, attracted a significant amount of criticism.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May described it as “nothing short of a disaster for the climate” and Press Progress suggested the news undermined election commitments and later statements by the Liberals.

Fair enough: McKenna had previously called the targets the “floor,” noting that “certainly we want to try to do better.” And in election materials, the Liberals stated: “We will work together to establish national emissions-reduction targets.”

Not exactly a broken promise, but some had hoped for more.

But here’s the thing: yes, the Liberals could have set a more ambitious target. And yes, to help keep global temperatures below two degrees of warming, they will need to in the future.

But what matters is not setting a target — it’s meeting a target.

The two previous federal governments were nowhere near to meeting the targets they set, so Canada is working to catch up right now.

While setting a new, more ambitious target might have drawn positive headlines, it may well have set the country up for repeated failures.

Ultimately, policy experts are more concerned with the details that will be contained in the government’s upcoming climate plan.

“At the end of the day, as much as the goals and targets matter, what matters most is reducing emissions,” says Amin Asadollahi, the lead for climate change mitigation for North America at the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

“Measures matter more. Setting up a target and missing it misses the point.”

Clare Demerse, federal policy advisor for Clean Energy Canada, agrees.

“We have, in this country, a long history of having targets and a very short history of having actual plans to meet them. We have been in a situation where Canada has really established a credibility problem in terms of hitting targets. We need to fix that.”

Paris Agreement Requires Canada To Review Targets Every Five Years

The important and now reaffirmed climate target is a reduction of emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030; a recent paper from the Climate Action Network indicated that current measures will result in a 91 megatonne overshoot, so a lot is still going to have to change.

There’s also a goal in place to cut emissions in 2020 by 17 per cent, largely considered impossible given a decade of inaction by the federal Conservatives. And then there are the most distant goals of a 65 per cent reduction by 2050 and a G7 goal of full decarbonization by 2100.

The Paris Agreement, which hasn’t yet been ratified by Canada, will require each country to review targets every five years starting in 2018 and justify plans to the international community.

“Every five years, we’ll come back to the table and the international community will test this resolve as to whether it has the political will to put the world on a trajectory to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” Asadollahi says.

And political will — inextricably linked to public acceptability — is what this is really about. Can the Liberals put in place a plan to meet the target and get re-elected?

Why @JustinTrudeau’s Commitment to Harper’s Old Emissions Target Might Not Be Such Bad News After All https://t.co/SBtzmCn2W0 #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 21, 2016

2030 Target Tough, But Achievable

Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Canada, says that meeting the 2030 target will be challenging but achievable, especially given Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s popularity and available political capital.

Plenty of options are on the table. A predictable price on carbon via a tax or cap-and-trade framework is considered the most important. McKenna has indicated the federal government will set a national price if provinces don’t take measures themselves, despite resistance from Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall.

A new report, Is Win Win Possible? Can Canada Meet Its Paris Commitment … And get Re-Elected?, published on Tuesday by renowned climate policy analyst Mark Jaccard recommends a combination of a $40/tonne of carbon dioxide tax by 2030, accompanied by an array of flexible and industry-specific regulations.

Other measures could include an accelerated phase-out of coal, better building codes, fuel efficiency standards, energy efficiency measures, incentivizing a faster deployment of renewables and smart grids, support for electric vehicles and charging stations and better public transit.

Demerse notes that governments and industry often overestimate how difficult environment policy is going to be to implement.

“Once you get started and it becomes a conversation where you take the lobbyists out and unleash the engineers, you see all kinds of innovation,” she says. “That’s certainly been the story with clean energy, where we’ve seen the cost of clean energy fall very significantly.”

Let's Not Forget About Decarbonization

Stewart warns that such measures could be effective enough to meet 2030 targets, but would be undermined if the Liberals approve new pipelines and massively expanded oilsands production, which would lock in new greenhouse gas emissions for decades.*

As a result, he says it’s important to start working now towards decarbonization — meaning no further growth of the oilsands, as also recommended by Jaccard — which in itself would allow for the meeting of 2030 targets given oil and gas now contributes the most emissions of any sector in the country.

Stewart says that such decisions will require some “tough political fights” but that the federal government has all the tools it needs to make the big changes required.

“If you’re not forcing anyone to change their behaviour, you’re not actually changing any outcomes,” he says. “Thirty per cent by 2030 isn’t good enough. We have to go farther. And the Paris Agreement builds in a way to ratchet up that level of ambition.”

The next United Nations climate conference will take place in Marrakech, Morocco, from November 7 to 18. Given the successes at the last iteration in Paris, it’s likely that it will be a quieter affair. But Canada will need to have the ball rolling on a serious climate plan by that point, especially given its ambitions to land a UN Security Council seat.

“We haven’t seen the work they’ve been putting together,” Demerse says. “We know it’s going to be very political and not simple. We’re still in a wait and see mode. This is a process that can deliver but we don’t yet know what’s going to come out at the end of this.”

*Update Notice: Sept. 22, 2016, 10 a.m.: This article previously incorrectly stated that the Liberals could approve new pipelines and meet the 2030 targets.

Photo: Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and her chief of staff Marlo Raynolds, via the Pembina Institute.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

It’s 31 degrees outside and I was planning to go to the lake this afternoon — and I’d be willing to hazard a guess that many British Columbians are in the same boat.

That’s exactly why B.C. Premier Christy Clark chose tomorrow to release her Climate Action Plan — originally scheduled for release nearly six months ago.

Politicans often "take out the trash" on Fridays during the dog days of summer and this time is no different.

The plan — according to a leak in the Globe and Mail today — will fail to increase the carbon tax or update greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Those were two of the cornerstone recommendations from the province’s own expert committee.

“The depths of August on a Friday afternoon is not the time you release a plan that you want a lot of people to pay attention to,” said Josha MacNab, B.C. director for the Pembina Institute.

Pembina was a member of the Climate Leadership Team comprised of environmental, academic, business and First Nations leaders. The team presented 32 recommendations reached by consensus (except for one dissenting vote by LNG Canada on the carbon tax recommendation).

“The Climate Leadership Team was very clear that the recommendations needed to be accepted as a package and they warned against picking and choosing amongst the recommendations that they put forward,” MacNab said.

MacNab says she is shocked the government appears ready to cherry pick from the recommendations.

“The premier herself appointed this panel to give her advice to get B.C.’s emissions back on track because under her leadership they have been going up,” MacNab said.

B.C. had promised to reduce its emissions by 33 per cent below 2007 levels by 2020. That’s not going to happen.

Instead, emissions are expected to increase 39 per cent above 2014 levels by 2030, according to modeling by the Pembina Institute.

Now the province will continue touting its pie-in-the-sky goal of reducing emissions by 80 percent below 2007 levels by 2050 — without any credible pathway to get there.

.@ChristyClarkBC Hopes You’re Not Reading This https://t.co/1SZDfJqUVY #summertime #holidays #bcpoli #climateactionplan

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 19, 2016

That puts B.C. in stark contrast to Canada’s other most populous provinces — Ontario, Quebec and even Alberta, all of which are projecting a decrease in emissions.

Merran Smith of Clean Energy Canada was a part of Clark's Climate Leadership Team and says B.C. has a legal obligation to reduce carbon emissions.

"We’ve been a climate leader in the past and our economy has thrived as a climate leader so I’m a bit shocked that this government has put all its eggs in the oil and gas basket and really procrastinated on climate action," Smith said.

"The carbon tax is the cheapest and most effective way to reduce carbon pollution. And that’s why it was a key part of our recommendations," Smith added. "We didn’t create a shopping list of different ways to reduce carbon pollution to meet our targets. We created a cohesive, coherent plan and you need all those different recommendations to work together in order to reduce carbon pollution."

Clark appears poised to defend her inaction on the basis of protecting “affordability for families” and maintaining a “strong economy.”

But the old dichotomy of environment versus economy is false, according to MacNab.

“The mandate of the Climate Leadership Team was to present a plan that met B.C.’s climate targets and maintained a strong economy. A strong climate plan going forward needs to meet our climate targets. But a strong climate plan also needs to position B.C. to be competitive in a low-carbon economy — in an increasingly de-carbonizing international market.”

In an attempt to placate anyone who’s paying attention, the province will announce feel-good measures like rebates on electric vehicles and incentives for industry to switch to electricity tomorrow.

The Globe and Mail has also reported that the plan will include details of the electrification of upstream natural gas production, one of the ever-changing justifications for building the controversial $8.8 billion Site C dam on the Peace River.

And therein lies the rub. Clark desperately wants to develop a natural gas industry — but she can’t do that and meet B.C.’s climate targets.

Instead of all the smoke and mirrors, it’d sure be refreshing if someone would just come out and tell the truth.

As it stands, the plan to be released tomorrow ought to be named B.C.’s Climate Inaction Plan. Question is: if we’re all at the lake, will it matter?

Photo: Province of British Columbia

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People have harnessed energy from moving water for thousands of years.

Greeks used various types of water wheels to grind grain in mills more than 2,000 years ago.

In the late 1800s, people figured out how to harness the power to produce electricity.

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, hydropower has expanded, producing about 17 per cent of the world’s electricity by 2014 and about 85 per cent of renewable energy — and it shows no signs of slowing.

According to the online magazine WaterWorld, “An expected 3,700 major dams may more than double the total electricity capacity of hydropower to 1,700 GW within the next two decades,” — including in my home province of B.C., where the government has started a third dam on the Peace River at Site C.

“Hydropower is the most important and widely used renewable source of energy,” the U.S. Geological Survey says.

But how “green” is hydropower and how viable is it in a warming world with increasing water fluctuations and shortages? To some extent, it depends on the type of facility.

The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions notes some large dams are used mainly for water storage or flood control with power generation an additional function, while some are used primarily to generate electricity. Small hydro such as run-of-river is installed on running water and doesn’t use water stored in reservoirs. Pumped storage facilities don’t generate additional energy, but store energy by pumping water from a lower reservoir to a higher one when demand and price are low, sometimes using renewable energy, and release water through turbines when price and demand are high. All have varying environmental impacts.

One of the biggest trade-offs with large-scale hydro facilities is that building them often means flooding land used for farming and human communities. Damming rivers also impedes fish — even with technologies like fish ladders — and can harm wildlife habitat and alter river temperatures, dissolved oxygen levels and flows.

While hydropower creates fewer pollution and climate problems than fossil fuel power, it isn’t entirely clean. Clearing vegetation to build a dam and flood land can release greenhouse gases. And as vegetation decays and water levels fluctuate, methane — a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide — can build up and escape from reservoirs.

Ironically, although hydropower is seen as an energy source that helps slow global warming, in many areas its viability is threatened by climate change. Rising greenhouse gas emissions and a warming world affect the entire hydrological cycle — surface and ground water, glaciers, precipitation, runoff and evaporation. Shifting precipitation patterns and increased droughts are changing water levels in rivers and behind hydro dams.

The massive Hoover Dam on the Colorado River is operating at 30 per cent capacity, and new turbines have to be installed at lower elevation because of low precipitation and drought. In Nepal, “low water levels rendered a brand-new dam project ineffective and cut off the water supply farther downstream,” said John Matthews, director of fresh water and adaptation at Conservation International, in Scientific American.

Matthews and co-authors of a study in the journal PLoS Biology wrote that climate change puts 40 per cent of hydro development investments at risk. They recommend an approach to dams and hydro that takes climate change into account, by building projects in stages so adjustments can be made as more is known about climate patterns, or by “building with nature” rather than on top of it.

Meanwhile, as more environmentally benign power technologies become increasingly cost-effective and viable, the U.S. is removing older dams, many of which don’t have fish ladders, because costs to maintain and repair them are too high, as are environmental impacts.

Hydropower will remain part of the clean-energy equation, but we need to find the least disruptive, most efficient methods. Scientist Peter Gleick, president and cofounder of California’s Pacific Institute, says the key to supplying energy to growing populations in a warming world will be to use a diversity of power sources.

“We need to design our energy systems to be resilient in the face of growing uncertainty about technology and climate and national security and all of the factors that affect energy,” Gleick told online magazine Slate.

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

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image: W.A.C. Bennett Dam on the Peace River by Jayce Hawkins

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Gravel-bed rivers and their floodplains are the lifeblood of ecosystems and need to be allowed to run and flood unimpeded if species are to be protected and communities are to cope with climate change, a ground-breaking scientific study has found.

The broad valleys formed by rivers flowing from glaciated mountains, such as those found throughout B.C. and Alberta, are some of the most ecologically important habitats in North America, according to the team of scientists who have done the first extensive study of the full range of species that rely on gravel-bed rivers, ranging from microbes to bears. The paper was published online Friday in Science Advances.

In the region that stretches from Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming to the northern Yukon, gravel-bed river flood plains support more than half the plant life. About 70 per cent of the area’s bird species use the floodplain, while deer, elk, caribou, wolves and grizzly bears use the plains for food, habitat and as important migration corridors.

While everyone knows that fish rely on rivers, the scientists found that species such as cottonwood trees need the river flood to reproduce and the ever-changing landscape of changing channels and shifting gravel and rocks supports a complex food web.

Gravel-bed rivers are much more than water flowing through the channel, said lead author Ric Hauer, director of the University of Montana’s Center for Integrated research on the Environment.

“The river flows over and through the entire floodplain system, from valley wall to valley wall, and supports an extraordinary diversity of life. The river is so much bigger than it appears to be at first glance,” he said.

But the floodplains are endangered worldwide as the flat, productive valleys are attractive for agriculture, roads or houses and it is time to look at gravel bed rivers with new eyes, said Harvey Locke, co-founder of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative and one of the study’s authors.

“A wild and free river drives the life support system across the whole landscape and we need to keep them happy,” Locke said in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“We need to let them be rivers and run free and do our development respecting that need instead of trying to control them.”

That means not building dams or levees that prevent essential flooding, Locke said.

“Flooding is critical to the health of the riparian system and, by extension, organisms across the whole landscape and, when you put in a dam for climate change mitigation you are killing that process. It’s a catastrophe not only for the immediate ecological effects, but it also puts a huge barrier to connectivity so species cannot go up the river to adapt to climate change,” Locke said.

Hydro dams are often touted as green energy, but, in reality they are a huge problem, not a solution to climate change, he said.

Locke emphasized that the scientific study does not look at the controversy behind individual projects such as the planned Site C dam in northeastern B.C., but said he personally regards Site C as a prime example of the problem.

Existing dams on the Peace River have already had a devastating effect downstream, he said.

“And the horror of wrecking more of that beautiful river valley around Fort St. John is an example of not thinking clearly. It’s very bad for the resilience of the landscape,” he said.

Gravel-bed rivers are found mainly in the western U.S. and Canada — and include major rivers such as the Columbia, Fraser, Flathead, Mackenzie and Yukon — and every part of B.C is affected by them, said Locke, who is hoping the scientific paper will attract the attention of groups such as planners and politicians who make development decisions.

“The really big point is that gravel-bed river systems are the heart of the whole landscape and you don’t want to clog the arteries attached to the heart, which is what a dam does,” he said.

Even in protected areas such as Yellowstone and Banff national parks, humans have altered the floodplains, the scientists found.

Hauer said the increasing pressures of climate change mean that species need access to intact gravel-bed ecosystems in order to survive.

“These systems must be protected and those that are already degraded must be restored,” he said.

Biologist and grizzly bear expert Michael Proctor, of Birchdale Ecological, one of the report’s authors, said the research highlighted how river systems are a focus of regional connectivity, not only for grizzly bears, but for all species.

“This paper helped me realize the amazing significance of gravel bed river systems, not just river valleys, as an ecological focus and arena of so much biodiversity and ecological processes,” Proctor said.

“It’s like the narrow pinch point in an hour-glass of influence. Everything is influenced by that pinch point.”

Human settlement and activities in those river valleys and floodplains reduces their biodiversity and significance, Proctor said.

“We need to leave and even restore some portions of these river systems to more of a natural condition,” he said.

Photo: Flathead River by Harvey Locke

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Federal and provincial climate policies unveiled over the last year are paving the way for Canada to massively increase the amount of energy the country gets from renewable sources, according to a new analysis released today by Clean Energy Canada.

“For the first time the federal government and the provinces are working together to establish a national climate plan,” Dan Woynillowicz, policy director at Clean Energy Canada, said. “A big piece of the puzzle is not just cleaning up the grid, but electrifying other parts of the economy reliant on fossil fuels.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is drafting a ‘pan-Canadian clean growth and climate change framework’ to be released this fall. Meantime, last year Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada’s main oil and gas producing provinces, set ambitious renewable energy targets. And Ontario recently announced one of the most cutting edge greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction plans in Canada to date.

All of that means things are finally looking up for clean energy in Canada. Federal and provincial politicians now need to make good on their climate pledges for the country to reap even bigger benefits from this $500 billion global industry.

“There’s never been a greater opportunity to move forward on this file for Canada. There is certainly reason for optimism,” Robert Hornung, president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association, told DeSmog Canada.

“We are in a unique moment in time. Not just the federal government, but Ontario, B.C., Quebec, and Alberta have all expressed climate change as a priority,” Hornung said.

Clean Energy Canada says the renewable energy challenge facing Canada right now is different from other heavy greenhouse gas emitting countries like China or the U.S. Nearly 80 per cent of all Canadian electricity comes from non-GHG emitting sources (including nuclear power), three-quarters of which is hydroelectricity.

In the United States, on the other hand, fossil fuels produce close to 70 per cent of the country's electricity.

“We have a comparative advantage in Canada because our grid is already pretty clean,” Woynillowicz told DeSmog. “Canada is in an enviable position.”  

While other countries are focused on switching their electricity base from fossil fuels to clean energy, Canada has a different challenge. Sectors heavily dependent on fossil fuels  — oil and gas, transportation, and industrial processes — have hardly any renewable energy in the mix at the moment.

That means to reduce emissions Canada needs to do things like shift to electric vehicles and efficient electric-based home heating systems (like air and ground source heat pumps).

Has #CleanEnergy's Time Finally Come in #Canada? https://t.co/xncUcQSaPM @standearth @merransmith @SciPolEnv pic.twitter.com/9QMtSvt81X

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 16, 2016

“Clean electricity is one of the best tools to fight climate change,” Clean Energy Canada’s executive director Merran Smith told DeSmog Canada. “As we shift to power our economy by clean electricity there will be an increase in demand for electricity and we need that to be clean electricity.”

In B.C., that raises the specter of the controversial Site C dam, but even with an increased demand for electricity in the future (demand in B.C. has been flat for the past 10 years), Site C isn’t necessarily the best solution according to Smith.

“From an economic perspective, Site C is concerning because the cost of renewables like wind and solar power have been dropping dramatically,” she said.

“In the U.S. the price of solar has dropped 80 per cent over last six years and the price of wind has dropped 60 per cent over the last six years. As the cost of those keep going down, that makes them attractive — whereas eight of the last 10 hydro projects built globally have gone over budget.”

A new report released by Bloomberg New Energy Finance this week found that wind and solar will be the cheapest ways of producing electricity in many countries during the 2020s and in most of the world in the 2030s.

“The good news for B.C. is we already have so much large hydro, we really can add intermittent renewables on easily because we already have the large hydro that acts as a battery and acts as storage,” Smith said.

“We could build solar and wind in 100 megawatt units as we need it in rural communities. It could create work around the province. And we could bring it on line as we need it. So a decade from now when we need another 100 MW, it will be even cheaper.”

Woynillowicz sees the emerging national climate framework as the space to address how to power more of the Canadian economy with renewable energy.

“That’s the place to articulate a clear priority of electrification and establish renewable energy targets,” Woynillowicz said. “It will change the conversation around climate away from where jobs are going to be lost to what we are going to create and build.”

Studies have shown the two pillars to decarbonizing any industrialized economy are to first transition completely to non-GHG emitting electrical generation and then run the economy off this clean electricity.

Clean Energy Canada’s analysis highlights energy storage and electricity sharing between provinces as areas where Canada is starting to break ground in electrifying the economy. In regards to the latter, Hornung would like to see more happen politically.

“What the federal government could do is provide a platform for provinces and territories to talk about the shared challenges they face in optimizing their electricity systems and enable collaborative relationships,” Hornung told DeSmog Canada.

Hornung points out more renewable energy is sold to the United States than shared between provinces right now.

Ontario and Quebec, and Alberta and Manitoba have all signed separate memorandums of understanding to take steps toward integrating their electrical grids.

In a report released in February, Clean Energy Canada warned Canada was falling behind its peers on the international stage in terms of renewable energy investments. At the time, it was estimated clean energy investments in Canada had dropped by a whooping 46 per cent, while they increased in the U.S., China, India and the United Kingdom.

However, when analysts with Clean Energy Canada took a deeper dive into the numbers for this latest report, they uncovered the decrease in investments was only 15 per cent when accounting for all clean energy projects, making 2015 the second biggest year for renewable energy investments in Canada.

Meantime, the country’s installed clean energy capacity grew by four per cent last year despite that drop in investment dollars, which the think tank concludes was likely due to policy uncertainty.

Smith noted that an increased price on carbon is needed to level the playing field.

“Right now fossil fuels are getting a free ride for their pollution,” Smith said. “Clean energy is the future. This train is going in one direction and that’s off of fossil fuels and onto clean energy.”

— With files from Emma Gilchrist.

Image: 1010/Flickr

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While the B.C. government may like to claim it’s a “climate leader,” the province has quietly become a climate laggard compared to Canada’s other most populous provinces according to a new analysis released by the Pembina Institute on Tuesday.

The analysis indicates that eight years after B.C.’s Climate Action Plan was implemented, B.C.’s emissions are projected to continue increasing — standing in stark contrast to Ontario, Quebec and even Alberta.

Between 2011 and 2014, B.C.’s emissions increased by the equivalent of adding 380,000 cars to the road — putting B.C. on track to blow past its legislated 2020 emissions target.

If the province’s inaction on climate change continues, B.C.’s emissions will increase 39 per cent above 2014 levels by 2030, according to modelling.

Meantime, carbon pollution in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec is expected to decrease by 26 per cent, 22 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively, over the same period.

How is it possible that B.C. will perform worse than oilsands heavyweight Alberta? The predicted increase in B.C.’s emissions is largely due to projections for B.C.’s nascent liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector — which would account for more than 80 per cent of B.C.’s emissions increase between 2014 and 2030. And that calculation is based on the equivalent of just one LNG terminal getting up and running (roughly the size of the LNG Canada project in Kitimat, which would create 24 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year).

Yup, despite whatever insane statements Premier Christy Clark might make about how the LNG industry is going to fight climate change the opposite is true due to its carbon intensity.

#LNG Could Make BC Canada’s Worst Actor on #Climate https://t.co/aznNQhPhv0 @christyclarkbc #bcpoli #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/fgUX9tdF6v

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 14, 2016

Pembina is applying pressure on the B.C. government as it makes the final decisions on a new Climate Leadership Plan, expected to be released later this month. Last fall, Clark’s Climate Leadership Team (which included Matt Horne of the Pembina Institute) delivered 32 recommendations to the government to get B.C. on track to meet its 2050 climate target.

“In 2008, B.C. built a solid foundation with the Climate Action Plan. But when it came time to construct the proverbial house, Premier Clark balked at taking the next steps,” Horne said in a news release. “It’s time to quit stalling and finish the job.”

The Climate Leadership Team’s recommendations included reducing emissions from buildings by 50 per cent by 2030, establishing a new zero-emission vehicle standard, cutting methane emissions from the natural gas sector by 40 per cent in the next five years and increasing the carbon tax by $10 per tonne per year.

Image: Christy Clark attends an LNG rally in Fort St. John/Flickr

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Gary Krause was mystified by an unusual fish he caught in his trawl net off B.C.’s Pacific north coast in October. It was a Pacific electric ray, named for a pair of organs behind its head that can knock a human adult down with a powerful shock.

Trawl fishery records show 88 of these rays in B.C. waters since 1996. Although an electric ray was first recorded off Vancouver Island’s west coast in 1928, nearly a quarter of the more recent sightings came from 2015 alone.

Fishermen like Krause, who worked an astounding 4,000 days at sea over the past 35 years, are often the first to observe the beginnings of fundamental ecosystem shifts. In 2008, he also identified the first ever brown booby, a tropical seabird, in Canada’s Pacific waters.

Why are creatures like electric rays, which prefer warmer southern California or Baja waters, turning up with greater frequency further north?

Unlike land temperatures, which constantly fluctuate, ocean temperatures are usually stable, with virtually no daily changes, little seasonal differentiation and only minor shifts over decades. Most marine animals prefer a narrow temperature range and move only in response to changes.

Short-term oceanographic events, such as El Niño and the Pacific “blob” — an enormous area of unusually warm water in the North Pacific — demonstrate that while oceans may be relatively stable, they aren’t immune to temperature shifts. These phenomena explain the appearance of unexpected species off B.C.’s coast over the past winter, including a Guadalupe fur seal, green sea turtle and Risso’s dolphins.

Higher water temperatures are also changing the relative concentrations of microscopic, occasionally toxic algae.

While these marine oddities don’t necessarily indicate a full-scale ecosystem shift, they may be signs of what to expect as the planet warms. Shorter-term phenomena correspond with longer-term oceanographic changes around the world. These changes promise to fundamentally alter the cast of characters in marine ecosystems before we’ve had the opportunity to adequately study them.

Climate change is pushing more species of fish closer — and faster — to the cooler North and South poles than similar climate-provoked wildlife movements on land. Fish are moving an average of 277 kilometres every decade and phytoplankton are speeding along at 470 kilometres. Land-based wildlife are inching along at an average of six kilometers a decade.

These shifts are bringing together species that have never had contact before, introducing new predators that could result in regional extinctions. In addition to moving, phytoplankton, which produce half the world's oxygen and support most ocean life, have been declining dramatically over the past century, an average of one per cent a year.

Sea levels are also rising quickly because of climate change. Over the past two decades, global levels have risen more than twice as fast as in the 20th century. As water warms up, it expands.

Thermal expansion in warmer ocean waters has been the greatest contributor to global sea level rise over the past century — although rapid melting of glaciers, polar ice caps, and Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets is also a factor.

Higher ocean temperatures also stress coral reefs, which then release algae, causing the corals to bleach and often die.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef just experienced its worst bleaching ever, with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority reporting that half the coral in the northern parts of the reef were dead, according to a Guardian article.

Along with environmental impacts, warming oceans will create economic insecurities for industries such as fisheries. One study predicted a nearly 50 per cent decline in B.C. First Nations’ catches for culturally and commercially important fish by 2050.

We can help marine life by reducing greenhouse gas emissions to keep global average temperature increases below the 1.5 C goal set out in the December Paris Agreement. Well-monitored fisheries, like those in British Columbia, will become essential data-collection points for understanding shifting marine environments.

Although it’s difficult to reverse temperature and other oceanographic changes that climate change has already set in motion, we may be able to lessen the impact through habitat protection, strong fisheries management and robust scientific monitoring.

The Pacific electric ray is just one of many marine canaries warning us of changing ecosystems. We’d be wise to listen to these signals.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation senior research scientist Scott Wallace.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image: Pennington Marine Science Center/Youtube.

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An average $2.5 trillion (£1.76trn) of the world’s financial assets would be at risk from climate change impacts if global temperatures are left to increase by 2.5°C by 2100, warns a new study by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.

The study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, is the first of its kind to produce a comprehensive estimate of the total value at risk from climate change impacts. So far most of the attention has focused on the risk of climate change to fossil fuel companies.

Under the Paris climate deal, nations have agreed to limit global warming to “well below” 2°C from pre-industrial levels. However, under business as usual emissions are set to increase global average temperatures by approximately 2.5°C.

The study estimates that the value at risk would be “significantly reduced” if countries are successful in limiting warming to 2°C by the end of the century. This would see an average $1.7 trillion (£1.2trn) in financial assets at risk compared to the more dangerous 2.5°C climate change scenario.

Even when factoring in the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to limit warming to 2°C the study finds that global financial assets are set to be worth $315 billion (£221bn) more than under a business as usual scenario.  

Put simply, financial assets are worth more in a world that pays to tackle climate change effectively.

“Our results may surprise investors, but they will not surprise many economists working on climate change,” said lead author, Professor Simon Dietz, “because economic models have over the past few years been generating increasingly pessimistic estimates of the impacts of global warming on future economic growth.”

However, due to the uncertainties in estimating the ‘climate value at risk’ the report finds there is a 1 percent chance that warming of 2.5°C could threaten almost 17 percent of all global financial assets worth $24 trillion ($16.8trn).

Limiting warming to 2°C would see a 1 percent chance that $13.2 trillion (£9.28trn) of the world’s financial assets are put at risk from climate impacts.

“It is important to remember there are huge uncertainties and difficulties in performing economic modelling of climate change,” Dietz noted, “so this [study] should be seen as the first word on the topic, not the last.”

As the study argues, it is important to understand the impact of climate change on asset values because “the possibility that climate change will reduce the long-term returns on investments makes it a matter of fiduciary duty towards fund beneficiaries.”

This is why, for example, many have been advocating for institutional investors such as pension funds to disclose their climate risk and divest from fossil fuel companies.

However, “levels of awareness about climate change remain low in the financial sector as a whole” the report states.

It argues that “for their part, financial regulators need to ensure that financial institutions such as banks are resilient to shocks, hence their growing interest in the possibility of a climate-generated shock.”

As Dietz said: “Our research illustrates the risks of climate change to investment returns in the long run and shows why it should be an important issue for all long-term investors, such as pension funds, as well as financial regulators concerned about the potential for asset-price corrections due to an awareness of climate risks.”

Photo: WIkimedia Commons

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