Vancouver under a thick plume of smoke from wildfires, Oct. 20, 2022. DARRYL DYCK/AP
LETTER FROM MONTREAL
Known for its grandiose landscapes, from the majestic Rocky Mountains of British Columbia to the tranquility of 500,000 lakes in the forests of Quebec, Canada is often associated with what nature has to offer of unchanging and everlasting beauty. “Instagram-worthy” images that draw tourists from around the world, but weigh in on a darker reality: its northern location puts the country at the forefront of climate change. Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world and even up to three times faster for the arctic territory to the north.
In just a few seasons, extreme weather events have shown the country’s vulnerability. Coastal flooding of the Atlantic provinces, caused by the passage of the post-tropical storm Fiona, on September 24, heat dome with records of more than 47 ° C in Vancouver, in the summer of 2021, followed by devastating fires and then, a few months later, massive floods in southern British Columbia. With each “disaster”, both the federal government and the state authorities have divided up emergency financial aid.
However, the multiplication of these aids promises to become a barrel of the Danaids in the years to come. A few weeks before COP27, currently in Sharm El-Sheikh (Egypt), where Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not want to go, the Climate Institute of Canada, an independent body, produced a report assessing that climate change was what is costing the country’s economy and its people’s wallets, and what it could cost them tomorrow if policies of “proactive adjustment” were not implemented.
An extremely high financial outlay
The study, titled “Damage Control,” details the damage account caused by these climate changes, based on several hypotheses for reducing (or not reducing) greenhouse gas emissions at a global scale in the coming years. Whatever scenario is chosen, “Canada never emerges victorious,” affirms Dave Sawyer, the institute’s chief economist.
Climate damage is already amputating national wealth, say the study’s authors. As evidence, among other things, the historic fire that devastated the oil town of Fort McMurray, Alberta, in 2016 cost $4 billion in direct damage, to which had to be added an additional $7 billion to absorb the Damage to the environment and natural resources, the loss of production from the city’s oil and gas industry, or even lost tax revenue. By 2025, climate damage is expected to cost Canada $25 billion, or half the fruit of expected GDP growth; By the end of the century, $865 billion could be a drain on public finances annually.
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