Wildfires are hurting many industries and could strain households across Canada, one of many countries reckoning with the impact of extreme weather
Thanks to Mike C.
By Lydia DePillis in the NYT
Canada’s wildfires have burned 20 million acres, blanketed Canadian and U.S. cities with smoke and raised health concerns on both sides of the border, with no end in sight. The toll on the Canadian economy is only beginning to sink in.
The fires have upended oil and gas operations, reduced available timber harvests, dampened the tourism industry and imposed uncounted costs on the national health system.
Those losses are emblematic of the pressure being felt more widely as countries around the world experience disaster after disaster caused by extreme weather, and they will only increase as the climate warms.
What long seemed a faraway concern has snapped into sharp relief in recent years, as billowing smoke has suffused vast areas of North America, floods have washed away neighborhoods and heat waves have strained power grids. That incurs billions of dollars in costs, and has longer-reverberating consequences, such as insurers withdrawing from markets prone to hurricanes and fires.
In some early studies of the economic impact of rising temperatures, Canada appeared to be better positioned than countries closer to the Equator; warming could allow for longer farming seasons and make more places attractive to live in as winters grow less harsh. But it is becoming clear that increasing volatility — ice storms followed by fires followed by intense rains and now hurricanes on the Atlantic coast, uncommon so far north — wipes out any potential gains.
“It’s come on faster than we thought, even informed people,” said Dave Sawyer, principal economist at the Canadian Climate Institute. “You couldn’t model this out if you tried. We’ve always been concerned about this escalation of damages, but seeing it happen is so stark.”
As this article points out the profound changes that are impacting the northern hemisphere so dramatically make a mockery of the argument by deniers that responding to climate change with mitigation and adaptation will cause ruinous economic damage. We are already seeing huge economic stresses occurring because we have not responded to the obvious, pervasive damage that climate change is bringing. Fossil fuels must be done away with despite the enormous efforts by the oil companies to influence our lawmakers and population with blatant falsehoods and lobbying. We owe our children and grandchildren, and future generations, a response that will in some way be meaningful and preserve some of the beauty of our home, the earth.