How Canada fits into the IPCC report’s ‘atlas of human suffering’
By John WoodsideMarch 1st 2022
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) is warning of “unavoidable multiple climate hazards” over the
next two decades in a clear recognition society is entering an era of
irreversible breakdown unless there’s immediate large-scale action to avert
catastrophe.
The report published
Monday is focused on adapting to climate change and outlines in unprecedented
detail what regions are exposed to what risks in order to illustrate just how
vulnerable communities are to climate impacts. At a high level, the report
finds increased floods, heat waves and droughts around the world already expose
millions of people to food and water insecurity and are driving extinction
across a number of animal and plant species. With every fraction of a degree
hotter the planet gets, those problems get worse.
“To avoid mounting loss of life,
biodiversity and infrastructure, ambitious, accelerated action is required to
adapt to climate change, at the same time as making rapid, deep cuts in
greenhouse gas emissions,” the IPCC said in a statement.
United Nations secretary general
António Guterres called the report “an atlas of human suffering” and called on
increased action from wealthy countries and financial institutions to phase out
fossil fuels.
He said with all G20 countries
committing to stop funding coal projects abroad, they must now dismantle their
coal plants at home. He also said oil and gas giants and their underwriters are
“on notice” and “must be held to account.”
In Canada, this adds mounting pressure
to banks, pension plans, insurance companies and Crown corporations like Export
Development Canada to align their investments with a climate-safe future given
Canada is one of the world’s largest financiers of fossil fuels. Since the
Paris Agreement was signed, Canadian banks have loaned or invested approximately $700 billion to fossil fuel
companies, while Canada invested $13.6 billion annually, on
average, from 2018 to 2020 in fossil fuel companies.
Guterres also called on wealthy
countries to scale up international climate financing, with half earmarked for
adaptation projects.
“The Glasgow commitment on adaptation
funding is clearly not enough to meet the challenges faced by nations on the
front lines of the climate crisis,” he said.
Climate Action Network Canada’s
international climate diplomacy manager Eddy Pérez said the IPCC report shows
tackling the climate crisis is a question of justice. He noted the report shows
Indigenous peoples, women, children and lower-income groups around the world
will face increased marginalization as climate breakdown happens.
“A justice lens approach requires
committing to responding to the needs of people most affected and on the front
lines of the climate crisis,” he said. “It speaks a lot to the fact that
(climate solutions) need to be interconnected with not only environmental
issues but also social systems and economic systems.
A new report from the
@IPCC_CH shows vulnerabilities to climate breakdown around the world. In
Canada, misinformation from politicians and the fossil fuel industry is called
out as the major barrier to action. #cdnpoli
“The financial sector needs to adapt,
infrastructure needs to adapt, transportation needs to adapt, health systems
need to adapt, and that kind of cross-cutting evaluation of adaptation policy
is critical,” he said.
What Canada is bracing for
For Canada, the IPCC’s latest report
has several key takeaways relating to extreme weather, economic stability,
health implications and food security.
As the planet warms, Canada will face
increased wildfire risks. Fire seasons will get longer, increased heat waves
will bake forests making fires more likely, and lightning strikes will become
more frequent. Areas that previously would have a fire once every 400 years
will see fires once every 50 by the end of the century if emissions remain
high. Canada says the cost of fighting wildfires has surpassed $1 billion annually
in six of the past 10 years and that will only increase as the planet warms.
Similarly, sea-level rise, flooding,
landslides, permafrost thawing and extreme weather will continue to destroy
infrastructure across the country. In Atlantic Canada, sea-level rise is
expected to be higher than the global average, putting communities on the coast
at increased risk from flooding and coastline erosion. In the North, ice roads,
critical for remote communities, will become more dangerous as the planet
warms, and permafrost thawing will disrupt infrastructure for northern communities.
The report also says annual rainfall will leap 20 per cent if emissions
continue to increase, making infrastructure failure, like British Columbia experienced from
the atmospheric river in November, more likely.
Food insecurity in Canada will be made
worse by a warming climate, the report also predicts. For Indigenous peoples
especially, climate change will continue to have harmful effects on traditional
foods, leading to negative physical and mental health outcomes as well as
exacerbating food insecurity by requiring more foods to be imported at a higher
cost. Aquaculture will be particularly impacted by climate change because of
increased ocean acidity and reduced habitats for fish. If emissions stay high,
fish production in Canada is expected to drop 66 per cent from 2030 to 2050,
while shellfish would see a 51 per cent drop over that same period.
Agriculture is a bit more complicated.
Some crops like maize could see a drop in production, while low levels of
warming may in fact lead to increased short-term yields in other crops, the
report says. However, increased warming would, in time, wipe out higher yields,
and increased warming is expected to make pests and diseases worse.
Canada’s economy will also be affected
by global climate change. There are domestic impacts ranging from things like
damaged infrastructure or lower agricultural yields, but Canada cannot
completely untangle itself from international supply chains, making the country
vulnerable to shocks around the world. The IPCC authors have “high confidence”
there will be large economic damages across North America if global emissions
aren’t brought down rapidly.
Bending the emissions curve
One finding of the report is that a
major barrier to climate action in North America is the undermining of climate
science from politicians and industry.
“Rhetoric and misinformation on climate
change and the deliberate undermining of science have contributed to
misperceptions of the scientific consensus, uncertainty, disregarded risk and
urgency, and dissent,” the report finds. “Additionally, strong party
affiliation and partisan opinion polarization contribute to delayed mitigation
and adaptation action, most notably in the U.S. but with similar patterns in
Canada.”
“Vested economic and political
interests have organized and financed misinformation and ‘contrarian’ climate
change communication,” the report adds.
In Canada, this is clearly reflected in
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney using taxpayer money to attack environmentalists and spread propaganda via the Canadian Energy
Centre. But it is more subtly reflected in the federal Liberal government
that claims fossil fuel investments will
pay for a clean energy transition despite warnings from
the International Energy Agency, IPCC, and UN Production Gap report that immediate
emission reductions are required to avert catastrophe, and that there is no
space for any new fossil fuel project if the world is to hold onto the Paris
Agreement goal of holding warming to 1.5 C.
Stand.earth international programs
director Tzeporah Berman called the IPCC’s finding that misinformation and polarization
is a barrier to North American climate action the “most political” statement
she’s ever seen from the international body that famously shies away from
politics. She noted the IPCC statement was signed off on by world governments,
including Canada, which is notable given the intense lobbying efforts from the
oil and gas industry directed at all levels of government.
For instance, a 2019 study from
the Corporate Mapping Project found that between 2011 and 2018, the fossil fuel
industry recorded contacting government officials more than 11,000 times,
representing more than six communications per working day.
Berman said the IPCC report makes clear
the time for “vague” climate solutions — like carbon offsets or technological
fixes to make fossil fuels “clean” — is over. Instead, she says bold action is
needed now to avert climate breakdown. She said Canada must stop expanding the
production of fossil fuels, protect intact old-growth forests and support
economies around the world with their transitions.
“We have known this for decades, but
what this report makes extremely clear is that what we are facing every day
already in Canada with the fires, with the floods, with the heat waves, comes
from three products: oil, gas and coal,” she said.
“We need to break free from the fossil
fuel industry, which is holding our policy and our politics hostage to the
benefit of a very small number of companies.”
One way to break this influence is by
cutting off the financing. Berman referenced a study from the International
Monetary Fund released last year that found the global fossil fuel industry
receives US$11 million worth of subsidies
every minute. In practice, that meant the IMF found coal, oil and
gas companies were subsidized to the tune of nearly $6 trillion in 2020.
A study from Oil Change International and
Friends of the Earth U.S. found from 2018 to 2020, G20 countries provided at
least US$63 billion per year to the fossil fuel industry. Over that same
period, Canada gave at least $11 billion (about C$13.6 billion) to the oil and
gas sector, mostly through Export Development Canada, representing nearly 20
per cent of the G20 total.
Canada has promised to phase out
“inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” by the end of 2023. Former climate minister Jonathan Wilkinson previously told Canada’s
National Observer that when Canada refers to “inefficient” subsidies,
it’s referring to subsidies that incentivize further fossil fuel exploration.
Still, Berman said in Canada there are
several ongoing examples of fossil fuel projects getting public money,
including the Trans Mountain expansion, Coastal GasLink pipeline and the LNG
Canada site, as well as a couple of new fossil fuel developments that show
Canada is still not taking the crisis seriously.
“We're right now in the midst of two
new pushes,” she said. “One to approve an offshore drilling project that holds
a billion barrels of oil, the Bay du Nord, which goes to cabinet next week …
and two, the oil and gas industry is arguing for a massive new credit for carbon capture and storage despite
the fact that the IPCC reports have said very clearly you can't use these
technologies to justify increased expansion.”
Berman called the government’s claim
that these types of fossil fuel projects have a place during the energy
transition “absolutely absurd.”
“It is not a transition if we're
growing the problem,” she said. “And if wealthy countries are not willing to
act now, then we know that we're on a track for millions of people to die in
our lifetimes due to climate change.”
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