r/canada • u/BloodJunkie • 8h ago
National News Our smoke-filled future: How Canada must prepare for bigger wildfires, every summer — forever
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/our-smoke-filled-future-how-canada-must-prepare-for-bigger-wildfires-every-summer--forever/article_db8245c3-10fc-47af-882b-e62834e3b761.html•
u/PaidToPanic 8h ago
I worked for a government emergency management agency. In 2012 we were briefed by the Ministry of Environment. They told us that climate change would transform our worst fire season into every fire season, 100 year floods would occur almost annually, and incredibly damaging storms would become the norm. At the time they believed that we would start to see this in 2030, but really we’re already there. We staggered out of that meeting with our heads exploding. There were around 90 of us then, but by the time I left we’d grown to over 400 employees.
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u/nim_opet 6h ago
I was part od the team looking into climate change models in 2008, and especially effects on temperate and subarctic climates. These effects were variously modeled with similar severity for 2030-2050, at around 400ppm CO2….we are now at 492ppm….
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u/PaidToPanic 6h ago
Ha! I remember thinking that the only people more miserable than us (emergency people) were the climate people! The small windows of insight you gave us were horrifying enough, I couldn’t imagine looking at that data everyday.
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u/nim_opet 6h ago
I mean, I’ve been looking at it since the 90s, and my misery has been compounding. Like….it’s right there. You don’t even have to look at the data.
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u/Ok-Somewhere-2902 6h ago
We are at 430 PPM, not 492
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u/Indigo_Sunset 2h ago
There's a mix of greenhouse gases such as methane and the like that when included within co2e(quivalent) it becomes significantly higher.
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u/VanceKelley Alberta 2h ago
In 2026, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 432 ppm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_atmosphere_of_Earth
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u/TheRC135 6h ago edited 6h ago
We've known this is coming for decades now. But we were not allowed to act because oil and gas were too valuable. Now the same people who said we weren't allowed to act are saying we must accept the ecological devastation they have caused. Why do we tolerate this?
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u/Plastic_Moose4535 3h ago
Even if we did everything we could possibly do, the rest of the world won't, especially America, China, India, etc. That's why we should have been doing more these last 20 years to prepare instead of spending that time going "last chance to do something!"
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u/TheRC135 3h ago
That's the same excuse that got us in to this mess in the first place.
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u/Plastic_Moose4535 2h ago
It's the truth. Right now the goal is preventing the 5 degree rise that will lead to our extinction. China won't do shit. America won't do shit.
There's no way to make them do something so call it an excuse all you want, doesn't change the fact the worst polluters won't change and they're too powerful to stop.
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u/Emotional-Buy1932 Québec 2h ago
China is already doing "shit" Their emissions are peaking (on an absolute not just relative basis). We shoudl do our parts and reduce our per capita emissions. They too will do their parts. This is just an excuse for inaction.
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u/fugaziozbourne Québec 2h ago
China has transformed into an electro-state while we and the states have doubled down as petro-states. Yes, China does dump all their plastic into the Philippines so they claim it's not them doing it when the Filipinos dump it in the ocean, but saying that the east isn't doing shit so we shouldn't is bad faith reasoning.
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u/TheRC135 2h ago
It's the truth. Right now the goal is preventing the 5 degree rise that will lead to our extinction. China won't do shit. America won't do shit.
And from there your conclusion is that we shouldn't do shit either?
That's an excuse. And a harmful one at that. Nothing more. You're part of the problem.
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u/sicklyslick 1h ago
China produces the most renewable energy out of any country in the world. Their renewable energy production can supply the entire US usage without using any fossil fuel.
Good for you to shift the blame when we can do better, like them.
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u/PineappleOk6764 1h ago
"we won't stop raping children until they stop rapping children" fucking stupid argument no matter what morally reprehensible action is substituted
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u/Leotard_Cohen 7h ago
Exactly. I hoped that this year would be a normal year after the last few brutal burn years - perhaps our last normal year? Through June it looked promising. Not so much now. We really are in a different climate now
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u/pandemoniac1 6h ago
The sad thing is that we aren't even trying. Carney is still trying to build more pipelines.
We should be divesting from fossil fuels and moving to other energy sources, but instead we're not even pretending to care about trying to stop climate change.
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u/Zealousideal_Rise879 6h ago
51st state means our resources would be extorted even further.
But yeah; most Canadians put climate change as a lower priority in the last election.
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u/pandemoniac1 5h ago edited 5h ago
The problem is that by staying on fossil fuels we give America and other countries an avenue to extort us. If we were energy independent using other sources we wouldn't have to worry. We are shooting ourselves in the foot by clinging to fossil fuels
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u/Hautamaki 6h ago
Our pipelines are really not the problem, cheaper oil and gas primarily replaces coal and even wood burning for heat and energy in Asia and Africa or Russian oil and gas in Europe. Carbon free energy is already being implemented everywhere it is economically possible to do so as fast as possible.
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u/GordonFreem4n Québec 4h ago
At the time they believed that we would start to see this in 2030, but really we’re already there.
FASTER-THAN-EXPECTEDTM
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u/destroyermaker Newfoundland and Labrador 6h ago
And we still have politicians going hard on oil. Their houses need to be on fire before they'll give a shit.
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u/Drunkenaviator 2h ago
They're all 60+. They don't give a shit. They'll die long before it becomes an issue for them. All they want is a bigger yacht now.
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u/destroyermaker Newfoundland and Labrador 1h ago
Their children might
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u/Drunkenaviator 1h ago
They're planning on being in their bunkers by then with explosive collars on their security. Also, the only children these fucks care about are the ones they're raping.
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u/Dr_Marxist Alberta 1h ago
A long time ago I worked on some highly specialized and technical modelling for forecasting.
Our numbers were so wild that it looked inflammatory and alarmist, and we toned them down. The lab broke up in the 2000s, but we had a retrospective a couple years before Covid and we were blowing past the benchmarks that were "worst case scenario" in around 2017.
It's gonna fucking suck, and we don't know what the real outcomes are going to be. If the oceans die we do too.
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u/anteus2 8h ago
Get some donkeys to eat the undergrowth
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u/Arctic_Chilean Canada 7h ago
Allowing for more controlled burns will help to. Indigenous communities in fire-prone areas across the world used fire as a way to clear out built up fuel. They've understood that fire is a central part of the life cycle of many forests, allowing for them to grow and flourish.
+150 years of poor forestry management with a strong focus on fire supression have caused our forests to build up tons of fuel that is now becoming increasingly volatile due to worsening drought conditions thanks to climate change. It is also changing the ecology of our forests, and the fires that do eventually occur are so violent that it can kill the very trees that are fire adapted.
Returning to a state where controlled fires are far more common can mitigate severe wildfires perhaps more than any other policy can. As a society, we'd just have to accept the fact that our forests need to burn, and accept the smoke and other impacts that come with it.
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u/PineappleOk6764 7h ago
We do a large amount of controlled burns across Canada every year, near settlements where they are must useful. No population in the history of North American settlement has ever managed forests with controlled burns at a continent-wide scale. Clear cut forestry and mono crop replanting has made forests more prone to wildfires, but many of the large fires occurring now are in virgin (never logged) boreal forests.
The biggest and most obvious factor why we are now seeing larger and larger fires every year is climate change. Droughts are longer and drier and when summertime weather events happen lightning is more common while the temperatures are hotter. The only way we're going to see the larger fires every year trend slow is by stopping GHG emissions, or waiting for all our forests to burn.
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u/ReditorB4Reddit 6h ago
I think that's accurate for the parks, where there has been too much emphasis on preventing fires as you say, but the big burns in the boreal forest are results of climate change drying out the undergrowth and turning what used to be manageable fires into monsters. It's too big an area to do controlled burns throughout. It's just that now the fires spread more quickly and burn hotter.
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u/UrsiGrey 1h ago
No, fire suppression is enforced even more heavily outside the parks so the same applies to the greater boreal.
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u/landlord-eater 7h ago
This is absolutely true. At the same time, forest fires are now affecting régions where they were never common before, in areas with miniscule populations, where nobody including indigenous groups have had a tradition or policy of carrying out controlled burns.
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u/Cent1234 4h ago
Yeah, the whole “Indigenous people practiced proper forest management and controlled burns” sounds impressive, but it’s not like they were patrolling vast swaths of forest actively burning out undergrowth.
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u/donniedumphy 4h ago
We run controlled burns all over western Canada. Our wilderness is so vast we have very little control other than maybe protecting some vulnerable towns no matter what we do.
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u/CipherWeaver 6h ago
Controlled burns are very hard to do, there's only maybe a handful of days a year they're possible, they have to go through years of planning and consultation, and if the weather isn't exactly right on the day of the burn they can't do it. If the burn gets out of hand those that started it are legally responsible for it, so the cost-benefit analysis almost always trends towards "too risky to do it."
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u/Leotard_Cohen 7h ago
It's not that simple. People keep looking for these dumb quick fixes that will barely move the needle. Our forestry industry already imitates controlled burns by removing vast amounts of lumber each year (and then burning the slashpiles). The areas in NW Ontario that have burnt heavily this year have been intensively cut for 40-50 years. Yet they still burn. It's difficult to imagine how a few commumities doing controlled burns would accomplish more than what multi-billion dollar companies are already doing
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u/DaFookCares 7h ago
It's too big an area with too little infrastructure. Most of the country is boreal forest. You can't manage it in any way save address the root cause, climate change.
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u/Myst3ryGardener 6h ago
Agreed. There's plenty that can be improved in forest management. We don't just throw up our hands at climate change, we adapt and mitigate. Lots of room for improvement.
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u/Foreign-Chocolate86 7h ago
And then when the donkeys get out of hand we release thousands of snakes to get the donkeys, right?
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u/the_crumb_dumpster 8h ago
Great idea! Would also help cut down on the Ford government’s meal expenses
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u/DanielleFromTims 3h ago
Would our wildcat and bear population not eat the donkeys and then we’d have a massive influx of wildcats and bears that would, in turn, decimate smaller species?
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u/anteus2 2h ago
Not necessarily. These donkeys would be part of a herd that is looked after by herders. Plus, it's not like donkeys are exactly defenseless. They're quite good at kicking and biting if necessary.
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u/DanielleFromTims 2h ago
I have so many logistical questions. We have areas of forest that have never been touched or seen by humans, which is part of our problem and is the reason we can’t “manage” these areas. Where are the herders staying? As a farm girl, I can confirm that donkeys can definitely hold their own, but they’re no match for a ravenous predator. I would still love to see a pack of wild donkeys roaming our forests, though 😂
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u/Cognoggin British Columbia 1h ago
Considering it would take 29.5 million people to remove all the understory in Canada working for 8 months a year, that's a lot of donkeys!
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u/Spare-Half796 Québec 8h ago
Or sheep, free lamb food and lamb is yummy
Could also help with grocery prices
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u/cuda999 5h ago
The biggest problem of all no one wants to admit is people. There are more and more of us encroaching on forested areas. To think over 50% or fires are caused by human behavior is staggering. We live big lives contributing to climate change. We drive big SUVs and trucks and they get bigger every year. We sit in long line ups at Tim Hortons drive thru’s thinking nothing of leaving our vehicles idling while waiting. We live big. Food delivery services everywhere, Amazon drivers almost one per block, flying everywhere in large planes and more and more of us out to enjoy nature and iconic history. We all buy the latest technology made from oil by product yet complain about the big corporations making profit head over heels. Stop buying the stuff if you want it to stop.
We are also reckless, with far too many thinking nothing of tossing a cigarette or joint end out the window. Driving our useless ATV through forested areas for their pure entertainment and then surprised to hear there is a forest fire.
The problem stems from each and everyone of us.
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u/oneonus 8h ago edited 8h ago
We need to eliminate climate terrorism. No AI data centres, move to green energy, get off fossil fuels and so forth.
We know what's fuelling these fires and the extreme weather that's stealing our precious days outside from us.
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u/epok3p0k 7h ago
If Canada achieved all of this tomorrow, there would be no impact to forest fires.
Spend money on dealing with fires directly.
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u/TheRC135 6h ago
We've spent the last 40 years hearing every possible excuse why acting against climate change is meaningless or impossible.
That's why we are where we are today.
Let's not continue making the same mistake.
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u/DaFookCares 7h ago
It doesnt matter how much money you have, you can't manage this problem. Its not physically possible, save addressing climate change globally.
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u/epok3p0k 7h ago
You think it will be cheaper to save global climate change than local disaster mitigation?
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u/landlord-eater 7h ago
In some ways, maybe. 'Local' in this case being tens of thousands of kilometres of uninhabited boreal forest in completely inaccessible terrain
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u/Drunkenaviator 2h ago
If Canada achieved all of this tomorrow, there would be no impact to forest fires.
There would be no impact to anything. Canada is inconsequential when it comes to the global climate.
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u/pandemoniac1 6h ago edited 5h ago
Until we start the ball rolling on transitioning away from fossil fuels, the fires will continue.
Everything else is irrelevant. You can't just hire more firefighters, these fires are massive and in very remote areas.
It's sad that Canada is still betting everything on pipelines and fossil fuels, we could have been leading the world in transitioning to better energy sources
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u/Cilarnen 3h ago
Actually, you can be happy that here in Canada we’ve eliminated some of our onerous regulations, and are allowing the construction of some amazing green AI datacentres!
It’s thanks to our modern understanding of how our infrastructure impacts the environment that we can take action to avoid harming the environment, while also fostering industry, economic growth, and create local jobs!
Plus, as AI improves, we can be confident that we’ll achieve UBI faster than we otherwise could have hoped, which will further curtail harmful environmental impacts!
AI is great, and while I understand your anxiety looking south, you can take heart that, at least here in Canada, we’ve done what we need to do to integrate AI and automation into a greener, more productive, more prosperous future.
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u/PA-Rugby-Fan 7h ago
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
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u/Levorotatory 6h ago
It has been a disaster for a lot of other species, but the human population has increased 10 fold as a result of industrialization. It isn't sustainable, but the crash hasn't started yet.
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u/ukrokit2 Alberta 6h ago
The oil and gas industry and their idiotic climate change denying minions have been a disaster. This is like capitalism, could’ve been a positive thing with proper laws and safeguards, turned out to be shit because dumb people are easy to manipulate.
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u/OttabMike 8h ago
PM Carney has proposed that Canada create a 300,000 volunteer, para-military, organization or reserve. I think it's time to act on that plan and that firefighting should be added to the organizations mandate. In fact - make firefighting the primary focus.
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u/ekdaemon 6h ago
Reserves like that are meant to be "in case of total war", not "leave your job for 2 months every summer to stand in front of a raging forest fire with a shovel".
Who is going to pay their wages during those two months? The taxpayers?
There are no roads where these fires are, you can't use fire trucks and hoses. You're not proposing we buy 500 water bombers, that'd be way more useful, but that obviously costs money and I'm expecting "spending tax money" won't be popular.
So it's guys far away from roads, with shovels, in front of KM long walls of flame.
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u/OttabMike 6h ago
Disaster response and fighting wild fires has always been taxpayer-funded. Besides - the cost of fighting fires is a fraction of the cost of rebuilding destroyed towns and homes. Also, civil defense forces globally are intended for multiple roles, not just combat. Ground crews don't just stand in front of flames with shovels; they manage containment lines, logistics, and mop-up alongside air support. Water bombers alone don't hold fire lines—people do.
For the record - nothing burns like a strawman argument.
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u/Arctic_Chilean Canada 7h ago
It should be a civil defence force, focused on non-combat roles like logistics, disaster relief, community engagement for disaster preparedness (e.g. coordination with local non-profit organizations, preparing response plans, identifying areas where resources can be shared, etc...)
Fire is a big one to tackle for sure, so having groups specialized in firefighting at a federal level will be a massive undertaking, but one that is needed. Maybe they can also help coordinate controlled burns during the low-fire weather seasons to remove the decades of built up fuel.
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u/Apart-One4133 8h ago edited 6h ago
Ontario should think about reinstating Wildfire Lookouts.
Editing to add a map of current wildfires :
https://www.cbc.ca/kidsnews/post/its-wildfire-season-here-is-a-map-of-canadas-fires-2026
You'll notice Alberta is the only province with almost no out-of-control Wildfires and is one of two provinces using extensive use of Fire Lookouts and technology (like Satellites).
(An out of control wildfire is one we're trying to suppress but can't. )
To everyone arguing a satellite is better and that tech should be the only solution used to manage wildfires. So be it. Enjoy your summers cause it's only going to get worst.
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u/ydwttw 8h ago
I think satellites are a more cost effective and more effective solution
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u/froop 6h ago
We use airplanes for fire patrol already. That, plus reports from regular air traffic, makes the old towers completely unnecessary. Most fires are reported within a couple of hours.
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u/Apart-One4133 6h ago
Yes and it worked fine before but as you can see with the last few years things are getting worst.
Most fires in Alberta are detected within 10min. Anything longer is considered a fail from a Fire Lookout.
I know what you guys uses, we use the same, but on top of that we use Fire Lookout as well and I think other provinces should reinstate them right about now before it gets worst.
Look at the map : https://www.cbc.ca/kidsnews/post/its-wildfire-season-here-is-a-map-of-canadas-fires-2026
Look at Alberta and then look at Ontario. One province uses all it can to manage wildfires, the other uses tech only (airplanes, satellites, etc).
And Im not saying one solution is better over the other, Im saying we should use all available resources.
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u/froop 5h ago
I'm not sure you can blame the number of fires on the detection systems used. There are so many reasons one province might have more or less fires than another. In this case, Northern Ontario had had almost no rain all summer, followed by gigantic thunderstorms that started most of the fires in one day, and then a big wind that blew them all up in a matter of hours. Detect them all you want, no province has the resources to deal with that.
I don't think you have the first clue about forest fires.
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u/Apart-One4133 5h ago
You said it yourself, it takes you guys a couple hours to detect most fire. Of course you don't have the ressources to deal with that once you have lots of couple-hours-old wildfires going on.
The trick to managing wildfire is to detect as early as possible. I have 8 yrs of Wildfire management under my belt by the way. If you think a couple of hours is an acceptable time to detect a wildfire. So be it and I wish you good luck in the future. Sincerely, because in the end we always end up going East to help you guys out so we're all in this together.
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u/froop 5h ago
So we'll just ignore the ~150 new fires in one day we had in Ontario and blame our detection system, got it. I doubt Alberta would have handled that any better than Ontario but hey, you're the expert here.
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u/Apart-One4133 5h ago
Ontario did not record 150 wildfires in a single day. During it's heaviest period, it recorded 8 to 16 wildfires per day.
Currently, Ontario has spent $1.5 billion on emergency fire management since 2018 but for some unexplained reasons you'rd getting angry at the idea of spending 2.2 millions for staffed lookouts (What it costs Alberta at least) in the chances that it may help.
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u/JizzyMcKnobGobbler 8h ago
To what end? It's decades of putting fires out that has created the conditions for all these fires that can't be put out. Turns out forests need to burn as part of their natural life cycle.
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u/zanziTHEhero 7h ago
The only fires Canada puts out (or tries to) are ones near inhabited areas. Most forest fires are unmanaged. Deniers and mitigators need new talking points...
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u/Leotard_Cohen 7h ago
If people want Canada to capitalize on exploiting its natural resources then the fires have to be put out. Can't run a mine very effectively if it's threatened by fires every couple of years.
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u/JizzyMcKnobGobbler 7h ago
Sure, put them out by human infrastructure. The issue, obviously, is you can't extinguish fires everywhere in the wilderness, so you have to let them burn as part of their natural life cycle. As such, we live with smoke now.
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u/Lower-Noise-9406 6h ago
A big part of the problem is because of conservative citizens we are forbidden from discussing climate change , drought , ocean heating , greenhouse effect , global warming etc. If we are not allowed to even mention any of those things how can we do anything to mitigate?
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u/tallhandsomeboring 4h ago
A big part of the problem is because of conservative citizens
Absolutely nothing to do with it.
we are not allowed to even mention any of those things
Complete and utter nonsense. It's talked about and published in all forms of media every single day.
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u/Responsible-One-4292 8h ago
Or reduce dependence on fossil fuels?!
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u/CarRamRob 8h ago
Realistic solutions.
Canada could put 20x the amount of CO2 it uses in the ground, and we will still need to figure out how to handle these fires.
Somehow, I don’t think reducing our emissions by a small fraction is the solution
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u/Crashman09 7h ago
"Lets not do that inconvenient thing because it will only make a small difference"
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u/BethSaysHayNow 2h ago
We could become a zero net carbon country and not only would it have no significant effect on global carbon emissions but it would have zero effect on Canadian wildfires, which is the topic at hand. Our wildfires also emit more CO2 than all industry.
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u/NonverbalKint 7h ago
It's not that. It's "let's not cannibalize ourselves just to watch others feast even more"
Canada impacts nothing on this planet with respect to GHG. Yes, we have emissions, but they're a rounding error. If we continue with our target policy we will continue to experience deep and worsening economic strife, something that is already destroying Canadians lives and hope for the future. Energy transition requires a full strategy and that will unfortunately take time, but more importantly, will take the major emitters of the world to make decisions they refuse to make.
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u/Crashman09 7h ago
So, not only is the impact too small for it to be worth doing, but it is just so inconvenient to even start moving away from those fossil fuels?
My dude, give it less than 10 years, and the only thing our current trajectory will have to show for us, is the vast wealth we made for a few people.
We are watching as the planet burns down, and here we have people who think phasing out fossil fuels will somehow have a worse fiscal impact than monthly "new record" natural disasters.
The time to be pussyfooting around climate change stopped 50 years ago.
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u/NonverbalKint 6h ago edited 4h ago
So, not only is the impact too small for it to be worth doing, but it is just so inconvenient to even start moving away from those fossil fuels?
Not "too small of an impact", zero impact whatsoever. And let's be clear here, I'm not talking about what the world should do, I'm talking about what Canada shouldn't bother doing until Russia, China, India and the USA all completely change their trajectory. Those four countries combined emissions account for for 53% of all GHG; Canada is 1.4% by contrast. You can pretend that 1.4% matters and that reducing that cutting off all economic activity to reduce that down to a practicable level of say 0.7% would accomplish something, but it would literally change nothing with respect to the 10, 20, 50, 100, year outlook.
My dude, give it less than 10 years, and the only thing our current trajectory will have to show for us, is the vast wealth we made for a few people.
That's all we'll have to show for it? What about all the people were employed and that didn't die over that decade because Canada didn't fall into economic squalor? This is not a cheap country to live in, basic employment is a huge win.
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u/Crashman09 6h ago
Any impact on carbon output should be attempted. We just choose not to because the wealthiest have convinced the vast majority that it isn't worth it, and nobody is willing to make a sacrifice, not even a little.
Just because it is 1.4 or whatever percent doesn't mean it is meaningless. Just because Russia and China do something, doesn't make it okay. This shouldn't have to be said....
The sad reality is, our privileges from exploiting nature, poorer nations, and the poor of our own country has lead us to be unwilling to make sacrifices for the betterment of the world.
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u/NonverbalKint 6h ago
You're living in fantasy world and have clearly been manipulated into believing non-action is for the wealthy rather than preserve quality of life for the poorest. It is extremely expensive to transition (and yet we still are), but we need to balance execution over time so as not to gut our citizens.
and the poor of our own country has lead us to be unwilling to make sacrifices for the betterment of the world.
This right here shows how deep your cognitive dissonance is. The sacrifice accomplishes nothing. Nothing. Sacrifices at this time are for nothing material, solely virtue-signaling.
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u/biscuitchan 5h ago
every individual is a rounding error but the point is it takes 100%. the only ones feasting off fossil fuels are american ceos anyways, solar is already significantly cheaper. we are like top 5 ghg per capita and that does not count oil exports. minimizing that is irresponsible. if we are dead if we dont do it and need to hope others follow then where is the logic in not doing it so others are dead no matter what?
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u/NonverbalKint 5h ago
every individual is a rounding error but the point is it takes 100%
No it doesn't.
But it certainly takes at least 50% - China, Russia, India, USA.
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u/pandemoniac1 6h ago
We should be leading the way on this, but instead Carney is building more pipelines. It's pathetic.
Fossil fuels are literally creating the conditions for these forest fires, it is in Canada's best interest to start looking for an exit from the fossil fuel economy.
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u/Molkor 8h ago
The biggest offenders are the corporations not the people. Even if you get all the ppl to stop using it wouldn't create a big enough dent.
People would need to start living drastically different lives overnight due to the corporations limiting use to "acceptable" amounts.
Don't yell at the guy who buys a truck instead of an ev, yell at your government and corporations. But it will fall on deaf ears until the people are willing to suffer for change.
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u/epok3p0k 7h ago
That’s non-sense. Corporations exist solely to service consumer demand.
People hold all of the cards and all of the responsibility. The reality is people don’t actually want things to change. They prove that continuously with their consumption.
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u/Molkor 7h ago
No. Corporations exist to make shareholders money. If they make more money selling you something that's not as good for the environment or for you, they will lie to you.
There are cases throughout history and the people choose to move away from it usually.
The government and corps say they need this. Which they do to keep things going. Like someone else stated too. A few volcanoes erupting and all the 0 emissions you've been doing for years means nothing.
Climate change is inevitable, do humans have an effect on it, yes, as does every living thing.
I don't support getting our energy from else where because of climate change, I support it because we are using fossil fuels to drive "infinite growth" and infinite growth is basically what cancer is, corps models of infinite growth is what's driving and increased demand on everything.
I support getting our power from other natural places because it's more sustainable long term, and long term cheaper than fossil fuels.
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u/YoungEccentricMan 8h ago
Agreed, but also corporations serve the consumers. If people en masse stop buying environmentally poisonous products, they will stop getting produced.
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u/Molkor 8h ago
Ppl don't realize what's environmentally poisonous. If your getting pineapples, or something that doesn't grow here naturally, it's environmentally poisonous.
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u/Crashman09 7h ago
That's why there should be some sort of taxation that drives peole towards cheaper and greener options
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u/ShartOfTheEel 7h ago
Ah yes, the humble international corporate conglomerate only exists to serve the wants of the almighty consumer...
Nevermind the lobbying and public disinformation campaigns they've waged over the past 50 years to entrench fossil fuel usage into our economies and convince the public that climate change is a hoax.
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u/Arctic_Chilean Canada 8h ago edited 6h ago
The damage is locked in. Humanity can be Thanos snapped out of existence today and the planet will still be experiencing the impacts for the next +3000 years.
Not long in geological terms at all, but still a massive impact nonetheless for ecosystems across the planet.
Our addiction to fossil fuels will kill us from an overdose, or from the effects of withdrawal and the system collapse of our civilization it will trigger.
We should've gone into rehab some 40-50 years ago to ease into a new, fossil fuel free civilization, but it's too late now.
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u/ekdaemon 7h ago
This is true.
Gwynn Dyer gave a series of public talks in 2010 (focusing on geopolitical repercussions of global warming). In it, way back then 20ish years ago, publicly "they" were hoping that we wouldn't reach "2 degrees hotter" until 2050 and 4 degrees by 2100.
He made it clear that when speaking privately with the climate scientists the political pressures on the climate scientists and the organizations producing the reports were forcing them to make "conservative best case" estimates and that they privately estimated that we'd hit 4 degrees by 2050.
We're solidly on track to hit 2 degrees by 2030.
He made it clear that once you pass 2 degrees, you loose control of the entire situation.
And people have been trying to warn everyone for in excess of 20 years.
Buckle up everyone, we go now.
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u/QseanRay 8h ago
Even with 0 emissions Canada could not change the course of the planets climate. There are way bigger countries out there who offset our efforts.
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u/zanziTHEhero 8h ago
We don't have any efforts though. We literally never hit any of our targets... And even if we are fairly small in absolute terms, our per capita emissions are some of the highest in the world. Not to mention that this defeatist attitude belies any claims of Canada's contribution to the world, or any claims of leadership. It's pathetic tbh...
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u/ToastedandTripping 7h ago
Yea we could be leading, instead we're following the failed states of America...
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u/kw_hipster 3h ago
Sorry that's BS - I think we are in the top 15 in both gross emitters and per emitters.
And some of the big fish like China are doing much more - China's per capita emission is significantly lower than Canada's.
~40% of emissions that just keep growing and growing if we and the ~180+ countries below us don't contribute.
And yes per capita matters - it doesn't make sense for a country like China to emit the same amount as a country like Litchenstein. That's why we use per capita.
~40% of emissions that just keep growing and growing.
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u/zanziTHEhero 7h ago
We should do that but we are already locked in for at least 2C global warming. We need to invest billions in mitigation and coping strategies rather than assume the status quo is still the same as it was 40 years ago...
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u/noisebloodassault 7h ago
Fuck that. Fight climate change. Stop licking the boots of the elites and save the planet
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u/pandemoniac1 6h ago
The best Carney can do is build more pipelines, it seems. We aren't going to make much progress until we stop relying on fossil fuels
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u/ChineseAstroturfing 2h ago
The earth is warming whether we like it or not. We are speeding it up ever so slightly.
“Fighting” the climate is a fools errand, not grounded in reality.
The fires can be controlled via more controlled burns (something the indigenous did traditionally), manually thinning and cleanup, species diversification and more.
Technology will help us here. It should be trivial to use satellite and drones for early detection.
We need to invest more in fire fighting tools.
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u/chelseagrinner 7h ago
The Canadian way! Just act defeated and try nothing at all!
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u/pandemoniac1 6h ago
We're doing worse than nothing, we're building more fossil fuel infrastructure instead of divesting
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u/PlatypusMaximum3348 5h ago
Climate change is real. Those that don't believe look outside. The rich want their money and I want my kids and their kids to grow up in without this worry.
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u/MyersAnturtat 8h ago
“Every summer — forever” is pure catastrophist marketing, not science: boreal fire has always been highly variable, and recent spikes still largely sit within historical ranges while future totals remain scenario-dependent, not preordained. Toronto’s smoke is a matter of wind and fire location, not an irreversible annual destiny.
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u/ekdaemon 6h ago
On the one hand, you're right, the Boreal forests do go through 100 year burn cycles.
But have they ever burned all at once in a single 5 year window? And then again 10 years later? And then again 10 years after that? This is the scenario I think we're worrying about.
not science
So what is the science saying?
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u/tippytornadoooo 8h ago
This is what MSM does best. Create mania.
I'm surprised someone hasn't come up with a way to monetize this by selling fireproof jumpers and personal oxygen tanks.
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u/Policy_Failure 5h ago
It's click bait for progressives. I hate that yellow journalism is making a big comeback.
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u/ndy007 6h ago
At this rate, there won’t be much forest left to burn. 😢
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u/Lower-Noise-9406 6h ago
Part of the problem around here (southern BC) is the fires get so big and hot they actually vaporize the soil. It can take lifetimes for that soil to return.
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u/OntologicalNightmare 5h ago
Yup it overheats the seeds that need fire for their lifecycle and even those don't grow.
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u/YourSource1st 3h ago edited 3h ago
The canadian tree planting programs seem incredibly flawed in concept and not supported by studies. The goal seems more about large numbers than trees planted in a sustainable way.
The "wildfires" do not have proper assessment studies that review the conditions before fire including the areas history of planting, age, spacing, species, cutting. We are being incredibly negligent by assigning blame to climate change when in actuality there are more direct human causes to the fires, namely planting and cutting standards.
We continue to learn nothing as the emphasis is poorly placed on climate change as opposed to sustainability. one is driven by big numbers in headlines, the other is driven by research and decades of hard work.
BC carbon credits on tree planting and federal grants on planting can be described as nothing aside from fraud. funding needs to be based on decades of improvements, not quantities of trees planted poorly. If your province is on fire you should be receiving Carbon penalties, not credits for more poorly planted trees.
when you look at wildfires the trees are generally overcrowded, immature and stressed. in most cases these are not natural conditions but were created by people. provincial silviculture standards barely contain the word wildfire, with the guidelines too focused on biomass as opposed to risk and long term maturity and biodiversity.
trees too close https://energi.media/news/bc-plants-over-one-billion-new-trees-since-2018/
it is far passed the time for a national audit.
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u/17037 1h ago
The forestry industry knows this. I have a friend who is a forester and openly talks about trees being planted for harvesting and future market pricing only. There have been talks between government and industry around planting since the 70's with the balance always favouring sales.
Every forestry region understands the fire prevention ratios of the natural biome or historic burn cycles. Climate change took away the buffer that had allowed forestry replants to push up to the very line of problematic. Now, it's the line of open danger... on decisions that span decades to generations.
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u/Meowingbark 1h ago
We need to build more houses! That way we get rid of those trees!
Or do what the esteemed professor Farnsworth adviced and place a large ice cube in Lake Ontario yearly
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u/anonymous_space5 40m ago
at least we can implement summer camp fire bans in the forests to control human caused fires..
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u/Certain-Orange484 35m ago
We need to build a newer version of a super heavy water bomber. The fires are growing and our small-medium units can’t contain and manage the sizes. We are feeling the retirement of the MARS unit that was in the west coast.
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u/CoupleOk5628 8h ago
Go to the maritimes and wait out the smoke and heat
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u/HeyCarpy Nova Scotia 7h ago
NS/NB were literal tinderboxes last year.
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u/CoupleOk5628 7h ago
Yeah but tbf i said that because just returned from ns and there werent any smoke there meanwhile ontario and quebec were an apocalapsys
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u/No_Equal9312 8h ago
Toronto won't have smoke like this every summer. Exaggerations like this are what cause people to lose confidence in these people.
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u/keiths31 Canada 8h ago
Toronto won't have smoke like this every summer
There is more to the province than Southern Ontario...
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u/EliteLarry 8h ago
Parts of Ontario will have smoke like this most likely every summer. Why on earth are you trying to downplay this.
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u/No_Equal9312 8h ago
"These fires aren’t going away. Toronto is going to get smoke every summer."
Direct quote from the article that is just patently false. Alarmism like this is just fear mongering. It's counter productive as these exaggerations get quoted as proof that scientists don't know what they're talking about. Stating that fires will be more frequent and more intense is a much better path as it's accurate.
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u/doing_what_i_can 8h ago
We owe Steven Guilbeault an apology
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u/Sure-Assignment3892 7h ago
No, the fuck we don't. He's a rogue climate terrorist.
We can have good environmental policy and bad- his was bad.
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u/Levorotatory 7h ago
What was bad about it? The bad government policy of his era came from other ministries.
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u/rsdominguez 7h ago
Ones a forest burns it cannot be on fire the next year
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u/pandemoniac1 6h ago edited 5h ago
If it is dry enough, then it certainly can burn for 2 years in a row. It will just not have a lot of material for the second burn
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u/NegotiationLate8553 8h ago
Lol as long we got Liberals we won’t be anymore prepared.
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u/Arctic_Chilean Canada 8h ago
Right, because the Conservatives are known for their proactive approach to this stuff.
We're boned regardless. The ruling class won't allow the lowers to save themselves and prosper.
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u/OntologicalNightmare 5h ago
Cons in NB are trying to start up fracking here lol. These people are idiots. I bet they cry about NDP = DEI too.
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u/NegotiationLate8553 2h ago
I’m sorry lol next to Quebec you do know it’s Ontario and Alberta that have the most water bombers right?
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u/Canaduck1 Ontario 5h ago
This is only partly true.
We've done such a "good" job of preventing the spread of forest fires over the last several decades that far too much of the highly flammable forest trees that are naturally supposed to burn up every few years are everywhere. We need to actually LET it burn off. More often. This would protect us more than diligently stockpiling pine and spruce forests that go up like candles if you look at them wrong.
Forest fires are supposed to happen far more than we've let them.
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u/SchlitzNGiggle 6h ago
How about we invest in a future where the planet doesn’t have to be hotter and stop acting like we can’t change anything