*Residents flee 2016 wildfire in FortMcMurray. Photo licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Driven by human-caused climate heating, temperatures are rising globally. In Canada, temperatures are warming twice as fast as the global average and its Arctic is warming nearly four times as quickly. As a result, extreme events such as flooding, violent storms, extreme heat, and wildfires will occur more often, last longer, and intensify.
The impacts of extreme events and climate change in Canada will worsen and increasingly endanger the health of its residents and the homes and communities where they live. And it will severely damage the financial health of corporations, nonprofits, and governments.
Already climate change is visibly affecting our lives. Wildfires and floods are forcing more people to flee their homes, smoke from wildfires is shrouding our cities and worsening our health, and heat waves are making outdoor work increasingly dangerous and risking the health of vulnerable Canadians unable to leave their overheated apartments.
It’s affecting our pocketbooks too. Insurance companies have already sharply increased the cost of home insurance and reduced its availability or even withdrawn coverage in regions of Canada that are at heightened risk from extreme events. It’s also increased the cost of our health care system because of increased visits to the emergency wards of hospitals and treatment of more patients with serious chronic health problems.
Impacts of Pollution
In 2023 Canadian wildfires pumped out unhealthy pollutants and burned more than 13 million hectares of land, costing an estimated $9.9 billion. The particulate matter from these fires resulted in 5,400 deaths occurring immediately or soon after exposure in North America and 82,100 from chronic disease caused by exposure globally, with 8,300 of these deaths in Canada. These impacts will worsen, risks of serious diseases — including several types of cancer, respiratory, and cardiovascular disease — will rise, and deaths could almost double by mid-century in North America.
Hazardous polluted air is also emitted when fossil fuels are used to power vehicles, heat and cool buildings, and power electrical plants. In Canada, it is estimated 15,300 premature deaths occur annually. To put this number in context, Canadians are about eight times more likely to die prematurely from air pollution than from a motor vehicle accident.Globally, air pollution, mostly from the use of fossil fuels, is responsible for the deaths of 6.7 million people yearly, according to the World Health Organization.
Air pollution affects the health of people at all stages of life from fetal and early stages of child development to old age. It is linked to a wide range of acute and chronic diseases. It increases risk of heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, stroke, asthma, diabetes, and impacts cognitive and mental development in children. And an important new study published in the prestigious journal, Science, showed that particulate matter from air pollution elevated the risk of Lewy body disease dementia, the second most common form of dementia, and increased the likelihood that patients with Parkinson’s disease would develop dementia.
Impacts of Extreme Heat
Extreme heat will worsen, and the intensity, duration, and frequency of deadly heat waves will increase with climate change. British Columbia’s 2021 heat wave killed 619 people, and the European heat wave in the summer of 2022, was estimated to result in the premature deaths of 61,672 people. In addition to its toll on our health and its risk of overstretching our health care system, extreme heat heightens the danger of wildfires, and when people are exposed to extreme heat and air pollution at the same time their mortality levels are amplified.
What We Can Do
Governments in Canada have not accounted for the health and economic impacts of climate change and extreme events in their policies, and are failing to protect communities and individuals. In developing these policies governments must keep in mind that marginalized groups are always at the greatest risk whether they live in Toronto or in rural Canada.
Regulations are one important lever governments can use to protect Canadians. For example, governments should prevent building in areas with high flood risk, and building codes should require air conditioning for buildings located in regions prone to extreme heat.
Governments, banks, insurance companies, and civil society need to communicate these risks to its residents and provide recommendations so that Canadians can protect themselves.
Unfortunately, most Canadians are unaware of the heightened dangers of extreme events, and too few have linked these events to climate change. A national survey of Canadians showed that only 6% of those living in designated flood-risk areas were aware of it and only about half of the respondents had taken practical steps such as installing a sump pump or purchasing flood insurance to reduce some of the impacts of flooding. And although Canadians are dismayed when their communities are shrouded in polluted air, it seems few appreciate its serious health impacts.
To be effective these recommendations will need to be targeted and should vary from community to community and even within the community from person to person. For example, in some communities near forests or grasslands, wildfires may pose the most risk. These communities should implement initiatives based on manuals such as FireSmart that are designed to help communities and homeowners mitigate and adapt to wildfire risk. These manuals should be expanded to include guidelines that would reduce the substantial dangers of their harmful pollutants.
In other communities, extreme heat and air pollution pose a higher risk to its residents. Grassroots organizations and all levels of government should communicate these risks and outline steps that can be taken to mitigate or adapt to these risks. Civil society should pressure governments to improve building codes, pass more stringent heat stress regulations, and advocate for air purification and air conditioning systems in public buildings and schools.
Insurance companies should notify homeowners about risks of climate change to their homes and outline ways to reduce risk. Banks need to review mortgage applications, assess the risks of extreme weather and climate change to the home, and outline actions potential homeowners can take to mitigate or adapt to these risks.
Extreme weather and climate change now and in the coming decades will impact everything from the largest institutions to every Canadian child and adult. We must continue to mobilize our communities and pressure corporations and all levels of government to act with more urgency to avert the worst imaginable effects of a warming planet.
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Norman Park is chair of the SCAN! Education Committee and Professor Emeritus in Psychology at York University.