The residents of the Alberta-Saskatchewan region have been under evacuation orders for over a week. In British Columbia’s lower Fraser Valley, the City of Abbotsford is banning commercial, recreational and agricultural irrigation due to flood risk.
There are many ways for climate change to affect our daily lives. From drought to intense storms, each impact can have an impact on our ability to live and work. With a continued global increase in carbon emissions, we may see increasingly increasing effects on our local communities.
Climate change will be a pervasive problem. At a United Nations climate meeting in Poland earlier this month, the world’s 195 participating countries made a decision to phase out fossil fuels in the next 12 years. The decision was made as part of the United Nations’ efforts to try to reach the 2 C global temperature rise, an international benchmark by which climate change impacts would have to be significantly reduced.
We have a responsibility to understand climate change. How this plays out for us today affects not only our everyday lives, but also our grandchildren’s futures.
While these changes are happening around the world, scientists and policymakers in Canada can learn from their southern counterparts. Here’s what we can learn from their experience: