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June 21st 2024
Feature story

Heat: Giving voice to a silent killer

We’re going to talk about heat this week, and how to talk about it. How could we not, given the sweltering temperatures in Eastern Canada and around the world? But let’s pause first for a moment of gratitude. June 26 will be a kind of armistice day — the old growth battlegrounds of the “War in the Woods” in Clayoquot Sound will receive permanent protection.

The Ahousaht and Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations have landed an agreement with the province of B.C. to protect about 760 square kilometres of the world’s most stupendous ancient forest and other unique biomes, creating 10 new conservancies to protect the old growth. In the process, the nations forced a local revamp of B.C.’s heinous “Tree Farm Licence” system — the “TFLs” that reign across the province’s “crown lands,” effectively privatizing the living world into corporate satrapies.

The armistice has been a long time coming. The Tla-o-qui-aht Nation declared Meares Island a tribal park in the early 1980s — long before such inconveniences were taken seriously by provincial governments or Ottawa. If you’ve ever visited Tofino, Meares is the towering emerald island that fills your view from the harbour, a logging scar on Lone Cone mountain gradually healing, the only visible sign of its turbulent past. The province blithely granted logging companies cutting rights to 90 per cent of it.

When the loggers arrived by boat in November 1984, they were met by the country’s first logging blockade. Just shy of one hundred blockaders — First Nations and assorted allies from the nascent Friends of Clayoquot Sound. Moses Martin, then elected chief of the Tla-o-qui-aht, greeted the loggers, inviting them to shore for a meal. “You’re welcome to visit our park. But leave your saws in the boat.”

“This is not a tree farm,” Chief Martin told the bewildered crew. “This is Wah-nah-jus Hilth-hoo-iss. This is our garden, this is a tribal park.”

Carl and Joe Martin, nephews of Chief Moses Martin at a protector cabin built for blockaders. Photo by Leigh Hilbert.

The logging crew declined breakfast. The blockade continued for months. Judges fired off injunctions (court orders against Moses Martin “and anyone else”). Local tempers flared. And then, to the government’s shock and dismay, the courts issued a historic decision in 1985, siding with the Tla-o-qui-aht. You’ll have to forgive Justice Peter Seaton’s language but it bears repeating:

“The Indians have pressed their land claims in various ways for generations. The claims have not been dealt with and found invalid. They have not been dealt with at all,” he wrote. “Meanwhile, the logger continues his steady march, and the Indians see themselves retreating into a smaller and smaller area.”

That injunction technically remains in place to this day. And Meares Island was the first salvo. Blockaders rallied to defend other forests in Clayoquot Sound and across the country: Haida Gwaii, Temagami, Grassy Narrows, the lineage continues to Fairy Creek.

Fast forward to 1993 and blockades had expanded to defend all intact areas of Clayoquot Sound and over 800 people were arrested, including this newsletter scribbler and my late father (if you squint just right at those 1993 photos, you’ll see my old van, typically topped by a fierce Tzeporah Berman brandishing a bullhorn — the woman who would later marry me on a summer solstice, at a remote beach on Vargas Island followed by a feast of Joe Martin-fire-smoked salmon).

You shouldn’t take away an overly-sentimental picture of First Nations and greenies working in harmony. We, non-Indigenous tree-huggers, made dreadful mistakes both in protocol and in practice. In retrospect, it’s amazing some of them were not irreparable. Yet, despite the bungling, the symbiosis seems to have worked. Fast forward to today, and the Ahousaht Hawiih (hereditary chiefs) “celebrate this decision alongside partners and people around the world as a significant win for climate, biodiversity, reconciliation.”

And it's another generation of the Martin family standing up. “British Columbia is now beginning to help us protect the forest from BC/from itself!” Gisele Martin celebrated.

“After GENERATIONS of work from many Nuučaanuł / Nuu-chah-nulth families and individuals, some illicit colonial land designations are being reformed to better respect our Indigenous land visions and Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks declarations.”

“ƛeekoo ƛeekoo to all our grandparents and leadership who worked towards upholding our existence.”

“Hold your governments accountable,” Martin urges. “The work is ongoing.”

Gisele Martin and her father Joe Martin in 2023. Photo from Gisele Martin/Facebook.

Silent Heat

With luck, the heat wave will have abated in Eastern Canada by the time you’re reading this. Much of the world has not been lucky at all.

South of the border, 150 million Americans were hit by temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and we have only touched the summer solstice. Zambia is roasting through its worst drought in 40 years, corn lies charcoal-black on the ground. Intense heat continues to scorch southern Europe, police say it’s the reason people keep disappearing in Greece. The daily high in New Delhi hasn’t dropped below 40 C for more than a month, local officials are warning about health risks from all the bat carcasses littering the ground.

It was 51.8 C earlier this week at the Grand Mosque in Mecca. And the death toll at this year’s hajj has exceeded 1,000 according to AFP’s count. The number will be higher by the time you’re reading this. All of them, people making the pilgrimage of their lives.

It’s become a cliché to call heat waves, “silent killers.” And so it falls to us to give voice to them and interpret what’s going on for the broader public.

These devastating weather events are not natural. “They are unnatural disasters” — that’s the top message advice from Potential Energy’s research with over 72,000 Americans.

Far too many people still conceive of heat waves as a natural change in the U.S. and Canada. Even though 7-in-10 Canadians attribute the increase in disasters to climate change, our understanding of climate change remains murky: only 6-in-10 say the cause is “mostly human,” and that percentage is actually declining.

Even fewer can name the primary cause. Public opinion research by the Canadian outfit, Re.Climate, corroborates the need to call it what it is: “a fossil fuel pollution problem.”

Without making that connection, most people simply don’t grasp that only systemic change, like transitioning off fossil fuels, can stop disasters from getting worse. Instead, Canadians tend to focus on things like recycling when asked in polls or focus groups.

But when heat waves, fires, drought or storms become top-of-mind, the public goes looking for information. And when the right message gets through, people do understand that fossil-fuelled climate change is already hurting the people and places we love, and the results show support for action rises between seven and 12 percentage points.

If you want a deeper dive into the research and how to talk about heat waves and other climate disasters, the organizations are hosting a free webinar for Canadians on Monday. You can register here.

If you do, you’re likely to see something like this, from Potential Energy’s Unnatural Disasters Communications Guide:


Invisible Heat

Heat is not only silent, it’s invisible, which presents its own communication challenges. The research shows that images are very impactful but not many of the ones often shared on social media or used by the mainstream.

Far too often, we see pictures of “fun in the sun” — people at the beach, eating ice cream, dousing in fountains or splash parks.

Just look at the juxtaposition between headline and photo on this — otherwise excellent — podcast from The Big Story:

Or the one chosen by a photo editor to accompany CBC’s story about the “oppressive” heat wave in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada:

Instead, images should show real people (ideally with faces visible), indicate medical urgency and emotionally powerful impacts, as well as conveying impacts at scale, or the causes of climate change, at scale.

Those are key principles from research conducted by Climate Visuals, a project of Climate Outreach. There’s even a curated photo library, much of it free-to-use, especially for non-commercial purposes.

It’s surprisingly difficult to convey the situation accurately in a single image. It takes real photojournalism skills to capture both faces and scale in the midst of a disaster. But there’s no excuse for sunbathers lounging over deadly wet-bulb temperatures. And Re.Climate recommends using collages of two or three photos to cover all the principles of visual communication.

Attributing heat

You’ve probably heard this tentative refrain for many years — some version of we can’t link any specific event to climate change, but…

It’s always been an overly-cautious qualification. The point is to focus on what is certain: “as the ocean and the atmosphere are heating up, it’s supercharging our climate system,” says climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. We’re “loading the dice,” she likes to say.

Anyway, the field of “attribution science” has progressed significantly. Scientists are now able to identify the fingerprint of climate change almost in real time by testing what actually happened during a specific event against climate models of our previous world without hotter temperatures.

Climate change doubled the likelihood of record-breaking fire weather in Canada last year, for example. That was the finding by World Weather Attribution, a consortium of scientists.

And, in general: “Every heatwave in the world is now stronger and more likely to happen because of human-caused climate change,” say Ben Clarke and Friederike Otto, two attribution scientists in their guide for journalists.

You can catch Friederike Otto and some of her colleagues explaining the details of attribution science in this video, filmed just last week by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

That’s enough talking about talking about heat for now. Let’s change gears…

Passing the Mic

You sure are a highly creative and empathetic bunch — in response to last weeks’ newsletter on grief, you sent in some incredibly insightful notes, along with poetry and even some first draft songwriting.

Janet wrote from Calgary adding to the list of recommendations on grief and radical action. “May I add Jess Serrante’s podcast with Joanna Macy called ‘We are the Great Turning’ for it takes us through her process of the Work that Reconnects.” (I’m pretty sure Janet was referring to this podcast, here, accompanied by this delightful shot of Macy and Serrante)

Photo from jessserrante.com

Rebecca from Ottawa sent along some of her own poetry. “I am a psychologist and about a decade or so ago I began noticing that what patients described as depression was amplified somehow by the zeitgeist, i.e. climate grief or melancholia, though I didn’t have a word for it at the time. It felt sane to me. I wrote a couple of poems to express a modicum of this phenomenon.” Here’s one:

The Great Grief

Washes over me

as a roller-wave, though

I try balancing on the curl

It rolls over me—

Each good-bye

a rehearsal

And what is my small grief

in this great ocean?

It rolls over me.

Rebecca also subscribes to the Climate Psychology Alliance North America newsletter. By no coincidence, the Alliance also got a plug this week from Britt Wray, the author of Generation Dread. “Activism isn’t *really* the cure for eco-anxiety and eco-grief,” Wray writes.

“There’s a danger lurking in that sentiment. It’s a shortcut — a too-quick move from pain to action — and it threatens to leave people far less resilient and capable of facing the ecological crisis than they ought to be.”

And Doug emailed from Agassiz, B.C.: “I am sure you are getting a lot of feedback… and many are likely saying what I am about to say: Denial is the first stage of managing grief, and is the one we seemed to be locked into societally/politically at the moment. This is what makes it so much harder for those of us that are in the Depression stage.”

Doug’s therapeutic interventions? Joining SCAN--Seniors for Climate Action Now, and… writing country music!

“I have the tune pretty much worked out, lol,” he writes. “There will have to be a series now, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance to follow…”

Here’s a snippet from an early draft of song #1, Denial:

I lived through a heat dome, and that was really bad!

And the atmospheric river floods made me really sad!

The changes that are happening make me really mad!

Why can’t the world just stay the same like when I was a lad?

They say that burning carbon is the source of all this mess

And if we don’t change, things will get worse, and it’s making me distressed!

I love my truck and ATVs, I cook with gas as well.

Is my burning fossil fuels really going to take us all to hell?

Who’s to blame for the state we’re in, I really want to know.

Our politicians? Or the banks? Or the economy as it grows?

The oil companies only want to keep things as they are

Keep burning gas and hoping we don’t buy an EV car.

The roundup

Protesting private planes, powdering Stonehenge

Just Stop Oil conducted two signature orange protests — they cut through the security fence guarding private jets at London Stansted Airport, and spray-painted the planes orange.

The activists targetted the airfield where Taylor Swift's jet had just landed. Swift’s jet is estimated to be the “worst private jet CO2 offender” among celebrities, by independent analysts.

The private jet protest came one day after Just Stop Oil powdered Stonehenge with orange cornflour, a “megalithic action” ahead of the summer solstice. Rajan Naidu, aged 73, travelled from Birmingham:

“Either we end the fossil fuel era, or the fossil fuel era will end us. Just as fifty years ago, when the world used international treaties to defuse the threats posed by nuclear weapons, today the world needs a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to phase out fossil fuels and to support dependent economies, workers and communities to move away from oil, gas and coal.”

https://x.com/MrMatthewTodd/status/1803798456001036662

Their land, their choice

The federal Indigenous loan guarantee program, announced by the federal Liberals in Budget 2024, is a “huge victory” for the First Nations Major Projects Coalition, reports Matteo Cimellaro. “It opens up $5 billion in loan backstops for First Nation energy and natural resource projects, from pipelines and mines to solar parks and wind farms.”

The program is “sector agnostic,” which has some successful business leaders scratching their heads. “How do they reconcile that with their net-zero plans, especially if there’s a finite pool guaranteed?” Matt Jamieson asks about Ottawa’s loan guarantee program. Jamieson is the CEO of the Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation, 100 kilometres southwest of Toronto.

Six Nations is rapidly becoming a renewable-energy leader in Canada. Its Oneida Energy Storage Project — backed by the Canada Infrastructure Bank and an Ontario government loan guarantee program — will house 278 grid-scale batteries, making it the largest in Canada and third largest in the world. Six Nations is also part equity owner in four solar and three wind projects, with a transmission line, all within its green portfolio.

A ghost pipeline rears up in northern B.C.

The Nisga’a Nation has approved construction of a gas pipeline on its territory in northwest B.C. and the provincial energy regulator has created “a legal loophole that is facilitating a ‘last-ditch’ effort to build it,” reports Marc Fawcett-Atkinson.

The exemption will allow the project, which is being partially bought by the Nisga'a Nation, to begin construction this summer using a decade-old environmental assessment.

The Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project (PRGT) would be roughly 900-kilometres long — a pipeline stretching from northeastern B.C. to an LNG terminal on the province's north coast. The assessment was originally for a pipeline to Prince Rupert, but the route has since been modified to end at a floating, Nisga'a-owned LNG terminal on the Nass River.

Youth win climate settlement in Hawaii

“Hawaii officials have announced a ‘groundbreaking’ legal settlement with a group of young climate activists,” reports The Guardian. “(It) will force the state’s department of transportation to move more aggressively towards a zero-emission transportation system.

“You have a constitutional right to fight for life-sustaining climate policy and you have mobilized our people in this case,” Josh Green, the Hawaii governor, told the 13 young plantiffs in the case, saying he hoped the settlement would inspire similar action across the country.

Under the settlement agreement, Hawaii will take “all actions necessary to achieve zero emissions no later than 2045 for ground transportation, sea and inter-island air transportation,” Andrea Rodgers, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the case, said at a press conference with the governor.

‘We’ve got nothing to sell’: B.C. fruit growers worried as climate crisis worsens

Sukhdeep Brar, vice president of the BC Fruit Growers Association tells CityNews that farmers are having a brutal year and still struggling from the deadly 2021 heat dome and floods. There are no “plums. Prunes. No peaches, no apricots, no nectarines. A very light cherry crop.”

“The climate has just been wacky over the last few years. It’s what keeps us up at night. It’s what stresses us out.”

Zero harvests left

The situation is much worse in some of the poorest places on Earth. The UN food chief, Martin Frick says the most deprived areas have reached a tipping point of having “zero” harvests left because droughts and floods have become so frequent the land can’t sustain crops.

Frick told the BBC that without efforts to reverse land degradation globally, richer countries would also begin to suffer crop failures. Parts of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America are now dependent on humanitarian aid.

“There’s too much carbon in the air and too little carbon in the soils,” Frick said.

Alberta’s last coal plant powers down

“In a feat once thought impossible, the province went from 80 per cent coal power to zero — years ahead of schedule.” Alberta’s last dedicated coal plant went offline last weekend and it's never expected to come back on, reports CBC News.

In 2015, Rachel Notley’s NDP government announced plans to phase out coal power by 2030, as part of its broader climate policies. "The industry was up in arms that it wasn't possible," said Blake Shaffer, an economist with the University of Calgary.

"Even parts of the government were in disbelief. I think there was a general view that phasing out by 2030 would actually be very challenging, and yet here we are."

Where we are is an impressive display of how quickly industry can pivot when good policies and regulations are imposed. But this pivot comes with its own carbon: Capital Power is "immensely proud" to confirm all units at its Genesee facility are now "100 per cent natural gas-fueled." Even though wind and solar have been booming in Alberta, fossil gas (methane) has grown to provide nearly three-quarters of the province’s electricity.

What happened to coal is coming for us

“Two core truths about energy will dominate this country’s future,” writes Sandy Garossino. “And we as a nation seem largely oblivious to both of them.”

You may have heard that Alberta’s once vaunted War Room has died. Its extended, painful (sometimes comedic) cortège included a rebranding as the “Canadian Energy Centre.” And Garossino thinks what Canada really deserves is a proper one — to engage Canadians about energy.

The first truth is that, “Love it or hate it, Canada is an energy superpower. Alberta is right about the central importance of its oil and gas sector to our economy.”

“The second core truth is that the entire world has embarked on a clear path to transition to net zero carbon emissions… What has happened to coal is coming for us.”

In every sector — solar and wind energy, ultra-high voltage grids, EVs and batteries, mineral supply chains — China is the unparalleled global leader, driving down costs and accelerating deployment.

“Ten years ago — even five — no one foresaw that renewable energy would out-compete fossil fuel energy. But that’s happening now, and accelerating,” writes Garossino. “That no one is preparing for this is governing malpractice.”

Cities consider max temp policy for rental units

Hamilton is set to put in place a bylaw this summer requiring landlords to keep rental units below a certain temperature, reports Cloe Logan. New Westminster has a similar motion tabled while View Royal on Vancouver Island is waiting to hear back from staff. The city of Toronto was instructed to study and report its findings on maximum temperature requirements last summer.

And the National Farmers Union (NFU) is calling for stronger heat protections for its workers. “While many people will turn to air conditioning as a heatwave rolls across Eastern Canada this week, thousands of farm workers will have few protections keeping them safe… The call from NFU follows a campaign launched last month by the Ontario Federation of Labour, also calling for heat protection legislation from the province.”

Restaurant association fights for gas

The B.C. Restaurant and Foodservices Association has joined with a pro-gas lobby group to fight efforts by some local governments to phase out the use of natural gas in buildings – even though restaurants are exempted from the rules.

Denmark’s plan for a plant-based future

“Plant-based foods are the future,” announced Jacob Jensen, Denmark’s Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, when the government released the world’s first national action plan for shifting towards plant-based diets. “If we want to reduce the climate footprint within the agricultural sector, then we all have to eat more plant-based foods.”

Under the policy, an updated plan gets produced every year, accompanied by grants to develop supply, drum up demand, and create an economic angle for Danish companies. Reasons to be Cheerful reports on start-ups like PlanetDairy using precision fermentation for substitute milk proteins, “a new vegetarian degree program at Denmark’s hospitality school, a ‘knowledge center’ about plant-based cooking for chefs and students and a ‘vegan travel team’ … to train chefs around the country who are usually schooled in traditional, French-style methods.”

Oilsands companies scrub website, social media ahead of greenwashing law

“The Pathways Alliance, a coalition of Canada's six largest fossil fuel producers, scrubbed its website and social media channels on Wednesday. All that remained was a terse statement blaming the decision on Bill C-59, which amends Canada's Competition Act to require companies to back up environmental claims.”

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has also modified its website. The feds’ Bill C-59 will soon become law with a truth-in-advertising amendment. A win for environmental groups, who have been campaigning against greenwashing. "This is basically a very modest provision in the Competition Act. It simply requires companies to tell the truth and to have an evidence base to back up their claims," said Leah Temper, program director with the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

"So I do think this reaction is very telling."

Edinburgh bans fossil ads

The capital of Scotland is banning advertisements for airlines, SUVs, cruise lines and oil companies — any ads for “high-carbon products and services” that “undermine the council’s commitment to tackling the climate emergency.

The ban explicitly applies to "all firms and associated sub brands or lobbying organisations that extract, refine, produce, supply, distribute, or sell any fossil fuels."

Earlier this month, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for a global ban on fossil fuel ads. Katharine Hayhoe, distinguished professor at Texas Tech (and one of Canada’s great climate exports) thinks it’s a great idea: “One in five premature deaths world-wide are the result of air pollution from burning fossil fuels. Let that sink in a minute – one in five deaths! So, just like with cigarettes, why should we allow the use of products with such serious health risks to be actively promoted?”

Migrants and megalomania

Two bonbons for you this week. One, not sweet at all and one, utterly delicious, if bittersweet.

June 20 was World Refugee Day and the hosts of Outrage and Optimism interview Gaia Vince, author of Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval.

And Gary Shteyngart spends seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas — for the reader it’s a sublime, side-splitting agony. Shteyngart wrote Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever on assignment for The Atlantic. Icon is three times the gross tonnage of a U.S. aircraft carrier, more than five times that of the Titanic. If you were harbouring any hope for humanity, Shteyngart will disabuse you of it before he reaches the dock:

“My first glimpse of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optic nerve to try again.”

“The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy.”

Photo by Royal Caribbean