If you focus on the kind of fires we’re worried about — the extreme fires — it’s clear that climate change is driving an exponential increase.

Fast forward to 1993 and blockades had expanded to defend all intact areas of Clayoquot Sound. More than 800 people were arrested including this writer and environmentalist Tzeporah Berman, 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.

Not only do we grieve for the lost and the losses to come, we have been complicit. We are grieving what we’ve done and are still doing. Here are two steps toward healing.

Many more people will admit eco-anxiety to pollsters, or their therapists, than are willing to give it voice among family and friends.

There is no way to make our climate crisis “go away.” So, what does it mean to speak of cures for an irreversible condition?

Let's start with 'the water is too hot.' Salmon like 12 to 15 degrees. The heat compounds what’s known around the lab as 'the river gauntlet' — seine boats at the river mouth, habitat degradation upstream and now ever higher temperatures bringing new pathogens, disease and lethal stream water.

According to researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the climate crisis will cause $38 trillion in annual losses to the global economy by 2049.

The impacts of inflation and the cost of living have knocked climate change down the list of priorities.

Around 90 per cent of Canadians who say they intend to vote Liberal or NDP tell pollsters that "climate change is a fact and is mostly caused by human activities," according to a survey by the Angus Reid Institute conducted in March. Yet only one-third of federal Conservative voters accept this foundational climate fact.

The planet's dire context is mostly absent from the Canadian carbon pricing debate.