In 2023, Canada had its worst wildfire season on record: more than 15 million hectares burned, the entire city of Yellowknife was evacuated, and smoke turned skies orange from Ontario to New York. In 2021, a "heat dome" over British Columbia set a Canadian record of 49.6 °C at Lytton, and more than 600 people in the province died from the heat. No single event is caused by climate change alone, but scientists can now measure how much warming made events like these more likely or more intense. Climate change is no longer only a projection about the future; it is something Canadians are living through.
Impacts around the world
| Impact | Examples | Link to warming |
|---|---|---|
| Heat waves | Deadly heat in Europe, India and western North America | A warmer baseline makes extreme heat more frequent and more intense |
| Drought and desertification | Land in the Sahel, at the southern edge of the Sahara, degrading toward desert | Higher temperatures dry soils faster; combined with overgrazing and clearing, dry land loses its plant cover |
| Coastal flooding | Low-lying Bangladesh and small island nations such as Tuvalu and Kiribati | Sea-level rise plus stronger storm surges push salt water inland |
| Melting glaciers | Himalayan and Andean glaciers that feed rivers used by hundreds of millions of people | Glaciers shrink, first adding meltwater and then supplying less in dry seasons |
| Ocean changes | Mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef; shifting fish stocks | Marine heat waves and ocean acidification stress marine life |
Impacts in Canada
- Arctic sea ice and polar bears: polar bears hunt seals from sea ice. In western Hudson Bay, the ice now breaks up earlier and forms later, so bears fast on land for longer, and the population there has fallen by roughly half since the 1980s.
- Inuit ways of life: sea ice is a highway for travel, hunting and visiting between communities. Thinner, less predictable ice makes travel more dangerous and harder to plan, affecting food security and cultural practices. Inuit knowledge of the ice is now combined with sensors in community-led monitoring projects such as SmartICE.
- Thawing permafrost: in the North, ground that has been frozen for thousands of years is thawing, cracking roads, airstrips and building foundations and releasing stored carbon.
- Wildfires and smoke: longer, hotter, drier fire seasons are burning larger areas, threatening communities and filling cities far away with smoke.
- Coastal flooding and erosion: rising seas and storms such as post-tropical storm Fiona (2022) are eroding shorelines in Atlantic Canada and the North.
- Longer growing seasons: farms in parts of Canada gain frost-free days and can grow new crops, but also face more droughts, floods and new pests, and ticks carrying Lyme disease are spreading north into Ontario.
Responding: mitigation and adaptation
AMitigation: reduce the cause
- Cutting greenhouse gas emissions or increasing sinks
- Switching to low-carbon electricity, heat pumps and electric vehicles
- Improving energy efficiency and insulation
- Protecting and restoring forests, wetlands and peatlands
BAdaptation: cope with the effects
- Adjusting to changes that can no longer be avoided
- Building higher sea walls and moving homes away from flood zones
- Cooling centres and heat-alert systems for heat waves
- Fire-smart planning and stronger roads on thawing permafrost
| Level | Initiative | What it does (and status) |
|---|---|---|
| Individual | ENERGY STAR | A label that identifies the most energy-efficient appliances, electronics and windows; administered in Canada by Natural Resources Canada |
| Individual | Reduce, reuse, recycle; less food waste; walking, cycling and transit | Cuts the energy used to make products, cuts landfill methane, and cuts fuel burned for transportation |
| Ontario | Drive Clean | Required emissions tests for older cars and light trucks from 1999; Ontario ended those tests in April 2019 and now focuses on heavy-duty diesel vehicles |
| Ontario | Coal phase-out | Ontario closed its last coal-fired power plant in 2014, one of the largest emission cuts in North America at the time |
| Ontario and Canada | Home retrofit rebates | Programs offered by governments and utilities help pay for insulation, windows and heat pumps; the details change, so check current programs |
| Canada | Carbon pricing | Puts a price on emissions so cleaner choices become cheaper by comparison. The consumer fuel charge was set to zero on April 1, 2025; carbon pricing for large industrial emitters continues |
| Canada | Emissions targets | Stated targets of 40–45% below 2005 levels by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050, the latter set in law by the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. Federal projections show Canada is not on track to meet the 2030 target |
| Anyone | Carbon offsets and tree planting | Paying for emission cuts or carbon storage elsewhere; only useful if the cut is real, would not have happened anyway, and lasts (planted trees can burn) |
| World | IPCC | The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, set up in 1988 by the WMO and UN Environment Programme, assesses published research and summarizes what is known for governments |
| World | Paris Agreement (2015) | Nearly every country agreed to hold warming well below 2 °C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C; each country sets its own targets and updates them every five years |
Judging climate claims in the media
You will meet claims about climate change everywhere: news stories, social media posts, advertisements, political speeches and scientific papers. Scientific sources, such as peer-reviewed journals and IPCC reports, are checked by other experts before publication, show their data and methods, and state their uncertainty. Non-scientific media may be accurate, but they are written to attract attention, persuade or sell, and they are not checked the same way. The scientific consensus, summarized by the IPCC from thousands of studies, is that the current warming is real and is mainly caused by human activity. Judging a claim means asking who is making it, what evidence supports it, and what they might gain.
- Source: Who wrote it, and what is their expertise? Is it a peer-reviewed study, a science agency, a news report, an opinion piece, an advertisement or an anonymous post?
- Purpose and bias: Is the author trying to inform, persuade or sell? Who funded it? A company advertising itself as green, or a group funded by an industry, has a stake in the message.
- Evidence: Does it cite data and sources you can check? Does it use long-term trends, or one event, one place or one cold day (cherry-picking)?
- Balance: Does it present a fringe view as if experts were evenly split (false balance)? Does it exaggerate in either direction, from "it's a hoax" to "it's too late to do anything"?
- Consistency: Do other reliable, independent sources say the same thing?
Career: environmental consultant
Environmental consultants help companies, cities and First Nations communities measure their greenhouse gas emissions, assess environmental risks, plan for climate impacts and meet regulations. The job combines science, data analysis and clear communication, and usually begins with a degree in environmental science, engineering or geography.