I recently returned from a glorious week hiking in the Alberta Rockies. I loved everything about the nature I explored with my family: glacier waterfalls, fields of brilliant pink wildflowers and occasional encounters with majestic elk and twitchy mountain goats. But the landscape was often hazy with smoke. In the morning, the air had a distinct campfire flavour. This summer, all over the country, there is no escaping the impact of a warming planet.
The swath of land in Canada that burned over the last few months is unfathomable. The fires have wiped out nearly 25 million acres, roughly the size of Iceland. I did not expect the future to arrive so quickly. Experts and activists predicted wildfires, floods and smoke years ago, and yet the sheer volume of climate catastrophes in the last few months was a shock. Parts of Europe reached 46 degrees, India was hit by deadly floods, Japan had the heaviest rainfall ever and Arizona experienced record-breaking heat.
So if this is what climate change looks like now, what will our world be when my kids are adults? We asked the Vancouver-based science writer Anne Shibata Casselman that very question. The result is the unsettling September issue cover story “Canada in the Year 2060.” Casselman did a mammoth amount of reporting for her story over six months, interviewing scientists, environmentalists and government authorities. Her piece spells out how climate change will transform Canadian society in surprising and upsetting ways.
When I asked her what she found most eye-opening about her research, she told me: “We often think about the physical impacts of climate change—warming, sea level rise, Arctic ice melt. But we are not sufficiently thinking about how climate change will affect us—our infant health, youth mental health, how it threatens our social ties and social cohesion.” Casselman’s sobering look into the future isn’t easy to read. But it’s important: perhaps it will change how Canadians think about the challenge we face and inspire us to work harder to find a solution.
—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief
