Foreword by Andrew Leach

Climate change is the most pressing environmental policy issue of our time, and one of our most pressing economic policy challenges. It’s a challenge because of its global nature, but also because of the timing of the costs of benefits of policy interventions. Climate change policies, at their most basic level, are asking people alive today to make sacrifices that will largely benefit the youngest among us today and those not yet born. The geographic and temporal separation between costs and benefits of action on climate change makes it challenge unlike any other environmental policy problem we have faced as a society.  This book presents an opportunity for students, many of them among the generations that will feel some of the long term effects of climate change, to speak to the issues most important to them.

The book begins with a look at the environmental implications of climate change.

Boisclair and Jameus look at the economic value of wetlands and the link to climate damage mitigation and carbon sequestration. Panagiotis Tsigaris, writing later in the first part of the book, uses the same database to look at valuing nature-based solutions to climate change. The Tsigaris chapter was surprising to me, given the finding that grasslands and savannahs provide the most ecosystem value in the context of climate change, with values orders of magnitude higher per hectare than tropical forests.

Piggin looks at one of the most compelling positive feedback loops in climate change: wildfires. Last year, John Vaillant’s wonderful book Fire Weather brought to the masses the link between warming temperatures and conditions which exacerbate wildfires. Piggin adds an interesting look at the emissions implications of wildfires, highlighting a short term positive feedback effect. Two other parts of the wildfire and climate feedback loop are explored in chapters by Escobedo and Gammie. Escobedo looks at forestry implications and positive feedback of pine beetle infestations and wildfires. And Gammie writes of a climate change impact that was news to me: blister rust on pine trees. The changing climate exposes vast white pine forests to this pest, much as was the case with pine beetles in years past.

In a similar vein, Keerat Sidhu takes us much further south, to the drought-riddled Amazon rainforest. Here, Sidhu looks at the challenge of deforestation through a climate change lens, documenting the impact of deforestation on Brazil’s emissions mitigation trajectory, and tracking the implied social costs of carbon from the foregone sequestration. The shocking statistic that “the loss of forest in Brazil is equivalent to 26% of Canada’s land and 33.5% of Canada’s forests,” caused me to gasp. The sheer scale of the destruction in one of our world’s most important ecosystems is breathtaking. Troy Ssebanakitta writes about the challenge of preserving Ugandan forests under threat from climate change, and the knock-on threat to various endangered species that accompany the threat to the forests themselves.

Alexander Urquhart looks at the impact of the oil sands on future generations, a topic very near to my interests over the years. Urquhart canvasses the challenges facing the oil sands, including high emissions intensity and land use impacts, and highlights the important role of government financing and support in enabling the expansion of oil sands production over time. The figures raised in the comment regarding the looming reclamation costs should give us all pause as we contemplate a world moving (perhaps too slowly) away from oil consumption.

The second section of the book looks at options for adaptation and mitigation.

Allan and Sladden look at one of the most daunting challenges we face in Canada: the impact of climate change on Indigenous communities, in particular in the north and near-north. A complex array of climate impacts, from changes in fisheries and wildfire patterns, to alterations in sea ice cover and loss of permafrost impact Indigenous communities. Allan and Sladden also provide an important reminder of the impact of events like the Lytton wildfire on Indigenous-owned businesses and community administration and support structures.

Croteau and Guay look at one of the more interesting areas of climate impact in Canada: agriculture. They examine the potential for technology in the form of precision agriculture to enhance adaptation to climate impacts. While we generally see the emphasis on warmer temperatures, longer growing seasons, and perhaps more rain in some areas as positives of climate change for agriculture, farmers will also face more drought, large precipitation events, and heatwaves, and potentially even more cold snaps. Each of these raise important adaptation challenges in Canadian agriculture. In a later chapter, Alison Waterhouse examines the impact of climate on soils and, specifically, threat of soil erosion and potential retention techniques that become crucial in the context of climate change.

Adria Huser asks a pressing question of the global community: is it too late to limit warming to 2°C? The title masks a more nuanced question in the chapter itself, which is more focused on the adoption of renewable electricity generation than on global climate mitigation. We know that cleaning electricity generation is a key part of the global energy transition as it in turn enables even larger emissions reductions through the electrification of industrial and transportation activities. But, it’s also important to remember that a lot of emissions come from sources other than electricity generation and, in some ways, clean power has become one of the low-hanging fruit of climate change mitigation.

Lindsay and Chretien look at sea level rise and the consequences of this slow-moving but potentially devastating consequence of a warming world. The map they share in the chapter is one of the more compelling figures in the book, although it looks at a relatively extreme 6m sea level rise scenario. The map serves to highlight what will be true at the more moderate sea level rise expected this century: impacts will be felt almost everywhere. We can adapt to sea level rise, to some degree, but adaptation everywhere adds up to some very big bills to pay!

Dipika Popatlal looks at a more local, coastal issue in southern France and the terrifying caption on the map of the land to be under annual flood levels by the end of this century. When you look at the local impacts in Popatlal’s chapter, and scale them up to the global level discussed by Lindsay and Chretien, the motivation for mitigation to reduce the impacts to which we will all need to adapt becomes clear.

And, in a related adaptation challenge, Kyra Williamson looks at the impact of wetlands on mitigation of climate impacts. Wetlands provide a very important buffer for the extreme rainfall and drought events that climate change will bring. Williamson rightly argues not only for wetland preservation, but for restoration which is a much larger challenge.

While it comes much later in the book, I found that a chapter from Olivia Davey on valuing marine ecosystems would have blended better with the questions in this section. Valuing our ecosystems and the services they provide is crucial to a coherent response to climate change. And, along the same line, Street and Magdolen highlight the importance of the fishery to global food security and in-turn the impact of climate change on fisheries. The chapter also highlights the differing impacts between the tropics where fisheries will face losses and the more temperate climates which may see positive impacts. As fish stocks move away from the regions that depend on them, the effects could be catastrophic.

The third section of the book looks at emissions reduction and alternative energy technology.

Brown and Floen look at the financial implications of electric vehicles for consumers. I was surprised at the degree to which their results supported hybrids rather than battery electric vehicles, but this is something I expect to change as both the cost of batteries drops and the ability to value-stack their storage and demand flexibility capabilities grows. Teryn Cameron looks at one of the challenges of electric vehicles in Canada: cold weather battery degradation. It would be interesting to see how much this weighs on Canadian consumers and how this has changed as overall ranges for electric vehicles have increased. Finally, Zachary Johnson looks at the potential for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. I feel like this will be an interesting chapter to look back on in a few years, as it seems that infrastructure and technological progress are both working against hydrogen vehicles at this point and favouring electrics.

Kaboni and Viesner look at geoengineering – a means to rapidly mitigate the impacts of climate change. While I would not have classified carbon dioxide removal as a subset of geoengineering, I think the contrast between two technologies to reduce forcing directly is interesting. It follows a chapter by Patrick Izett that looks at how we can use satellite technology to identify methane leaks which, like geoengineering, can have more rapid impacts than the reduction of carbon dioxide. Methane abatement also extends beyond oil and gas, to agriculture and land use changes.

Finally, Molai and Thomson offer up a chapter on migration in the Sahel region in Africa, one of the regions most affected by climate change. Migration in general is one of the under-considered aspects of climate change and will place pressures on governments in and adjacent to severely affected regions. We are already seeing evidence of our incapacity to deal with this impacts without massive upheaval, and as climate change worsens, we are unlikely to improve in our capacity to welcome newcomers.

The final section of the book looks at national mitigation policies. First, Mutrie and Oleyakin look at the likelihood that Costa Rica will meet its targets, and speaks to the challenges of decarbonizing transportation. Conor Brown writes on Canada and finds that Canada is unlikely to meet its own targets and that Canada’s targets are themselves likely to be seen as lax on the global stage.

As a whole, the book paints a picture of a cohort of students deeply concerned about the impacts of climate change and the capacity of our economic system to value the damages involved appropriately. I was surprised by the mix of pessimism and optimism with respect to energy and abatement technology options. And, while the final section can’t be read as a representative sample of how the authors collectively feel with respect to Canada’s efforts on climate change, the fact remains that Canada is not on track to meet its targets and that while I might personally disagree with this assessment, the international community sees Canada’s efforts to mitigate climate change and its targets to lag where we should be.

Congratulations to all the authors and to their capable editor and mentor, Peter Tsigaris.

— Andrew Leach