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Firefighters retreat as flames approac, amid the Grizzly Wildfire Complex in the East Prairie Metis Settlement, Alberta.
The North is burning
As voters were casting their ballots, firefighters were fighting dozens of wildfires across Alberta – a grim backdrop to the political debates about climate change and oil production that played out ahead of Monday’s election.
The Alberta fires — which appear to be linked to climate change — did not seem to move votes away from the firmly pro-oil United Conservative Party or toward the left-leaning New Democratic Party.
On the East Coast, where provincial leaders are raising the alarm about the financial impact of the Trudeau government’s emission-cutting policies, the woods are also on fire. In typically foggy Nova Scotia, 13 wildfires are raging, including in the suburbs of the capital Halifax, where 18,000 people have been forced from their homes. More than 200 buildings, mostly residential, have been destroyed. The province’s premier has been forced to ask Ottawa for help.
In California, where fire is such a threat that insurers are balking at issuing homeowner policies, the forests are wetter than in recent years, but forecasters still expect fires later in the season, which goes through October.A firefighter conducts a controlled ignition on the Sturgeon Lake Wildfire Complex GCX001 near Valleyview, Alberta.
Alberta wildfires send smoke far and wide – and south
Canada’s wildfire season is already in full swing, with a series of intense blazes in Alberta that have sent toxic smoke across the country and into the US Midwest. A wet and cold weekend followed by cooler temperatures this week helped firefighters from Canada and the US battle the 100+ fires, but dozens of blazes remain out of control. Fires are also burning in the provinces of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, where thousands have been forced to evacuate. And it’s only May – wildfire season goes through September.
Last week, the fires jammed up natural gas exports from Canada to the US, leading to price hikes, and the blazes have also led to reduced oil and gas production. Earlier this month, wildfires shut down oil and gas production in Alberta, reportedly curtailing at least 145,000 barrels of oil per day. A new study links the growth in extreme wildfires to the oil and gas industry as well as cement makers – in case irony is your thing.
Meanwhile, Alberta is in the midst of an acrimonious and tight provincial election in which discussions of climate change are constrained by the province’s reliance on the oil and gas industry – even for the ostensibly left-wing New Democratic Party. Politicians are unwilling to take aim at the province’s main source of wealth. There’s a push in Canada to set an emissions cap and get oil and gas companies to net-zero emissions, but Corporate Knights reports that the industry is lobbying against necessary steps to get there while claiming to support it. Meanwhile, a recent report by the Public Policy Forum claims a full phase-out of oil and gas production by 2050 would cost the province CAD$60 billion. A full wind-down of the industry is not on the table.
Ending the oil and gas industry (which no one is proposing) would be extraordinarily costly, but wildfires in western Canada are expensive themselves – the 2016 fires alone cost CAD$9 billion. They are costing the province plenty in terms of health, domestic and international trade, and destruction, yet politicians shy away from the issue. A federal report cites a series of measures required, and in various stages of adoption, to tackle present and future wildfires, including more money, training more firefighters, purchasing more equipment, and developing a satellite system to track wildfires. Without a significant effort and more aggressive climate action, these blazes will only get worse in the coming years – and their smoke and destruction have no respect for national borders.A smoke column rises from wildfires near Fox Creek in Alberta, Canada.
Hard Numbers: Wildfires for Alberta, Canadians for defense spending, last supper for Jenny Craig, Meta-threat for Canadian publishers
24,000: At least 24,000 people in Alberta were forced to evacuate their homes by wildfires this week. Authorities counted as many as 88 fires burning at one point. This year has seen an unusually high number of wildfires, with more than 400 recorded so far.
64: Should Canada spend more on defense? A majority of Canadians say yes, with 64% in a new poll saying they want Ottawa to boost military outlays and meet the unofficial requirement that all NATO members spend 2% of GDP on defense. Canada is currently at just 1.4% and hasn’t hit the NATO mark since the 1980s.
323 million: The famous weight loss chain Jenny Craig has announced it will shutter all North American locations week after nearly half a century in business. The move leaves millions of folks without pre-made meals and diet coaching, and it sticks Canadian creditors with a $323 million vat of unpaid loans.
1.9 billion: Meta threatened to pull links to Canadian news outlets if a new bill forces the social media giant to pay those publishers for their content. Meta says its Facebook Feed has already generated 1.9 billion clicks for Canadian news outlets over the past year, amounting to $230 million in revenues for those companies.