As the planet gets warmer, Canada’s climate debate seems frozen in place | CBC News
This is hardly the first time Canadians have been faced with the direct impacts of a changing climate. Recall the devastating Fort McMurray wildfire in 2016, or the flooding in Ontario and Quebec in 2017, or the record wildfires in British Columbia
in 2018. None of those events produced an overwhelming or lasting
consensus in Canada about the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions and mitigate the future impacts of climate change.
in 2018. None of those events produced an overwhelming or lasting
consensus in Canada about the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions and mitigate the future impacts of climate change.
But those
events might have been seen as rare, one-off calamities. A recurring
series of increasingly devastating events eventually could push public
opinion to a tipping point, both in terms of concern about climate
change and public support for actions to meaningfully reduce carbon
emissions.
Standing in the way of overwhelming agreement is a
partisan divide — with Liberal, NDP and Green supporters on one side,
Conservatives on the other.