Heading off the next great flood

In the case of climate change ... it is better for decision- makers to anticipate harm before it occurs and take action.

It took no longer than it takes to say the word “tweet” before Twitter sprang alive with people connecting the extraordinary floods in southern Alberta with climate change and oilsands.

Environmental activists pecked out numerous versions of “told ya” while climate skeptics, deniers and ethical oil promoters struck back with versions of “liar, liar.” Not edifying, but predictable.

Where’s the truth? In this case, not even in between. The truth of climate change depends almost entirely on where you sit and little said by anyone will alter cemented views. For policy-makers, this makes coming to a reasoned and evidence-based understanding of what is happening and what should be done very challenging.

Frustratingly, neither temperatures nor the weather is co-operating. Most people will admit the climate is changing. What’s causing that change is less certain. Two online polls released in the past six months show this disconnect.

An Angus Reid poll released last month found 58 per cent of Canadians believe that global warming is a fact and is mostly caused by emissions from vehicles and industrial facilities. An Insightrix survey from August last year showed, by contrast, only 32 per cent believed climate change was the result of human activity. Both, however, showed a vast majority believed the climate was indeed changing.

A wickedly funny Will Ferrell parody a few years back of former U.S. president George W. Bush declaring that “we’ve got to stop co-operating with Mother Nature and get Mother Nature to start co-operating with us” rang true for the be- lievers — on both sides.

Yet more and more extreme weather incidents — earlier hurricane seasons, unseasonably warm and dry summers, wetter springs, superstorms and flooding — are happening.

But now, Mother Nature is not co-operating with what climate scientists even predicted. Recent global temperature data shows a possible slowing or at least a stabilizing of upward trends, despite record high greenhouse gas emissions and carbon concentrations in the atmosphere.

Since 2005, global temperature readings have been at the low end of projections which, if continued, would mean temperature increases toward the end of the century of between two and four degrees Celsius perhaps, rather than four to six degrees. Or, perhaps not.

Climate science is inherently uncertain, which complicates things for policy-makers. But that does not make it wrong. There are feedback loops and responses by the Earth not yet fully understood.

So, global warming may just be “on vacation” but ready to roar back with a vengeance later. Meanwhile, climate change impacts occur.

For governments, industries and consumers worried about devising and paying for climate policies that deliver the most emission reductions at the least economic cost, this does not make solutions any easier. So, what to do? The precautionary principle gives guidance. It states, in the case of climate change, that it is better for decision-makers to anticipate harm before it occurs and take action. As the 1992 Rio Earth Declaration put it: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

This then is the basis for both climate change mitigation — arresting future carbon emissions growth — and climate change adaptation — becoming more resilient to expected climate change impacts. There is no exact balance; it differs from country to country. But the precautionary principle dictates acting on both.

Oilsands emissions in Alberta did not cause this week’s disastrous flooding. By themselves, they have been a small contributor to overall global emissions and local carbon emissions are not to blame for local climate impacts. If climate change was either a contributing or the principal factor in causing the floods arising from wet snow and extensive rain anomalies, then it is global emissions doing it to Canada with local emissions adding to the overall problem. This makes it critical for world emissions to come down to stop affecting Canada. And Canada will need to do more to make its contribution to the whole-world effort. Reducing global carbon emissions has a clear positive economic impact for us here at home.

In short, Canada must do both: Invest in adaptation while working on mitigation.

Alberta has now experienced two “once-in-a-century” floods in less than 10 years. Can we afford to bet it will not happen again?