Temperature records typically break by tenths of degrees, like speed records for the 100-metre dash.
Summers lost to fire and smoke. Biblical floods. Dying forests. Retreating coasts. Economic turmoil and political unrest. It’s going to be a weird century. Here’s what it will look like—and how Canada can get through it.
"Soon after the heat dome, a team of international climate scientists used computer modelling to estimate how likely it would be for it to occur on a hypothetical Earth, where human-caused warming had never occurred. They found it would have been virtually impossible. In that sense, the heat dome was a foreshock of the world to come, with impacts both immediate and long-lasting. Yet it occurred in a world that has only warmed, on average, about 1.2 degrees since 1850. We’re now racing to 1.5 degrees and are likely to cross that threshold by the mid-2030s. Even if carbon emissions peak soon, as projected, we’re probably headed for two degrees of warming by mid-century, unless that peak is followed by rapid reductions. A recent study by Stanford University scientists, using machine learning to analyze climate models, projected two degrees warming by mid-century even if emissions fall quickly.
What follows is a portrait of Canada in a world warmed by two degrees.
In 2005, Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht first coined the term solastalgia to describe the feeling of being homesick while still at home. It’s that feeling of loss and melancholia that kicks in as your home environment changes before your eyes, and it will come to define the deep emotional and psychological distress that more Canadians will confront as global warming drives their climate past recognition.
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