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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
By working at all costs to stop forests from burning, we might have created something worse. Now, we must rethink preparedness in an era where wildfires are exacerbated by climate change.
Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Oil and gas: Ottawa-Alberta pipeline deal includes a cancellation fee critics say is too low
- Environment: Yukon’s rusty rivers linked to permafrost thaw
- Guide: Tick season is here. How can you protect yourself?
- Oceans: B.C., First Nations, Ottawa sign agreement to create ‘Realm of the Salmon’ coastal reserve
- Pollution: Fibreglass particles a potential ‘forever’ contaminant, new research warns
- Agriculture: Will farmers go electric as diesel prices rise?
- Arts: Multidisciplinary climate play cicadas is ambitious and daring, but also a mess
A deeper dive
Godelive Ohelo looks out at a wildfire burn scar from her apartment in Fort McMurray on April 28.Jesse Winter/The Globe and Mail
A decade after Fort McMurray, what did we learn?
For this week’s deeper dive, a closer look at the lessons we have learned, and are still learning, in the past 10 years of fire emergencies across the country.
Ten years ago, the Horse River wildfire hit Fort McMurray, Alta., with a ferocity few were prepared for.
It changed the way Canadians, and the rest of the world, thought about fires. More than 88,000 people were forced to flee and more than 2,400 buildings were destroyed. We learned that wildfires, exacerbated by climate change, are capable of releasing as much energy as a nuclear weapon.
While much of Canada may still be playing catch-up, reporter and photojournalist Jesse Winter writes, Fort McMurray has taken its lessons to heart.
When neighbourhoods were rebuilt, the city ensured that each was connected to at least two evacuation routes. Urban planners also ringed them with parks and greenbelts, creating vital defensible space between homes and the forest. Firefighters are now armed with the knowledge of how to better fend off a blaze. Some residents are more prepared today with evacuation bags at the ready.
The neighbourhood of Beacon Hill in Fort McMurray was razed to the ground by the 2016 Horse River wildfire. May, 2026, marks the 10-year anniversary.Jesse Winter/The Globe and Mail
“Fort McMurray proved that wasn’t a one-off,” Jamie Coutts told Jesse. Coutts was the fire chief of Slave Lake, Alta., when he watched his own town burn. The most important lesson is that wildfires are not a problem we can solve, only one we can learn to live with, he said.
Jesse covers Western Canada for The Globe and Mail’s B.C. bureau, and has focused on wildfires in his coverage the past few years. He’s the author of Wild Fire: Dispatches from a Country Ablaze, and his adapted essay for The Globe takes an even further step back.
“Media coverage of wildfires often drives simplistic narratives about wildfire as wholly bad – a thing we need to tame, control, stamp out. The truth is much more complex, and that story hides our own complicity in the destruction now frequently wrought not by traditional wildfires, but by megafires,” he writes. “Fewer routine healthy fires have paved the way for the destructive monsters that are entirely unstoppable.”
Tyler Moylan and Charlie Helton ignite the forest with drip torches near Vanderhoof, B.C. If left unchecked, dense underbrush like this could allow a real wildfire to spread quickly.Jesse Winter/The Globe and Mail
Wildfires are as inevitable as rain, and just as necessary for the health of many North American ecosystems. Indigenous peoples learned how to co-exist with fire here thousands of years before the first settlers arrived. Fort McMurray, Tsah Creek, Jasper and a dozen fires in between taught us that that megafires are often the result of trying to put out wildfires at almost any cost.
“I set out determined to understand our fastest-growing blazes, our narrowest close calls, and the monster fires that really should scare us. I learned that we can either rethink most of what we know about wildfires, and fast, or we can watch as more of our homes goes up in flames,” he wrote.
What else you missed
- Scientists rule out best and worst predictions for global warming
- India is sweltering under heat waves, with temperatures rising above 46 C
- Authorities order 50,000 California residents to evacuate due to risk of a chemical tank explosion
- How birds helped Bar Fridman-Tell reimagine a Welsh myth in Honeysuckle
Opinion and analysis
Ottawa-Alberta agreement both improves and hobbles Canada’s most important climate policy
The most disappointing aspect of the MOU’s deal on carbon pricing is how close it was to being great at fixing this problem. Instead, the final agreement misses the mark by a wide margin.
— Dale Beugin, Dave Sawyer and Rick Smith from the Canadian Climate Institute.
Alberta-Canada MOU continues to strangle energy sector with climate red tape
Raising the cost of investing in Alberta’s energy sector will simply shift investment to regions with more competitive tax and regulatory environments where energy is often produced with higher emissions, such as Latin America, the Middle East or the United States. And emissions cross borders regardless of where they originate.
— Julio Mejia and Elmira Aliakbari, analysts with the Fraser Institute.
Business and investing
Climate advocacy group Investors for Paris Compliance to shut down
After five years of filing climate-related shareholder proposals at a slew of company annual meetings, publishing reports and filing regulatory complaints, Investors for Paris Compliance is shutting down.
Matt Price established Investors for Paris Compliance in 2021 to test whether the tools of shareholder activism could push corporate Canada to live up to its net-zero pledges. Now, he and his team have concluded that the answer is no.
More business stories
- Fast-fashion giant Shein to buy eco-friendly retailer Everlane
- Canada Infrastructure Bank retains LNG consultant as it mulls financing for B.C. project
Photo of the week
A drone view of Apastepeque Lagoon in El Salvador last week, which has changed its usual colour because of a possible algae proliferation, according to local media.Jose Cabezas/Reuters
Guides and Explainers
- We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP30 and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
- We have ideas to make your travelling more sustainable, your lifestyle at home more ecofriendly, and to talk to your kids about climate change.
- In a series of essays from writers exploring the role The Globe and Mail has played in Canada’s history, A Nation’s Paper also highlights the journey of the newspaper’s green evolution.
Catch up on Globe Climate
- Canada has lost billions of trees
- A beaver’s journey
- The Caribou Keepers
- Wildfire reflection and protection