Globe Climate: Canada has lost billions of trees

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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.

Canada is short billions of trees, but there is still time to build the forest of the future. Today’s deep dive takes a closer look at how we got here and how to get out of it.

Now, let’s catch you up on other news.

Noteworthy reporting this week:

1. Weather: Environment Canada disbands radar research team amid cuts to weather services
2. Heat: Vancouver cuts cooling kits as B.C. faces more record-breaking summer temperatures
3. Emissions: Ottawa, Alberta agree on carbon pricing to advance plan for new oil pipeline
4. Energy: Ottawa begins consultations on strategy to double Canada’s grid capacity by 2050
5. Fisheries: PEI fisheries brace for hardship as two diseases devastate the province’s oyster industry
6. Arts: Cameron Fraser-Monroe explores Indigenous controlled burns with Ballet Kelowna

A deeper dive

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The tree economy

For this week’s deeper dive, a closer look at the fight for our forests, sustainable ecosystems, and the question of how to stop losing trees.

Canada is losing trees far faster than nature can grow them or humans can plant them. And even worse: We’re not planting enough seedlings to make the slightest dent in our tree deficit.

We cut them down for development, clear-cut for timber and paper. Some trees have been destroyed by the mountain pine beetle, a tree-killer supercharged by warming temperatures. Then there are the fires. Canada lost 7.35 billion trees that will never grow back, according to a recent analysis by the Canadian Tree Nursery Association.

And moving forward, as temperatures continue to rise faster than trees can adapt, scientists are now worried that even the sun-loving jack pine, which grows back first after a fire, will suffer.

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To stop losing trees, writes Erin Anderssen, Canadians will have to be far more ambitious.

Short-term profits have often been prioritized over long-term stewardship, says Valérie Courtois, a member of Quebec’s Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation, who now serves as the executive director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative.

Her elevator pitch for saving Canada’s boreal forest: It’s the largest intact forest on the planet; it stores more carbon in its soil than any other terrestrial ecosystem; it holds back floods; it cools the world down.

And according to Amy Cardinal Christianson, the senior fire adviser with the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, the harm that comes with the overconsumption of nature was even greater because Indigenous expertise was cast aside.

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Across the country, about 10,000 tree planters put 600 million seedlings in the ground each summer. But these are only trees that companies are obligated to plant after clear-cuts.

In 2023, Canada’s forestry industry contributed $27-billion to the GDP. So economists are studying how to make the money work to save forests: How do you value a tree that is alive versus as two-by-fours?

Ottawa is set to study how to factor nature’s true value into decision-making and generate more private investment in conservation. Last year, the feds cancelled the 10-year 2 Billion Trees Program. This year, the government announced a new conservation strategy that promised to designate 2.9 million new hectares of federally protected land by 2031.

Sustaining our existing forests and creating climate-resistant new ones, scientists say, requires thinking carefully about how and what and where we chop and plant, and for what purpose – guided by the Indigenous experts who were Canada’s first forest guardians.

Read Erin’s full story for more about failed attempts and new efforts to fix Canada’s forest problem.

What else you missed

• Electric-vehicle sales are getting a jolt
• Quebec miner ArcelorMittal fined $100-million for polluting fish-bearing waters
• How this tree-planting company built a sustainable apparel business and technology platform
• Nature overshadowed the history of Shackleton’s epic journey on my Antarctica adventure

Opinion and analysis

Want to save the whales? Enforce the rules

Ottawa sacrifices climate goals for a pipeline nobody needs

Maybe Canada should levy a tumbleweed tax on the U.S.

Business and investing

Carbon pricing would not spur oil and gas sector to reduce emissions, Cenovus CEO says

Carbon pricing does nothing to incentivize the oil and gas sector to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, said the head of Cenovus Energy Inc., as Ottawa and Alberta drew nearer to implementing a $130-a-tonne price in the province by 2040.

Jon McKenzie, chief executive of Calgary-based Cenovus, said that a carbon tax only works when costs can be passed down to consumers, who see a higher price and reduce their consumption, thereby decreasing demand for the product in question.

• Meanwhile: The British Columbia government and Ottawa have reached a pact with LNG Canada to support expansion plans at the B.C. terminal for exporting liquefied natural gas to Asia. Critics say climate and health impacts are being ignored, including the effects of LNG Canada’s excessive flaring of natural gas.

Photo of the week

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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

• A beaver’s journey
• The Caribou Keepers
• Wildfire reflection and protection
• A fiery debate over dead trees