Globe Climate: Strategizing the fight against wildfires

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

Canada does not have a national wildfire strategy, and long-standing calls for one have taken on a renewed urgency after another intense season. Suggestions include creating a national firefighting service and instituting a more proactive approach. This fall, Ottawa is poised to decide on what course to take.

The Globe and Mail spoke with experts in wildfire management across the country to better understand the ideas being put forth. We’ll get into that today.

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

Noteworthy reporting this week:

1. Tourism: Jasper is welcoming visitors again by embracing its fire-scarred landscape
2. Wildfires: Saskatchewan residents who refused to flee wildfire fought flames to save their homes and cabins
3. Smoke: Western Canada was shrouded in smoke last week as hot, dry weather fuelled new wildfires
4. Recreation: I discovered top-tier mountain biking in Northern Ontario (just watch out for moose)
5. Environment: Alberta vows to implement new standards for releasing treated oil sands mine water
6. Home: Six tips for a climate-friendly garden
7. Oil and gas: London-based Crown LNG pitches export project for Newfoundland and Labrador
8. Harvest: India’s boiling climate could make tea more expensive – and reshape global trade
9. Geography: Royal Canadian Geographical Society acquires new globe highlighting Canada and ignoring Trump edicts

A deeper dive

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Rethinking firefighting

For this week’s deeper dive, a closer look at the idea of creating a national wildfire agency.

If the record-breaking fire season of 2023 was a wake-up call for how a warming climate is turning Canada into a tinderbox, this is the year that the country has been forced to come to grips with another pressing issue: How will we be able to continue fighting fires and protecting communities using a patchwork system that has been pushed to its limits?

Matthew McClearn and Andrea Woo spoke with experts across the country to find an answer.

Under the current system, provinces and territories are primarily responsible for their own wildfire management. While this system functioned well for decades, there is a growing debate over whether a federal agency is needed.

Provinces are seeing more fires than they can respond to, top emergency officials have called the status quo unsustainable, and firefighters are facing burnout and mounting mental health strains from longer and more challenging deployments, Andrea wrote in the Morning Update newsletter.

Mike Flannigan, a professor at B.C.’s Thompson Rivers University who specializes in emergency management and fire science, said one of the biggest problems with the existing approach is that it is too reactive.

“What we’re seeing today with these disaster-driven events, they’re increasingly outpacing the capacity of the Canadian emergency management system,” said Matt Godsoe, director of the Emergency Management Strategy Implementation Office at Public Safety Canada, at a July 18 wildfire briefing.

There have been calls for a federal emergency management agency, a national firefighting service and a shared pool of firefighting resources. Former emergency preparedness minister Bill Blair has mused about a “NORAD-like” joint disaster response with the U.S. and a civil defence force similar to the U.S. National Guard.

Emergency Management Minister Eleanor Olszewski has said a more proactive approach to wildfire seasons could include a new federal disaster response agency and shared national firefighting resources, such as water bombers.

Ottawa is now formally examining all the options, with a decision expected late this fall.

What else you missed

• Over 85 scientists say Trump Energy Department climate report lacks merit
• Yves Veggie Cuisine to be discontinued as demand slows for plant-based meat products
• U.S. government sues California utility, alleging its equipment sparked deadly wildfires
• Excavator that became unlikely monument removed from Saskatchewan lake after 11 years

Opinion and analysis

Editorial board: How cities can give nature a helping hand

Gary Mason: Twenty years after Katrina, New Orleans and other U.S. cities remain vulnerable to catastrophe

Green Investing

John Rapley: Could a wildfire trigger the next market crash?

In 2020, the Bank for International Settlements produced a study that floated the risk of a green swan – a climate event that triggers a market crash. The idea was borrowed from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s concept of a black swan – a highly improbable, unpredictable event whose impact can be huge.

The BIS paper, which appeared during the pandemic – itself a black swan event whose impact on the world economy was catastrophic – raised the possibility that a climate shock, such as an extreme weather event, could cause asset values to fall, triggering a chain reaction through the financial system.

• Eric Reguly: Trump-style executive capitalism is killing the offshore wind industry and could wreck other businesses
• 25-year-old formula dictates how grain moves across Western Canada, drawing criticism

The Climate Exchange

We’ve launched the the Climate Exchange, an interactive, digital hub where The Globe answers your most pressing questions about climate change. We have been collecting hundreds of questions and posing them to experts. The answers can be found with the help of a search tool developed by The Globe that uses artificial intelligence to match questions with the closest answer drafted. You can ask a question using this form.

Photo of the week

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Guides and Explainers

• Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that: Green Investing 101 newsletter course for the climate-conscious investor. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
• We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP29 and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
• We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills - Little Steps to Big Change.

Catch up on Globe Climate

• The keepers of the coast
• Reporting from turtle rehab
• The rise of weather content on social media
• Grief, loss and uncertainty this wildfire season

We want to hear from you. E-mail us: GlobeClimate@globeandmail.com. Do you know someone who needs this newsletter? Send them to our Newsletters page.