Summer holidays have become more challenging in the face of climate change.Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press
Remember when summer used to be carefree and fun?
You could send the kids off to camp or head out on a family holiday, and return with a touch of sunburn, some mosquito bites and a lot of tales to tell, or putter around the yard, gardening and lounging in the sun, reading a book.
You barely had to check the weather – just the calendar, to know when the school year started anew.
Today, summer holidays are filled with the prospect of apocalyptic challenges: choking on the smoke of wildfires; suffocating in the heat; being swept away in a flood or by a destructive storm; tick-borne and mosquito-borne diseases; beaches closed by fecal coliform and algae blooms; and who-knows-what else. (We won’t even mention measles, COVID-19 and other non-climate-related issues.)
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Even on a nice day, you need to limit your activities to early morning and late in the day because it’s just too hot. That’s if you can go out at all because of the smoke in the air, or the violent storms that lead to soccer and baseball games and practices being cancelled.
Forget about playing at the beach or park all day. Or the family picnic or barbecue. For much of the day, you instead need to huddle inside, away from the increasingly harsh elements.
And in the evening? No more campfires or s’mores. Fire bans are the norm. Summer camps are actually resorting to fake fires made with coloured cardboard. Hopefully, there’s still some singing amidst the tears.
In addition to the usual lectures about the buddy system and never swimming alone, camp kids get detailed instructions on fire evacuations, and morning briefings on air and water quality. They are issued N-95 masks to deal with the small particles in wildfire smoke.
You need to keep the radio on, the phone charged, and a go-bag packed in case of evacuation orders. Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer have seemingly become a never-ending cascade of threats.
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Climate change is no longer a theoretical problem, it’s our everyday reality. Just look out the window: Wildfire smoke, atmospheric rivers, cyclone bombs and more. No wonder the younger generations are being consumed by eco-anxiety – the chronic fear of environmental doom.
A study published in The Lancet in 2021 showed 45 per cent of young people aged 16 to 25 felt climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning. In the international survey, respondents said that their fear of ecological degradation interfered with their ability to eat, concentrate, sleep, go to school, spend time in nature, play, have fun or be in relationships. Seventy-five per cent of respondents in the survey said the “future is frightening,” 56 per cent said “humanity is doomed,” and 39 per cent said climate change makes them hesitant to have children themselves.
There’s no doubt that the lives of those who are children today will be greatly affected by climate change in the future. The question is: What are we going to do about it?
Clearly, if we’re going to save summer (never mind the planet) for future generations, we need to invest in mitigation and adaptation.
The big challenge, of course, is lowering the greenhouse-gas emissions that are fueling climate change. Canada signed the Paris Accord, which committed the country to lowering greenhouse emissions to net-zero by 2050, but there is little indication we’re on track.
Individuals have a role to play, too. When you leave your monster home in a monster SUV to drive the kids to camp or to the cottage, some thought needs to go into the impacts of a consumerist lifestyle and each of our ecological footprints.
Slowing climate change can, at best, buy us some time for adaptation – preparing for a future with a significantly different climate.
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That requires some serious investment in greening cities: More trees, more parks and other green spaces, better public transit and bike paths – all to promote alternatives to fossil-fuel-burning, single-family vehicles.
The cost of inaction is stark. Last year alone, weather-related disasters resulted in $8.1-billion in insurable claims and another $24-billion in non-insurable losses in Canada. Those numbers are 10 times worse than a decade ago.
To think that the worst is yet to come...
And how can you calculate the cost of lost summer fun? The price of replacing children’s feelings of joy and freedom with emotions like sadness and helplessness?
It’s a sobering reminder that a public-health approach to climate change is essential if we don’t want to leave our children and grandchildren a world that looks and feels more like a hellscape.