Alberta

If you’re trying to figure out how Alberta’s already hurting budget is going to get battered by the Fort McMurray wildfires, don’t get too bogged down in the reports of massive losses in oil production shutdowns. You’re better off keeping an eye on the way the oil price responds to the drama playing out in the Alberta oil patch.

The simple fact of the matter, a fact that many invested in a destructive oil industry do not want to now face, is that a fire whose early-season extreme intensity was fueled by human-caused climate change is now doing what Canada would not.

Politicians are reluctant to mention the role of global warming in the destruction of Canada’s oil sands capital.

The Fort McMurray fire disaster brings out the eloquence in Canada’s politicians. They talk movingly – and I think sincerely – about the devastation wreaked on the inhabitants of the northern Alberta city.

They praise the generosity of those Canadians who help. They put partisanship on ice. In one memorable instance last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau crossed the Commons floor to hug Rona Ambrose, the teary-eyed interim Conservative leader.

With each day the bad news spreads. A gigantic wildfire now covering some 4,000 km² is spreading through northeastern Alberta and into Saskatchewan — devastating much of Fort McMurray, the city in the heartland of the tar sands. Some 90,000 residents have been displaced and thousands of homes, many local industries and businesses, destroyed.

What's turning northern forests into tinder? Biggest reason is climate change, but that’s not all

A sudden shift in the wind at a critical time of day was all it took to send a wildfire out of control through Fort McMurray, forcing more than 80,000 people out of their homes in what has become the biggest natural disaster in Canadian history.

Earlier this week, Darby Allen, the regional fire chief for the area, minced no words when he was asked what might happen now that more than 1,600 homes have been destroyed.

Unseasonably dry and hot weather in Fort McMurray, northern Alberta has inflicted disaster on the city.