Climate change should be linked to Alberta inferno

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.

They invariably offer their hearts and prayers.

But the one thing they are reluctant to talk about is the shadow lurking behind the massive forest fire raging in Alberta’s north. And that is climate change.

“It’s not the time to start laying blame,” New Democratic Party leader Tom Mulcair said last week when asked whether climate change played a part in the Fort McMurray wildfire.

“Pointing at any one incident and saying well, this is because of that, is neither helpful nor particularly accurate,” said Trudeau when asked the same question.

Even Green Party leader Elizabeth May felt compelled to clarify a remark to reporters in which she had said that the fire was “of course” linked to climate change. “Some reports have suggested that wildfires are directly caused by climate change,” she wrote in her clarification. “No credible climate scientist would make that claim and neither do I.”

She’s right. No credible person would make such a claim and no one has. Forest fires are endemic to northern Canada. They stem from many causes, including the terrifying combination of dry underbrush, hot temperatures and strong winds that combined to assail Fort McMurray. A 2012 Alberta government report noted that, among other things, the age of the province’s coniferous forest has made it more susceptible to fire.

But climate change is hardly irrelevant. If the world’s leading climate scientists are correct, global warming raises the probability of extreme weather conditions occurring – from drought to ice storms to floods to the kind of unseasonably high temperatures experienced this spring in Fort McMurray.

As Trudeau noted last week: “It’s well-known that one of the consequences of climate change will be a greater prevalence of extreme weather.” So why then the reluctance to talk about the role of climate change in the context of Fort McMurray?

Trudeau has shown no such hesitation when discussing other disasters. Speaking at a Canadian Federation of Municipalities conference in Edmonton last June, he specifically linked climate change to the flooding that beset southern Alberta in 2013 and the forest fire that destroyed the community of Slave Lake in 2011.

“Climate change is real,” he said then. “We’re already seeing its effects … Here in Alberta in just the last five years we’ve seen destruction on an almost unprecedented scale.”

The reason why he and other politicians are tiptoeing around the issue this time, it seems, is that they fear giving offence.

In the popular imagination, Fort McMurray is linked to the Alberta oil sands. They in turn are linked to the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. Politicians fear that to even use climate change and Fort McMurray in the same sentence might be seen as blaming the victim.

Indeed, one-time provincial NDP candidate Tom Moffatt did ignite a minor storm when he suggested in a tweet that Fort McMurray’s tribulations might be an example of karma at play. His employer publicly distanced itself from the comment and Moffatt, wisely, apologized.

To say that the inhabitants of Fort McMurray brought this disaster on themselves is dead wrong. But to say that climate change played a role is not. The Fort McMurray wildfire is not just a freak accident. Neither was the 2013 ice storm that crippled much of Toronto.

True, these things can happen without global warming. But climate change dramatically increases the probability of their occurring.

So perhaps the politicians should get over their squeamishness and begin to ask the tough questions.

Yes, Canadians are generous. Yes, the people of Fort McMurray are remarkably plucky. Some have gone through experiences that are truly terrifying. Yes, we should all chip in and help.

But what about the future? Is weird weather our destiny? If not, what are Canadians willing to do to make sure disasters like this one don’t become the norm?