Peter Prebble, a board member of the Saskatchewan Environmental Society, says the province needs to reverse course on its fight against climate change action.
The World Meteorological Organization has just declared the period July 2023 to June 2024 the hottest 12 months in 174 years of record keeping. It has issued an urgent warning to all governments to rapidly reduce their carbon and methane emissions.
Sadly, Premier Scott Moe’s government is ignoring their advice.
The World Meteorological Organization can see the global emergency unfolding. While Saskatchewan residents swelter in temperatures in the mid-30s, those living in New Delhi, India faced 49 C in early June. Northwest Mexico hit 52 C in June.
Most citizens in these countries lack air conditioning. Heat deaths around the world are on the rise. They will skyrocket if manmade carbon and methane emissions are not contained.
Many communities and ecosystems here at home are suffering terrible consequences, too. On July 25, vast portions of the beloved town of Jasper were incinerated by wildfire.
Approximately 25,000 people were forced to evacuate Jasper National Park and the town’s 4,700 permanent residents now face an exceptionally difficult future.
Meanwhile, in Saskatchewan our boreal forest is also ablaze. Smoke fills our skies, posing a health risk. Last year, a forested area in Saskatchewan five times the size of Prince Albert National Park burned, while more than 18 million hectares of forest was lost nationwide.
In 2023, over 200,000 Canadians were forced to evacuate their homes due to forest fire.
The oceans are also record hot. As a result, hurricanes are intensifying to dangerous levels more rapidly, as we witnessed in June when Hurricane Beryl became the earliest Atlantic Ocean storm ever to intensify into a Category 5 hurricane, crippling several Caribbean nations with wind speeds of up to 270 kilometres per hour.
Hotter ocean temperatures are also destroying coral reef ecosystems at a rate never seen before. Losing our coral reefs is unthinkable for they provide a home for 25 per cent of marine life and are a source of food security for 500 million people.
However, scientists warn that virtually all coral reefs will die worldwide if we don’t rapidly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
Data filed with the United Nations three months ago shows that Saskatchewan’s greenhouse gas pollution now sits at 76 million tonnes per year. This is five times higher than the province of Nova Scotia with its 1,072,000 people.
For Saskatchewan’s population size, our provincewide emissions are nine times higher than the world average. That’s clearly not sustainable.
In contrast, every other provincial government in Canada is complying, knowing full well that coal is the most polluting of all fossil fuels.
When the federal government gives notice of regulations that will require methane pollution from Saskatchewan’s oil and gas industry to be sharply reduced, Saskatchewan’s government opposes that, too, even though experience shows such regulations are cost-effective and will not burden the average taxpayer.
Premier Moe and leaders of several other governments around the world whose policies cater to the fossil fuel industry do not seem to understand that the future of our children and grandchildren and all future generations is now at stake.
The climate change emergency is a public health emergency. Once its consequences are upon us, they will not reversible.
The scientific evidence supporting the need to make deep cuts to greenhouse gas pollution by 2030 is overwhelming. We need to change course in Saskatchewan before it is too late to do so.
Peter Prebble is a member of the board of directors of the Saskatchewan Environmental Society.
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