The cost and consequences of the climate crisis continues to break records

Originally published in Rabble

As the federal government talks about building pipelines, they ignore the cost of the climate crisis.

Every day, there is news of more forest fires threatening communities across this country. Over 40,000 people have been evacuated, including dozens of First Nations communities. The smoke crosses borders and boundaries, a sure reminder that something is wrong – and at the heart of this crisis is climate change. 

It was 10 years ago – but it seems like a lifetime – that world leaders gathered in Paris to craft a comprehensive approach to the climate crisis. There was a strong consensus that allowing a two-degree change in global warming would have disastrous consequences, and so the goal was set to curb emissions enough to limit that number to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Ambitious programs were put into place, and the idea of ensuring that workers in affected sectors would be included in the plans became known as “just transition.” Some of the most powerful voices in this process were energy workers. 

At a labour gathering at the UN COP 21 meeting in Paris, Ken Smith, an Alberta oil sands worker and local union president, related why he was involved.

“Imagine you have a decent life, working hard, raising your family, with a home on the edge of a town and the forest,” said the heavy equipment operator. “Then one day, a forest fire breaks out and threatens to engulf your home. You grab everything you can in your two arms and flee with your family. The fire continues to follow until, as you run, you come to a river. You have only two choices: to perish or to discard everything you own and swim across. Or, if you had started earlier, you could have built a bridge.”

Only months after he spoke, metaphorically, of the need to build a bridge to avoid disaster, Smith was evacuating his own family from the epic fire in Fort McMurray. And in the following years, fires have become the new norm, starting in the spring, and extreme heat warnings are now routine across the globe. The Insurance Bureau of Canada reports that 2024 shattered records for the costliest year for severe weather-related losses in Canadian history at $8.5 billion.

But even as people focused on solutions, the immense power of the fossil fuel industry sought to deny, delay and sabotage the new consensus on emissions reduction. Oil billionaires funded new political movements and champions, and the backlash began in earnest. Donald Trump is the most extreme example, but there are many others, including Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, who have the same agenda. Ironically, the idea of standing up for Canada in the face of Trump is being framed by corporate interests as the need for this country to become an energy superpower, with new pipelines in every direction and massive subsidies for oil and gas production.

This approach won’t change Trump’s tariff obsession or the impact on our industries. It’s simply the wrong direction for us to take, and it will have massive consequences. Yes, we recognize that the cost of living has displaced climate as a top-of-mind issue for young people since the heady days of Fridays for Future. But a recent study by the Centre for Future Work’s Jim Stanford shows that profiteering on oil and gas was a key contributor to the spike in prices since the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine.

Big Oil is awash with profits, and the last thing any government needs to do is to continue to subsidize their operations or plow public money into their long-overdue efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of the oil sands. 

Estimates of the level of subsidies vary. The largest public subsidy was the purchase and completion of the Transmountain Pipeline, with actual costs soaring from $4.5 billion to $34 billion. Nobody should trust any estimates for similar projects. The incessant messaging by the fossil fuel industry has overwhelmed the public narrative in 2025, and many fear that billions more will be dedicated to pipelines or unproven carbon capture technology. At the same time, there are calls for a national firefighting service as provincial agencies are overwhelmed by the scale of forest fires.

A much more impactful investment would be an east-west electricity grid, helping to share electricity across the country. Clean energy combined with a mass retrofit program would create thousands of jobs without jeopardizing the future. The coming federal budget will be a litmus test. So too will the final decision on the emission cap for the oil and gas sector. Canada’s climate movement will have to ramp up pressure on the federal government to match the influence of oil CEO’s and their lobbyists, because failing to act now with serious measures will mean a lifetime of extreme weather and all the consequences that will bring. We will pay far more later…

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