I was writing last week about the sense of paralysis that often comes over people trying to think about climate change. However, to adapt to the extreme meteorological phenomena which upset Quebec, the solutions are not lacking. Here are some of the ideas that have been launched in the public space on the subject lately.
Protect wetlands. When we allow the sprawl of suburbs in these natural environments, we greatly harm the resilience of an entire region in the face of floods, which will be more frequent in a more unstable climate. Wetlands also harbor significant biodiversity, while absorbing CO2 and by offering an island of freshness when they are located near an urban environment. Moreover, François William Croteau published a text on the question in The duty last July 12.
Investing in sewer systems. We saw it last Thursday, after the tornado, the storm and the torrential rain that hit southern Quebec: our infrastructures are not all ready to accommodate such a level of precipitation. However, it is not particularly attractive for candidates for municipal politics to campaign on the subject of sewers. Almost everywhere in Quebec, structuring investments in this sector tend to be postponed, in favor of more ” sexy and visible to citizens.
Better insure farmers. With the extreme weather this summer, the harvests of many farmers have been ruined, or are in the process of being so. On Wednesday, a CBC report reported on the situation. One of the big problems is that the Financière agricole du Québec does not insure everyone, and the insured are not covered for all types of damage. And the more the climate is disrupted, the greater the risks for this sector of the economy, the more complicated and expensive it will be to insure or reimburse all the farmers affected. There is an urgent need to better protect farmers by taking note of the new climatic realities.
Iair conditioning is no longer a luxury. The elderly and those whose health is fragile, particularly when they live alone and in poverty, are too numerous to lose their lives during heat waves. We can make public places, such as municipal libraries, available to people, but the concept has its limits. And many key spaces like hospitals, schools and seniors’ residences remain poorly air-conditioned.
We learned this week in Pivot that detainees from the provincial prisons of Bordeaux and Rivière-des-Prairies were kept in solitary confinement in their cells for more than 22 hours a day during hot days. Not only does solitary confinement itself contravene prisoners’ rights, but the heat contributes to the inhumanity of the treatment, and could lead to death.
Protect the electrical network. Last April, the last ice storm left several sectors of Montreal without electricity for days. But basically, we were lucky. The Hydro-Quebec distribution network that crosses Quebec’s forests was not affected by the storm. And in the spring, the ice melted right away. So we avoided the nightmare scenario of 1998.
The day after the storm, the Prime Minister explained that it would be too costly to bury all the sons of Quebec, and that several improvements had already been made since 1998. Certainly. Except that by dint of telling us that we couldn’t do everything, they ended up making us believe that we couldn’t do anything at all. So, let’s ask the question again: what more could be done to increase the resilience of the network?
Working on energy efficiency. For real. With all the apocalypses that have fallen on our heads, we have almost already forgotten that temperatures dropped to nearly -50°C this winter, with the wind factor, in southern Quebec. Periods of extreme cold can also become more numerous with climate change, and with the electrification of transportation, the pressure on Hydro-Québec is only increasing.
The government’s vision, as we know, is first to build new dams to increase the capacity of the network. Except that Quebec remains one of the places in the world where the most energy is wasted per person. There is still so much to do, both in the residential and commercial sectors, to increase our energy efficiency, or even reduce our “needs”, and therefore our consumption. Even if certain initiatives have already existed in this direction for a long time (tax credits for certain types of renovations, for example), let’s say that we are far from the ambitious plan that we really need.
This list could have been even longer — very, very long. We will not even have spoken here of the greening of cities, the strengthening of shorelines or the forest fires that continue to burn in several sectors of Quebec.
Let us end, however, by recalling that last fall, the elected officials of the ten largest cities had united to ask Quebec to finance a green pact of two billion per year, over a period of five years, to finance the adaptation of infrastructures to climate change. Although the government provides some assistance to municipalities through various programs, its investments remain well below the ambitions of mayors, who are seeing the impact of the damage of recent months on their population.
If I was part of this municipal leadership, I would relaunch this campaign as soon as Parliament returns. And raising your voice this time. With the year just past, popular support is likely to be otherwise strong.
Anthropologist, Emilie Nicolas is a columnist at Duty and to Release. She hosts the podcast Detours for Canadaland.