Let’s credit our colleague Marie Vastel with the introduction to this sad editorial: if it continues like this, the young people of 2030 will see The tuque war like a fiction film. Like, snow for the holidays won’t exist anymore, unless we spit it out of the mouths of cannons.
Are we exaggerating? Just a little bit. Look out the window wherever you are. Pay attention to the weather forecast. In many regions, Christmas 2023 will be stripped of its white coat in favor of a common brown or green overcoat, depending on the color of the ground under your feet. It’s nothing to laugh about.
The phenomenon of snowless holidays has occurred a few times in modern history, the result of temporary warming. It was rather the exception. Environment and Climate Change Canada analyzed 67 years of weather data for 45 major Canadian cities. The evolving portrait is not white, but rather black. On average, Green Christmas is on the rise, and the depth of snow on the ground is down by 5 cm. Since 1990, one in three Christmases has been green, brown, gray… And sad! During the previous 32 years, the infamous phenomenon happened one in five times.
Notice that there is still hope for children, young and old. The probability of a white Christmas was 72% for the years 1955 to 2021. It is still 66% for the period 1997-2021. Last year’s blizzard, tragic for some homes without electricity, reminds us that winter has not said its last word. However, the long-term trend does not seem favorable to those who live on love and fresh snow this time of year.
Draw on your childhood memories. What was worse than receiving an educational toy or “laundry” for Christmas? It was of course the absence of snow, storm, adversity. In winter, this big man, hungry for attention, swallowed everything in his path, he enveloped us, he conquered us and he forced us to retreat into the cozy comfort of our interiors, with a cup of hot chocolate, not without having to previously took the time to play outside until the point of frostbite.
This founding mythology in the land of acres of snow is at risk of burning like the Rosebud by Charles Foster Kane, the main character of Citizen Kane. The world before will never come back. Our memories in the land of Merry Christmas, and those of our children, will be understood as a page of history by our grandchildren and our descendants.
Of course, there will be some occasional bumps in the road and reversals. A heavy snowfall will keep up appearances just in time for the holidays, here and there. Regions further north will retain their white gold reserves longer. Even microphenomena will have the effect of increasing snow precipitation in certain regions.
But this year, it is far from won. Meteorologists are predicting a green Christmas, precipitation and temperatures above seasonal averages in several regions of Quebec and Canada. There will come a day when, in some gift delivery areas, Santa will have to replace the skates with wheels on his sleigh. In the future, instead of shoveling before welcoming the visit, we will build dikes like in Charlevoix, unless we are forced to evacuate.
Across the world, 2023 was the hottest year on record during the Anthropocene. The Radio-Canada site took stock in a series of infographics and frightening texts. Temperature records have fallen like flies on the planet. From January to November, the temperature rose to 1.46 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. We have even crossed the 2 degrees Celsius mark at times, while the Paris Agreement proposes a target of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Examples ? It’s 52 degrees Celsius in a remote town in China. That’s a full month of over 43 degrees Celsius in Phoenix, in Arizona. It is the water that is lacking in certain places where the water tables are in a pitiful state, and the rivers which overflow at times or in places where we did not expect it. These are forest fires, heatwaves, constant pressure on ecosystems and biodiversity.
So this snow? We will mourn her absence if she does not fall. If by chance it comes to New Year’s Eve, we will contemplate this magnificent snowflake, its unique and fragile geometry referring us to ours and reminding us of our duty to do more in 2024, on an individual and collective basis, to contain the damage caused by climate change. We must leave at least some hope under the tree for future generations.