In this episode of "Mother Nature Doesn't Give a Crap," hosts Peter Reynolds and Geoff Sheffrin are joined by David Phillips, Senior Climatologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, to discuss the profound influence of climate change on Canadian weather patterns. From hurricanes and wildfires to urban floods and bone-chilling cold snaps, they explore the alarming changes happening in our environment. David highlights key data on CO2 levels, ocean temperatures, and atmospheric conditions, emphasizing the urgent need to take action. Join them as they delve into the global picture of climate change and its impact on our daily lives.
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In this episode of "Mother Nature Doesn't Give a Crap," hosts Peter Reynolds and Geoff Sheffrin are joined by David Phillips, Senior Climatologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, to discuss the profound influence of climate change on Canadian weather patterns. From hurricanes and wildfires to urban floods and bone-chilling cold snaps, they explore the alarming changes happening in our environment. David highlights key data on CO2 levels, ocean temperatures, and atmospheric conditions, emphasizing the urgent need to take action. Join them as they delve into the global picture of climate change and its impact on our daily lives.
Subscribe on your favourite podcast app and don’t miss an episode!
Also available on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkTMDHlF8N8lVIWzyPl4yhw?sub_confirmation=1
Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087081536326
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mothernature_podcast/
Ep8_Mother_Nature_(Audio)
[Start of recorded material 00:00:00]
Peter Reynolds: [00:00:18] Hi. I’m Peter Reynolds and welcome to Mother Nature Doesn’t Give A Crap, with Geoff Sheffrin. Is climate change a tempest in a teapot or are we walking on thin ice throwing caution to the wind and hoping to weather the storm? Because come hell or high water, what we’re experiencing is just the tip of the iceberg. And soon we’ll all be in the hot seat.
In this episode we’re going to be discussing the profound influence climate change is having on Canadian weather patterns: from hurricanes and wildfires to the rise of urban floods and bone-chilling cold snaps. And joining me come rain or shine is professional engineer, climate activist Geoff Sheffrin. Geoff, good to see you again.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:01:07] Peter, thank you for the opportunity and I appreciate the welcome. And I love the little analogies about icebergs and walking on thin ice and so on. It’s so absolutely fitting. So if I may, just – sorry. Peter –
Peter Reynolds: [00:01:20] Yeah. Jump right in, Geoff. Jump right in.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:01:22] OK. I was going to say, partly to set the stage a little bit for David who we’ll introduce in just a second. I tend to stay on top of a certain amount of basic data and the three things which I’m always looking at quite closely from what I consider to be reputable sources like NASA, Our World in Data, and from the World Meteorological Office. You know, this past year the CO2 level has gone up to 424 parts per million from 421 last year. Right? The oceans are at 0.7 and the atmosphere is around 1.2, and both of those are a long way above what the Paris Climate Accord in 2015 said should be our targets for 2030. So we’re a long way up the curve of change, but not a whole lot up the curve of making change to moderate, mitigate and eliminate.
So, you know, that’s the context of global picture from my point of view. But David, whilst we look at the Canadian picture, the very fact that you’re a meteorologist also gets us into a much bigger picture, because Canada is not an isolated weather pattern. We are a piece of the world pattern and we contribute to that.
Peter, let’s continue with welcoming David.
Peter Reynolds: [00:02:42] Absolutely, David. And we’ll introduce David who is a senior climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. He’s also an author of two books: Blame it on the Weather and the Climates of Canada, and has been studying weather in Canada for over 50 years. David, welcome to the podcast.
David Phillips: [00:02:42] Well, thank you, guys, very much. Delighted to be with you. Let me just correct one thing that Geoff said. He called me a meteorologist. Oh boy. I’m not a meteorologist, Geoff. I’ve never spent a day in a weather office.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:03:13] I’m sorry.
David Phillips: [00:03:13] But, you know, hey, I don’t correct Canadians, really, when they say are you a climatologist or a meteorologist. I’m a weather guy or a weather weenie as I sometimes call myself. But, you know, I –
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:03:25] Even better.
David Phillips: [00:03:27] Well, I’m certainly interested in tomorrow’s weather. But as a climatologist you’re sort of a historian and also a futurist. I’m interested in weather centuries ago, particularly in the last year or so. And people say, well, how boring is that? That’s past history weather. No, no. We can learn from the past. And then of course a futurist. I’m more interested in, say, the season coming up. What is the summer or the winter going to be like? And then certainly what is [00:03:57] going to be the weather in 90 years from now? And now of course I won’t be around to tell anybody about that or to hear what they’re saying about it. But I have more confidence in telling you what the weather’s going to be in 90 years from now than I would, say, in two months from now.
And I think that is this the very nature of the science of climatology. We can run these big models on some of the biggest computers in the world and we can we can really tell what the future is going to be. [00:04:27] And at the proof is in the pudding, guys. I mean, my gosh. When you look at what’s happening now, I mean, scientists described that 30 years ago. I was there. The only thing we got wrong were the heights of the sea level rise. And we didn’t – no one anticipated Antarctica and Greenland to melt as much as they have. But certainly the temperatures: we’re fine-tuning it but, boy, it’s not as if it’s a different world; it’s the same world.
But as Geoff pointed out we’re not doing [00:04:57] anything about it, and that’s probably the issue.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:05:01] Yes. And my apologies for the misdirection. I’m just delighted to have your expertise here. That’s what to me is most critical, so.
Peter Reynolds: [00:05:12] David, I’m wondering if we could start for people, our listeners out there, who might not be familiar with Environment and Climate Change Canada. Can you talk a little bit about what the organization is and your role in it?
David Phillips: [00:05:27] Well, I’m called senior climatology with emphasis on age. But I’ve been around doing – my gosh. I had two jobs in my lifetime. I was a room service in the Banff Springs Hotel. So I always felt I had something I could fall back on if the weather business got a little tough, you see. But no. I’ve been following the weather for a long time. And I’ve tried to popularize weather. I was a research scientist at the beginning working on the Great Lakes problems. But then I realized there was an insatiable appetite that Canadians had for weather. [00:05:57] And so I tried to fill it. I fill it with facts and figures and stories and to just make them more aware of the importance of their of their climate.
Not in terms of climate change. I mean, I certainly grew up on learning about climate change. But often, guys, it was about, hey, the climate, we always thought, was stable. It’s static and dependable. I mean, it changed every hundred thousand years; you got an ice age. But of course what we’re seeing now is [00:06:27] dramatic changes in our lifetime. I mean, it’s something that when you describe climate change to people, people often say, well, I’ll be safely dead before that begins to bite the deep and hard. But no. It’s not a surprise. It’s not something we have to wait for. It’s happening now.
At Environment Canada we used to call ourselves – before I was there when it was called the Department of Transport and the focus was on meteorology – on forecasting at airports and providing Canadians with warnings [00:06:57] and what just – you know, we just celebrated last year our 150th anniversary of weather in Canada. One of the oldest scientific agencies in Canada. And I wasn’t there when teenagers drew maps back in the 1870s but we certainly have come a long way with charts on computers and data and everything.
But interestingly enough I get a lot of teasing by my colleagues where I started out. They say, oh well, you’re a climatologist. That’s like being a, you know, a lighthouse keeper. It’s kind of a [00:07:27] terminal position. You see? Because our job was just to crunch the data, massage it, get it in a way that people could make sense of it, you see. But it’s now become a very important topic.
And of course now the sort of the irony is that our department changed names from Department of the Environment to Department of Environment and Climate Change Canada. So here I’m a climatologist and it’s right in the name of our department. I tell you, I [need?] a lot of my [00:07:57] professional colleagues and the fact that there are – I’m a climatologist and they finally saw the light and they named the department in the way they should have.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:08:08] Excellent. Great bit of background. Thank you, David.
Peter Reynolds: [00:08:12] David, something that we’ve definitely talked about on this podcast before, you know, are extreme weather events, you know, and how they just seem to be increasing in frequency and intensity. And, like, how does this trend sort of align with, you know, with the data that you have and the direction that Canada is going in in terms of extreme weather?
David Phillips: [00:08:39] Well, Peter I really think there are no – there shouldn’t be any doubting Thomases anymore. I mean, it used to be when I gave talks I would spend the first half of my talks try and explain why the weather is – why the climate is warmer now. I don’t waste people’s time. I mean, it’s a done deal. I mean, there’s no deniers anymore. We know that in fact the world is in fact warmer. And what we’ve seen too, and I think this was, for me, you know, a kind of a moment that I really began to see in my focus change, when I believed – [00:09:09] I used to say to people, well, the past is a guide to the future. And that’s how I spent 35 of my 50 years at Environment Canada saying to people, well, you use past data and you can give a sense of what the future is going to be. That it was sort of in what the future is going to be. We’ve already seen it, you see.
But I don’t necessarily believe that anymore. When farmers say to me, well, what will I grow this year? I say, well, don’t do what your parents did or your ag agents told you to do. You’re more likely to see what’s going happen [00:09:39] this coming growing season what’s happened in the last 10 years, not the last 50 years. So sometimes using a longer period record. Great for building reservoirs and large capital-intensive projects. But for operational decisions you want kind of a shorter period of record.
But Peter, I think, for me, when I could say to people, Canadians, you know, you don't have to wait for climate change. It’s here. It’s not fake news. It’s not a fluctuation. [00:10:09] Or – it’s a trend. I mean, it’s no surprise. Scientists were telling us 30 years ago we’re now seeing and feeling and experiencing in our own backyard. So you can actually look out the window and you can see climate change. And I think that’s the big deal is the fact that our weather has got so extreme, it’s so impactful to us, that you can’t escape it. And everybody’s going to be affected by this.
You know, it’s not something that you can will to your grandchildren. [00:10:39] You’re seeing it now. I mean, it’s causing deaths now because of runaway climate change.
And I think, for me, really, it changed about 2021, 2022. Recently. Because for most of the time Canadians would hear about climate change and say, well, hey, that’s an Arctic thing. That’s ice melting in the north. That’s permafrost melting. Snow is less snow. There’s more search and rescues in the north because the elders can’t read the ice. [00:11:09] For that, for Canadians, southern Canadians, we saw documentaries on it, you see. We would read or see reports on it. But now it’s happening in our own neighbourhoods, our own communities. It’s not something that happens on the only – on the other side of the world.
I used to say well, you know, what happens in Bangladesh and Botswana and Bolivia is happening in Burlington and Brandon and Burnaby. And this is something that’s in our own doing. Now, maybe it has a different effect on us but there’s [00:11:39] no question about it that the world and nature, global climate system is acting because of this overheated planet and what we’re seeing, I think, is different kind of weather. It’s interesting, guys. It’s not new weather.
I often say, you know, if it was sort of sandstorms and Saskatoon and monsoons in Montreal and typhoons in Toronto, my gosh, we’d had this all figured out. The world would be upside down. But it’s the same weather that our grandparents dealt with but [00:12:09] what’s different is a different personality, a different character, a different nature to it. Storms are stormier. Weather has slowed down. I used to say the best thing about Canadian weather is that it hits and runs. It doesn’t stand around and torment you like it does in other parts of the world. We know that weather, extreme weather, has slowed down. It has more time to spread its misery to you.
And so we’re seeing that storms are bigger, larger, out of season, out of place. And so, this is how climate change, [00:12:39] the warming, has affected our sort of day-to-day weather. It’s made it more extreme; more impactful.
And there’s another aspect to this: it’s not just the physical climate changing but also we have changed. You and I have changed. We’re changing our landscape, cutting down trees; we’re draining wetlands. All of these things. We’re, I mean, paving over cities. We’re building near oceans and in avalanche zones. I mean, these are graveyards [00:13:09] in the waiting. And I think we’ve made the sort of the climate more impactful because of what we have done.
So yes, it’s coming out of our tailpipes and smoke stacks. The climate has changed. But also we have changed and made it more impactful. And that’s why it’s an urgent thing. It’s a crisis climate. And I think that that’s why we have to wake up to the fact that we need to do something about it.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:13:34] Right. Absolutely.
Peter Reynolds: [00:13:36] Geoff, your thoughts?
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:13:39] Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I find it very frustrating that we have, you know, eight billion people on the planet and, you know, 40 million here in Canada and we struggle with the concept of how to fix this problem. One of the problems is we’re always adapting. We’re mitigating. We’re the only species on the planet that does more by creating infrastructure for our survival. There’s no other creature on the planet that does that. Coral reefs [00:14:09] only do what they do for survival. Termites only do what they do for survival. Elephants; giraffes. You know: earthworms. They only do what they need to do for survival. We’re the only species that has to dig up the flaming planet or pillage and rape everything that we can get our hands on in order to create infrastructure. And that frustrates the hell out of me because it’s causing exactly those things which give you more and more work, David.
David Phillips: [00:14:35] Well, Peter, you know, I think, Geoff, that’s a really a heavy kind of thought. I never reflected on it that way. I think it’s a very good way of looking at it. And I think you pointed the finger where the problem is. And, you know, it’s in my generation, I mean, they’ve – 90% of the fossil fuels burned in the world has come during the boomer generation. And it’s really our doing.
And then I say to you, the interview, you talked about at the beginning of how the different signs are there. You know, it’s not just warmer temperatures but you’re seeing the oceans are warming and dramatically. And what we’ve seen in the last couple of years –
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:15:14] Yes. Yes.
David Phillips: – is a dramatic – and this is scientists very concerned. Because I think the oceans have really taken the heat over all these years. They’ve actually absorbed all that – 90% of the excess CO2 emitted from the greenhouse gas situation is absorbed by the oceans. So I think that what we’re seeing in terms of the rapid increase of ocean temperatures is marine heat waves and things that are absolutely, like, hot tubs out there in many [00:15:44] ocean basins is a direct result that we – and the worry is by scientists and oceanographers is something they always talked about as a tipping point. And if we reach that tipping point where the oceans are not absorbing as much of the excess heat that they did in the past. And where is it going to go? It’s going to go into the land or to the air. And we’re going to talk about runaway warming. Well, that’s what we’re going to see if the oceans are not going to be doing what they have been doing for all these years.
[00:16:14] And it’s simple science to say that, hey, when you warm up the oceans they’re going to absorb less of the gas. And so we’re worried about that showing up. Now, we’ve seen in the recent years, I mean, to support what Geoff said about in terms of temperatures, a dramatic – of the eight warmest temp years of record have occurred in the warmest years of the last eight years. And that includes several La Niñas, which are cooling off. [00:16:44] We’re into an El Niño situation right now and it’s – all the models seem to suggest it’s going to get big and wild. And we’re also warming it up through just normal global warming.
We’re going to see either this year or probably next year the warmest year on record. And we’ll already have surpassed that aspirational target that was set at the at the Paris Accord by 1.5 degrees. Now, it may be just temporary, but boy, we’re headed into that slippery slope. And yet, you know what? We still continue to burn fossil fuels. I mean, at – [00:17:14] even the pandemic couldn’t reverse those.
And so my sense is that there is something we need to do to really kind of focus this more and to really raise the urgency of what this is.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:17:30] Yeah. One of the frustrations I have with it is when you report the statistics, you know, people don’t appreciate that 70% of the planet is the oceans. And 0.7 degree temperature rise sounds trivial and irrelevant but the thermal mass that that creates, people don’t appreciate the impact that you’ve just described in terms of the weather pattern shifting because of that apparently tiny bit of temperature causing such a tremendous shift because that’s an [00:18:00] incredible heat volume which the ocean is no longer being able to absorb from excess CO2.
And, you know, that [00:18:07] [multiple voices] it looks irrelevant.
David Phillips: [00:18:11] It does. I mean, you think about, well, and the numbers we give don’t seem shocking enough. They don’t seem catastrophic enough. Because you’re right. I mean, they talk about, well, pre-industrial revolution, which is 1850 to 1900, well, we’ve warmed up now by maybe 1.1 degrees, 1.2 degrees. Well, you couldn’t go outside and feel that warmth of temperature. But when you spread it over a planet earth and the oceans and the air. And all are warming up equally. It’s not as if the oceans are cooling off and the air is warming up or the [00:18:41] ice caps are staying themselves. No. It’s everybody. Everything is – nature is being reflected and impacted by all of this excess warming.
And we’ve seen just in Canada, if we go to back to Canada and we talk about the kinds of extremes that we’ve seen, and I’ve been monitoring this for 50 years. And what I saw in 2021 with that heat dome, that Canada dry from coast to coast to coast, from the forest fires, [00:19:11] the most relentless fires. We thought this year is bad; it certainly was also in 2021 and we saw then the flooding in British Columbia. I mean, this was when southerners woke up to the fact that we’re on fire.
And to think what we’re seeing is because the world has warmed up by 1.1 degrees. What is it? That’s in 150 years. What’s going to happen if we warm up by three degrees in 30 years? I mean, it’s scary. [00:19:41] And I think that –
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:19:43] Disaster.
David Phillips: – that we really have to see this as a existential kind of problem. We really have to begin to do something about it.
And I think, you know, to kind of change the topic a little bit on one of my focuses in my career and my – as a climatologist is to focus on adaptation. I know we have to mitigate. I mean, clearly, and I’m depressed by what I see from mitigation. I think the governments are kind of [00:20:13] they’re green-lighting the burning of fossil fuels and the exploration and oil companies are gaslighting the science in terms of climate change. So I think in some ways we’re being defeated that way. But I think we have to do something. I mean, I think clearly it’s the – our existence in future generations depend on it.
And I think too that I – I think we need it not because I come from a science organization or where I’m [00:20:43] among engineers, but I think we need to also invest in science and engineering and technology to help us with that mitigation aspect of it. I mean, when you see the amount of renewables that are out there. They’re slowly getting better and that. But I think the international energy agency said that by the year 2050 when we think we’re going to be zero emissions, they said 50% of the energy will still come from fossil fuels.
[00:21:13] And so I think that we have to adapt. I think we have to do things differently. And so I don’t feel like some who feel, oh, well that’s giving up. That’s throwing in the towel. If you’re adapting you’re not mitigating. No. No. You can do both. But I said, you know, we have to realize that we can learn to live with the climate we’re going to get. We can kind of – you know, the thing is, when you see that storm coming your way, all the blowing you do doesn’t [00:21:43] stop it from coming your way. But you can prevent it from becoming a disaster by proper planning and responding to it.
And I think that’s my message is that, hey, you’re not going to – we live on a planet of extremes. We always have. Even before human beings were here. But they’re just going to be more excessive numbers out of season. They’re going to be more extreme. They’re going to be more impactful – because of who we are and what we do. But I think that we also have to make our communities more weatherproof [00:22:13] and safer, convince our local politics – because, you know, you can’t expect the federal government and the provincial government to bail you out every time mother nature misbehaves. But I think the actions to do something –
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:22:24] Yeah. That’s what’s happening.
David Phillips: – in terms of adaptation belongs to individual property owners, neighbourhoods, communities, municipalities. This is really where the rubber meets the road. And I think that if we can do a better job of preparing our communities to handle the extremes that we can’t avoid, but we can maybe prevent them from becoming a disaster, then we have to do things differently. And some of them are just simple as changing building codes or [00:22:54] separating out sewers from sanitary flows.
Even it’s something like greenery. I mean, green infrastructure. Get away from that gray infrastructure and more green infrastructure. And wetlands. My gosh. What’s wrong with wetlands? Wetlands are our lungs and our kidneys that have protected us.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:23:13] We need them. We need them.
David Phillips: [00:23:16] And we need them. I mean, I think it’s not a cesspool.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:23:18] Yes. Absolutely.
David Phillips: – a mosquito-infested pond of water. Well, we build condos and farmland on it. No. I mean, this is saving us; it always has. And I think one of the greatest tragedies in the Province of Ontario is the fact that in some communities we’ve removed 90% of our wetlands.
Peter Reynolds: [00:23:38] David, I can hear obviously the passion. David, let me just say I hear the passion in your voice. And, you know, I can hear this call to action and that it’s a crisis. So where is the disconnect between, you know, the passion that I’m hearing from you and what governments around the world seem to be doing?
David Phillips: [00:23:57] Well, you know, I think, Peter, it’s a slow motion and you have to – it’s like you have to convert people gradually. I mean, sometimes when you have an extreme event that converts a lot of people. But then we have poor memories of it, you see? We often do studies; we find that it’s about a seven-year. Your community is hit by a tornado. Well, every time the skies turn dark, you worry about it for about seven years. And then you think, well, that affected the previous time; it won’t affect me now.
So I think that one of the good things about extremes is [00:24:27] that it causes people to reflect and maybe that, hey, that is – I had a part to play in that. So maybe, you know, we should be doing something about it.
I think it’s at the political level, for all people to encourage their politicians at all levels. And I’m not just thinking federally or provisionally but at municipalities to ask them questions about, well, what’s your belief and understanding about the environment?
And then for young people. I worry so much, guys, [00:24:57] about the despondency I see, the disappointment, the hopelessness, the disappointment, the eco-anxiety that exists with the young people and feel their hope – they can’t do anything about it. And I try to give them hope and I do get hope from young people. When I feel down and out I just read about what young people are doing and how they’re telling people, stand clear, because we’re moving in a different direction. So there is some hope.
I think also we need to get hope from the success stories. [00:25:27] We don’t advertise our success stories very well.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:25:29] Yes.
David Phillips: And there are success stories everywhere in Canada. In communities –
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:25:32] A lot of them. Yeah. A lot of them.
David Phillips: [00:25:32] They’re really just dreamed up by that community. But if they were told to other people, they would be practiced everywhere. And see, the thing is, I think about climate change that it’s not – it’s could be a big ticket item. But, you know, adaptation, building safer communities, is not really a bank breaker. I mean, it’s not going to kill jobs; it’s going to make jobs. I remember, guys, I was there when the green revolution started and people said, oh, [00:26:02] it’s a job killer. Oh and oh, well, just look at it. It’s a job killer in Japan and Germany. I mean, they’ve led the way in terms of that and it’s just been great for quality type of jobs.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:26:14] Absolutely.
David Phillips: [00:26:14] So it’s just wrong to think that it’s going to be to change your way of life.
So, hey, I know I’m off the topic but I just get – I do feel – I need to have hope. I sometimes get down when I see what’s happening. But young people give me hope. And reading these success stories in every community and people trying to do things to move us in the right direction and maybe give science and technology engineering a chance to help us get out of this mores that we’re in.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:26:44] I think one of the issues is with – when it comes to making changes, I think as an electorate we as a populous don’t push our politicians hard enough because it’s not beating us over the head with a two-by-four. Therefore, climate, whilst it’s on the agenda – sometimes higher, sometimes not – if we don’t get our politicians in tune, because we as the electorate aren’t demanding it, then, you know, our adaption and mitigation will limp along.
And to me, as Peter will tell you, I consider adaption and [00:27:14] mitigation to be somewhat dirty words. They’re not. They’re part of what we have to do. But the bottom line is if we look at the bigger picture we’ve got to get rid of coal first, oil second and gas third. We’ll never get rid of all of them. But coal absolutely has to go. Gas: we’re going to need some of the chemicals. And oil: we need some for chemicals. But the majority, we’ve got to get out of this. We’ve got to create green infrastructure.
David Phillips: [00:27:42] Well, Geoff I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I get so discouraged when I see, well, first of all you’ll go to a conference, like, well in Glasgow or Paris or Kyoto or Cape Town and they sign documents and they fly home and then they don’t go anywhere. I mean, where are the results of the actions? I mean, they say a good thing but then the bottom line: they don’t – I mean, we saw with Glasgow that, like, 60% of the countries there promised to have zero-based emissions by [00:28:12] 2050. Well, we know that’s going to be almost impossible to achieve. And we need to cut back.
And look at China. I mean, they okayed 165 power plants and these are coal-burning plants in the last year. I mean, it’s just criminal.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:28:31] Exactly. It’s a disaster.
David Phillips: [00:28:32] Yeah. Yeah.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:28:33] Yeah. It’s an absolute disaster waiting to happen. And we keep feeding that disastrous monster because we can’t figure out – you know, my – I’ve got another cynical view about this. You know, when I look at the pandemic, which killed about seven million people around the globe, and, you know, we got some action pretty quickly because it was pretty obvious. My fear is I think we’re going to have to kill perhaps a half a billion people collectively from climate crises before the politicians start to wake up. They’d be, oh, we may have a problem. We’ve got to fix this. You know? So that [00:29:03] troubles me is that we’re – the two-by-four is not powerful enough from mother nature and she’s going to have to wield it harder.
David Phillips: [00:29:11] Well, you know, I think extremes of weather have killed people the past. The one kind of encouraging note, though, I must say, is that while it causes more damage – extreme weather – causes more dislocation and disruption, it’s not the big killer that it used to be. I remember in my career in 1970s, I’m hearing about 100,000 people in Pakistan, Bangladesh, are dying from cyclones that came ashore and terrible flooding. And now you don’t see [00:29:41] that because of progressive weather services, our science, our telecommunications, our monitoring of global – of planet earth. I mean, the oceans can’t burp without us knowing about it now.
I mean, these are all progress that we’ve made and so we can do a better job of forecasting and –
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:29:58] Yes. That’s true.
David Phillips: [00:29:59] – whether it be weather or being climate.
But I think there’s clearly – and it’s not only just meteorology that has caused the fewer deaths, but it’s also countries that are more emergency measures, more responsive and better infrastructure. These are all positive, positive things.
But there’s still no doubt about it. I mean, in Canada, I mean, it’s – when you saw that, you know, used to be three people died from a heat wave; well, you’d have a royal commission. Well, we had in 2021 [00:30:31] 600 British Columbians and 60 or 70 Albertans died from that heat wave. And most of them were indoors. Most of them were elderly and had illnesses, of course.
But and then also in Montreal. I remember about three years ago there were 70 people that died from a heat wave. Well, the good news is that there have been nobody died in Montreal since then and we’ve had just historic heat waves, because we learned by that. We understood that and [00:31:01] we had a different system that, OK, there are people who are more vulnerable, so maybe we should know their postal address and maybe you look in on them when you have another heat episode.
What was the result? No deaths. We could go and rescue those people, give them water, bring them to emergency measures. And so I think we can learn from some of these but, boy, we have to have an awful lot of them to make sure everybody listens and pays attention and does the right thing.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:31:28] Yeah. And my fear is the more we learn from these things the more we say, yep, we have it under control and we just get on our merry way and we build another coal-fired plant. You know? That’s what frustrates the hell out of me. That we’re busy adapting and doing a great job. There’s millions and millions of people around the world. And here in Canada, you know, tens of thousands working diligently on making this better. But the bottom line is the better we make it the more we can tuck it in the back of our minds and say, yeah, we’ve got it under control. That’s what frustrates the hell out of me.
David Phillips: [00:31:58] Well, Geoff, and I think it’s a matter too of just not saying, well, hey, I mean, we’re not going to do it because those other countries are not doing it. I mean, I think it’s –
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:32:09] Oh give me a break. [Laughter]
David Phillips: [00:32:09] – important to get on and set the right model here and to show that economically it’s powerful. If you can be a leader in doing the right thing from a mitigation point of view, boy, you’d have never a balance of payment problems ever, because you would be exporting that technology and innovation to the rest of the world who will desperately need it.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:32:29] Absolutely. And we’re well equipped in Ontario and in Canada to be a primary instigator of many of these technologies and exporting them. There’s just so much green stuff that’s at our disposal which we can make happen and make commercially viable for so many more around the world.
David Phillips: [00:32:49] Absolutely. For sure.
Peter Reynolds: [00:32:51] David, I want to go back to something you said at the beginning and, you know, again this idea of taking it sort of, you know, from sort of this, you know, existential threat to something that we can actually all sort of relate to. And, you know, in the past when they talk about climate change they’ve talked about the melting of the ice caps and the rising of the sea levels. And how does that impact anyone in Toronto? How can you even visualize something like that? But I think that the, [00:33:21] you know, when we can look at ways that it impacts us directly, I think that’s something that’s going to, you know, have a real connection.
I even think about the wildfires just recently, you know, that swept smoke into Toronto. I mean, my son has terrible allergies and he was basically trapped inside for three days. And that was – if there ever was a more direct [00:33:51] example of how our lives were affected. Suddenly it wasn’t a story that was happening in Australia; suddenly it was something that was happening right here.
And, you know, and I’m wondering if you can maybe talk a little bit about ways that extreme weather can impact the economy and sort of hit people in the wallet maybe that they don’t know about, if you have any stories you can you can share.
David Phillips: [00:34:19] Well, Peter, I think you’re right. I mean, some of the impacts of climate of weather, wild weather, affects people directly. For example, we – you know, on the prairies they don’t have to worry about hurricanes; they have other things to worry about from an extreme weather point of view. But certainly it’s something that you would see in marine basins. Like Atlanta Canada, because of the nearness of the water and these storms are mighty storms and – yeah. It doesn’t matter, you know, [00:34:49] whether the numbers – it’s just if that big one’s going to hit you.
And we saw it with Fiona. And that was a quiet year and then Fiona hit; it was the most devastating hurricane we had in Canada. And then a week later Ian, one of the most expensive hurricanes ever that hit Florida. And just did a number in that particular area.
So we see examples there. But there’s no safe havens from wild, wild weather. I mean, I could name any particular community, and I’ve travelled across the country. I’ve spoken to hundreds of thousands of Canadians and pointed out [00:35:19] in their community what’s at risk. I mean, I think we can’t just worry about everything but I think we have to know what the hazards are in your particular community and how we can safeguard ourselves against some of those.
But you also raise, Peter, that what we’re seeing more is that sometimes we import the problem. And I think forest fires are a good example of that where you don’t have to be living in the forest to smell the smoke of that forest [00:35:49] – the toxic. And people used to worry that it was the fires, the flames that bothered them. Wasn’t the smoke. What we know now: it’s the smoke that is really the toxic – is the health effects of that.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:36:01] The killer. That’s the killer.
David Phillips: And it’s something – I think California fires. I remember one year that Alberta had the quietest forest fire season ever and yet they had their smokiest year ever. I mean, in Calgary, just to give you an example. I mean, they get on average about maybe eight hours a year with haze and smoke. This year they had 512 hours. You couldn’t – a city where you could see the mountains on most days. You couldn’t see across the street because – and this was smoke that came from California fires. Portland, [00:36:34] Oregon, and Washington. This was imported into Canada and affected their community.
So it’s a global issue. It’s not just the forest [unintelligible 00:36:46] by you. It is elsewhere. And we see this occurring. Nature doesn’t know any boundaries. I mean, it just goes where it goes. And then of course we also are international people. Our economy is international. We trade around the world. So my gosh. [00:37:04] I’ve had people talk to me and said, well, gee, that was that storm in Korea. I’m interested in that because I sell product to that and I want to know whether that’s going to be a boom or a bust for me, you see. Or cacao plants.
I mean, in Africa you want to know about the droughts. The world is smaller. It’s shorter. And because we’re more internationally, we’re global people. And so I think that what affects us in one part of the world is going to affect us in [00:37:34] the other.
And El Niño is a good example. I mean, that’s something thousands of kilometers away in the tropical Pacific off the coast of Peru and Chile and yet it affects our weather, particularly the wintertime, here in Canada. And if we know that, if we know there’s a good chance of that, well then we can actually make money off of it or at least safeguard the cost of that particular event because we can monitor it and know what the impacts are going to be from past times.
So I think it’s [00:38:04] clearly you raise a good point, Peter. It’s not just home-grown; it’s sometimes elsewhere and it affects us in so many different ways.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:38:15] Yes, it does. Yeah. Absolutely right.
Peter Reynolds: [00:38:19] So I know part of your mission is to raise awareness, you know, about climate change with Canadians and young people. So, what do you say to those – the young people who are feeling like it’s too big a problem? You know, that they can’t really have any impact on it whatsoever and just composting how much is that really going to help the climate crisis? So, what do you say to them?
David Phillips: [00:38:48] Well again, Peter, I really – I worry about young people and I hear stories of them. I hear from parents. Their kids are going to psychologists because they’re fretting about this. They’re losing sleep over it. I remember one group said they’re not even doing their homework. I thought, oh well, there’s an excuse for not doing homework, I guess. [Laughter] But, you know, it’s serious. It shows you that that these are serious matters for young people.
And so I try to look for hope but I also say, you know what? [00:39:18] Rather than just, you know, kind of be despondent about it, seek action. You know, action can sometimes free you up and give you hope and to be part of that cause and that. It’s not necessarily joining a political party but it is just doing the right thing and just promoting in your schools, in your friends. And then also, you know, we all – it’s really something [00:39:48] that we have to – it’s like Johnny Appleseed. You know? We have to spread the seed out there. We have to keep convincing our friends, our neighbours, our relatives. And, you know, you meet an uncle that isn’t so tuned in with the concern of climate change. Don’t give up. Just keep, keep at them.
But don’t be pointing a finger and screaming and yelling and that; just treat it in a gentle kind of way keep. Coming up with information. And every time you [00:40:18] have an opportunity to speak to him then just kind of bring him around.
And, you know, you’ll be surprised how effective that is. So it’d be whatever your circle of friends are. You don’t have to be lecturing to a group of hundreds and thousands of people but just small – your network of people. And I think you will have a great hope.
I mean, hope is not a policy but it is something – action is. If we take action [00:40:48] I think that this would help us get over those emotional moments that we have, a little thinking, well, we’re going to hell in a handbasket and I’m not going to have children when I get older or what’s in it for me. I might as well just go ahead and keep burning and doing the wrong thing because the world’s going to end in 2065. No, no. We don’t want our young people feeling that way.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:41:11] No; that’s absolutely right.
Peter Reynolds: [00:41:12] Geoff, your thoughts?
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:41:15] Well, I would agree totally with David. I mean, it’s really tough because I think when you’re at the younger generation like your son is, Peter, you know, it’s difficult to see how as an individual even talking about it and getting people to respond to it et cetera, it’s extremely challenging because when you look at the bigger picture the bigger picture is so vast and so many things that need to be done urgently in order to move us in the correct direction just aren’t happening [00:41:45] or aren’t happening quickly enough. And that sort of thing is – it makes it very difficult for people not to be despondent.
So even the thinking people, you know, are challenged. The non-thinking people, they’re probably quite happy to go back to the couch and pull a blanket over their head. You know? And I feel for them as well because this problem is not going away and I don’t think it’ll go away until it has – my sad fear is it won’t go away [00:42:15] until the problem has got a whole lot worse. That’s what frustrates me – that as a species we’re so busy creating infrastructure building more coal plants, mining coal, now talking about mining the lithium out of the seabed and creating a whole new environmental disaster, the scope of which we’ve never even imagined. Right? We’re so busy re-engineering nature that we can’t even get on with our lives to save ourselves. That frustrates the hell out of me.
Peter Reynolds: [00:42:45] David?
David Phillips: [00:42:46] Well, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, it’s very frustrating and it’s very depressing in a way. And then I think the other thing too is that also what worries me are these tipping points where there is no return from that. And we haven’t really – I mean, if the ocean’s warming up now, maybe that first tipping point, we know that glaciers is another tipping point. I mean, the melting of the permafrost could release [00:43:15] huge amounts of greenhouse gases, methane and – and from the oceans too. I just worry that things are going to get so out of control that there’s nothing that’s going to be able to recover from that. And I think that the more we talk to people about some of these crisis points and that we’re very close to it.
And that’s why that 1.5 aspirational level for keeping the temperatures to that level in the next – [00:43:46] by 2050 or I guess by the end of the century rather than the, you know, than the 2.7 or 3 or 4 degrees that we’ve talked about. I think that it’s important that we have that milestone, that we keep aiming to it and keep people directed to that.
Because, you know, I think in many ways what we do to curb our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels is easier in the early years. But as we get, [00:44:16] you know, that first, you know, 50% will be relatively easy. But it’s the second half that we’ll depend upon technology and engineering and science to help us. But I think we need more motivation from the general population too to say, hey, this is an issue for future generations.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:44:38] Yeah. We have the science. We have the technology. We have from an engineering community perspective globally, we have what we need. We just to figure out how to get on with it. Do we have the money? No. We can make the money. If we made $20 trillion available for the pandemic, we can – this is going to cost $80 trillion to fix globally. You know? That’s the global GDP level. We can make this work. You know? It’s just – we need to get our minds around it and until it becomes more of a crisis my fear is [00:45:08] we’re not going to get our minds around it quickly enough. We have what we need. We just need to find ways of getting on with it.
David Phillips: [00:45:14] Yeah. We know the problem. We have the facts to back it up. We know the solution. And now it’s that will to make things happen that is the missing in action.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:45:26] Will of the wisp. Elusive.
Peter Reynolds: [00:45:33] It is such a tightrope that individuals like yourself, David, walk in that you know the truth of it, you know the reality, you know what’s coming. And how do you raise that flag? How do you shout from the rooftops, you know, to inspire without basically scaring people under their covers? And I –
David Phillips: [00:45:59] Well, I think you put it well, Peter. I’ve been accused of being chicken little. You know? The sky’s falling and I don’t want that. I mean, I want to have some hope and some positive success. That’s why I’m kind of a storyteller. I love to tell stories of weather in the past and what the impacts had on people. Weather is different back then than it is now but yet it’s the same kind of weather. But the impacts are different. But I think you’re right. I mean, I think people are [00:46:29] going to tune you out. You’ve got to give hope there too.
But, you know, hope – unfortunately hope is not a policy. We need action and but I think exactly – that’s right. And we need to have breakthroughs and advertise and pump up those breakthroughs and maybe we will finally see, you know, what the future is and we’ll do the right thing.
Peter Reynolds: [00:46:59] Geoff, any final thoughts?
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:47:02] No. I think David’s sharing his conversations with us about this is so critically invaluable. Because, you know, people – I think people see bits of the picture but, you know, until it affects them personally in a sustainable and difficult way, we just don’t move enough. We’re just too busy getting on with our lives and, you know, getting up in the morning and, you know, you and I touched on the fact. I can barely get out of bed in the morning [00:47:32] before I have to do something that is not green. Right?
So, but that’s but that’s the nature of how we’ve created our society. And we’ve got to figure our way through this both individually and collectively and find ways of bringing some political influence to the fore. Because ultimately in the democratic societies it’s that influence that’s going to change things. In the non-democratic societies, that ain’t going to change. And to me I’m very fearful of that. China’s [00:48:02] building 100 or more coal plants. Well, you know, that to me is a disaster. I can’t exactly see anybody going up to Xi and saying, excuse me, would you like to rethink that? But it’s just not going to happen.
Peter Reynolds: [00:48:17] David, for those listening, and we talked about hope, and we talked about how some people can feel despondent, what’s one thing that they can do to, you know, if there’s a young person listening, to start that process, to start moving us in the right direction?
David Phillips: [00:48:38] Oh gosh. That’s a tough question. I mean, there’s so much to do. It’s a life work for so many people and for an individual. But my sense is that we don’t all have to be environmentalists or climatologists or scientists or engineers and thinking, you know, I mean, just if – whatever your pursuit is. Whatever. You could be a Sunday sailor. You could be a coach of a girls’ ball team or whatever you do in life. There’s room to also [00:49:08] appreciate nature and the environment and do something to push. This is a huge problem. It’s something that everybody has to embrace. And I think the more we think about it and educate others.
And don’t feel that you’re being an environmentalist is a dirty word. No. No. No. You don’t have to be a tree hugger to spread the word. And just to be concerned and show concern and to all your circle of friends, [00:49:38] whether it be coaches or teachers or neighbours or what have you.
Even when I go into the grocery store and people say, hey, you’re the weather guy and they’ll ask me about the weather. But I never lose the opportunity to say, well, yeah. You know, I think it’s going to get better but, you know, I think the climate issue is something that we have to all be concerned. And then, you know, so often I get the remarks, oh you’re right. You know? And my grandchild is [00:50:08] very in on that and I’m proud of the fact that they are – they do things that way.
And so again, I think it’s a matter of, like, just try to be converting everybody to do the right thing. It’s an impossible task but, hey, we need to start and I think we would get energy and enthusiasm and hope from the fact that we’re seeing that change. And I think we’ve seen it. Maybe we haven’t focused enough on this podcast about the, you know, [00:50:38] the good news, the success that we’ve certainly did a good job of [crepe? 00:50:43] hanging the situation. But I think also maybe we’ve given out a few little morsels of hope there that people can pick up on and begin to talk to others about and move this big, big issue – the most important environmental issue that humankind has ever faced, to move it along that we can give hope that the world won’t end.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:51:06] Yeah. And whilst hope may not be a strategy, if we have enough hope then individual actions will progressively move us in the right direction.
Peter Reynolds: [00:51:15] David, thank you so much for joining us today.
Geoff Sheffrin: [00:51:19] Absolutely. It was a delight, David. Thank you.
David Phillips: [00:51:22] Well, thank you so much. I so enjoyed our conversation and bringing things out and equally shared by everybody. So, hey, thanks for having me aboard. I’ve enjoyed it immensely.
Peter Reynolds: [00:51:33] Well I want to take this opportunity to thank our audience for joining us today because without you this podcast wouldn’t even be here. And whether you’re listening on your favourite podcast app or watching us on YouTube we really appreciate your support. Please be sure to like, subscribe and leave a comment. Your comments are what help drive the subject matter that we discuss on the podcast. And if you can leave us a five-star review on your favourite [00:52:03] podcast app that also is an incredible help.
So for David Phillips and Geoff Sheffrin, I’m Peter Reynolds. You’ve been watching Mother Nature Doesn’t Give a Crap. And we’ll see you next time.
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