Nature's Past Episode 031: Histories of Canadian Environmental Issues, Part 1 – Global Warming

Since the World Conference on Changing Atmosphere was held in Toronto in 1988, Canadians have participated in discussions of climate change prevention and adaptation. The UN-established and Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change includes Canadian members and Canada supported the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, though it withdrew from the treaty in 2011 when faced with financial penalties for failing to meet its greenhouse emissions reduction goals. The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) Act established and maintains the NRTEE as a federal agency, advocating adaptation and suggesting Canada must “adapt and prosper” in the face of climate change, seeking out the “opportunities” climate change offers Canadians. The Canadian government recently announced that the NRTEE will be eliminated as of March 31, 2013. In spite of this and other political setbacks, Canadian climatologists have continued Impact and Adaptation Studies among Canadian communities, and historians of climate change in Canada examine the ways in which these biological, political, and social changes have taken place, providing context for assessing their efficacy. Organizations such as the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE) continue to support projects examining climate change in Canada, such as the Early Canadian Environmental Data Project.

Changes in Earth’s climate have always occurred and have varied over time, with no consistent pattern of warming or cooling emerging until the 1820s. Before the Industrial Revolution, eras such as the Medieval Warm Period could be followed by periods of cooling, such as the Little Ice Age, though the effects of climate change have not been consistent around the globe. After the Industrial Revolution, however, a pattern of consistent global atmospheric temperature increase due to human activity, called anthropogenic climate change, became apparent. The scientific community began discussing this phenomenon and its causes as early as 1896, with Svante Aarhenius’s calculation of atmospheric warming due to industrial gases released into Earth’s atmosphere. As the twentieth century progressed and patterns of anthropogenic climate change became more apparent and alarming to the scientific community, the discussion moved into the public realm as scientists, politicians, and bureaucrats attempted to address climate change through public policy. Nations and international agencies then began formulating regulations in attempts to curb climate change. The discussion increasingly focused on economics and has now shifted from finding ways to fight anthropogenic climate change to creating means of adapting economies to its effects.

Historians have credited historical climate change with creating environmental opportunities for human action, including Norse exploration of the Canadian Atlantic coast, the Thule peoples’ movements across the Arctic, eighteenth-century adaptations of South Saskatchewan River Basin peoples, and economic diversification of contemporary logging communities in British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alberta, to name a few. Climate change and knowledge of the environment in Canada now exist in a colonial context that includes local knowledge and indigenous participation as climatologists and policy makers seek ways of creatively adapting to changes in the Canadian climate.

On this episode of the podcast, we hold a round-table discussion about the role of climate in Canadian and global history with James Daschuk, Joshua MacFadyen, and Dagomar Degroot. We also speak with Ross Coen, author of the recently published book Breaking Ice for Arctic Oil: The Epic Voyage of the SS Manhattan through the Northwest Passage.