Climate chaos

In addition to lost lives, smoke-induced illness, evacuation of tens of thousands of Canadians, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and $billions of losses to homes, forest values, biodiversity, businesses and infrastructure, unwanted wildfire with its consequent flash flooding, landslides, and tremendous greenhouse gas emission, is a major factor in worsening climate chaos making Planet Earth increasingly uninhabitable. 

Global warming causes the trend of exponentially increasing wildfire area burned. The scientific climate community has reached an almost 100% consensus¹ that global warming is real and human-caused, primarily by burning fossil fuels. Wikipedia lists many other studies confirming that consensus². The few deniers may be incentivized by the fossil industry.

British Columbia’s annual reported greenhouse gas emission of 60 million tons of CO₂ equivalent doesn’t include emission from wildfires even though in British Columbia (BC) each hectare burned emits 207 tons of CO₂ equivalent³. In 2017, 2018, and 2021, the area burned in BC was 1,215,852⁴, 1,353,861⁵, and 869,255⁶ hectares emitting 252, 278, and 180 million tons of CO₂ respectively.

In 2023, a staggering record 2,823,802 ha (28,238 square kilometres) of BC’s 60 million forested hectares⁷ (5%) burned in BC⁸, emitting over 635 million tons of CO₂. This is 8 times BC’s total reported emissions. 

For comparison, between 1995 and 2002, unwanted wildfire in BC averaged 30,000 ha/year in each consecutive five year period⁹. Between 2017 and 2021 it averaged 688,000 ha/year – over 20 times that. In 2023 it was 93 times that.

The record  18,491,141 ha (185,000 square kilometers) burned in Canada in 2023 emitted 3.8 billion tons of CO₂¹⁰. This is a tenth of the reported 37 billion annual tons global energy-related CO₂ emissions¹¹ and a sixth of the global “…gap to emissions consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C in 2030 [which] is estimated to be 20.3–23.9 Gt CO₂ eq.”¹²

This will increase global warming, which will cause a greater wildfire area burned in a vicious cycle. 

Furthermore, it has recently been discovered that wildfire smoke is eroding the ozone layer¹³ which protects us from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

Because of a developing el Niño, 2024 wildfires and climate catastrophe could be much worse. 

1. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966 ↩︎
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists’_views_on_climate_change ↩︎
3.  Personal communication; Mark Hafer, Carbon Accounting, CFS/PFC/PPO/FCA
   Natural Resources Canada. 207 tons CO₂ e/hectare in BC for 2017 from the 2019 GHG Inventory analysis ↩︎
4. https://www.ciffc.ca/sites/default/files/2019-03/2017_canada_report_2018_05_04.pdf ↩︎
5. https://www.ciffc.ca/sites/default/files/2019-06/2018 Canada Report 019_05_28 R1.pdf ↩︎
6. https://www.ciffc.ca/sites/default/files/2022-02/Canada_Report_2021_Final.pdf ↩︎
7. Forested area in BC https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/Docs/Mr/Mr113/forests.htm ↩︎
8.  https://ciffc.net/summary  Grand total for BC ↩︎
9. Personal communication from a BCWS manager who wants to remain anonymous ↩︎
10. https://ciffc.net/summary Grand total for Canada ↩︎
11. https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2022 This excludes wildfire emissions ↩︎
12. 2023 Sept. 8  https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/sb2023_09_adv.pdf page 5; para. I. B. 10. ↩︎
13. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05683-0  & https://news.mit.edu/2023/study-smoke-particles-wildfires-erode-ozone-0308 ↩︎