Saturday Huddle: When Forest Fires are no Longer Remarkable
The Saturday Huddle is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis, and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts, and business news in the region. Trevor Nichols is Huddle’s editor.
Thousands of Nova Scotians have had the worst week of their lives.
Record-breaking forest fires ripped through the province and forced about 20,000 people to evacuate their homes. Many of those homes are now nothing but ash.
It’s a shocking display of destruction many Nova Scotians aren’t used to. But these kinds of massive and destructive wildfires are quite common in other parts of the country.
Several years ago, I lived in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia for half a decade, where forest fires are much more common.
Every year, “fire season” was marked with seemingly constant warnings, destruction, and a smoky haze in the sky as hundreds of wildfires racked the region. The kind of mass evacuations Nova Scotians are right now dealing with were the norm.
My wife remarked several times this week how Halifax felt like the Okanagan: that dry haze blanketing the sky, the slightly acrid smell of smoke in the air, the vague uneasiness as people not directly affected go about their days.
Forest fires are always scary. And for the people forced to evacuate, or who lose their homes to the flames, they are straight-up horrifying.
I still remember the panic I felt when I had to leave work and start stuffing our important documents into a bag because we thought a nearby fire was going to rip through our neighbourhood.
We didn’t need to evacuate in the end, but it was still deeply traumatic.
But, despite how harrowing forest fires were for people who are directly affected, it became remarkably easy in the Okanagan to push them to the back of your mind and just continue with your life.
Forest fires were so common that people became inured against their horror. If your, your friends, or your family weren’t being threatened, it was hard to find the mental space to care too much.
Don’t get me wrong, for most people the fires were still upsetting. It’s just that they were also commonplace. Most no longer found it remarkable that out-of-control fires forced thousands to flee their homes every single year.
But of course, it’s remarkable; it’s downright world-shaking.
It’s just that gradual acceptance made it feel less so. And that allowed people, and more importantly politicians, to continue to not meaningfully address the real problem.
This week, tens of thousands of Nova Scotians are getting a taste of the kind of “normal” summer I became accustomed to in the Okanagan – and we are rightly horrified. As climate change continues to boil the planet, it seems likely this kind of fire season will become normal here, too.
My plea to my fellow Maritimers is to not become desensitized to that horror.
For essentially my entire life, I’ve watched politicians set climate goals and then put in only the barest hint of effort to meet them. Nova Scotia is no exception.
This province’s climate plan sets a 2050 target to hit net-zero emissions and calls for a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gasses by 2030. If we were treating climate change as the glaring emergency it is, we would already have hit both targets.
Even still, given our government’s history on climate action, I’m not sure many expect us to reach even those far-too-distant goals.
Nova Scotia Power has made significant progress greening its power production, but nowhere close to enough. By 2025, it predicts only about half the power in this province will come from renewable sources. That same year, 27 per cent of our province’s power will come from just straight-up burning coal.
If we’re still relying on the dirties, industrial-era sources for almost a third of our power two years from now, why would anyone think we’re anywhere close to net zero?
Meanwhile, Tim Houston’s most notable climate-related policy has been steadfastly opposing the federal carbon tax, a policy that evidence shows is among the best ways to reduce carbon emissions with the least economic impact.
Forest fires are a horrifying, stark, and deadly reminder of the dire situation our planet is in. And fires like the ones we’re seeing in Nova Scotia should be a giant wake-up call for people and politicians who refuse to seriously consider the problem.
This could be our moment to do that in Nova Scotia.
Let me beg my fellow Maritimes again, as community-shaking forest fires become more common, please don’t become inured, please don’t stop asking our leaders tough questions, please don’t accept that this is just how things are now.
If we do, it will only mean more heartbreak and suffering.
Stay safe out there, everyone, and do whatever you can to support our firefighters. Thousands of us are safe today because of them.