B.C. climate news: Extreme heat caused at least 16,500 deaths in Europe this summer | Metro Vancouver pushes for water metering | No money for B.C.'s flood strategy
Here’s the latest news concerning climate change and biodiversity loss in B.C. and around the world, from the steps leaders are taking to address the problems, to all the up-to-date science.
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In climate news this week:
• Climate change led to at least 16,500 heat deaths in Europe this summer
• ‘Sobering’ news: No money for B.C.’s flood strategy that will need billions, Metro Vancouver told
• Metro Vancouver pushing for water metering to reduce overall consumption
• Is B.C.’s goal of electrifying LNG to reduce natural gas emissions possible?
Human activities like burning fossil fuels and farming livestock are the main drivers of climate change, according to the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change. This causes heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere, increasing the planet’s surface temperature.
The panel, which is made up of scientists from around the world, including researchers from B.C., has warned for decades that wildfires and severe weather, such as the province’s deadly heat dome and catastrophic flooding in 2021, would become more frequent and intense because of the climate emergency. It has issued a code red for humanity and warns the window to limit warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial times is closing.
According to NASA climate scientists, human activities have raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 per cent in less than 200 years, and “there is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.”
As of Sept. 5, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 425.48 parts per million, down slightly from 427.87 ppm last month, according to NOAA data measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory, a global atmosphere monitoring lab in Hawaii. The NOAA notes there has been a steady rise in CO2 from under 320 ppm in 1960.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warms the planet, causing climate change. Human activities have raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50% in less than 200 years, according to NASA.
Climate change quick facts:
• The Earth is now about 1.3 C warmer than it was in the 1800s.
• 2024 was hottest year on record globally, beating the record in 2023.
• The global average temperature in 2023 reached 1.48 C higher than the pre-industrial average, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. In 2024, it breached the 1.5 C threshold at 1.55 C.
• The past 10 years (2015-2024) are the 10 warmest on record.
• Human activities have raised atmospheric concentrations of CO2 by nearly 49 per cent above pre-industrial levels starting in 1850.
• The world is not on track to meet the Paris Agreement target to keep global temperature from exceeding 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, the upper limit to avoid the worst fallout from climate change including sea level rise, and more intense drought, heat waves and wildfires.
• On the current path of carbon dioxide emissions, the temperature could increase by as much 3.6 C this century, according to the IPCC.
• In June 2025, global concentrations of carbon dioxide exceeded 430 parts per million, a record high.
• Emissions must drop 7.6 per cent per year from 2020 to 2030 to keep temperatures from exceeding 1.5 C and 2.7 per cent per year to stay below 2 C.
• There is global scientific consensus that the climate is warming and that humans are the cause.
• Scientific information taken from natural sources (such as ice cores, rocks, and tree rings) and from modern equipment (like satellites and instruments) all show the signs of a changing climate.
(Sources: United Nations IPCC, World Meteorological Organization, UNEP, NASA, climatedata.ca)
Latest News
Climate change fuelled scorching summer temperatures that killed an estimated 16,500 people in European cities this summer, pushing overall heat deaths to more than three times what might otherwise have occurred, according to a new study.
The analysis presents an early glimpse at the effects of Europe’s fourth warmest summer on record, in which a series of heat waves hit countries from Italy to Germany and France. Temperatures reached up to 46 C in Spain and Portugal, and led to the deaths of several outdoor workers in Spain and Italy.
“These numbers represent real people who have lost their lives,” said Friederike Otto, an Imperial College London climate science professor who co-authored the study alongside colleagues from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and other institutions. “If we continue on the path that we are now — continue burning fossil fuels — these deaths will only increase.”
Researchers focused on 854 urban areas, finding that temperatures were as much as 3.6 C higher from June through August due to climate change, according to a report they released Wednesday.
—Bloomberg News
Flooding in Abbotsford in 2021.
The B.C. government’s 10-year flood strategy to reduce risks worsened by climate change will need to be backstopped with billions of dollars, but local governments are being told there is no money.
When Metro Vancouver representatives met this month with Randene Neill, B.C.’s minister of water, land and resource stewardship, and Kelly Greene, the minister of emergency management and climate readiness, they were told there is no new funding for the flood strategy because of the province’s tight fiscal position.
This week, the B.C. government announced that this year’s ballooning operating deficit has grown to $11.6 billion.
Lisa Dominato, the chairwoman of Metro Vancouver’s air quality and climate change committee, shared the “sobering” news with local politicians on the committee at a recent meeting.
In an interview Friday, Dominato said the problem is there has been a lot of planning and mapping of risks already and they are ready for action, but cannot fund projects without the assistance of higher levels of government because local governments simply don’t have the tax bases to do so.
This is about prevention, she said, pointing to the floods in 2021 that hit southern B.C. and parts of the Interior, including in Merritt, where the town had to be evacuated.
—Gordon Hoekstra
Metro Vancouver is making a push to get more municipalities to require water meters for each water customer.
Population growth, coupled with climate change-driven reductions in snowpacks and rain during summer months, requires expanded water-conservation measures, according to a recent staff report sent to Metro’s water committee.
Measuring water use so residents only pay for what they use not only helps to conserve water but also helps to identify leaks in the pipes, the report says.
“The Metro Vancouver region is one of the few major water suppliers in Canada that do not universally meter the end-user,” says the report, noting that 52 per cent of water used in the region is unmetered.
While all commercial and industrial buildings have water meters and all new buildings require them, unmetered water remains common in residences, especially older and single-family ones.
—Sobia Moman
File photo of an air conditioner and fan at a business on Powell St. in Vancouver.
Climate change made several heat waves across Canada this summer up to 10 times more likely, according to climate scientists with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
The scientists analyzed 17 regions in July and August using data from the federal agency’s rapid extreme weather event attribution system, which compares today’s climate with a pre-industrial one to demonstrate how emissions from human activities have increased extreme weather.
Of those, heat waves in 12 regions were linked to human-caused climate change, including nine that were considered “much more likely because of climate change,” said Megan Kirchmeier-Young, a climate research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada.
That means human influence on the climate made heat waves in parts of B.C., Alberta, the Northwest Territories, Quebec and Atlantic Canada two to 10 times more likely to occur than without human-created emissions.
“When we have a heat event that triggers our analysis we monitor that event, and we pick the hottest day and that’s when we do this attribution analysis,” said Kirchmeier-Young.
A heat wave in Northern B.C. was found to be the longest in the country, lasting from Aug. 23 to Sept. 9, with temperatures reaching a peak of 9.6 C above normal on Aug. 29, she said.
In southern B.C., from Aug. 23 to Sept. 7, temperatures reached a peak of 10.3 C above normal on Sept. 3.
—Tiffany Crawford
The B.C. NDP appears to be all in on LNG with the environmental approval of the Ksi Lisims terminal, but the province faces challenges in getting all five terminals proposed or underway in B.C. connected to clean power as previously required.
Overall, Natural Resources Canada estimates LNG could add $7.4 billion annually to Canada’s economy, with the LNG Canada terminal in Kitimat expected to add 0.4 per cent to the country’s GDP on its own.
In 2023, B.C. mandated that all new LNG terminals would be required to chart a path toward net-zero by 2030, but earlier this year that mandate was weakened to instead only require new LNG facilities to be “net-zero-ready” by the end of the decade.
B.C. Hydro has been experiencing chronic shortages of electricity due to drought and population growth, with the Crown corporation needing to increase the power supply by up to 15 per cent over the next five years to keep up with demand.
Energy Minister Adrian Dix has now launched two calls for power over the last two years in an effort to bring online alternate sources of clean electricity, and passed legislation this spring that would remove the need for wind power projects to go through the standard environmental review process.
Green interim Leader Jeremy Valeriote says any emissions that result from the LNG projects will take B.C. farther away from the reduction target of 40 per cent by 2030 that Dix has already acknowledged B.C. isn’t on track to meet.
“The more fossil-fuel infrastructure we develop whether or not we electrify some part of it, it’s still adding to our emissions, and it’s going to make it impossible to meet our target,” said Valeriote.
—Alec Lazenby
File photo of Coquitlam residents outside city hall. Photo credit: Nancy Furness
Evidence that climate change harms public health is “beyond scientific dispute,” the independent National Academy of Sciences said Wednesday in a report responding to Trump administration efforts to revoke a landmark 2009 U.S. government finding declaring climate change a threat.
The NAS, a non-governmental non-profit set up to advise the government on science, said human activity is releasing greenhouse gases that are warming the planet, increasing extreme temperatures and changing the oceans, all dangerous developments for the health and welfare of the United States public. Evidence to that effect has only grown stronger since 2009, the group said.
In July, the Trump administration proposed revoking what’s known as the “endangerment” finding, the concept that climate change is a threat. The finding underpins many environmental regulations adopted in the U.S. and overturning it could pave the way for cutting a range of rules that limit pollution from cars, power plants and other sources.
“EPA’s 2009 finding that the human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare was accurate, has stood the test of time, and is now reinforced by even stronger evidence,” the NAS said. Science that was uncertain or tentative in 2009 has now been resolved, it said, and new risks have been found, too.
—The Associated Press
There has been a significant increase in single-use disposable items winding up in Metro Vancouver landfills, despite a push to encourage residents to use less because of the adverse environmental impact.
In 2024, overall single-use items — including bags, cups, straws, utensils and takeout containers — made up about three per cent of the total waste stream, up from 2.1 per cent in 2023, according to a Metro staff report to the zero-waste committee.
And that number is expected to increase given the popularity of food-delivery services.
Terry Fulton, a senior project engineer with Metro and an expert in waste composition, said there was a notable shift toward home-food delivery during and after COVID-19.
He said that while disposable items still make up a relatively small part of the waste stream at three per cent, the increase is a move in the wrong direction.
—Tiffany Crawford
Australia will spend A$9 billion ($6 billion) on climate adaptation through 2030 as it braces for more frequent, severe and overlapping hazards caused by global warming, the government said in two climate-related reports on Monday.
The money is earmarked for flood mitigation, bushland conservation, supporting the agriculture sector to transition to net zero, and managing health impacts across society, among others, according to the National Adaptation Plan. That was released alongside a report that showed the nation at risk of losing A$40 billion a year due to climate change.
“No Australian community will be immune” from deadly heat waves, floods, cyclones, droughts and bushfires, said Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen on the release of the reports.
They come as Australia prepares to publish its 2035 emissions targets and is bidding to co-host the United Nations’ flagship climate conference next year. Environmental groups have pushed for the new targets to be far more ambitious as the nation tackles back-to-back disasters already costing billions each year.
—Bloomberg News