Report says forests will suffer more due to climate change, but neglects to mention own role in global emissions
The Alberta tar sands (Pic: Howl Arts Collective/Flickr)
By Paul Brown
Having repudiated the Kyoto Protocol on reducing fossil fuel use, Canada is still exploiting tar sands for oil − despite accepting that climate change is destroying its forests.
Detailed evidence that Canada’s vast natural areas are undergoing major changes because of climate change is produced in a new report by Natural Resources Canada.
The government body describes problems with disappearing glaciers, sea level rise, melting permafrost and changing snow and rainfall patterns. One of the country’s most important natural resources, the forests that cover more than 50% of its land area, is under pressure because of pests, fire and drought.
There may, the reports says, be some pluses for Canada in climate change − at least in the short term − because some staple cereal crops will also be able to be grown further north because of warmer weather, assuming that the soil is suitable.
The report, Canada in a Changing Climate, concentrates on impacts and adaptation, but does not mention the causes, or the fact that Canada is now an international pariah in the environmental community because of its exploitation of tar sands for oil.
The country does attempt, for economic reasons, to be more energy efficient, but has repudiated the Kyoto Protocol and international efforts to curb fossil fuel use. The country had accepted a target of cutting emissions on 1990 levels by 5% by 2012, but the government backed out in 2011.
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Average greenhouse gas emissions for oil sands extraction and upgrading are estimated to be 3.2 to 4.5 times as intensive per barrel as for conventional crude oil produced in Canada or the US.
If Alberta, where the oil is produced from tar sands, was a country and not a merely a province of Canada, it would have the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world.
The only mention the report makes of tar sands extraction is the problem caused by its large use of water, and it makes the point that the industry is recycling as much as possible.
Mitigation is not on the agenda, as the country’s politicians are intent on exploiting as much of the country’s oil and gas as possible.
A study of forests says that 224,410 people are directly employed in the sector, although it makes up only 1.1% of GDP. About 5% of the forests are damaged annually because of outbreaks of pests and fire.
Temperatures in the forest areas have risen far more sharply than on the rest of the planet, with far-reaching consequences for the future, the report says.
In 2009, over three million hectares of forest were destroyed by fire in a single year. The number of fires is expected to increase, with the area being burned being three to five times as much in Western Canada by the end of the century.
Large fires are raging again this year, but the quantity of the damage has yet to be assessed.
Severe outbreaks
One of the pests moving north and devastating mature trees is the mountain pine beetle. The beetle is endemic, but is killed by winter temperatures below 35˚C, thus limiting its numbers from year to year.
However, winter temperatures in many areas now fail to drop below this level, leading to larger and more severe outbreaks of the pest.
A report in 2012 concluded that 18.1 million hectares of forest dominated by mature Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) had been affected. Scientists conclude that productivity of the forests will decline rapidly in British Columbia, and thousands of jobs will be lost.
Meanwhile, the beetle is continuing to move north and east.
One advantage of the increased temperatures in Canada is that trees can grow further north and higher up mountains than previously, and there is a longer growing season.
Trees that live 100 years cannot migrate fast enough to take advantage, so local governments are going in for assisted migration.
This involves planting the seeds of suitable species 100 to 200 metres above the existing tree line on mountains, and in some cases two degrees of latitude northwards (about 100 miles) of the existing forests into what is currently tundra or scrub.
This article was produced by the Climate News Network