The Language of Climate Change
[Music]
climate change isn’t just changing the
natural environment
it’s changing language take the word
megafire
which was once the way we described our
largest and most destructive wildfires
that burned over a hundred thousand
acres
nowadays we have gigafires that burn
over a million like a 2020 fire in
california
that burned an area nearly three times
the size
of los angeles black summer
was a term coined by australians for
their recent bushfire season
due to the unusually intense fires that
burned an area more than
five times the size of vancouver island
and here in british columbia canada we
lived
through the smoke from fires in
washington and oregon this past summer
we can recall the effects the sting in
our eyes and lungs
sunny days hidden by a smoky blanket
but there were also the effects that we
didn’t see
as an ecologist watching these fires
burn
i saw carbon carbon stored in trees
shrubs and soils that took decades
sometimes centuries to accumulate
quickly combusted and sent into the
atmosphere as greenhouse gases
the same gases released by the burning
of fossil fuels
the main driver of climate change that
we’re facing today
and i saw all the climate benefits of an
intact forest
carbon removal as plants take co2 carbon
dioxide
out of the atmosphere as they grow i
watched those benefits
disappear as well and these wildfire
missions are nothing to scoff at
here in bc our two back-to-back extreme
wildfire seasons in 2017 and 18
each produced three times more
greenhouse gases
than all other sectors combined
meaning forests which are one of our
most important assets in the fight
against climate change
can just as easily be a liability
trees can and do regrow post-fire
building up carbon as they do
but building that carbon takes time
and in the fight against climate change
time is precisely
what we lack so
how did we get to an era of gigafires
and what can we do about it
let’s start by talking about fire
suppression a phrase that used to be
jargon but is now just part of our
general vocabulary
before this policy many landscapes in
north america burned regularly
due to fires ignited by lightning and
those ignited by indigenous people to
sustain healthy ecosystems and
communities
fire maintained ecological integrity and
landscape mosaics
forested stands clumps of shrubs
grasslands and bare ground
all intermixed this variation changed
the flow of fire across the landscape
and constrained the severity of many of
these burns
but european colonizers forcibly removed
indigenous communities from their land
and inhibited traditional fire
stewardship around the turn of the 20th
century
both canada and the united states
implemented comprehensive policies of
fire suppression
and effectively banned burning by
indigenous communities
intentionally excluding fire we
fundamentally altered
the structure character and resilience
of our forests
our landscapes became dominated by
conifers which in large continuous
stands can quickly carry and spread fire
and increase the risk of pest and
disease outbreaks like mountain pine
beetle
which has taken a staggering toll here
in bc
in the absence of regular fire and with
millions of beetle kill trees
our forests are packed to the brim with
fuel ready to burn
layered on top of these dangerous forest
conditions
is climate change which brings us not
only new words
but reinvigorates old words with new
meaning
words like unprecedented which i know
after 2020 none of us want to hear again
but
at the same time when it comes to
climate no other word captures
the moment that we’re in or where we’re
headed
in relation to today’s forests
unprecedented
applies to higher temperatures extended
droughts and rapid fire spread
so we see bigger fires more often that
are harder to control
and riskier to humans in relation to
today’s climate
unprecedented applies to atmospheric co2
concentrations
which ice cores tell us are higher than
any
time in the last 800 000 years
meaning higher than any time in the
history of our species
this is a direct consequence of fossil
fuel burning which governments around
the world have subsidized
even after the consequences were well
understood
despite language about the new normal
the changes to our climate are just
getting started
if we continue to burn fossil fuels we
will keep breaking records
and move deeper into an unprecedented
world
so what do we do
as the conditions of our world change we
must shift our thinking
re-examine our language and let words
take on new meaning
why because changes in language are a
precursor to action
and a first step towards change
the word conservation conjures ideas of
preservation
of landscapes untouched by human
activity
but in reality indigenous people have
been managing and shaping north
america’s landscape since time
immemorial
and now climate change is bringing human
influence to even
the most protected areas of the world as
temperatures shift and rain patterns
change
some forests will no longer be able to
support the species that we’ve expected
there for generations
instead of viewing conservation as the
preservation
of what once was we need the language of
conservation
to mean preparation for what will be
in a word we need resilience
ecological resilience so that our
forests can persist
and thrive in the face of tomorrow’s
wildfires
so that they can continue to support not
just our species
but all species that call these forests
home
so that forests can be part of the
solution and
actively remove carbon from our
atmosphere
but resilience like trust is
challenging to build but deceptively
easy to dismantle
thousands of years of evolutionary and
human history
created the resilient forests of our
past and it just took
over a single century of burning fossil
fuels
and suppressing fires to unravel the
whole
damn thing
those invested in continuing to burn
fossil fuels
embrace the language of moderation that
climate
action means each of us turning down our
thermostat by a few degrees or
simply abiding by smokey the bears
refrain that only you
can prevent forest fires but
what climate action demands is the
language of transformation
transforming how the energy that powers
a thermostat is generated
and transforming the conditions of
forests themselves
building resilience requires
unprecedented action
to match the scale of this crisis and an
acknowledgement
that climate change is not an individual
problem
but a systemic one not an issue of
choices
but of policies that’s
not to say that individual decisions
don’t matter
they’re just insufficient
because when it comes to climate change
our systems
have failed
all right that was heavy
but there are reasons for us to hope
because if
policies got us here policies can help
us get
out we could restore indigenous land
stewardship
and remove the bureaucratic barriers
that stifle the reintroduction of
traditional fire
we can replace the language of fire
suppression
with that of adaptive management which
is already practiced here in bc
but could be practiced at a much greater
scale
this means investing resources to create
jobs so we can physically remove
fuel from our landscapes by using
thinning or
prescribed burns but then also we need
to use that fuel
that carbon in ways that keeps it out of
the atmosphere
even after it’s left the forest
we could remove the word glyphosate a
powerful herbicide
from our forest management policies this
chemical is currently sprayed on
thousands of acres of regrowing forest
and promotes commercially valuable
species at the expense of hardwoods like
aspen
which can naturally moderate fire
behavior
and finally we have to eliminate fossil
fuel subsidies
which are in direct conflict with
provincial and federal
efforts to combat climate change because
when it comes to carbon without reducing
the amount of greenhouse gases that we
pump into the atmosphere
all the tree planting and forest
management in the world
won’t make a difference
the language of climate action is here
for
our taking what we need is the
collective courage to act
as individuals we must demand
transformative action from our elected
officials
and the systems they represent on our
behalf
we can proactively manage our forests
with carbon and tomorrow’s wildfires in
mind
we can reimagine the language of our
policies
to prioritize justice and climate action
and we can transform our systems to meet
the urgency of this
moment the urgency of our
moment by doing so
we give future generations a fighting
chance at resilience themselves
because while gigafires may be our
reality today
they don’t have to be our future
thank you
you