EDITORIAL: Adapting to climate change is common sense

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Of the two ways to address climate change — adaptation and mitigation — adaptation is far more significant when it comes to improving the daily lives of Canadians.

Mitigation, which means reducing greenhouse gas emissions, will take decades to have any discernible impact on severe weather.

Adaptation means pursuing sensible policies that make public and private infrastructure more resilient to the impacts of severe weather, no matter how it’s caused.

It’s a less controversial policy than mitigation which is the justification for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax and other policies that raise the cost of living .

Adaptation involves common sense policies such as upgrading and separating storm and sanitary sewers, tougher building codes, banning urban development on coastlines, in flood plains and in heavily forested areas, planting trees, preserving wetlands and keeping roads, bridges, public transit, dams, dikes, berms and spillways in a state of good repair.

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You wouldn’t think these would be controversial ideas but as Robert Henson writes in The Rough Guide to Climate Change: The Symptoms, The Science, The Solutions:

“What might seem like a straightforward response to climate change — adapting to it — is actually fraught with politics … There’s a tension between adaptation and mitigation: to some, the former implies a disregard of the latter, as if society were giving up on trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

That’s an absurd argument and it’s why it’s a positive step that Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault announced Tuesday that the federal, provincial and territorial governments have agreed on a national policy on adapting to climate change.

The problem is Ottawa has only earmarked about $6.5 billion since 2015 to adaptation, compared to a total budget of $200 billion addressing climate change.

According to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, responsible for 60% of Canada’s core public infrastructure (the rest is owned by the federal and provincial governments) we already have a national climate adaptation deficit of $150 billion, with 35% of all municipal infrastructure in fair, poor or very poor condition.

The Trudeau government has contributed to this infrastructure deficit, but mainly, it inherited it from decades of neglect by all levels of government in Canada, that failed to keep public and private infrastructure in a state of good repair.

That bill has come due now.