The Costs Of Climate Change

If you're looking for a case study into the costs of climate change, consider what happened to British Columbia in 2021. Marc Lee and Ben Parfitt write:

When Don and Mary Nowoselski moved from Dawson Creek in northeast British Columbia to the Creston Valley 30 years ago, they were looking for a little less winter.

But in 2021, they "lost 100 per cent of our crop. We didn’t pick anything. It was just cooking, is what it was. The berries just cooked. I’ve never lost a complete crop ever in the 30 years we’ve been doing it. We just had to walk away from it. It was pretty devastating," Don recalls.

And then there was the year-ending floods and landslides that left five dead on the Duffey Lake Road, thousands forced to flee their damaged or destroyed homes in Merritt and Princeton; police, fire, paramedic crews and volunteers scrambling to get people out of harm’s way; and thousands of businesses suddenly without supplies.

Singly, each of those three events exacted a heavy toll on the province. Collectively, they made for the single-worst climate catastrophe in Canadian history.

All of the individual stories like the Nowoselskis' add up to horrendous losses:

Our research, published today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, shows that when the broad sweep of non-insured losses is considered — along with a number of other factors — the estimated economic hit in B.C. associated with 2021’s extreme weather events is in the range of $10.6 billion to $17.1 billion

Our estimate includes:

Non-insured damages to households and businesses;

Lost income for workers due to closures or damaged transportation linkages;

Costs to the public sector, including immediate disaster response and longer-term cleanup and recovery costs, including rebuilding infrastructure; and

Specific impacts on vulnerable and/or marginalized populations such as people with low incomes, renters, seniors, Indigenous Peoples, immigrants and people with disabilities.

One key takeaway from 2021’s extreme weather events is that in many ways, they were linked, with one making the other worse.

Then came the heat dome:

The 2021 heat dome was at its worst over four days in late June when temperature records were shattered. Temperatures reached over 40 C in many parts of the province, leading to 619 heat-related deaths across B.C.

The farming sector, in particular, was hammered by the heat. More than 650,000 chickens and other livestock animals died, while certain crops were either significantly damaged or destroyed altogether.

The Nowoselskis were among those orchardists who used a rotating crew of between 50 and 100 pickers who moved back and forth between orchards as different cherry varieties ripened. The better pickers were routinely earning $300 to $400 or more per day.

We estimate that between $205 million and $328 million in income was lost in the most-affected sectors. Additionally, heat waves slow everyone down and therefore are also associated with general productivity declines. Over the four days of maximum temperatures, this likely cost the economy an additional $34 million to $84 million in lost productivity.

You get the idea. You'd think that, once climate change begins to cost you big time, you'd start to do something about it.

Image: The Tyee