How The Climate Crisis Is Making Canadians Stick

All over the world, people are facing health hazards that are directly linked to climate breakdown.

- Lisa Bendall

And according to a 2017 United Nations report that explores the worsening human-health impact of this crisis, we’re losing ground every year. If we fail to reverse this trend, we’ll see a marked increase in deaths by 2030.

As Canadians, we should be singularly alarmed, as we’ll confront a broad range of climate disasters. “We’re a very large country, with a lot of different geography and geology. We have flooded in Quebec and fires in Alberta,” says Dr. Bradley Dibble, a cardiologist in Barrie, Ont.

According to a major Environment and Climate Change Canada report released in April, our country is heating up twice as fast as the world’s average. Yet a 2017 Health Canada poll found that over half of the population doesn’t believe that climate change is currently threatening our health and our lives.

They’re wrong. This environmental emergency is making Canadians sick in ways many of us never predicted. Some groups are especially vulnerable, such as the very young or old, those with existing medical conditions and those who live on the margins due to socioeconomic factors. But none of us is safe.

“The climate crisis is ultimately going to be a health issue,” notes Dibble. “The planet will survive, and some species will survive, but the human species will be in real jeopardy in the coming decades.” That’s because your health is already at risk in multiple ways.

YOUR BREATHING IS COMPROMISED

Any time we burn fossil fuels, we’re pumping fine particulate matter from oil, gas and other toxins into the air. “Some of these carbon particles can persist in the lungs for decades, like soot in a chimney,” says Dr. Don Sin, a respirologist and director of the Centre for Heart Lung Innovation at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver.