The upside of global warming

A new report says Canada could benefit from climate change. Should we just sit back and let it happen?

The climate change alarm has been sounding so loud and so clear in recent years that it’s hard to hear any other viewpoints over the din. But a report released yesterday by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy suggests Canada may actually have things to gain from a warmer earth, including increased tourism, bigger forests, and more oil. So maybe we don’t have so much to worry about after all.

The Globe and Mail was quick to jump on the report, however, writing in an editorial that “while not all the change to Canada's climate will be deleterious, in no way does that decrease the urgency, or absolve Canada of the responsibility, to deal with climate change.” Yes, there may be positives to global warming, but “for almost every benefit, the survey found a downside,” such as the desertification of the Prairies and poorer air quality. “Standing on the sidelines, wagering on victory, would be the dangerous, and morally bankrupt, position,” the Globe warns.

Their editorial may be a thinly veiled response to this weekend’s Globe article by Doug Sanders about Greenland, where the government isn’t just standing on the sidelines, it's rushing onto the field and playing for the opposing team. “To the rest of the world, [climate change] appears to be the greatest problem of our century,” but to Greenland’s Inuit, “global warming is a gift from the heavens.” After years of living in humiliating economic and cultural subjugation, “retreating ice is salvation,” opening up access to natural resources that will give the people control over their destiny.

A piece by Dan Gardner that circulated in Postmedia papers this week argues that predicting climate change is pointless. A “stunning contradiction shows up … when environmentalists talk about climate change,” he writes, noting that the idea that ecosystems are too complex to fully understand is canonical wisdom for eco-activists, and yet they continue to issue warnings about exactly how and when climate change will unfold. “Either we can reliably predict the effect human actions have on climate and the natural world or we cannot,” he writes. “Which is it?”