It was 8:30 a.m. last Tuesday. I was scrambling to get an editorial done before we went to print when my phone buzzed in my pocket with a CBC news alert. 

“Sunken Nazi warships are resurfacing as Europe’s drought deepens,” read the headline. So few words to describe the particular brand of devastation and terror that is defining this moment in time. Europe’s record heat waves, supercharged by over a century of burning fossil fuels, are evaporating its rivers, uncovering the remains of a toxic political system that for many years was believed to have been defeated.

Meanwhile, these same heatwaves are destroying the world as we know it. In Europe, France, Spain, Scotland, Ireland, Croatia, Greece, and now Belgium, have all been scorched by hellish infernos. Over 1,200,000 acres burned by wildfires. By the end of July, some 330,000 had been evacuated from their homes, a number that’s likely higher now after another month of fires. The wildfire devastation in Canada this summer and in years past has been on par. 

In the Pontiac last week, we saw a different face of climate change. A thunderstorm with an almost-tornado and golf-ball sized hail tore through the region, shredding crops and killing livestock in Clarendon. As one farmer put it, “people 80 years old” have never seen hail destruction quite like what he encountered in his soy and corn fields. As the climate warms, hail will only get bigger, according to a study published in the journal Nature this spring. As the scientists explain, a warmer atmosphere brings with it more extreme thunderstorms with stronger air drafts. Hail is formed by drops of water that get bounced around in cooler clouds before they drop to the ground. Stronger air drafts mean these drops are spending more time up in the clouds, growing in size before they descend to wreak havoc. 

The reason I keep coming back to this subject in editorials this summer is, well, because our planet is burning. And perhaps more terrifying than images circulating on social media of entire communities going up in flames is the prospect that these images, this reality, be accepted as normal. We are lucky enough to live in a corner of the world that so far has gone largely unscathed in this climate crisis. In this context, it is easy to look the other way, to call it a fluke storm, or chalk it up to good old unpredictable Mother Nature. But how many times is a fluke a fluke before it becomes a new reality? And will we look this reality in the eye in time to prepare ourselves for its wrath?

July data from the Angus Reid Institute shows that we’re moving in the wrong direction when it comes to our willingness to accept that human activity is causing climate change. Just 59 per cent of Canadians believe that climate change is mostly caused by human activity. In 2021, 71 per cent were comfortable with this truth. Over the same five years, the percentage of people who consider climate change a “very serious” threat dropped from 50 per cent to 38 per cent.

Acknowledging that human activity – the ongoing burning of fossil fuels – is causing climate change is the first step in slowing its course. Failing to connect these dots leaves space for governments to keep using our money to support the oil and gas industry that is making some very rich while the rest of us Google “hail-resistant bean varieties.”