The summer of 2024 in Alberta is one for the record books.
The forest fire that destroyed a third of Jasper shattered lives and livelihoods. It was the ninth most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history. Insured losses from the blaze cost an estimated $880 million.
The violent windstorm that hit Calgary on August 5 rained down golf ball-sized hail, severely damaging buildings, planes, and vehicles.
Insurers say the Calgary storm resulted in 180,000 claims and $2.8 billion in insured damages. It was the second-costliest disaster ever in Canada. Only the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire cost more – a whopping $4.5 billion price tag.
“Back in the 1980s, ’90s and early 2000s, my industry was paying out on average annually hundreds of millions of dollars in severe weather,” Rob de Pruis, national director for the Insurance Bureau of Canada, told Jasper Council in late August. “But over this past decade, that number is well over $2 billion.”
We Can’t Afford to Wait Any Longer
The financial cost of extreme weather has soared into the stratosphere, not counting the human cost of lost lives.
This past summer, 24-year-old Morgan Kitchen from Calgary died fighting the Jasper wildfire. A tree fell on him while he was battling the blaze. His sister told CBC News that he was a “bright, charismatic, kind and loving light in the lives of everyone he touched.”
In 2023, four wilderness firefighters died while on the job.
According to one report, wildfire smoke caused between 620 and 2,700 deaths between 2013 and 2018. There were fewer forest fires then. No studies show recent numbers, but we can assume the number of deaths is much higher.
Smoke from wildfires pollutes our air and affects our health, and we’re seeing more and more wildfires every year.
Cancelled Renewables
If we want to stay healthy, we need to reduce the amount of pollution we put into the air.
Building more solar and wind farms is a great way to do that. The oil and gas industry pumps out tons and tons of harmful chemicals, while solar farms, in comparison, don’t impact our health.
2023’s wildfire season broke records. All that smoke was awful for our health. Still, Alberta’s UCP government put a six-month ban on building new wind and solar energy projects last summer.
“Our research finds 33 projects that were in the queue before the announced moratorium have since been cancelled,” the Pembina Institute said in a news release.
“These projects would have generated approximately the same amount of power as is used by 98 percent of Alberta homes annually.”
Albertans are missing out on a lot of clean energy opportunities. Meanwhile, our government continues to promote oil and gas production. The oil and gas industry reported record production in 2023.
The Costs of Delaying
After the wicked hailstorm in August, Calgarians were in shock.
“I don’t think anyone buys a house expecting … their house could get damaged every second year,” Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal told the Calgary Herald.
“What I think is happening is people are looking for answers. How do we make sure we have more resilient built homes?”
You don’t have to look further than Alberta’s borders to see what continued inaction on climate change will cost us.
Since 2013, two of the most expensive natural disasters in Canadian history have occurred in Alberta.
We simply can’t afford to maintain the status quo.
