Donald Wright

Climate change has been called everything from a hellscape to a hoax. Both characterizations are political dead ends: the former because it feeds a sense of futility (“What’s the point?”) and the latter because it excuses business as usual (“Drill, baby, drill”). Between these extremes, however, is the promise that we can take steps to lower emissions and adapt to a hotter…

According to a Chinese proverb, the best time to plant an oak tree is twenty years ago. In the case of climate change, it was 127 years ago that a Swedish chemist determined that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide would lead to an increase in the global mean temperature. Of course, we didn’t plant an oak tree…

Prime ministers are not exactly in fashion. In 2016, for example, Wilfrid Laurier University reversed its decision to house twenty-two life-sized statues of them after critics called the Canada 150 project “culturally insensitive.” Two years later, Victoria mothballed its statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, citing his central role in the creation of residential schools. Regina, Charlottetown, and Kingston followed in rapid…

We are running out of phrases. “Global warming” worked for a while, but it didn’t fully capture what was happening, especially to global precipitation patterns. “Climate change” is certainly better, although it implies change that can be neatly plotted on a graph over time, which suggests both order and predictability when there is neither. “Climate breakdown” may be more…