Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 6 - Evidence, February 6, 2003
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 6, 2003
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:35 a.m. to examine the impact of climate change on Canada's agriculture, forests and rural communities and the potential adaptation options focusing on primary production, practices, technologies, ecosystems and other related areas.
Senator Donald H. Oliver (Chairman) in the Chair
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, during the course of the last study that this committee did we published a report called, ``Canadian Farmers at Risk.'' In that report the committee found environmental stresses to be such a pressing issue for agriculture and rural Canada that it decided to undertake a comprehensive study of the effects of climate change on agriculture and forestry in rural communities.
The committee is examining the expected effects of climate change on Canadian agriculture, forests and rural communities and, more importantly, will consider how these sectors can adapt to the expected climate changes. The committee is expected to report before the end of 2003. We expect to meet that target, and probably do better.
After our meeting with various federal departments on the general aspects of climate change, the committee has had an overview of regional issues with the six regional offices of the Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Network, C-CIARN.
Today, the committee receives the Sierra Club of Canada, a well-known organization actively involved in the issues of climate change.
Next week, our meetings will focus on industry concerns, with representatives of the forest industry and farm groups.
I would now like to turn the floor over to Ms. Elizabeth May and Mr. von Mirbach.
Ms. Elizabeth May, Executive Director, Sierra Club of Canada: Honourable senators, thank you for asking us to be here today. We have prepared our presentation in light of the reference given to this committee to look at both the impacts of climate change on agriculture, forests and rural communities, and the potential scope for adaptation to changes that we will not be able to avoid. Mr. von Mirbach will attempt to cover agriculture, rural communities not dependent on agriculture or forests, and forests as separate areas.
The bulk of the presentation and most of the original work that has been done by the Sierra Club in this area is on forests. Mr. von Mirbach will also speak to the forest issues. I will speak to what we see as a concern for agriculture.
Under the rubric ``rural communities,'' I will use my presentation to draw the attention of senators to the impacts on fisheries and small rural communities dependent on them. I will look at the impacts on forests of climate change and the potential role for forests in responding to the threat of climate change, including adaptation measures.
Those are the key areas we will try to get through in our presentation, which we hope will not take more than 20 minutes.
We will start with a chart that I know you have seen. It shows what has happened globally to temperature records and carbon dioxide records over a period of time starting in the year 1000 and looking at the future toward 2100 and the rapid increases. This has real impacts in many ways. For me, this is a deeply frightening chart. It makes the point that we are grateful that the Government of Canada has ratified Kyoto and that we must make every effort to get to one of those lines that represent the lower end results from increased CO2 in terms of temperature impact.
When we look at this chart, it is important to remember that according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the reductions we make in carbon dioxide involve dealing with a significant time lag, even if we were able to achieve the ultimate result of a 70 per cent global decrease in our CO2 emissions. The 70 per cent figure is a scientific extrapolation by the IPCC of how we would need to reduce our output of CO2 to avoid an atmospheric doubling of such levels. Even if we were to achieve that level tomorrow, we would face a more than 100-year period before the temperature stabilized, and more than a 1,000-year period before the rise in sea level stopped. Long-term impacts are already built into the system, yet we continue to pump out more CO2.
What are the impacts of these kinds of shifts in temperature on agriculture, rural communities and forests?
I will speak to agriculture and rural communities, first in terms of threats and, second, in terms of opportunities. Mr. von Mirbach will then deal with forests.
Obviously, one of the biggest impacts for agriculture is increased drought. This occurs because we will be seeing higher temperatures leading to increased evaporation. There will not be that much change in annual precipitation. That translates into less soil moisture on average. That has already been seen in the Prairies and across the country. There is actually a decline in the average minimum flow of most rivers. The exception is the Red River.
This decline in the average minimum flow of rivers extends from the Saint John River basin in New Brunswick through to the Rocky Mountains. That is what we have seen with approximately 30 per cent more carbon dioxide in terms of atmospheric concentration by volume as compared to before the Industrial Revolution. This has led to a decline in average soil moisture and a decline in river flow. As a result, we can expect more droughts, which will have a real impact on farmers.
I said there would not likely be more precipitation on average, but we will see an increase in heavy rainfalls occurring within short periods. This is because warmer air holds more moisture; and it will, in turn, lead to more soil erosion. Warmer weather also means more pests will survive over the winter, which will result in more problems with insects. Water shortages will be a real problem as well, particularly in the Prairies.
In the non-forest rural communities, the major threat is to fisheries, which is a different pattern. Ironically, the water off our Atlantic coastal region is getting colder due to the effect of the Labrador Current. It is speculated that one of the major reasons the cod stocks have not rebounded after the moratorium is that the colder water represents an environmental stress that makes it hard for those populations to rebuild.
In much of British Columbia, the water is getting warmer, particularly in the salmon streams, where the temperature needs to be just right for spawning. There have been years recently where DFO and Environment Canada have reported that the temperature was simply too high for fish to spawn.
What are the opportunities in a post-Kyoto world? A particularly strong opportunity for farmers is planting trees on marginal lands. These are places where agriculture is not profitable anyway, and where, by planting trees, they may be able to get carbon credits. In these instances, we think it is important to plant indigenous species.
The tree plantation issue is controversial in a forest context, but I want to point to it as something farmers can to do to enhance carbon sinks and get better water retention in certain areas. Adaptation can also be a way of reducing carbon dioxide. Farmers can practise conservation tillage or no-till and develop shelter belts, which will help restore degraded lands and enhance carbon sinks.
Farmers also can become partners in wind power. Farmers in Iowa say they get more money from renting out the border areas of their farms to produce wind power for sale than they would from agriculture.
Fishing communities are in a different situation. They need adaptive management strategies to protect sustainable fisheries. I want to commend the Department of Fisheries and Oceans because they have tried to incorporate the principle of erring on the side of caution throughout their entire decision-making system. Having erred on the side of taking risks previously and losing the cod stocks, it appears this lesson has now being learned.
However, when the environment presents new stresses, we must be very careful of our fisheries. For instance, we should be protecting all key coastal spawning and migratory areas. One of the new threats to them is increased oil and gas development, particularly in Atlantic Canada. Oil and gas development can coexist with fisheries, but not all the time and not everywhere. We need to have some areas set aside to ensure that spawning and migration routes are protected from other industrial developments.
Mr. Martin von Mirbach, Director, Forests and Biodiversity Campaign, Sierra Club of Canada: I will say a few words about the impact of forests on climate change, which is another way of looking at the mitigation issue.
One of the areas where there is considerable confusion is the difference between sinks and reservoirs. Forests are, at various times, carbon sinks, sources and reservoirs. Sequestration is the act of taking carbon out of the atmosphere. Young, growing trees sequester carbon through the process of photosynthesis. Forests are also sources, when decomposition takes place due to natural events or logging.
Lastly, a forest is also a reservoir when high volumes of carbon are stored on the landscape over time. The important distinction is that old forests are particularly good reservoirs of carbon because the overall volume is high; while young, growing forests are effective carbon sinks. Both are important in meeting Kyoto objectives and addressing climate change, but a forest reservoir is more valuable than a sink over the long term.
Another key fact is that industrial infrastructure development inevitably results in deforestation. Canada has 418 million hectares of forests and we are a growing country. The continuing expansion of infrastructure into that forest does result in deforestation, which results in a loss of carbon.
As I mentioned earlier, old forests store more carbon than young forests. As a result, the conversion of intact forests into managed secondary forests generally results in a significant loss of carbon. It is sobering to note that, overall, Canada's forests are a net source of carbon; i.e., from 1920 until the 1970s, Canada's forests were absorbing more carbon through growth than they were emitting through decay. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the process had flipped. Forests are currently emitting more carbon into the atmosphere than they are sequestering.
In the graph, the thin line shows the incidence of insect attacks that started to rise sharply in the 1970s, as well as a strong increase in the incidence of fire in the late 1970s and 1980s. Those disturbances over the entire national forest landscape are the main reasons that forests have switched from being a sink to being a source. While it is difficult to say with certainty that a particular fire or insect outbreak is caused by climate change, the indications are that it is a significant factor.
As far as deforestation is concerned, the information produced for the forest sector roundtable shows some of the sources of deforestation, including agricultural conversion and forestry. In this instance, forestry is confined to roads and landings. Logging is not indicated because deforestation does not occur when forests grow back. Deforestation due to the institutional or industrial infrastructure from oil, mining and electricity is also shown, together with urban development, transportation and recreation.
As a percentage of Canada's forests, the amount of deforestation on an annual basis is not great. However, it is significant in real terms because our forests are so vast. Deforestation is estimated to be between 55,000 and 88,000 hectares per year, which amounts to a 14- to 16-megaton carbon debit.
Regarding some of the projected and observed effects of climate change on forests, it is appropriate to say that forests are under stresses that they have not previously experienced.
Some of those stresses include new insects and diseases. The issue here is that as climatic regions migrate north, insects are vastly more able to move into those regions than trees. Trees cannot pick up and move nearly as quickly as insects can. Even if the climate is suitable for a new species of tree, the soil may not be there for it, whereas insects can rapidly colonize new habitats. The devastating effects of the mountain pine beetle in British Columbia are attributed to three consecutive mild winters, allowing those insects to over-winter there, which they were never able to do before. Eventually, over many hundreds of years or millennia, the trees would adapt and become resistant to those insects, but the genetic stock in those areas have not had a need to breed that resistance, so they are quite vulnerable.
Changes in precipitation have an impact on forests, as they do on agriculture. That extends to droughts and drying as well as floods and flash floods. The droughts, in particular, are likely. As we saw from the previous graph, there is evidence that there has been a marked increase in both the frequency and severity of forest fires. That, again, is a sobering impact because, as that drives down the average age of the overall forest, it reduces the amount of carbon that the forests store. There is a somewhat frightening potential for a feedback loop with that increased severity of fires.
Extreme weather events are likely to be more frequent. Again, those are localized, but can have significant impacts on forest health.
I have also added that there are projected and observed increased growth rates, due both to the longer growing season and the carbon dioxide atmosphere as a richer growth medium. There is some evidence that trees actually do grow faster, though there is some suggestion that those increases only last for a few decades. That is followed by an increase in plant respiration that offsets that growth rate.
In general, from a human perspective, one of the most sobering impacts is the sheer uncertainty. We cannot predict with any certainty what will take place where. That uncertainty has an impact on the investment climate. It is fine to say that an area might be more suitable for certain types of activity, but if there is a ski hill there, the investors in that ski hill obviously lose their investment.
This map shows some of the projected climatic changes based on a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is now considered to be a conservative estimate of what is likely to happen. It is likely to be a great deal more.
The upper map shows present land cover, with the green swath being the boreal forest stretching from Newfoundland across to Northern Saskatchewan. The map shows that with that doubling, essentially, all of that region, except some parts of Northern Quebec and Labrador, convert from being in the boreal forest to being in the temperate zone. Again, that does not mean that all of a sudden, temperate forests will replace boreal forests. What it means is that the existing forests would not be in their ideally suited climate zone. These forests will not necessarily disappear, except possibly locally, but they will be under stresses they have not previously had to address.
On the issue of adaptation measures for forests, some of the previous presentations you have heard have talked about some of the new species that we may be able to plant. One of the factors to consider is that the scale of Canada's forests is so vast that it is difficult to conceive of any human agency being able to actually manage the transition from one climatic zone to another. Another factor is that while we can guess which climatic zone might be suitable for a tree in 50 years time, it does not necessarily mean that a seedling planted in that area now will be well suited to it. While we have a shifting climate, there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty about which species to plant when. That is one reason the forest industry has been slow to seriously take up and implement adaptation measures.
However, in general, one of the strongest points to be made here is that, in the uncertainty around what actually will happen and how those impacts will take place, the implementation of large protected areas becomes particularly important because they provide the north-south corridors in which species will migrate to new habitat. We are looking at two types of migration. One would be the ability of species to migrate 50, 100 or 200 kilometres north. As our southern landscape is increasingly fragmented, that becomes difficult to do. We still have the opportunity to ensure those possibilities exist in some of our northern landscapes and forests, which have not yet been intruded upon by extensive networks of roads and other developments. To the extent that protected areas can limit that fragmentation, it becomes an extremely valuable tool for species adaptation.
There is a triple benefit from the use of protected areas. It allows us to meet our objective to complete a representative area of protected networks. It allows for species to adapt to climate change, and protected areas themselves will store, on average, more carbon than forests that are aggressively managed on an industrial scale. The protected areas should be particularly in north-south migration routes, but also in hilly terrain, where species can migrate uphill and reach a more suitable climate relatively easily. That is not a preferred outcome, because that would create what we call ``islands of extinction.'' It may keep species alive longer than otherwise, but in general, the move to a larger, connected habitat will now be increasingly important.
Ms. May: I wanted to briefly speak to your focus on adaptation. It has been controversial. Some of you may have noticed that over the years in the climate change debate, people who spoke about adaptation were sometimes accused of having given up the fight. Adaptation was the language of those who did not want to do anything about reducing emissions. The Sierra Club of Canada is firmly committed to exploring adaptation and to making sure that the populations, industries and sectors that will be impacted by climate change understand the changes that need to be made now.
The reality, however, is that because of what we have done to the atmosphere already — and I spoke earlier of the 30 per cent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from something like 275 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution to 370 parts per million today — reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, as quickly, as intelligently and as aggressively as we make them, will not reverse the amounts we have already loaded into the atmosphere, so we are in for climate change. The goal of Kyoto and subsequent agreements will be to have climate change occur at levels to which we are capable of adapting and which minimize catastrophe, thus avoiding the worst outcomes of the ``business as usual'' trajectory. The reality is that we need adaptation and mitigation and the reductions in carbon dioxide. We need much more than is currently in anyone's budget in any country on Earth. We need more of both than we can possibly afford.
Honourable senators, I know your focus is Canada, but adaptation to extreme weather events and the shifts that are needed are especially important for developing countries, the poorer parts of the world, where an event like Hurricane Mitch can wipe out 10 years of development and GDP achievement in countries like Honduras and Guatemala. Quite often, the infrastructure then gets rebuilt in the same places, and the increased weather events will wipe them out again. Adaptation is important, globally and in Canada.
Our key messages to leave with you are that climate change in Canada will affect our forests, our agriculture and our rural communities in severe and potentially catastrophic ways. There is an urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but there are opportunities out there for rural communities. There are opportunities in the forest sector. The best way to help our forests mitigate climate change is to conserve large, intact ecosystems. The same point also applies to the protection of fisheries. We need to ensure that the ecosystems in which they strive are not faced with multiple stresses.
That is a quick presentation on a number of issues, and we would be happy to take questions.
The Chairman: Senators, Ms. May must leave in about 25 minutes to go to the Energy Committee, but Mr. von Mirbach will be staying to continue our discussion.
Your initial slide showed us that big blip in the increase in the temperatures and so on. One of your statements was to the effect that thank goodness the Government of Canada passed Kyoto, otherwise we would be in trouble. If we were to pass a series of other Kyotos, are you suggesting that that would cure the problem of global warming and climate change and that we would not have to worry about adaptation? What is the effect of these Kyoto-type agreements?
Ms. May: We are looking at a number of different models in the graph for how far up this line we go in terms of an increased global average temperature. Frankly, if Kyoto is fully implemented and all countries that have signed it meet their targets, the full impact is to delay the global atmospheric doubling of carbon by between six to ten years only.
The congress of the parties on climate change is in reference to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was signed and ratified by Canada in 1992. That is our framework, and that is where we started. Kyoto is merely one of what will be, as you said, many agreements. The key is to take the long view. For instance, Canada's measures should not be geared, in our view, to how we can just barely squeak by in meeting the Kyoto targets. We should be designing things now so that the reductions we make for 2008 to 2012 are geared towards shifting many aspects of our economy so that it will be easier to meet deeper reductions in what is referred to in international negotiations as the next budget period. We will be soon be negotiating the next set of protocols that bring in developing countries and go for deeper reductions, et cetera.
Even if all of the most ambitious global agreements possible were negotiated, it would not stop the levels of climate change that one can expect from at least 30 per cent more CO2 by atmospheric concentration for centuries. It certainly does not remove the need to consider adaptation. It does not in any way solve the problem. That is what made the debate about Kyoto complex. Those who wish to cast doubt on the government's resolve to ratify Kyoto could easily pick on something I just said and hold up Kyoto as therefore pointless. By itself, if nothing else is done, it postpones the point of doubling atmospheric concentrations by between six to ten years.
The Chairman: You used the word ``postpone.'' Is there any science that indicates that it could be reversed?
Ms. May: Mr. von Mirbach said he did not know if we could avoid the doubling of CO2. It is controversial. The scientific community has picked carbon dioxide doubling as a point at which impacts are so severe that they are certainly dangerous and, in some areas, catastrophic. The goal of avoiding the doubling of CO2 has been part of the international framework since 1992. Many people, including scientists and negotiators, now doubt that we can avoid it, and they are beginning to model what happens if it hits a tripling or quadrupling and so on. The doubling of CO2 scenarios that you have heard about are not the worst-case scenarios. They are in fact what will happen if we allow it to double. That is all it says.
I still believe we can avoid a doubling. That is important. Will that reverse the levels of temperature increase we are now seeing? Not for at least 100 years, even on the most ambitious schedule of emission reductions.
Senator Wiebe: Thank you for your presentation today. All of the witnesses we have heard have certainly outlined the effects and the damage that humans, because of their actions, are inflicting upon our climate and upon our world. As a committee, we have recognized that, and that is why we have the terms of reference that we do, that is, to find ways to adapt to that change.
What we saw in this country last year — the inability of governments at all levels to agree to the urgency of making changes vis-à-vis the Kyoto agreement — indicates that it will take Canada and the world a considerable length of time to come to a consensus on just how serious the problem is.
We have recognized that, and we are looking for ways to adapt. I thank you for providing a few areas in which we can make recommendations. Each of these areas of adaptation will be very expensive. If we ask our farmers to convert to zero till, that is an initial investment of $100,000 just for equipment.
If we want to plant trees, we need ones that will maintain a root system. We can cover that soil, but if the root system is not there, eventually it will become a desert. It is a long time before you get a return on your investment and can harvest those trees.
I congratulate you on the suggestions you have made, but do you have any other ideas on how we can adapt, and do you think that the general public not involved in agriculture or forestry is prepared to accept some of the cost burden to allow our agricultural and forest industries to adapt to the rapid changes?
Ms. May: Those are good questions. Let me address how even the suggestions we have made already could provide an economic benefit sooner than what we usually think of as point of harvest, for example.
You may want to consider inviting another witness. I do not know if you have considered Dr. James Bruce, formerly with Environment Canada. He was Chair of the socio-economic group within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He spent time looking at soil sequestration as a response to climate change and as a way of creating a better sink potential. Mr. von Mirbach pointed out the difference between reservoirs and sinks, and we always want to stress, when we mention the benefits post-Kyoto of enhancing our sinks and reservoirs, that it is no substitute for substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr. Bruce also shared with me a presentation he made to the House Agriculture Committee on December 5. In that, he cited an IPCC special report that estimated that activities in land in addition to forestry — soil sequestration — could remove globally up to 500 megatons of carbon per year, or nearly 10 per cent of net emissions. It is difficult to verify whether soils are actually holding carbon out of the atmosphere, but at least theoretically, one could imagine farmers receiving a cash benefit in terms of a carbon credit for their role in helping meet Kyoto, depending on how broadly the carbon trading scheme, which has not yet been unveiled, is in Canada. We could see a benefit to farmers for their work in planting trees. Well before they are harvested for fibre, they can be harvested for carbon.
In a real way, the Kyoto agreement attaches a monetary value to something we had always seen as without value, as a free good — that is, carbon. Monetizing carbon, even if we get the price wrong in the first budget period, has an economic impact that shifts the way we think about forests and soils and pollution. It is not just dumping something into the atmosphere that is bad for us; it becomes a case of wasting money. It changes things.
There is now a carbon exchange on the stock market in Chicago. It is beginning to creep in even in the United States, which has not ratified Kyoto. There could be ways in which there would be an immediate cash benefit for farmers.
Certainly the plight of farmers in periods of increased and continuing drought will have a cost to taxpayers. We have had substantial bailouts — not substantial enough, obviously, for the farmers who are suffering — of farmers by the federal government to help them through the years when crops fail because of drought. We will see more years of crop failure because of drought, and therefore it makes sense to look at agriculture as a partner in dealing with the threat of climate change by both increasing their ability to produce renewable power and receive money from that and their ability to hold carbon out of the soil.
Another thing that is being pushed now is subsidies for the production of ethanol. We certainly support ethanol production, but only if it uses the non-edible portions of corn and wood waste. Some people dream of growing corn to make ethanol. If you do that on a lifecycle basis, you do not get a greenhouse gas benefit.
The Chairman: You can plant non-edible corn.
Ms. May: You want to plant edible corn, but use the husks and the waste to fuel ethanol. The key is properly designed ethanol production systems that rely on waste products — an ethanol production system right next to a pulp mill picking up on the wood wastes, or a bio-fuel ethanol based on corn, but not growing corn in order to feed every part of it into an ethanol plant. On balance, any benefit you get from less pollution from the tailpipe, because you are putting ethanol in the car, is lost at the other end through all the energy that went into growing the corn in the first place — the tractors, the pesticides, et cetera. We are focusing on an ethanol system based on waste substances. That is another place where there is a potential benefit.
We need to think about climate change policies in every sector, not just in terms of what we do about the environment but in a more holistic way, asking how we can make the economy work better, smarter and more efficiently. How we do things can address other problems at the same time, such as trying to find ways to keep rural communities afloat. I do not think we want everyone in Canada to live in cities. How do we design things on the climate change front that is good social, economic and environmental policy?
Other things can be done that make economic sense. The forest industry has done a lot already to reduce CO2 in its own mill operations. They are leery. What do they do to adapt to levels of climate change? Planning now for what the climate in Canada will be like in 100 years is difficult. The Canadian forest service needs the help of science to ensure they have the capacity. Many of the charts we show were developed through the work of scientists and work done within the federal government. It is good science.
Senator Gustafson: I would like to pick up where Senator Wiebe left off. We have become an urban country, politically and economically. Governments — I am not picking on the Liberal government, because it does not matter who is in power — will automatically set their policies based on where the numbers are because that is the way the democratic process works.
Farms are getting larger because they have to. They have to get larger if they want to survive, and Senator Wiebe referred to that. In our area of the Southern Prairies, where the drought is, shelter belts are being pushed out because farms are getting bigger. At the same time, the plant that grew trees no longer exists. Thousands of trees went out of that plant to forestation, shelter belts and so on.
You mentioned Kyoto. Interestingly enough, the automobile industry is exempt from Kyoto. What do you suppose farmers out West think about that? What do oil industry people out West think about that? They are saying, ``You talk a good talk, but you do not walk the walk.'' That is the problem I have with many of these things.
What you say is wonderful, but are you selling your message to urban Canada? Are you selling your message to the government? This committee has done some wonderful work on recommendations for agriculture. I am not being specifically political here, because I think it is broader than that. We are missing the mark for all of Canada. The average Canadian does not understand the plight, what is happening out there. It is very serious.
Ms. May: I think there is a general sense, even among urban Canadians, of romanticism about rural life. It is hard to run a family farm. My family is from a small community in Cape Breton. It is not an easy way of life, but people romanticize it. In that sense, they do not want it to disappear.
I know we are getting a little far from the climate change topic, but I would like to say that we should address this as an issue of what happens to the environment when we lose the small family farmer and the small livestock producer. As everything gets bigger, the environmental damage from these operations becomes more significant. There is a way for farmers to survive in this era of globalization without getting constantly bigger, and that is to look at niche markets such as organic agriculture, where there is a better return, but there is a transition that needs to be made.
Through the Green Budget Coalition, to which Sierra Club and 15 other national environmental groups belong, we proposed to Minister Manley that there be funding available to those farmers who want to make the shift from industrialized to organic agriculture. It is less energy intensive, so there is an impact on climate change, and since it also involves no poisons, there is an improved impact on the local area. People need help to make that transition. If it is a smaller agricultural operation, it helps keep the local areas populated.
Senator Gustafson: The smaller farmer who is staying on the farm does so at great sacrifice, because he is holding down another job and working 16 hours a day to make it effective. That is about the only positive thing you can see.
Ms. May: I wanted to address what you said about the car industry. They are not exempt from Kyoto. The Sierra Club of Canada's director of climate change was on the front page of The Globe and Mail over the Christmas holidays, attacking what had just been done. The government did not exempt the car industry from Kyoto but made a decision, which we think was a mistake, to remove them from the group called ``large industrial emitters.'' The government has chosen not to concentrate on how much pollution comes out of the factories that make the cars, but to shift their attention to how much pollution comes out of the cars they make. The auto industry should be regulated on this point. The government has the authority to set required levels for fuel economy for the automobile industry, and their approach right now is to negotiate with the big three. We think they should be regulated to reach the same standards to which California is committed for 2009, so that the car fleet in Canada will be as efficient as theirs. We have a large car market, so we will not marginalize ourselves economically.
The Chairman: The problem with organic farming is that it takes three years to make that transition.
Ms. May: That is right.
The Chairman: Are you calling on government to finance a farmer who wants to make that transition?
Ms. May: To subsidize or assist over a three-year period. That is exactly the problem.
Senator Tkachuk: I have a few questions about your organization itself. How many members does the Sierra Club have and where does it get its funding?
Ms. May: We do not have a huge membership base. We have 10,000 members and supporters across Canada. We do not do direct mail. You will never receive junk mail from us.
In contrast to many other organizations, our members are not just a donor base, but also volunteers who are active with the organization. Sierra Club is not just people like Mr. von Mirbach and me, who live and work in Ottawa, but includes members and volunteers from the Maritime Fishermen's Union and cattle ranchers trying to make a living. We hear firsthand from our membership what they are going through. The membership is primarily urban, but we do have many members who educate us about these issues.
Our funding comes from support from the public, primarily from our members and others. The government has not wanted to give us any money in recent years, although we would take it if they did. We do not take money from large industrial corporations.
Senator Tkachuk: You said, ``members and others''?
Ms. May: I mean foundations. For example, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation in Montreal has been supportive of our Sierra Youth Coalition. We have operations on 25 university campuses across Canada trying to improve the energy efficiency and the overall environmental ethic. I would be happy to provide you with a financial statement by mail.
Senator Tkachuk: That would be good.
When we talk about climate change we hear about increasing temperatures and the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. What is normal temperature?
Ms. May: There is no such thing as normal temperature. We have global averages. The graph we provided shows the averages, which fluctuate. As you can see from those, you cannot say what was a normal temperature. Averages mask the extremes and, while global average temperatures have increased over the last century by one degree Celsius or so, related to human-induced climate change, that is the average. The rate of increase in Canada's North, for example, is three times faster and has a three times greater impact. There is no one normal temperature.
Senator Tkachuk: While you say that one-degree-Celsius increase has been human-induced, we have had climatic changes like that before in human history. Why do we jump to this conclusion? We have heard from previous witnesses that we only have records from so far back. There are situations in history where there has been a dramatic increase in temperature. For example, we hear about the Vikings coming here during warm times, 1300 to 1500. Then it got colder and they did not come here any more because of the drop in temperature. Obviously, there have been variations before. What caused them?
Ms. May: There are variations, and they are reflected here. You can see this is the range of global average temperatures. This area is actual temperature measurement, while this section is called ``proxy data.'' That is where you go back and look at things like pollen and geological records. We have actual measurements of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere going back 160,000 years, from Antarctic ice core sampling. We have proxy data going back 20 million years. There has been no jumping to conclusions, I assure you. The 2000 scientists who make up the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change review only work that has appeared in peer-reviewed journals. Then, within the range of views that are presented, they negotiate, as scientists, what is most credible. There are scenarios that are far worse than what the panel has concluded is their consensus view, and there are people who think the effect would be less. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has come to the conclusion that the increased temperatures and increased CO2 we have seen are human induced. What is different from what we have experienced in previous eras is not just the degree of temperature increase, but the time frame in which we anticipate seeing it. If you consider that the global average temperature difference between 2003 and the last ice age was only five degrees Celsius, and in this graph we are seeing increases of about five degrees Celsius within a hundred years from now, it is very frightening stuff to a scientist. It is not in any way saying that climate has not varied over time, or that temperatures have not changed over time. It is just that the scientific community is clear on this point now: there is no question that emitting greenhouse gases warms the atmosphere. The uncertainties that remain are mostly localized, in terms of how much of a difference increased water vapour will make in an area and how much it will impact on the cycling of ocean currents. I mentioned this aspect briefly in talking about the Labrador Current bringing more cold water off Newfoundland as a response to climate change. There is a significant body of science that thinks that the Gulf Stream will stall, and that Europe, which has benefited from it, will have winter temperatures more like Canada's than they have had in the last millennia.
Senator Tkachuk: There are scientists who say we are heading toward an ice age. Much of this is speculation. We do have a lot of debate. There may be 2000 scientists, but they do not all agree. There are many scientists who do not agree. When we use the word ``scientists,'' whom are we talking about? Are we talking about meteorologists, physicists, biologists or chemists?
Ms. May: This is a bigger topic than I think we can address here and still get to other questions.
Senator Tkachuk: It is an important topic. Claims are being made about impending disaster.
Ms. May: Sixteen national scientific academies have reviewed the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, as have scientists hand-picked by President Bush, and they ended up concluding that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conclusions are correct. They are probably conservative. We could go over the qualifications of these scientists, and I wish we had more time to do it, because I would love to be able to convince you.
The Chairman: We have that evidence of the Bush committee before us already.
Senator Tkachuk: I read it on the Web site. However, that was not my point.
Ms. May: They have a range of qualifications that make them scientific experts in the views of their governments.
Senator Hubley: For the sake of argument, I will accept that we are experiencing a warming trend in our climate. A key message in the forestry section of your submission is that climate change will affects forests and agriculture in a severe and potentially catastrophic way. Since it will be our farmers and our fishermen who will be most severely and directly impacted, because of their livelihood, they will have to make the greatest changes.
If we were to make recommendations to the government regarding the importance of developing an adaptation strategy and that money should be spent, is the answer in research dollars, in scientific evidence?
If we were to recommend that money be spent, where would you suggest that we should be looking at this stage?
Ms. May: That is a tough question. It certainly makes sense to enhance the scientific capacity of our government. It has been cut back severely over the years and we need the folks at Agriculture Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Environment Canada, who can help and advise various sectors. However, it is also important to get out there and start doing things, helping the individual communities with demonstration projects. I do not want to paint this as all doom and gloom, because part of the scenario of having policies that work economically, socially and environmentally is that Kyoto becomes something that shifts our society in an overall positive way. If we can start spending those dollars to create the incentive for doing things that will pay us back, we can save enough money on energy use to fund the things we need to do to adapt to climate change. That has not been the topic here today in terms of what we can do to avoid the unnecessary emissions of carbon dioxide, but a lot of those are money-saving measures that would create some opportunity to fund assistance to the farming community in planting trees and getting people going.
We have already taken some adaptation measures in Canada. It does not really relate to this, except it is rural, but you probably heard that when they built the fixed link to Prince Edward Island, they built into the engineering concept what would happen if sea level was one meter higher. There are some adaptation measures that involve fitting into existing planning processes. Let us build awareness into our infrastructure planning for communities along the Great Lakes. Their adaptation strategy will include infrastructure planning that recognizes that the lake will be moving farther from their shores. The Great Lakes levels will be falling while ocean levels are rising, so planning piers, wharves, docks, basic infrastructure, needs to take climate change into account.
With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I think I should go to the Energy Committee.
The Chairman: I just received a note that it is running late and we are able to have you a little longer.
Ms. May: All right. I will take your word for that.
Senator Day: I have a number of questions with respect to forestry that I can keep until we get into that area.
First, I should like to ask about colder water off the Atlantic coast. I have been under the impression that most people who are concerned about the severe depletion of the cod stock in the Atlantic region — at least, those who do not blame it on the seals — were blaming it on the warming of the waters in that area. Was this colder water just around Labrador?
Ms. May: No, this is colder water in general affecting cod stocks. There has not been a warming trend in the waters off Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. It has been colder water. We do not use the term ``global warming'' because it is misleading. As I mentioned, if the Gulf Stream stalls, so-called ``global warming'' will be experienced in England as frigid weather, for which they are unprepared because they do not have central heating. It is very different things in different parts of the world. Overall temperature increases will have an impact on ocean currents. It happens that the scientists who study thermal cycling of the Labrador Current, the constant conveyor belt of water currents globally, recognize that for an area that is well studied, there is a lot they do not know.
For instance, they do know that a molecule of water that starts in the Labrador Current off Newfoundland and Labrador will eventually come back there, having travelled the current system, this underwater conveyor system of water, if you will. That molecule of water will have travelled around the globe via the Gulf Stream. What they do not know is whether that molecule of water takes a year to make that tour or 5,000 years. They do not know how long it takes for that whole system to move around the globe.
Some scientists are clear that El Niño effects are becoming more severe because of warmer water in the Pacific due to climate change. As for the cod, the water off Atlantic Canada is uniformly getting colder because the Labrador Current is receiving the water from the rest of the currents of the world and it drives cold water to the surface. It brings the cold water up for cycling, and that colder water has increased.
There is also the less prominent effect of glacier and Arctic ice melting, also adding to colder water. However, the larger effect is that of the Labrador Current. Water has become colder, not warmer, off Atlantic Canada.
Senator Day: Are there scientists who believe that the lack of cod stock on the East Coast is due to colder water?
Ms. May: Yes.
Senator Day: Is the lack of salmon on the West Coast due to warmer water?
Ms. May: Exactly, and due to the same atmospheric phenomenon.
Senator Day: Interesting. Further research will probably be necessary in that area.
Ms. May: I am not saying that cold water is the complete answer to the mystery of why the cod stocks have not come back. There are also scientists who think that the increased seismic testing for oil and gas has interfered with the ability of cod to reproduce, because they do use acoustic communication in mating and if they cannot hear each other, it could be a factor. It may be and probably is a combination of quite a number of factors.
The Chairman: That includes the seals, because they eat about 40 pounds of cod a day.
Ms. May: Yes, but the scientists studying this are less confident that that is a primary factor. Certainly they are all factors, but the most likely explanation for what caused the decline is overfishing, and largely by the dragger fleet offshore as opposed to the smaller inshore fleet. The dragger fleet was capable of hunting down the last cod because it could move all around. However, after the fishing stopped, most scientists expected that the populations would have rebounded by now. It has been 10 years. They are now looking at the probable causes for that lack of rebound in the cod stocks. Climate change is among the top three in terms of scientific inquiry.
Senator Day: You talk in your brief about fishing communities adapting to these changes. Apart from adjusting the amount of fish that they take from the sea, what other adaptation strategies could fishermen adopt?
Ms. May: It will primarily be the further inculcation of the precautionary principle, recognizing, for example, when a fish stock goes into what Brian Tobin once called ``commercial extinction.'' The cod stock is still there, but it is not a healthy population; you cannot fish it, you can hardly find it. The world faces all these environmental stresses, particularly climate change, but also ozone depletion may be playing a role because it causes more UV in the upper levels of the ocean and there is some speculation that that has affected the ability of caplin, which is a primary part of the food chain for cod, to feed. When you already have these environmental stressors, you must be more cautious about adding new ones. That is our point about making sure your spawning and migratory routes are protected. That is key. It may not sound like adaptation, but it is. It is a way of ensuring that you recognize the impacts of climate change and protect a sustainable fishery from losing out because of decisions that are made as though this population of snow crab, lobster, hake, whatever it is, has been there forever and we do not worry about it because the level of fishing is controlled by DFO. However, the other impacts are not controlled by anyone.
The Chairman: I have received another note. You must go; however, before you do, I should like to give our last question to Senator Wiebe, and then you can rush off to your next calling.
Senator Wiebe: My question will be a tough one that perhaps you may not want to answer.
Ms. May: I will pass it to Mr. von Mirbach, then.
Senator Wiebe: It follows on somewhat from Senator Tkachuk 's question to you. One of the frustrating aspects from my perspective is that we hear so many scientific reports about what is happening with our climate. Some are saying it is a natural progression; some are saying we will be running into extreme difficulty.
When I read these reports, I try to find out who financed them. What I have found is that our country's worst polluters and the governments that do the most polluting are financing the reports that say that this is just a normal progression — do not be upset or concerned.
Is that a fair assessment of the differences in our scientific community?
Ms. May: First, there is much less debate about the science than we have heard discussed briefly this morning. There is as close to unanimity as you will get on a scientific issue in our society among the scientists who say that greenhouse gases are changing the climate. Even the scientists who label themselves as contrarians, and against Kyoto, say greenhouse gases are affecting the climate. They just want to argue about how bad it is likely to get or whether a deus ex machina will suddenly appear and get us all out of trouble. It is hard to argue against the basic science that increased greenhouse gas emissions change the planet's climate.
I recently had occasion to cross-examine a scientists known as one of the handful of contrarians on a CBC program. I do not know if anyone heard it, but I was trying to get Michael Enright to ask him about his funding, which came from the oil and coal producers. There was no question that his institute on climate change was being bankrolled by fossil fuel companies. I did not get that through.
However, I hold out every possibility that there is a legitimate, unbiased scientist out there somewhere who does not believe climate change is a real problem and is not being funded by anyone. This issue is a lot like smoking. I think you will find that most of the doctors who said that smoking does not cause lung cancer were being paid by Philip Morris, and I think the same thing is happening on climate change.
The Chairman: Thank you for coming. I hope to have you before us again.
Ms. May: Mr. von Mirbach is an excellent witness, and I am sorry I have to go to another committee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Day: I must comment on the last question. That was not a difficult question at all for Ms. May. In fact, I think it was a set-up question.
We have had people here previously who have indicated to us that the modeling mechanisms that are currently available, similar to one of the graphs at the end of your presentation, where you see the temperature going up over the next 100 years, are not sufficiently precise. Information could be obtained to tell the forest industry what trees they should be planting in Quebec, for example, or Northern Ontario. As you are aware, and as the panel is aware, that is a major decision. If you are planting for reforestation, you will not be harvesting these trees for 60 to 80 years. It would be nice to plant the right tree.
Could you confirm that comment about modeling?
Mr. von Mirbach: You are absolutely right. It is very important. Those who do work with models continually have to remind people of the limitations, what a model is or is not and what it does and does not do. A model does not predict the future with any reliability; it merely outlines a scenario. That scenario is based on the assumptions that drive that model. The value of models for people who work with them is the ability to look at alternate scenarios. Therefore, a model projecting a certain activity 100 years into the future cannot make a reliable prediction on what will happen. The world is too complex for that. However, it does allow one to say this: if we do nothing, or if we choose action A versus action B, what are the possible different paths that we might take? I see a model as a scenario, a projection of the future that allows people to make the most informed decisions now. However, no model represents reliability. It provides information that helps to inform decision making in the present, but it does not actually tell us what will happen.
Senator Day: Do you hope, expect or anticipate that, with further refinement of the modeling systems, there will be a time when we can predict what is likely to happen with some degree of accuracy?
Mr. von Mirbach: Global climate modeling has received an intense amount of scientific attention and peer review. In effect, the 1,600 members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change constitute the world's most massive peer review process. The models have been validated at a global level, in that you can wind one back to, for example, conditions in 1958, roll forward and see what it predicts will happen, and then compare that against what actually did happen.
The models have been validated on a global level, in that what has happened is generally consistent with what the models predicted would happen.
The challenge is that the models are extremely limited in their ability to predict the local impacts with accuracy. From the point of view of a farmer, forester, landowner or anyone else, it is the local impacts that count, not the global impacts. The global impacts can affect things like the price of wheat, which does in turn have an impact on people, but the local climatic impacts are extremely difficult to predict.
Senator Day: Should we be recommending that more funds be put into this particular area of research, or do we know that we will never be in a position to develop accurate local predictions?
Mr. von Mirbach: I hesitate to answer that question, as I am not a scientist. As Ms. May said, there is need for more government-funded research. I would not venture to say which specific areas are underfunded.
Senator Day: I appreciate your frankness on that.
When a tree grows, it takes in carbon dioxide and gives out oxygen, the photosynthesis process we all learned about in school. If a tree grows faster, I would have thought it would take in more carbon dioxide and give off more oxygen. Therefore, the younger trees, which tend to grow faster, would be more useful than the older ones. Is that not correct?
Mr. von Mirbach: This is the paradox or the quandary in comparing the sequestration ability of young trees with the storage potential of old forests.
There has been a great deal of interest in fast-growing trees. You are quite correct. The fast-growing tree pulls carbon out of the atmosphere more rapidly. From the point of view of investors in possible Kyoto credits, those credits will be judged on the difference in volume between 2008 and 2012, so the faster you can grow a tree during that period, the more you will get. Therefore, if you are looking simply at the first budget period, then indeed fast-growing trees are a better investment.
The challenge then is the Kyoto rules. The limitation of fast-growing trees is that they also mature more quickly. They turn from being a credit to being a liability. Once those trees reach maturity — and some fast-growing, hybrid poplar species being used in Southern Ontario can reach maturity in 20 years — they are a liability.
That may be after the first commitment period, but they will be a liability for the people of Canada and for the atmosphere, because when they die or are logged, the bulk of the carbon is then re-emitted into the atmosphere.
Over the long term, the value of a piece of land will depend on the average volume stored on that landscape. In that case, the average volume for a faster-growing species will not be greater than that of a native, slower-growing species. However, if you are looking for a benefit over the next 15 to 20 years, the faster-growing trees are better.
If you are looking for a long-term investment in solutions to climate change, forests that maintain a stable and steady state and at a high volume — and that tends to be native species, which are often slow growing — are a better deal.
Senator Day: Is that why you say old forests grow more carbon than young forests?
Mr. von Mirbach: That is right. There is an interest in plantations of faster-growing species. However, if you have to clear an area of old forests in order to create that plantation, then you are creating a liability, because the carbon in the wood that is removed is emitted back into the atmosphere. It depends on the accounting method, but if that is not included in the accounting method for a trading regime, then it certainly is a public liability. There is a risk in some proposed trading schemes that you could have short-term credits that would be a privately traded commodity, whereas the long-term risk would be a public liability. We do not think that is in the best interest of Canadians, although investors, brokers and dealers of carbon credits might like that arrangement.
Senator Day: The carbon credit-trading scheme distorts nature to a degree. That is what you have explained to us.
Mr. von Mirbach: It has the potential to do so, unless we get it right. At this point, we do not have a carbon credit- trading regime in place in Canada. We have a commitment from the Government of Canada to implement such a scheme, but the design has not yet been done. We are keen to contribute to that design so that it does send the right messages that induce people to do the right thing for the long-term interests of the atmosphere, as well as benefiting biodiversity, soil conservation and community sustainability.
The Chairman: If you had good silviculture practices in your plantations, namely, as your older trees grew up, you cut those while younger ones were ready to come along, and you had this cycle continuing, that would certainly maintain the balance of nature, would it not? You would cut the old and give preference to the younger ones to preserve the balance.
Mr. von Mirbach: Over the long term it would, yes. There is no credit then, but there is no debit. However, investors seeking a credit cannot fairly expect to obtain one during the growing cycle unless they are also prepared to take responsibility for the debit during the cutting period. That is where the rules need to be clearly established, so that a sustainably managed forest will be more or less in a stable state over the long term.
For instance, in a natural, un-harvested boreal forest, you will tend to get a net increase in carbon. That has to do with the soil. As the annual fall litter goes into the soil, the majority of those needles and branches decompose and go back into the atmosphere, but a certain percentage builds up the soil. At the end of the last ice age, there was next to no soil in much of Canada. The soil that is there now is the contribution of an undisturbed cycle of growth. Intensive logging tends to interfere with that, so that the soil build-up does not occur.
The Chairman: The dead trees do not rot, and so on.
Mr. von Mirbach: Right.
Senator Day: I want to clarify some of your points here about how converting primary, intact forests to managed secondary forests results in a loss of carbon. When I read this in a couple of weeks, I will wonder what you meant by that. Could you help us with that?
Mr. von Mirbach: There are three factors involved. We are expanding into forests that we have not yet logged. The forestry industry is relying on that. There are three reasons why we lose carbon when we move into an intact forest that has not previously been logged.
First, putting in the road infrastructure and the landings where the logs are stacked prior to being loaded into trucks is a more or less permanent incursion on the land base. Some of the roads are rehabilitated but, in general, the basic roadwork is a permanent removal of an area from the land base. It is estimated that between 5 to 10 per cent of the land base is permanently removed from forest productivity.
Second, in general, the average age of the forest will be reduced. For example, the boreal forest is subject to a fire- driven cycle that varies across Canada. I am using an abstract example here. You have a forest that, on average, might burn every 120 years. That is the natural cycle. In much of Canada we do not have 400-year-old forests because of fire and insects sweeping through periodically. When we log in those areas, the rotation age — that is, the age at which logging then takes place — is usually less than the average fire-return interval. If you have a landscape in which the fire-return interval is every 120 years and you start logging there, you might be logging on an average return interval of 80 years. Therefore the average age of the forest is thereby reduced. It takes a long logging cycle for that to happen. As the average age of the forest is reduced, the average volume is reduced, because those young, fast-growing trees may be sequestering carbon, but they do not have as much carbon on that site to begin with.
Senator Day: However, they are taking more out of the atmosphere as they grow.
Mr. von Mirbach: Yes, but if you have to log old, high-volume stands in order to generate those trees, those high- volume stands are immediately emitting into the atmosphere through the slash that is decomposing, for example. There is some storage in forest products, but it depends on the product. Obviously, if you are making toilet paper, it does not stay as long in the atmosphere as if you are making furniture.
Third, fire is random. If an average fire-return interval is 120 years, it does not mean that no trees grow to be older than 120 years. It means that on average, fires go through every 120 years. Some trees may survive 180 or 220 years. In a natural landscape, patches of old forests are maintained, whereas in a rationally planned, efficient logging done on an 80-year rotation, as soon as a stand of trees is 80 years old, you cut it. There are no exceptions to a rule in a well- planned logging operation.
Senator Chalifoux: I had the opportunity to be on the subcommittee studying the boreal forests here in Canada a few years back. We went to Finland and to Sweden and saw what they were doing with their forests. They lost their boreal forests in about the 1500s. They have developed an excellent plan to manage the forests and forest farming.
I am concerned about what is happening with our boreal forest in Canada with the widespread clear-cutting. To expand on what Senator Day is saying here, is it feasible, and would it help us, to establish management practices such as Finland and Sweden have? They manage it very carefully there.
They are not allowed to cut a tree unless an inspector comes out and looks at it first.
Another thing I noticed there was that I never saw any animal tracks. There were no rabbit tracks; there was nothing in there. It was sad. They are concerned about reintroducing some of the smaller animals to that forest.
Mr. von Mirbach: I would venture to say that, prior to forest farming in Finland, there would have been more carbon on that land base. Finland has escaped scrutiny by converting to managed forests before the attention to climate change occurred. They got in under the wire. Whether that is fair or not is not for us to say. The issue is that, if we were to convert our forests to that kind of managed forest, we would lose a great deal of carbon. We were grateful and pleased to see the recommendations from that Senate subcommittee, included the recommendation that 20 per cent of the forests be devoted to intensive forest farming, along the lines of what is done in Finland. We would support that, with the recommendation that the 20 per cent be done not in the currently forested land base, but in areas such as marginal and degraded, non-profitable agricultural land. If you started farming trees on lands that do not have a lot of carbon on them now in order to maintain your productivity base, you are not decreasing biodiversity. You are adding to carbon and addressing the needs of the forest industry for a stable source of fibre in the long term.
Senator Chalifoux: I come from Northern Alberta. There, and in the bordering province of Saskatchewan, we have had a terribly devastating drought. I am a child of the 1930s, and for the first time in my life I saw an alkali storm while I was travelling to Saskatchewan last summer, because the lakes had totally dried up. I could not believe this storm; it was almost like a tornado, and quite devastating. With respect to adaptation strategies, is Canada doing enough to assist farmers in adapting to the tremendous change and what is happening to their land, in your opinion? I am also very interested in the growing of hemp. Would that help? I know we have marketing problems and so on, but hemp is such a diversified crop. In your opinion, would that help in promoting adaptation strategies for the agriculture and forestry sectors? We have to start looking at that.
Mr. von Mirbach: The potential range of things that might happen that could have an economic impact on farmers and rural Canadians is vast. If the expectation were that the Government of Canada would buffer Canadians against all impacts of climate change, and it was an obligation of the government to do so, then I would say no, government is not doing enough. I suggest that we need to pay attention to providing various tools and incentives to allow individuals to make their own decisions and undertake their own adaptations. That might be, for farmers, the knowledge base that would allow them to explore the different crops they might want to grow based on a changing climate.
The potential impacts on Canadians are vast. I think we need to provide tools, information and facilitative mechanisms, because we cannot simply compensate people for every potential climate-change-related loss they have incurred.
Senator Chalifoux: In your opinion, do urban Canadians realize the impact that climate change is having on our rural sectors, and how it will affect them in urban centres?
Mr. von Mirbach: I would strongly suspect not. There is this joking around about whether warmer winters would be better for Canadians, as if climate was simply like heating and you turn your thermostat up or down.
The real issue, which rural Canadians feel more than urban residents, is the uncertainty. We met a sugar bush owner in Southern Ontario who was managing a sugar bush that her grandfather had started. She hoped that her grandchildren could manage it; that continuity is more important for rural than urban Canadians. It is the fracturing of that continuity and its financial and emotional impact about which there is not a lot of sensitivity yet among urban Canadians. They see it as a business challenge and opportunity, rather than a fundamental change in lifestyle.
Senator Chalifoux: I saw something on the television news that really scares me. The black bears in B.C. are not hibernating this year. It is affecting everyone who lives in the forest there. You talked about the pine beetle and similar things. I have noticed on my own place that I have bugs coming out this winter that should be either hibernating or dead. This is where I am really concerned. I want to know if the Sierra Club is really addressing any of the effects that this global warming is having on the animals.
Mr. von Mirbach: The impacts are varied and we are working in collaboration with other groups. My background is in philosophy, not science. The question is how you induce Canadians to change their behaviour. We have had some discussion about science, whether there is enough and whether it is adequate. There is a need as well for people to internalize and appreciate the real impacts. Some work has been done on that. The science has indicated that the impacts of climate change are felt more severely in the North, and we have seen recently some very eloquent Inuit spokespeople talking about observed impacts of climate change there. That affects Canadians in a way that no amount of slick scientific presentations ever could. As that moves further south — you are describing personally observed changes — we will see a change in behaviour. Climate change is sort of hard to detect clearly, but when I was a child, the sun was our friend and my mother would send me out into it. Since the thinning of the ozone layer, there has been a shift based on mothers seeing their children come in with sunburn. They are now protective about the sun. That is a change in behaviour that has been inculcated, not just because of scientific findings, but because of everyday observed behaviour by citizens who have two eyes in their head and common sense. We do need to rely on that and, as a membership-based organization, we seek to incorporate that into our work whenever we can. As a non-governmental environmental organization, we try to communicate with people at a number of different levels, at the knowledge as well as the emotive level.
Senator Chalifoux: I would like to compliment the Sierra Club on their presentations, what is happening in the news media and how you are attempting to bring urban Canadians into the 21st century in terms of what will be happening to them. They cannot buy their bread in the store unless we in rural Canada grow the wheat.
Senator Gustafson: There were those scientists who suggested that you should let the law of nature take care of itself in the boreal forest. In other words, if you go in there and start planting all one kind of tree, all the other trees that should have been in there to nurture a forest will be lost. That is serious.
Senator Chalifoux referred to animals. The law of the jungle, if you will, really works. In the Prairies, we eliminated all the coyotes with poison, and then all the foxes came in and were spreading disease. There was no balance. The same thing seems to happen in the forest. That is my observation, and you can comment on it, if you will.
My wastepaper basket is a pathetic sight. If that basket is not full every night, I have not done my work. Much of it is irrelevant. I have not heard much about that angle. We are cutting down a lot of trees to circulate a lot of unnecessary paper.
Senator Day: You are recycling that.
Senator Gustafson: That is another question. Does that really pay? I have not heard much from any of the scientific witnesses about that angle of the situation. I think it is important.
Mr. von Mirbach: The idea of letting nature take care of it is a reflection of the fact that our forests are so vast that we cannot engineer them ourselves. I do not have off the top of my head the amount of planting we do annually. Even if we were to do 100 times what we are doing now, it would not accomplish much towards this kind of systematic change. We have no choice but to create the mechanisms. Our argument on the need for large protected areas is to create these mechanisms where nature can take care of itself.
As for pricing, I will come back to the point that Ms. May made earlier. The Kyoto Protocol begins to monetize an environmental value. The challenge for government is to get the pricing signals right to induce people to do the right thing and avoid the wrong thing. In the case of wasteful paper, the forest industry is keen on having credits for the carbon stored in forest products. To some extent, I could support that, provided that there was a corresponding debit for the decay of forest products. If you build a good desk that lasts 60 years, you are storing that carbon out of the atmosphere, but if you are making a piece of unnecessary packaging that is sent to a landfill or decomposes within a short time, that would have a corresponding debit. If the pricing signals were right, it would penalize the production of needless products that were thrown away to decompose. The mechanism of how to do that is not clear to all of us, but in theory, we could develop at least better pricing signals than we have now. They would not be perfect, but they could be better.
Senator Hubley: I come from the Maritimes, as does Senator Day. On your coloured slide, the Maritime area is coloured yellow. Does that mean that our forests will be less impacted by climate change?
Mr. von Mirbach: Thank you for mentioning that point. This is a crude map. There is another, and I was looking for a copy. It was on a Web site. I did not save a copy. This map is inadequate. It is simply showing changes in the boreal forest. This comes from Natural Resources Canada.
I have seen a map that is a little more sophisticated and includes several different climatic regions. The Maritimes are in the Acadian forest region and show less of an impact than some of the northern areas of Canada. The region stays the same, in the modelling that I have seen, based on a doubling. You still have the stresses of insects that have not been seen there previously. That is consistent with a sense that some of the cooling effect of the Atlantic will offset some of the projected changes in Atlantic Canada.
I have been looking for a map that shows all of Canada and is more adequate on forest regions. I was not able to find it.
Senator Wiebe: We have spent a considerable portion of this morning talking about the effects that climate change will have on the agricultural producer. I would like to switch to the effects that climate change may have on each individual in our country. We are a large country by area, and yet with a small population in terms of global figures.
Our farmers have been very efficient. We produce a tremendous volume of food, the vast majority of which is exported. Canadians today work fewer hours in a year to feed themselves than they did 30 years ago, 50 years ago, or even 100 years ago, because we have a cheap food policy in this country.
What effect will global warming have on the food supply for Canadians and the security of that supply, so that we are able to raise enough to feed our population, and what could happen to the cost of that food if global warming continues?
Mr. von Mirbach: I will be general in my comments because it is not an area where I have particular expertise. Costs could go up, but I will not even comment on that. I think costs can change and people adapt to that in various ways.
In general, the likelihood is that Canada will be less threatened by food security issues than other parts of the world. The fact that other parts of the world will see extreme food security issues will clearly be an issue for us. It is part of the ethical dimension of the climate change problem. Although some of the impacts are most extreme in the North, the impacts in a human context will be felt in many developing countries. Those developing countries have not historically been part of the problem. They have not been the cause of those emissions since 1860 to 2000. We could have, because of food insecurity or rising sea level, up to 100 million environmental refugees. They are not the authors of their own misfortune; we are collectively — the global community and the high emitters. Food security is an international issue and a severe one.
In a general sense, how will that affect individual Canadians? Well, it will not affect us in the sense that we will not have food on our shelves. It will affect us as a people in that we will have to make some heartrending decisions about our obligations to assist those who are worse off than we are. We will not be the worst off on food security, but we have an obligation to those who are.
Senator Wiebe: My last question is in regard to how we adapt. It has become evident within the last number of years that we are experiencing weather extremes. We will have longer periods of drought. We will have more thunderstorms and more rain at times. We are not losing water. However, if we are warming up, that means that wherever there is water, there is more evaporation. Where there is more evaporation, there is rain.
We can talk about adapting. How do we adapt to ensure that the City of Toronto or the City of Vancouver has adequate water supplies? We can adapt by building dams to store the water in the wet periods and allow us to survive over the dryer periods. Then again, by building that dam, you also provide a larger area for evaporation, which also provides for more extremes like thundershowers.
Have you looked at how we adapt to and manage those extremes?
Mr. von Mirbach: The extremes are difficult to adapt to as such. In particular, there would be local engineering issues that have their own environmental, economic and social costs. You can adapt to extremes to a certain extent by managing for the general range of variability. I am not a forester, but I have had some discussions with forestry people who say that when trees are planted in sylviculture, the seedling stock needs to come from a certain region to maintain good, healthy stock. You want that stock to be relatively local because you assume it is adapted for that region. There are maps giving guidelines to nursery suppliers of seedlings. I have been talking with people, without getting a clear answer, about pushing those boundaries north. It would be a modest change and might not be a guarantee against extreme weather events, but why not encourage the planting of seedling stock that has come from farther south than you might have used 10 years ago? It is not a guarantee that some freak storm will not wipe out your crop, but it increases the likelihood that the resilience of those trees will be greater than otherwise.
There is some modest bending of the envelope that we believe the forest industry can and should implement. In talking about it with people, I have had some agreement in principle, but a little reluctance to do it. I cannot get my head around that reluctance. I would urge you to ask your witnesses about that next week.
Senator Gustafson: I want to pick up where Senator Wiebe left off in regards to a cheap food policy and how it relates to the agricultural community and the global situation.
This committee travelled to Europe, the U.S. and Northern Ireland. What is beginning to happen in those countries, for the most part in Europe and in the U.S., is that they are putting environmental, rural and agricultural policy under one roof. That is working to the benefit of the agriculture community.
As Senator Wiebe has said, that has not happened in Canada because the farming community has borne the brunt of this situation. I heard yesterday that a large percentage of farmers have left the farm in the last four years. There simply are not enough hands out there to do the job if we are to follow the recommendations we get from the scientific community.
From a global perspective, if you look at Ethiopia and similar countries — my son sits on the Canadian Foodgrains Bank — there is not enough food in the world to send to those people, the food that is going through NGOs and so on. It is an important question to which I do not see answers coming. We live in an enlightened society, and yet we will buy all kinds of stocks related to something that we think is going to happen that does not, and then there is a bust and the shares drop from $100 to 50 cents. However, we think that is the way to go. When it comes to reality — and I am thinking like a farmer now — that land is pretty real, but to the general public it means little. We have people come here from the Department of Agriculture and they know better than anyone how their budgets have been cut and how they are not able to do the things that should be done.
That is part of what is happening in our society. How do we get that message across?
Mr. von Mirbach: It is beyond me alone to provide an answer to that question, except to say that in general the challenge we have to face is somewhat awe-inspiring. On the other hand, our opportunities as Canadians to adapt effectively are greater than in many other parts of the world because we are a relatively small population on a relatively large land base. Thus, if we lose productivity on some areas of the land base we do not entirely run out of options for alternatives. We do have an opportunity to adapt more effectively.
How to find the political will and create, as a society, the priorities such that the financial support flows into those areas where it is most needed is a difficult question. All Canadians will have to look at that topic.
The Chairman: On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you, Mr. von Mirbach, Ms. May and the Sierra Club for a most impressive presentation. We have been here two hours and everyone still has a lot of questions, which is an indication of how much you have stimulated our thought processes.
I must also say that in terms of the subject we are dealing with, that is, adaptation to climate change, you and Ms. May have touched on more of the salient parts of those issues than many of our other witnesses. What you have had to say today will play a major part in the recommendations we will make at the end of our study.
Mr. von Mirbach: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak.
The committee continued in camera.