A report from DBRS Canada out Wednesday said that while there have been rail service interruptions, grain shipments overall have not yet been seriously affected, although ' the situation remains volatile and unpredictable.' Spike in deathsįor Dave Sawyer, principal economist with the Canadian Climate Institute, the costs of climate change in our daily lives are obvious, including from the current forest fires. In the past rail traffic has been interrupted by fires. Oil and gas companies have been forced to shut down production again this week.

wildfires damaged key rail lines, backlogging Canada's freight supply chain While some of the effects of a warming planet seem distant from our daily lives, including the slow-moving impacts of rising sea levels or disasters affecting other people someplace far away, the smoke from forest fires has an in-your-face impact affecting millions of Canadians that makes it harder to ignore. Since there is no benefit, it is harder to justify spending the money. Do you have a question about climate change and what is being done about it? Send an email to federal budgets include all the costs of fighting climate change, the other side of the ledger, the notional income from the benefits of you not breathing smoke, or at least breathing less, remain blank.It is an interesting conundrum and the thousands of people displaced from their homes or breathing smoke from the current spate of forest fires are caught in the middle. You don't have to tell the people of Calgary and other Canadian communities breathing orange air that forest fires have a cost.Īnd while repeated studies draw a direct line between an increase in costly forest fires and climate change, economists and accountants right up to Canada's Parliamentary Budget Officer say the benefits of stopping climate change and thus reducing the many harms it creates are simply impossible to measure for public accounting purposes.

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