Climate change committee gets glimpse of New Brunswick's future

A study of climate change by a committee of the legislature beganThursday with a sobering view of what New Brunswick's future may look like.

Experts appeared before the committee of Liberals, PCs, and Green MLAs to tell themthe climate is already changingit is going to cause damage and cost millions upon millions of dollars.

Paul Kovacs from the Institute of Catastrophic Loss Reduction, funded by the federal government and the insurance industry, said trends show more extreme weather is on the way.

Not too far away you're going to have summers where it's above 30 almost every day.- Paul Kovacs, Institute of Catastrophic Loss Reduction

Noting a heat warning in effect in Fredericton as he spoke, he said, "The number of times the temperature's going to get above 30 C is going to increase a lot. Not too far away you're going to have summers where it's above 30 almost every day."

And, he said, when it gets that hot, "the number of people who die goes up. It's not complicated science."

For the first time, he added, insurance companies are paying more out in claims for flooded basements caused by extreme rain than they are for house fires.

Alain Bourque, the executive director of a Montreal think-tank that studies climate change for provincial governments and powerful utilities, told the MLAs that while scientists can't definitely attribute "one extreme event" like the Fort McMurray fire to climate change, the risk of such events is increasing.

Fredericton temps could rise 4 C

He said trends indicate even with robust emission reductions, the average temperature in Fredericton is likely to rise 1.9 to 4.3 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Such projections and trends are familiar to climate scientists and experts, but for many of the MLAs, it was "new information," Liberal MLA and committee chair Andrew Harvey said.

The committee was struck to consult experts and the public to develop recommendations on how the Gallant government should comply with the Paris climate change agreement.

That international deal calls for governments to limit the average global temperature increase to two degrees Celcius and to hold it below 1.5 degrees if possible.

Kovacs and Bourque both said that while immediate action is required to meet those goals, governments also have to act in the short term to mitigate the effect of climate changes already underway.

Harvey said that could help stimulate the economy and thus build public support for climate action.

"There's jobs, there's efficiencies, green jobs, all these types of things. So it's not all that you're investing all this money and there's no reward right now," he said.

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Kovacs told the committee that the challenge with emissions reductions is that the public may be expected to change their behaviour without seeing any benefit from it in their lifetimes.

But PC MLA Brian Kierstead, the party's environment critic, said he thinks New Brunswickers see the need for action.

"I think people do understand it is urgent, but not something that you can say `Oh,in six months we're going to fix it, in 12 months we're going to fix it.'"

Targets set previously

In 2001, the four premiers in Atlantic Canada and the governors of northeastern U.S. states agreed to reduce carbon emissions by 75 to 85 per cent of their 2001 levels by 2050.

They set a shorter-term goal of reducing them 10 per cent below 2001 levels by 2020, but a report two years ago by the Alward government acknowledged New Brunswick would need to take "additional actions" to meet those regional goals.

While New Brunswick's emissions have decreased since 2004, it's been attributed not to government initiatives but to the shutdown of large plants, including two NB Power generating stations in Dalhousie and Grand Lake and some private industrial plants.

Last year, the premiers and governors, including New Brunswick's Brian Gallant, agreed to a new goal of 35 to 45 per cent reductions by 2030.