(Ottawa) Meghan Fandrich’s voice still shakes as she remembers how she grabbed her five-year-old daughter before rushing out of their home in 2021 as flames engulfed the village of Lytton, British Columbia.
Darryl Tedjuk, for his part, remains stoic as he describes how his hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, Nunavut, is slowly being eaten away by the Beaufort Sea.
These two Canadians are part of a growing category of citizens for whom climate change is not a theoretical abstraction, but a harsh, very concrete reality.
Scientists at Copernicus, the European Union body responsible for measuring the planet’s temperature every day, reported this week that last May was the hottest month on record worldwide. The average temperature in May was 1.52°C higher than the average recorded during the months of May in the pre-industrial era.
Canadians who presented their own stories of “climate survival” in Ottawa on Thursday say more must be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Canada and around the world.
