City Views

Print

E-mail

Text

It was just a week ago that councillors on the city's Government Management Committee voted to postpone a vote to approve an environmentally-green policy to buy food for city institutions locally. Local environmental groups and environmentalists on council criticized them roundly for it, despairing that the city would never get around to battling global warming properly.

That, however, was a warm-up to the level of despair an observer might find at this week's special Parks and Environment Committee meeting, to debate a plan not to fight climate change, but to accept it. To be fair, "Ahead of the Storm" is a complementary plan to the one David Miller ran on: to cut smog-causing emissions dramatically. And if the Government Management Committee can ever sort out the local-food issue to its members' satisfaction, the city's "mitigation plan" rolls on.

"Ahead of the Storm" will roll on too, although not in earnest until next year, and it's pretty practical. The plan stems from the fact that Toronto and Canada and the rest of the world have spent many years not effectively mitigating its production of greenhouse gases - and from that, Toronto and Canada and the rest of the world are pretty much doomed to a future in a radically transformed climate.

The city's already felt the effect of climate change. What once would have been considered 50-year storms come along once every couple of years now. In August of 2005, a flash rain storm delivered more precipitation than Hurricane Hazel and washed away part of Finch Avenue. Cases of extreme heat are more common. Tropical diseases like West Nile Virus and Lyme Disease are making their way into the city.

With the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, the prediction is that it's going to get worse. This past winter notwithstanding, winters are expected to get shorter and warmer - which will mean disease-bearing insects will survive longer. Tornadoes may start touching down in city limits, and rising sea levels will make Toronto a popular spot for environmental refugees.

And according to the report, there is nothing that Torontonians can do about this. Curtailing energy use - particularly automotive energy use - will help mitigate the effects, but only marginally. Toronto will still be going into the future with an infrastructure designed and built for a more benign environment; the city will only thrive inasmuch as it can adapt and rebuild that infrastructure to deal with those changes.

There is some good news in this. Toronto is engaged in a multi-year reconstruction of its sewer infrastructure and road network. The city is already constructing new sewers with heavier rainfall projections in mind; and it is possible, in the coming years, to rebuild roads using materials and pigments that don't retain and reflect heat as current materials do. The city is coming up with new guidelines to make private parking lots more water-permeable and is encouraging new developments to build green roofs - which will help keep those buildings cooler during heatwaves. And the city has been setting up cooling centres during heatwaves for years to help vulnerable people get help.

This is fine work, and it will no doubt make things better. But based on the evidence, it's fair to say that Torontonians will be reeling from the effects of climate change for many decades to come. And those effects won't be mitigated by small measures. The Parks and Environment Committee caught an inkling of that this week and has asked all city departments and agencies to think hard about ways to deal with a changing city - and what those strategies will cost - in time for next year's budget.

When that cost comes up for debate, expect it to be a grim one. Unlike the mayor's plan to fight climate change, with its clear goals and hopeful note, the adaptation is all about the joyless business of getting on.