How Climate Change Affects Canadians

Adam Choghri, Adam D’Addario, Melissa Cohan

The Canadian government pledged to help reduce the emission levels by 2030. The government of Canada wants to achieve a 40-45% emission reduction. In the roadmap they released, they share what they are hoping to do the same with the electricity, oil, gas, Transporation, and other main factors that are contributing to the rising emissions.

From the Economy-wide standpoint, the government of Canada so far launched a $2 billion Low-carbon economy fund and spent $200 million towards the climate action and awareness fund. The government of Canada also stated in the roadmap they joined the Global Methane Pledge to help reduce Methane emissions by 20% by 2030.

However, even with these pledges, the fact remains that climate change is a very real threat. Toronto feels it even more than any other Canadian city. Data from Nestpick, an apartment rental platform in Berlin that used research methodologies and reports from established climate change experts to compare the cities’ climates, average temperature, sea-level changes, and water stress, shows that Toronto ranks 14th in the world for cities that may face the biggest shifts by 2050.

This data is based on current trends from research conducted by experts. If Canada makes serious strides in the response to climate change the effects of it by 2050 could be drastically different.

Using Google Trends, when comparing four specific topics over a five-year period: Extreme Heat, Extreme Cold Warning, Freezing Rain, and Tornado Warning, it sparked an interest. You can see that in 2018, freezing rain was one of the top searches on Google, and when moving into the warmer months of Spring and Summer you can see that the tornado warning took the top search results.

Things stayed relatively the same throughout 2019, but there seemed to be a pivotal switch starting to appear in December 2021 and spiking dramatically in 2022, especially with the extreme cold warning and freezing rain search.

While the government of Canada is certainly making many promises they are going to have to start taking action swiftly. Data shows that Toronto ranks the highest of any city in Canada that is experiencing the worst overall effects of climate change while google trends tells a clear story of Canadians growing concerns with extreme weather conditions.

It is clear that climate change is at the top of many Canadians' minds as the effects of it continue to worsen.