Terence Corcoran: Oil superpowers dodge the climate change ‘crises’

Global economic growth, currently fuelled by fossil fuels, is needed to create the economic circumstances that can reduce carbon emissions over time. Photo by James MacDonald/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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The grim news is spreading faster than a B.C. wildfire: This year could go down as one of the hottest and most devastating in modern history. Last month, the world’s seas reportedly hit the highest temperatures on record. Wildfire events and damage are unprecedented around the world — Ontario, British Columbia, Spain and France.

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The largest wildfire season since the Second World War hit France in July, although many of the fires were allegedly started by humans, making the link to climate change a little difficult. In Washington state, the department of natural resources reports that 85 per cent of the state’s wildfires are “human-caused.”

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Heat waves are killing thousands and fires are displacing hundreds of thousands, at least temporarily. The relative scale of the ongoing destructive heat and wildfire events needs to be kept in perspective, however.

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The Independent reported that the 2026 summer of record-breaking temperatures and extreme dry weather over the course of four heatwaves “has left a large part of the continent scorched.” The “large part” of Europe needs definition. The official estimate is that 543,000 hectares of land has burned since the start of the year, equal to about 0.013 per cent of the European Union’s land mass and 0.34 per cent of its forests.

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The major headline focus has been the number of displaced people. According to the World Economic Forum, the estimate for France and Spain is 300,000 displaced, or 0.25 per cent of the total population of the two countries. In B.C., about 20,000 people have been evacuated, or about 0.35 per cent of the province’s population.

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Globally, the World health Organization (WHO) estimates that between 2000 and 2019, an average 489,000 people died from heat waves annually. By comparison, the WHO reports that annual global deaths from traffic accidents averages 1.16 million, more than double the number killed by heat waves over two decades.

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This does not mean that heat wave deaths are to be dismissed or ignored. But there does appear to be growing realization that while climate change theory points to a long-term crisis brought about by fossil fuel consumption, the immediate heat and wildfire events have other, more immediate causes.

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Climate change and fossil fuels often make the headlines. A typical example: “B.C. wildfire a symptom of global crisis” that is part of a “much larger issue connected to the burning of fossil fuels.” While climate change and the need to “shift away from fossil fuels” drove the headline, the main focus of the story was the lack of proper government management of forests and wildfires. The real need is for prescribed burns of forests to prevent wildfires from spreading, along with major increases in firefighting capabilities and preparation strategies.

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In Ontario, union officials have highlighted the province’s failure to maintain adequate firefighting capacity. Also needed are specific forest management and tree-planting strategies.

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In summary, there is a discernible global shift in the approach to heat and wildfire events, and to climate change in general. Excessive ideological agitation over fossil fuel use is being replaced by a stated need to adapt to such destructive events and mitigate their impacts. Instead of ranting about oil and gas, the world must learn to face changing environments with policies and practices that reduce the harms caused.