When it's cold, I adapt and put on a coat, hat and gloves. In the heat, I want light clothing, look for shade or crank the air conditioning. We adjust to temperature changes. After all, this is Canada. We have seasons.

These days, though, weather extremes are getting worse. Hot, dry, “fire weather” conditions saw Ontario’s worst wildfire season on record, before August hit. Those conditions were twice as likely as they would have been in a world without fossil fuel emissions, according to World Weather Attribution scientists. Put another way, we used to see these conditions less than once in 40 years. Now we can expect them as frequently as one in six. That means more emergency evacuations, more smoke, more health issues, and more costs. Prior to 2009 the Canadian Insurance industry paid about $400 million a year for extreme weather damage. Since 2009, the average has been almost $3 billion. 

A friend of mine recently put in an order for N95 masks and bought an air purifier to protect against smoke. We’ll need those items more and more.

Floods and fires are our most costly unnatural disasters, according the Intact Centre for Climate Adaptation (ICCA) at the University of Waterloo. Remember the Jasper fire in 2024 ($1.3 billion) and Toronto area flooding the same year (almost $1 billion)?

But extreme heat also costs us in many ways. This summer a road near Sarnia buckled in the heat. It can warp subway and rail lines too. Municipal governments everywhere are concerned about such costs. Estimates show that investing about $4 billion a year to adapt public infrastructure to excess heat and rainfall could save Canadian taxpayers $9 billion in repair costs. 

Sizzling heat has been called the “silent killer,” and not just because of heatstroke. It can increase the chance of heart attacks, strokes and asthma attacks. This summer, heat killed more than 25,000 people in Europe. In Canada, we don’t accurately track such deaths, other than the 600-plus who perished in Vancouver during the heat dome of 2021. 

The good news is that heat-related deaths are often preventable – at least in countries that can afford to provide air conditioning and cooling centres. Those are two of the adaptation measures we need. Planting more trees and preserving green spaces would also help. They cool the air, and absorb rain in a torrential downpour. 

Kawartha Lakes is currently updating its Healthy Environment Plan, looking at measures to help us adapt as well as bring down planet-warming emissions. We need to do both. 

In May, NDP Environment Critic Peter Tabuns introduced the Adapting to a Hotter Ontario Act, to be debated this fall.

The ICCA offers us some affordable tips for keeping cool, including using drapes and cross ventilation. And remembering to check on vulnerable neighbours when extremes hit. 

The good news is that the climate models that accurately predicted global heating also show us that when we stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, global temperatures will stop rising. “As long as we keep burning fossil fuels, temperatures will increase globally. And that will mean that these fire weather conditions will get worse and worse and worse,” said Friederike Otto, World Weather Attribution founder at the U.K.’s Imperial College London. “There are hard limits to what we can adapt to.”