Our own Snowmaggedon in January. A major ice storm in March. Flood warnings in April. Smoky air from western wildfires. Unprecedented sizzling heat. Drought conditions. Low water level warnings. Four area wildfires in August.

Climate disruption is not some distant concern for future generations, or something inundating small island nations. It’s in our backyard now.

To quote Al Gore, watching the news “is like taking a hike through the Book of Revelations.”

Researchers have been raising the alarm for decades. When my daughter was born 30 years ago, the second global climate report said “projections … confirm the potential for human activities to alter the Earth’s climate to an extent unprecedented in human history.”

Nothing like meeting your potential.

By mid-July, Canada’s wildfire season was already declared the second-worst on record.

More than 70 per cent of Canada was “abnormally dry,” according to John Pomeroy, director of the Global Water Futures Program in Saskatchewan. Locally we were asked to cut water consumption by 20 per cent and we were under a total outdoor fire ban for weeks. And we were battling our own wildfires.

We’re part of a world that saw alarming record temperature levels on land and in the oceans last year. That heat is not just killing people, crops, livestock, and wildlife, but also fish and coral reefs that provide habitat to a quarter of the world’s marine life. It’s melting glaciers and polar ice caps – the earth’s air conditioners. We’re seeing less ice cover on the Great Lakes, meaning more shoreline erosion.

It’s a fundamental disaster on many levels. And it’s only going to get worse, thanks to the rapid increase in heat-trapping C02 emissions, which is also making storms more severe and widespread, Pomeroy told CBC recently.

That’s heavy. But I’ve decided I’m an apocalyptic optimist. We’re folks who believe we can still reduce future devastation by rapidly winding down our dependence on fossil fuels – coal, gas, oil, natural gas. We no longer have time for incrementalism. Burning the stuff is trapping the excess heat and hurting us now.

Amidst it all there is good news. Last year 40 per cent of global electricity came from clean sources like wind, solar, and hydro. That was up from 31 per cent just one year earlier.

This summer, the World Court ruled that countries are obligated to prevent harm to the climate or be held liable for damages. And shortly after, a South African court blocked an offshore oil and gas exploration project because it did not consider the project’s long-term impact on the climate.

For our part we can prod the federal government to make sure its new national energy corridor focusses on clean energy.

We can demand they hold firm to that zero-emission vehicle mandate that would see all new light-duty vehicles sold in 2035 be electric or plug-in hybrid. We need to stop arguing that we can’t meet that deadline. Let’s discuss how we can.

Provincially, we need to push for more renewable energy and a moratorium on natural gas expansion. Locally, it’s important to support all of the above. And individually, we can all do what we can to reduce fossil fuel pollution.

Climate devastation has hit our home. We need to protect it. Join with others to write those letters, make those calls, show up for those rallies. This is everyone’s fight now.