It’s hardly revolutionary to say that climate change is already here. This summer and fall brought one extreme weather event after another, and where I live, it’s now late November without a single snowfall (20 years ago, it wasn’t unusual to be bundled up against a blizzard as early as Halloween). Temperatures are clearly rising, and still, many people don’t seem alarmed.
Climate Legacy is frequently reading new research from groups like Re.Climate, EcoAnalytics, and others, and one recurring theme we’ve seen is that seniors are most concerned about the direct health impacts of climate change. So in order to show that not only is climate change here, but it’s already threatening our health, we wanted to open the floor to our network – how has climate change already impacted or threatened your health? Let us know, and with your permission we’d be happy to include a quote on our social media or in a future newsletter.
Our Stories
In the part of Southern Ontario where I grew up, rampant tick populations have become a threat to locals’ health. This is because hotter summers and milder winters allow the parasitic arachnids to survive in regions that were previously off limits. For the first 15 years of my life, no one I knew ever found a tick latched on to themselves or their clothing, but now checking for ticks has become an essential epilogue for any nature walk or hike. When my sister’s dog occasionally wanders into a grassy field, she’ll inevitably come back with a handful of ticks hiding in her fur.
The true harm of tick bites is that they can spread Lyme Disease, which has debilitating and sometimes long-lasting symptoms, and in rare cases can even be fatal. Earlier this month, a family friend of mine in his 60’s was bedridden with the condition.
As tick populations boom, reported Lyme infections have been skyrocketing in proportion. Although Canadian data isn’t perfect because of how often Lyme infections go unreported, what data we do have show an alarming increase:
The growing likelihood that we may be bitten by ticks and contract a painful bacterial illness is fast becoming a fact of life for Canadians living near our southern border, and ticks will only creep northward as Canada’s climate continues to warm.
The Fatal Impact of Rising Temperatures
And then there’s the heat. I imagine most of us are familiar by now with the Western Heat Dome that caused 619 heat-related deaths in BC in 2021. Many of those who died were seniors, and the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control has since confirmed that during the heat dome, there was a 100% increase in deaths amongst adults over 50.
Though this is an extreme example, as temperatures continue to rise, heat incidents like the one that struck BC will become more and more common. Furthermore, it doesn’t take a freak weather event for summer heat to reach deadly highs, and non-fatal heat can still have a significant impact on your quality of life.
Wendy Quarry, a member of Climate Legacy’s Steering Committee, was nearly driven from her Ottawa apartment when the building’s cooling system broke down in 2023. By summer 2024, it still hadn’t been fixed or replaced, leading to sweltering heat within the building:
“During this summer and last summer there were days when it really was frightening to stay in the apartment,” Wendy told me in an email. “I knew it was dangerous but didn’t really know what to do about it.”
In addition to the broken cooling system, the apartment also had large west-facing windows. During a hot day, the sunlight streaming in made much of the space nearly uninhabitable, including the kitchen. Building management was supposed to fix the problem, but after a year of inaction, Wendy was forced to purchase a portable air conditioner, which still wasn’t enough to counter the brutal heat.
Like the rise in tick populations, dangerous temperatures will only worsen as the climate crisis continues to go largely ignored by our federal and provincial governments, as well as by the corporations most responsible. In the case of heat though, we have much better data, and recent research suggests that compared to today, by 2050 there will be an extra 250 million people aged 69 or older exposed to dangerous temperatures. If our housing infrastructure isn’t updated to meet this new challenge, many will die.
To help convince more people that climate action is a cause that can’t wait, we’re calling on our network to share your own climate-related health stories. Have ticks or extreme heat been a problem in your life, or have you been facing something else entirely? Write us at climatelegacycanada@gmail.com, or send us a message over Facebook!
