What Needs to Change in a Changing Climate

By Glen Hodgson Canada Next: 12 Ways to Get Ahead of Disruption SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS Climate change is creating a growing array of economic and societal costs and risks, including severe flooding and forest fires, threats to infrastructure, and the risk of stranded assets in oil and gas production and distribution worth many billions of dollars. [...] They recognize that some- thing must be done to adapt to the new Managing climate change risk will be critically important to climate reality, provided our standard of Canada and the international community for decades to come, as living and lifestyles are not severely con- evidenced by the fact that other jurisdictions are already moving strained. [...] Innovative that a full social consensus on climate public policy and technology will be required in Canada to change adaptation has not been reached, address and manage climate change risks, and to promote faster and policy shifts are likely to occur in adaptation without sacrificing robust economic growth. [...] While we have made a strong start in addressing the There has been surprisingly little debate consequences of climate change, the Government of Canada about the current and expected economic needs to focus its policies on completing and implementing key costs of climate change. [...] A third key area of focus in the coming years will be the risk of promote public and private procurement of technologies that stranded assets, most notably in sectors reduce GHG emissions without relying on these technologies and regions that have high greenhouse to meet emissions targets gas (GHG)-emissions intensity.