Increasingly frequent and powerful, widespread wildfires are now scorching B.C. and Alberta forests every summer.
Making matters worse, a plague of resilient, adaptable pests is multiplying and spreading at unprecedented rates as a result of milder winters, their astronomical growth killing swaths of forests that die and rot.
Combine those factors, which have a huge impact on emissions, and Canada is no longer a carbon neutral nation.
Our forests, arguably as a symptom of rising average global temperatures, have for many years no longer been acting as the carbon sink they once did in the past.
But this pervasive assertion that Canada is carbon neutral, which often has a dose of "What about China, India and the U.S.?" thrown in, erroneously gets presented as grounds to justify doing absolutely nothing whatsoever to reduce our collective emissions in Canada, let alone actually bothering to improve energy efficiency.
It also completely disregards our direct contribution to those countries' emissions by importing arguably the vast majority of our consumable products from their massive factories that must consume vast amounts of power, and the cargo ships that haul the T-shirts and sneakers around the globe.
Meanwhile, although petroleum and fossil fuels are expected to remain in growing demand for the immediate future, the global economy is preparing — or least attempting — to transition to a more diverse energy sector that is less dependent on oil.
Among the omens, Norway, well known for having the visionary foresight years ago to place people's interests before corporate profits and today sitting on a $1-trillion rainy day fund, recently announced its intent to partially divest from oil exploration, albeit sparing big batters like Shell and BP, firms with renewable energy divisions.
Additionally, this idea that we are carbon neutral does not consider the per capita impact we have.
If there were more than one billion Canadians, we would eclipse the pollution churned out by China.
Personally, one conversation I think needs to be had involves an alternative that has become a bigger energy bogeyman than oil and gas, coal even.
That's none other than nuclear power.
That's right, I said it!
If the global community is serious about dealing with out-of-control emissions before we pass the tipping point, what better way to assist the shift away from burning carbon based products than by switching to a source of power that emits water vapour?
We have to get over Chernobyl — the design flaws and lack of containment fail-safes from the failed Soviet Russian regime were to blame.
And by all empirical evidence and measurable observations, Fukushima was simply not "another Chernobyl."
By comparison, it was barely a firecracker.
And to give the Japanese credit where it is unquestionably due, their facility withstood a perfect storm that pushed their engineering and technology to the limits. By and large, they prevailed by preventing a worst-case scenario meltdown. Despite suspiciously citation-free and poorly compiled memes you might have seen on social media, we aren't about to see Godzilla emerge from a glowing green radioactive ocean filled with two-headed fish with seven eyes.
But over engineering a project without cutting corners to save costs on safety still was not enough in their case to avoid a near disastrous catastrophe.
There's a cliche saying in real estate: location, location, location.
And somehow, a region prone to repeat earthquakes and tsunamis does not seem the ideal location for a nuclear facility.
However, there are plenty of geologically stable regions, especially in a country like Canada, that would be perfectly suitable.
Unfortunately, public opinion of nuclear typically tends to, perhaps ironically, rally the polar opposite sides of the climate change conversation in a unified chorus of "Heck no."
Yet realistically, if we are to actually succeed in reducing carbon emissions while demand for power only continues to increase, nuclear might in the short run be our only hope.
