Two new reports show that Canada needs to do much more to tackle climate change

Emissions flow from a factory’s smokestacks in Toronto, Jan. 8, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston Two new reports show that Canada needs to do much more to tackle climate change Published: September 23, 2026 10.11am EDT Share article Print article Global climate warming is expected to cross the 1.5 C temperature threshold — the lower limit of the Paris Agreement temperature goal — within a handful of years. This temperature increase shows no signs of slowing, and on our current trajectory, Canada is likely to experience temperatures 5 C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. These are the headline messages of two major climate reports that were released earlier this month: The United Nations Environment Programme’s Limiting Overshoot report is a stark reminder that global climate mitigation efforts have been insufficient to avoid exceeding this critical climate target. Canada’s Changing Climate Report 2026 shows in detail just what the consequences of this global failure could mean for Canadians. None of this is good news, nor is it surprising. In 2015, the same year that the Paris Agreement was signed, I joined with colleagues in Montréal and around the world to launch the Climate Clock project, which for the past decade has counted down the time remaining until we reach the 1.5 C above pre-industrial temperatures. I hoped at the time that global mitigation efforts would succeed in reducing emissions and adding time to the clock. This has not happened fast enough, and the clock now shows less than four years remaining until 1.5 C is crossed. The consequences of this continued climate warming are also not surprising to those of us who participated in writing Canada’s Changing Climate Report. In the report, we presented evidence of increases in heat and precipitation extremes, fire season length, glacial retreat, permafrost loss and rising sea levels. We showed that these changes are projected to continue to intensify in the coming decades in response to ongoing global greenhouse gas emissions and resulting global warming. What does this mean for the future? The important message of both reports is not that the world has failed (which it has) nor that the consequences of this failure are dire (which they are). The critical message is that the climate crisis will get even worse if we continue with the halfhearted mitigation efforts of the past decade. Every additional increase in global temperatures will cause more intense…