Your Personal Action Plan

If you care about affordable housing, you care about climate change and you can take both personal and systemic action to help address the issues above.

The impacts of climate change on health are pervasive.

Climate change also poses risks to the economic and social determinants of physical and mental health including clean air, clean and accessible water, healthy soils, and food systems (including both food security/availability and food quality/nutrition) and livelihoods.

In addition, there are inequities among people with respect to the impacts of climate change on health. Certain communities and certain groups of people are more vulnerable and at higher risk to the health impacts of climate change.

For example, certain existing health conditions can make people more affected by climate events — e.g. people with diabetes are more at risk in an extreme heat event. People that work outdoors may be more at risk for heat stress.

Others may have greater difficulty accessing care or emergency assistance during a disaster. Socioeconomic factors may also make certain groups less able to withstand climate impacts, or recover from them.

Climate change poses both physical climate risks (risks from climate disasters and a changing climate) and transition risks (shifting to a clean economy) for a number of sectors of the economy including fishing, tourism, agriculture, forestry, energy and mining.

It also poses risks to the economies of communities that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change including northern and coastal communities, and communities in areas prone to wildfires, floods, and other natural disasters.Collective impacts pose a risk to the overall economy and our GDP (see costs of inaction.)

Implementing climate mitigation and climate adaptation measures as soon as possible is critical to minimizing the impacts of climate change on the economy. Climate action and the energy transition also provide a massive opportunity for the creation of jobs and competitive advantage for Canada (whereas inaction can mean we will be left behind as other countries develop the innovation, skills and capacity to deliver the emerging clean economy technologies.)

Finally, a managed and just transition will ensure that the hardworking Canadians in sectors negatively impacted by the transition are supported in finding new employment opportunities.

If a healthy economy or if the impacted economic sectors are important to you, you care about climate change.

From local to global scales there are intersections between climate change and social inequality.

Globally, climate change and poverty are intrinsically linked. The world’s poorest countries experience the worst impacts of climate change but have contributed the least to the problem.

This is in part because they are in more tropical regions, have large populations in cities including in low lying coastal regions, and/or have large populations working in agriculture which is also susceptible to climate change.

Not only are they more likely to experience extreme weather events, flooding, and drought, they are also the least equipped to adapt (e.g. their homes and infrastructure may be less able to withstand extreme weather events, they may not be able to easily migrate to areas with less food/water scarcity) and they are less able to recover from loss and damage (e.g. they may not have the means to replace lost assets, and may lack insurance or government support).

If displaced entirely, they may be pushed into a worse economic situation from which they cannot recover (see migration below.) Vulnerable populations are also less able to cope with climate-related impacts on food prices, inflation, and health in some cases.

Climate change exacerbates inequality. In fact, it is anticipated that over 100 million people may fall back into extreme poverty in less than a decade as a result of the climate crisis, reversing the global progress on eradicating extreme poverty. It is impossible to do justice to this critically important subject in a paragraph but there are of course, a ton of resources to explore and ways to help.

Climate change also impacts unhoused people everywhere as they are more exposed to extreme weather events including heat waves and storms and other climate impacts such as air pollution.

If you care about global poverty and inequality, you care about climate change, and similarly when we act on climate we are also acting to ameliorate social inequality and poverty or at least increase the protection of vulnerable populations from the impacts of climate change.

Climate change compromises air quality through increased air pollution — e.g. from black carbon, poor air quality spikes during extreme heat events, and wildfire smoke.

Air pollution is linked to disease, increased hospitalizations, and premature deaths, particularly in children, elderly people, immunocompromised individuals, and people with cardiovascular health conditions.

According to the Canadian Cardiovascular Society, air pollution causes 15,000 premature deaths per year in Canada and about 20% of cardiovascular disease deaths globally. The World Bank states that air pollution, primarily fine air particulates or aerosols, is the world’s leading environmental cause of illness and premature death, responsible for 6.4 million deaths per year, with 95% of those deaths in developing countries.

There is a strong interconnection between particulate air pollution and climate change because they often come from the same sources, for example coal and diesel exhaust.

In addition, air quality is compromised by wildfire smoke and global warming increases ground level ozone and airborne pollen and spore counts that can exacerbate asthma, particularly in children.

Extreme heat makes the impacts of air pollution worse in vulnerable individuals. Fossil fuels thus adversely impact air quality both directly and indirectly. There is a strong synergistic effect of tackling air pollution and mitigating climate change.

If you care about air pollution and its health-related effects, you care about climate change.

Agriculture contributes approximately 10% of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada so it is an important area of focus for emissions reduction.

At a high level, on broad timescales, climate change may increase the productivity and productive area of Canadian farms, however some of the current farming regions and crops may not be as suitable for farming in future and on more local space and time scales climate change will bring unpredictability in weather and an increase in climate events.

This impacts farmers directly of course, but also all Canadians as it is reflected in the price and availability of our food and our GDP from food exports.

Current solutions and supports are sometimes problematic and the pain is in the details. For example, increased irrigation needs in response to drought competes with other water needs — e.g. hydropower; heavy precipitation can necessitate additional energy-intensive drying processes which increases emissions; crop insurance, which is designed for occasional use will become more expensive with increasing climate risk.

Agriculture is also an important part of the solution to the climate crisis because plants and soils sequester carbon. (Regenerative Agriculture, which focuses on soil and ecosystem health, reduced carbon intensive inputs and long-term storage of carbon underground, is a key climate solution.)

Farmers need government support to adapt to a warmer climate, recoup losses from climate events and to transition to low carbon/high carbon sequestration food production practices, particularly given their low profit margins and decreasing predictability of weather due to climate change.

Suffice it to say though that if you care about Canadian farmers and the agricultural industry, you care about climate change.

Of course, the impacts of climate change are felt by farmers all across the globe and our food systems are highly globalized. Many farmers in developing countries are experiencing far more serious climate risks than we are in Canada (see poverty and social inequality above.)

And there are specific risks to foods that are staples in many Canadian kitchens. Climate change poses particular risks to many crops, including coffee, cocoa, olive oil, wines from some regions, and others.

There are also other ways personal climate action can be synergistic with other social causes that are covered within the areas of action in this site.

For example, local programs to address food waste can also support those vulnerable to food insecurity. Sustainable fashion choices also avoid exploitation of garment workers and can promote gender equality. Electrification can improve local air quality in urban areas and indoor environments.

Deepen your connection to your reasons for action and incorporate them into your personal plan and use your vote to address climate change in part because it impacts other voter issues you care about too.