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Pandemics, massive earthquakes, war, and other catastrophes inspire immediate action because their casualties and destruction are immediately visible. Climate change is an unyielding problem because its long-range dangers are hidden, and thus it is a global risk unlike anything in human experience.
The federal government recently announced aggressive climate targets for Canada. We have committed to producing net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which will require major changes for our economy and way of life. Canadian citizens need to understand why our most distinguished climate scientists and our senior political leaders think that we must meet this target. Canada and Climate Change explains the importance of policies that will ensure we meet the net-zero emissions target. William Leiss provides a firm grasp on what climate change is and how scientists have described shifts in the earth’s climate as they have occurred over hundreds of millions of years and as they are likely to occur in the near future, especially by the end of this century.
Leiss argues that citizens have a right to place their trust in what climate scientists tell us. Canada and Climate Change is an essential primer on where we stand on the issue of climate change in Canada and what will unfold in the years ahead.
“Grounded broadly in risk theory, Leiss provides an excellent climate primer: addressing what is meant by ‘climate’, detailing the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs, and describing climate science methods and future projections. Leiss makes an impactful argument about the unique and vulnerable characteristics of the climate niche in which human society emerged and thrived in the last twelve thousand years, and the fact that ‘we have begun to move outside this range … at an accelerating rate, with no end in sight.’” H-Environment
“In Canada and Climate Change, Leiss distills the complexity while dialing up the urgency to act and offers us a roadmap for why it’s so important to hold governments and industry accountable for their climate commitments – it’s literally a matter of survival for current and future generations.” BC Studies
"Leiss expertly offers a sociological and historical approach to analyse climate change. This approach aims to compare two parallel streams related to climate change: the evolution of climate science from 1950 to 2022, and the evolution of government responses to climate science from 1990 to 2022. This accessible book will help non-experts gain a deeper understanding of the global climate change challenges." Weather