Wide variety of ecozones, stable economy, large area, small population—Canada is ready to manage climate change

Regardless of who is to blame or what is causing it, our planet’s climate is in a state of flux.  Let’s just get that out of the way now, shall we?

Great.  Now let’s talk about dealing with realities here.  Essentially as the world warms, etc we’re going to see a shift in things like where key fishing grounds are (the ocean’s temperature will change) and where the “bread baskets” are in a given area.

Lucky for Canada, as things warm. more of the prairies should become arable and what is arable now should be able to support a wider range of crops.  With the NW Passage opening up, well there is a whole new way to ship things around.  Imagine, Hudson’s Bay as a year-round port.

All this comes from this report I caught today (thanks Mack!)—Canada best to escape climate change – Telegraph—and looking at the chart from the article … well blue is bad.

Part of the “bad” will be related to how climate will change (low lying areas, yeah not good) the other part is the ability to adapt and change with climate.

So, as developed countries, do we have a responsibility to help?  Should we?  Can the planet manage to support all these people?  I am not advocating wholesale culling of the world’s population.  I think the question we need to consider is how to deal with the fact that lots of people are going to be suffering and will likely need a new place to live.

And we thought oil wars were bad.  We fear water wars, I’m thinking we’re going to be facing “habitable land” wars in our future.

Image credit: Maplecroft