In 'serious omission,' G7 leaders release wildfire charter with no mention of climate change

G7 leaders released a joint statement on Tuesday about wildfires that did not include any reference to climate change.

Climate change — fuelled primarily by burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas — is driving warmer and drier conditions and increasing the likelihood of more frequent and severe wildfires.

The Kananaskis Wildfire Charter is 536 words long. None of them are "climate change." 

“They're missing the whole point in that we're seeing more fires, a longer fire season, more intense fires, more severe fires, because the climate is changing due to human activities,” said fire and climate professor Mike Flannigan of Thompson Rivers University. 

“It's a serious omission, and that's being very polite.”

The charter published talks about everything related to wildfire but climate change: firefighting equipment, data collection, information sharing, restoring ecosystems, building resilient infrastructure, to name a few.

“It's saying many of the right things,” Flannigan says — aside from the glaring omission — but he notes that even the actions laid out in the agreement are light on detail. “How are they going to do it? Easier said than done. It's going to cost money.”

The discussions that led to the statement’s specific wording were not public. But governments of most G7 nations recognize the role of human activity in climate change, as well as the role of climate change in wildfire, with one notable exception.

Since the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, climate change has been scrubbed from government websites; grants for research on climate have been cut; the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy and many others have had their climate capacity slashed, among other devastating anti-climate moves. 

“For [G7 leaders] to avoid it — probably for political reasons; I don't know that for sure, but that's a guess — it's a serious shortfall,” Flannigan said.

“This was a wasted opportunity as Canada ducked away from a confrontation with Trump,” said Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada. 

“Canada is literally a country on fire.” 

The Canadian environmental group the Climate Action Network lambasted the charter in a statement within hours of its release.

“What’s the point of a coalition of like-minded countries if it isn’t even capable of mentioning the existential crisis facing humanity?" wrote Caroline Brouillette, the Climate Action Network's executive director.

Canada is experiencing what may be its second-worst fire season on record, and the frequency of bad years has been increasing due to climate change.

“You can talk all you want about fire guards and resilient communities. But at the end of the day, if you're in a flammable landscape and things are extreme enough, fuel is fuel is fuel — it will burn,” Flannigan said.

Trump received record donations from the oil industry during his election campaign. In his current bill working its way through congress is a billion-dollar tax break for the oil and gas industry.

Last year, with Joe Biden as US president, the G7 summit ended with a communiqué that specifically mentioned climate change among the priorities countries agreed to focus efforts on.

Not so this year.

“It’s sad but not surprising,” Bloc Québécois MP Patrick Bonin said in an interview with Canada’s National Observer. Another Bloc MP Xavier Barsalou-Duval echoed Bonin, saying the joint statement is consistent with the federal government acting “as if climate change did not exist anymore” and is very worrying. 

NDP MP Leah Gazan agreed the failure to reference climate change is “highly problematic” and given the global impact of extreme weather events this issue should be front and centre.

“We were expecting that the quick departure of Mr. Trump will bring the other countries, including Canada, to show more leadership and to talk about climate change and to come up with some statement and commitment in order to recognize that they need to do more and that they commit to do more,” Bonin said.

Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs declined to comment because she had not read the statement, saying, “I couldn’t speak for the thought process of the people who put the document together.”

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada Julie Dabrusin was not immediately available to comment; this story will be updated with comment if it becomes available.

Talking about wildfires without talking about how climate change is making wildfires more frequent and intense is “just like putting their head in the sand,” Bonin said.

“We need to have a real discussion about the root cause of what we're seeing,” he said. While Canada burns, the prime minister is “just ignoring the smoke,” he added.

Natasha Bulowski / local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer