As confirmed at the September meeting of the Union of B.C. Municipalities, the City of Victoria is still looking to spearhead a controversial class-action lawsuit against oil producers demanding that they pay for the costs of climate change. But how do you even begin to tally up an invoice for something as large and difficult to quantify as the damage directly attributable to a warming climate? The Capital can’t answer that, but it did get veteran writer Caitlin Stall-Paquet to review all the existing science and paint a picture of what climate change can be expected to do to the Victoria of tomorrow.



First, the good news

To be clear, climate change is a clear net negative for the human species. To cite a few examples, rising sea levels are expected to submerge 2,000 of Indonesia’s smaller islands, while a combination of drought and flooding in India could lead to 50% decreases of many essential staple crops, like wheat. However, Victoria — like much of Canada — is in the rare position of being able to expect a few moderate blessings from a warming planet. An April 2017 climate projection by the CRD predicted that warming temperatures could make cycling “more desirable year round” as well as reducing heating bills and infrastructure damage associated with freeze-thaw cycles. That same report also anticipated that the City of Gardens could find their growing season extended thanks to an expected 69% decrease in frost days. However, as outlined below, this is all going to come at immense cost.



More droughts, but also more rain



One of the main goals of the Paris Climate Accord is to curb emissions enough so that planet earth can expect to contain human-caused temperature hikes to just 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But even if all goes according to plan, Canada is still projected to warm about twice as fast as the rest of the world given its higher latitudes. The Capital Region is no exception, with average annual temperatures projected to rise by about 3°C.



As we’re starting to see on a global scale, warming by only a few degrees results in exacerbated extreme weather events. So, when a heatwave hits, it’s likely to be hotter and last for longer. This increased intensity is already causing death spikes internationally. During the summer of 2019, for instance, there were 57 heat-related deaths and 18,000 hospitalizations in Japan, a country sharing many climatological similarities with Vancouver Island. Victoria is particularly vulnerable to heat waves due to the combination of a disproportionately elderly population and a building stock that largely eschews air conditioning when compared against other major Canadian cities like Toronto or Calgary.



Meanwhile, heating up the Southern Vancouver Island weather system is expected to yield some bizarre effects on rainfall: The Victoria of the future will be wetter overall, but droughts will be more common. B.C. government projections hold that while regional rainfall will go up by 10%, summers will see rainfall plummet by an incredible 18%.

Also, while the BC Ferries fleet will likely be all-electric by 2050, those zero-emissions ships are set to face much higher rates of delays due to increased violent storms hitting the Salish Sea.

