The last in a 10-part series of columns from the West Kootenay Climate Hub.
Summertime can feel full of possibility: time outdoors, visits with friends and family, gardens and music festivals. But summer now has another face — anxiety about wildfires, smoke, heat and drought.
Climate change has made our summers hotter and drier, leading to a huge increase in wildfires. Events big and small are disrupted. Some stay indoors with air purifiers when our sweet mountain air turns hazardous, while others have to labour in the smoke and heat.
Since we started this series last September, much has changed. We’ve had provincial and federal elections. We’re feeling the devastating impacts of the U.S. elections. We experienced the hottest year on record, and climate pollution is at an all-time high.
It can feel overwhelming, like we’re up against powers beyond our control.
This seems especially true as false and misleading narratives increasingly dominate our information ecosystems. As we outlined in an earlier article, misinformation about the causes, severity, and immediacy of global climate breakdown has been pushed deliberately by oil and gas industry front groups and extremist right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation (authors of Project 2025), posing as grassroots citizens’ groups. They do their best to obscure the scientifically established fact that continued fossil fuel pollution is the main driver of climate disruption.
It’s not just climate change that is subject to this kind of distortion. The American Psychological Association points out that “the spread of misinformation and disinformation has affected our ability to improve public health, address climate change, maintain a stable democracy, and more.”
Increasingly, people in Canada and elsewhere get information about current events from social media and podcasts, making us vulnerable to manipulation by those who write the algorithms to maximize engagement by promoting polarization, scapegoating, hate and conspiracist viewpoints. Similarly, many of the most popular podcasts are hosted by ultra-conservative commentators like Jordan Peterson and Tucker Carlson. This likely plays a role in the increasing support for far-right populist politics among young adults around the globe. According to Yale Climate Connections, eight of the 10 most popular online shows have spread false or misleading information about climate change.
In a 2024 webinar, Canada’s Naomi Klein discussed how conspiracy oriented perspectives that took root during the pandemic now permeate the online world and tend to “spring into action after every extreme weather event,” adding that “it’s as if conspiracy culture has replaced traditional climate denial.”
While conspiracy pushers may get the facts wrong, they often get the feelings right, tapping into deep and legitimate dissatisfaction with today’s global systems.
At the same time, fewer people trust traditional media outlets. While there may be legitimate reasons for distrusting large, corporate-owned media, abandoning the role of professional investigative journalists and replacing them with TikTok and YouTube influencers makes it even harder to determine what’s real and what's false.
So how can we help each other discern what’s true, when so many of our information channels are drowning in garbage?
First, we can build community resilience and overcome polarization by creating more community connections. That means getting offline and talking with our neighbours, listening to each other’s real lived experiences and helping each other today, as well as during emergencies.
Second, we can talk about climate change and who is benefiting from the disruptions that we see in our communities and around the world. We can share what we know about how fossil fuel interests have made record profits, hijacked international conferences and knowingly misled us about the harms of their products while our forests and our future burn.
Third, we can use practical climate solutions that also improve human and ecosystem health, increase jobs and affordability, protect water, save us money and create community connection — things like heat pumps, solar energy, more affordable electric vehicles, energy-efficient home design and retrofits, restorative agriculture, repair cafes that reduce consumption, and rurally oriented transit options. We can apply these personally, where possible, and advocate for them collectively.
Focusing on positive solutions addresses our deep, shared sense that we cannot continue to do things as we have been. It’s time for creative ideas that come from the full cross section of society, including youth, Indigenous people, and the marginalized. More LNG facilities and pipelines are not solutions to 21st-century problems.
We can all push back against vested interests and toward positive changes needed for a safe climate future. We can use our voices. We have power together for a better future for our kids and everything we love — our trees, our summers, our water, our air, and each other. Later is too late.
Tamara Schwartzentruber and Laura Sacks are mothers concerned about their kids’ future. Tamara is a musician, teacher, editor and healer who lives in Kaslo with her partner and two kids, and volunteers with the West Kootenay Climate Hub. Laura lives in rural Castlegar, has a science background and is immersed in climate advocacy.
