John Pomeroy
Nature Alberta
June 18, 2025
In the 30 years since global leaders first gathered to discuss how to limit climate change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Earth has lost close to 8 trillion tonnes of ice1 and the atmospheric concentration of the potent greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, has risen from 350 to 430 parts per million2 — a level last experienced about 2.5 million years ago at the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch in which humans later evolved.
As a result of greenhouse gas concentration increases, temperatures are rising quickly and our weather is becoming more extreme. We now stand on the cusp of major losses to Earth’s major polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. These changes are happening much sooner than many scientists’ previous worst-case scenarios.3 They spell the end for both low-lying nations and coastal regions, as maps of coastlines are redrawn by rising seas,4 as well as for wildlife such as polar bears, seals, and Antarctic penguins that have evolved to thrive in these frozen zones.
But they are also set to strike all of us, much closer to home. And it’s hard to imagine anywhere that will feel the force of these changes as acutely as Alberta…