The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts damage caused by climate change could cost developed countries up to 2 per cent of GDP. For Canada, a country highly dependent on natural resources, this figure would likely be much larger.

We're already seeing ominous changes:

• Rising ocean temperatures on Canada's West Coast have weakened economically valuable salmon species, reducing the survival rates of spawning fish, scientists say. During the 1997 Fraser River sockeye run, mortality rate was 76 per cent, compared with a typical average of 5 per cent.



• Forests in British Columbia were devastated in 2001 by the spruce pine-beetle, which thrived thanks to unusually mild winters. An estimated 500,000 hectares of timber worth $4.2 billion was infested, according to the BC ministry of Forests.



• The 2001 prairie drought cost the Canadian economy over $5 billion in agricultural losses, according to a University of Manitoba study.

In the future, Canadians may also expect the following:

• Increased forest fires could turn large portions of Alberta's aspen parkland and boreal forest into grass and shrubland.


• Higher temperatures, dryer soil and increased insect infestation are expected to reduce crop yields in much of the prairies by up to 30 per cent, according to Environment Canada studies.

Internationally, insurers are feeling the costs of climate change. Before 1988, the global insurance industry never had claims for more than US $1 billion in any single natural disaster. Yet between 1988 and 1996, 15 such events occurred, and a number of insurance companies closed down in the wake of these disasters.

According to the Munich Reinsurance Corporation of Canada, "Economic losses caused by natural catastrophes are likely to bring home the effects of climate change more and more dramatically as time goes by."

Nonetheless, economic opportunities can be found among the solutions to climate change.