Over half of the world’s population now lives in cities, consuming 75% of the world’s energy and producing 80% of greenhouse gas emissions. Increasingly, cities are becoming dangerous places to live, as insect-born diseases, heat stroke, respiratory and cardiac illnesses become increasingly common. Hot Times in the City takes the pulse of three major Canadian cities: Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax, as they grapple with one of the planet’s greatest threats to human health: global warming.
In Vancouver, David Suzuki visits ravaged Stanley Park and travels to Richmond, an area already at or below sea level and slowly sinking. As construction for the upcoming 2010 Olympic games continues, critics argue that the current building boom is based on short-sightedness and denial.
Meanwhile, Toronto already struggles with crumbling infrastructure, urban sprawl, traffic gridlock, pervasive smog and now global warming. The city is rapidly becoming a heat island, the result of thousands of acres of bare concrete and asphalt absorbing and radiating the sun’s already intense energy and producing temperatures sometimes 5 to 10 degrees warmer than many surrounding areas. This is already having a terrible impact on vulnerable populations: the very young, the very old and the homeless.
Because of climate change and the resulting shift in Atlantic weather patterns, Halifax now sits squarely in a hurricane route, facing down storms that are increasingly intense, as ocean currents grow milder. With hundreds of miles of local coastline threatened and public safety and health at stake, scientists, city planners, healthcare specialists and environmentalists have banded together to develop integrated multi-level initiatives to address the need for climate mediation and adaptation.
The need to stay constantly competitive has encouraged over-consumption and waste, and it is ultimately the poor and most vulnerable among us who will pay the highest price from a health perspective. In particular, city-dwellers need to understand the economies that scale play in maintaining human health in the face of global warming – one car may have relatively little impact on the environment, but millions of vehicles, idling at stoplights with their air-conditioners on, continue to have tremendous health consequences for this generation and all future ones.
Climate Change: Hot Times in the City is written, directed and produced by David Tucker. Michael Allder is Executive Producer for The Nature of Things.
