The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Is Climate Change Still a Top Concern for Canadians?

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

Climate change is reshaping the world around us, but it is not always top of mind for Canadians. Why does the issue struggle to break through as a public priority, even as its effects become more visible? We explore the psychology, politics, and public attitudes shaping Canada's climate conversation with Amber Bennett of Re.Climate, philosopher and psychotherapist Natalie Thomas, and Curiosity Podcast co-host Naila Moloo. Then, as scientists monitor an unprecedented El Niño developing in the Pacific, we examine what it could mean for Ontario's weather and whether climate change is influencing the phenomenon with meteorologist Janine Baijnath-Rodino of UCLA.Donate Today : https://tvo.me/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What a difference a year can make. When you support TVO, you're helping bring trusted stories, inspiring ideas, and lifelong learning to people across Ontario. And as a thank you, you can receive the 2027 TVO calendar. Filled with beautiful photography from the documentaries and programs your support helps make possible. It's a year-long reminder of the learning, beauty, and discovery your generosity supports. Donate $40 or more to claim yours today at TVO.com slash calendar 2027 and make every month a little more inspiring. This summer brought extreme weather around the world. Flash floods in Nepal, a deadly heat wave in Europe, and here in Canada, wildfires, devastated northern Ontario communities, and sent air quality plummeting thousands of kilometers away. Experts also warn that climate change will make weather events more frequent and extreme.

Now, Canadians are worried about climate change. A recent report found that an overwhelming majority are concerned about it. But when you ask Canadians, what issues matter most to them? Climate change falls behind things like cost of living, Donald Trump, and more. So if Canadians are worried about climate change, why isn't it a bigger priority? And what would it take to create a sense of urgency? And there's more in store in the coming months. Experts say a historic El Nino is building, and it could have a big impact on the winter ahead.

I'm Jay and Jaganondon. This is The Rundown. Amber Bennett, Natalie Thomas, Naila Molo, thank you so much for joining us on the rundown for this important conversation. Amber, your organization, Reclimate, put together a report this year that showed that Canadians are still concerned about climate change, but it's no longer the priority. So help me understand what's behind the findings. Yeah, thank you. So what we see is that climate change kind of peaked as a top issue for people in, say,

2018 and then, you know, has slowly slipped off as cost of living, inflation, housing. And more recently, the troubles that we've been experiencing around Trump with the economy. and threats to the to sovereignty. So what I want to point out here is that it is possible for people to be concerned about something. And in fact, Canadians have consistently been concerned about climate change. And when we have, you know, events like wildfires or extreme weather, we see that kind of peaking. So there's been a base of, you know, seven to eight out of ten Canadians, our report that they've been concerned about climate change. That's remained consistent.

But at the same time, it's not necessary. the most pressing issue for them. So I think that that's really important to note that on the one hand, somebody can be highly concerned about something, but it's not the most pressing issue for them. And in fact, for many Canadians, you know, issues around cost of living, inflation, etc., are more, feel more pressing at the moment. Naila, you have been on the sustainability track since you were 14. You're now in your 20s.

you study at the University of North Carolina. How has the urgency about climate change sort of changed in your cohort? I know you don't speak for everybody, but I'm curious, what are those conversations like? Yeah, I think I have a lot more conversations about topics like AI now, as opposed to climate change, which is a little bit concerning. I just feel like there are so many issues that youth are anxious about, that climate change is kind of going down on the priority list. So a few years ago, I feel like this was the hot topic. And I was constantly having conversations about it. And people had a lot of

eco-anxiety. I don't think that eco-anxiety has necessarily fizzled out. I just think there's anxiety about a lot of other topics that are impacting humanity today. So that's something interesting that I found. Natalie, recently the UN reported that we are, quote, past the point of no return on the warming of the planet. To add fuel to the fire, then last week, an AI whistleblower warned that technology is going to wipe out humanity sooner than we'd expect. Please help me here as a psychotherapist. You know, when you hear that, what do you think about people's ability to cope? Yeah, it's a really good question.

It's a lot for people psychologically to handle, right? It's overwhelming. And I think the nature of climate change and of AI, they're both such like existential issues because they raise these really profound questions about our existence as a species. So people cope in various ways. I work with some people.

You know, I'm a climate-aware therapist too. So that draws some people into my practice that already have this concern for nature and eco-anxiety and climate anxiety but overall, I think people are finding either they shut down. It's a common tendency to just say it's just all too much, so they just turn away, right? It's like, I don't want to look at climate. I don't want to look at AI because, frankly, it's just too much.

The people that engage feel overwhelmed as well. So they might suffer, you know, I work with some activists. They suffer from burnout because they're trying to. to fight all the things and fight for, you know, humans and nature and all of those things. And then they can also lead to burnout, right? So, so coping is a tricky thing. It's, you know, I often talk to people about can we feel into it a little bit, but also find other aspects of our lives where we can maybe find more balance. But it is overwhelming. And it makes sense, I think, even of the idea that for a lot of people, climate is drifting because we tend to be more

concerned about what is most immediately experienced, right? So if I get this, you know, alert about AI and we're all going to die from AI, suddenly I found that week in my sessions, that's all everybody was talking about. And so I think what we're experiencing firsthand and more what is more present for us, like cost of living when I go to pay for groceries or, you know, that's what I'm noticing. But often things like climate change are a bit of a slow creep. So it's harder to feel the urgency, I think. Well, Amber, I want to talk a little bit about sort of the new priority list, let's call it.

Here in our studios, we've had conversations about, you know, nation building projects. We've talked about pipelines. Canadians, though, want to be renewable energy superpowers. Like, there's an interesting balance here. But according to your report, we also want to. want pipelines. We want to figure out how to deal with our neighbors to the south with the current administration.

How does this make sense? Yeah. When we asked Canadians, we did some research last year and we asked them, would you rather be a renewable energy superpower or would you rather be an oil and gas superpower? And overwhelmingly, 70% of Canadians, so that's 7 in 10 Canadians, said that they would prefer to be or rather to be or feel more

pride in Canada being a renewable super power. And I think that this holds across all regions of Canada. So even if you're in areas or regions like where I live in, in Alberta, it still holds true. So I think on the one hand, we want to be a renewable energy superpower. On the other hand, we also think that we can do both. So Canadians also hold the belief that we can build fossil fuel infrastructure, build out pipelines, while still being good climate actors, while still meeting our climate targets, et cetera. And part of that has to do with it's not really easy to understand necessarily all of the complicated components that go into what does it mean to meet targets, what do emissions mean, et cetera. And so there is to some degree a literacy

component of that. But on the other hand, I think as Natalie was mentioning, there's also a, to some degree, motivated reasoning on, you know, we feel that and we see our political leaders talking about the need to build out pipelines. And if you don't really have a lot that you can do about it, it's tempting and it's easy to believe that we can do both. So we can act on the climate, be good global citizens, take care of each other. And on the other hand, we can also build out pipelines and, you know, address our economy and, and, et cetera. So, you know, I think that maybe Natalie could talk more about this, but to some degree, Canadians are in a bind, right?

There's really, they're in a bind in which we, on the one hand, need to secure our economy. We need to secure our country. And on the other hand, we are sitting in day after day, you know, stories of the kinds of impacts and extreme weather and forest fires and towns burning down. And so it's hard to do both. And so I think, you know, maybe we can talk a little bit about, you know, some of the motivated reasoning and some of the indicators we see. Well, I want to get a sense of the types of weather events folks are seeing and witnessing. In this graph, we're showing the question that was put to Canadians is,

are there more, fewer, or the same amount of these events compared to five years ago? Top of the list is wildfires at 74%, then poor air quality like smoke or smog at 68%, followed by extreme heat at 66%, droughts at 48%, and finally floods at 41%. Amber, very quickly, can you help us understand what did, what, can we learn from these results? You know, Natalie had mentioned sort of the, what we're sort of seeing in front of us. And so when I see wildfires up on that list, that is something that a lot of people can remember this past summer, you know, northwestern Ontario, people fleeing. Those images are quite vivid here. But what can we learn from these results? Yeah. So I think the top line is

Canadians are making sense of climate change through the impacts that they're seeing, that they're living and experiencing day to day. So, so, you know, not surprisingly, those things that we most associate with heat and the things that we see most dramatically in Canada are breaking through. What I would point out is that on the other hand, what we also see are declining association or attribution to climate change and those being human caused. So on the one hand, you can at the same time, you know, connect extreme weather or extreme weather events to climate change. But you can also believe that it may not be, you know, it may be natural or there may be, you know, forest fire mismanagement, etc. So it tends to get a little bit jumbled up.

And I think that there's some real work that we can do to clearly connect extreme weather to climate change. change and then the cause of that is burning fossil fuels. Well, Natalie, let's get you in there, you know, this list you look at it. We're talking about, you know, what nightmares are made of, right? Droughts, wildfires, floods. How does this cause anxiety or even apathy for some people? Yeah. It's really interesting.

You think I always think that, you know, people are activated by the, even by the smell of smoke, right? So when we were experiencing more smoke here in southern Ontario, for example, people's anxiety really spiked, right? Because it's like, oh, my gosh, I can smell it. And if I can smell it, it causes this really kind of like visceral response and reaction to it that's filled with anxiety. So on the one hand, those things peak. But on the other hand, we also feel a sense of, I think, as Amber mentioned, like a helplessness. Like, what do I do? Like, what can I possibly do? And so that can also lead to a certain amount of happen. as well because it's in the face of overwhelming like what if these fires get worse and continue

and get closer to me. My mind goes on and on and thinks of all these scenarios. But at the same time, what can I possibly do about this? So it's easier to focus a little more on like the, again, the immediate like, oh, I'll get a better, you know, air purifier in the house because it's easier for me to have control over that than it is for me to do something about climate change causing forest fires. Right. There's a better. a degree to which people feel helpless to do that. So they tend to focus more on the immediate, what can I do, for example, in my house, right? Well, let's talk about action or inaction, Naila.

A lot of Canadians have seen the gradual results of climate change. But your generation, unfortunately, was born into this. So help me understand how does that shape what you guys decide to do or not do? Yeah, well, I think for me personally, as you said, climate change has been in issue that I've been talking about since I was really little, and I feel like it's been a discussion among youth for a really long time. I feel like it translates a lot into action with the people that I talk to, which is inspiring because, you know, you're constantly talking about climate change, so there's this desire to go out and do something about it. And I found

that people are really willing to help youth, and that is super important. I think it's really important to get youth involved. I remember when I was 14, I was reaching out to professors of labs and being like, can I come develop my own solar cells at your lab? And they said yes. And that really impacted my journey a lot because it made me feel like I was doing something to help me cope with my eco-anxiety, and I was helping build something, a solution to a problem that I really cared about. So I think there is this general like go-getter attitude for my generation and for young people. And I think we need to keep that up by giving opportunities to young people so that they can go and pursue different opportunities and build real solutions to problems. I am curious,

Naila, you know, there might be a lot of people who are listening to this who might feel like there is a lot of pressure as an individual making big changes when we are talking. talking about nation-building projects, we're talking about pipelines, we're talking about fossil fuels. How do individuals compete with that? Well, I think climate change intersects with everything. And that's what's really important to understand. Anything that you are interested in, you can probably find a way to tie sustainability into that. So I am studying engineering, so obviously I'm a little bit biased with building these hands-on

solutions. And I think that is a really great way for people to get involved. but also it does not have to be a technical project. You might be really interested in an art. And, you know, there's also this beautiful intersection of art and climate change because art captures people's attention and it gets people to care. And that is important. Sometimes people don't want to go read 50 blocks of text.

They just want to look at a photograph and feel something. And that can be extremely powerful and lead to change as well. So photography, art, storytelling, writing. I'm actually really interested in writing too, and I see this intersection of writing in climate change because obviously you can write about what you feel. And I'm working on a children's book series right now about emerging technologies and some of them relate very heavily to climate like fusion energy. And that has the intent of getting people interested in these technologies from a really young age and understanding these problems from a young age. Natalie, how do we better communicate climate change to all demographics, really? but there is a gap here.

And so what is the communication skills here? What do we need to be talking about? Yeah, I think it's, we can, you know, clearly we live in a time where we can polarize very quickly on things and we're more apt to, especially on social media, to fight rather than discuss. And I think one thing that I often think about, there's a couple of things, I guess. One is recognizing that what seemed to be opposing views, there's often something that we do agree on.

And so I think we can all agree, for example, that none of us want to experience what it's like to live through a forest fire or a flood or to suffer in these ways are differences in terms of interpreting what causes them and all of our political views and things like that are the ones that start to clash, right? So if we can find a point of commonality and be open to that, I think it helps. And it's a way in to say, well, you know, we both agree that these things are really concerning and that we're experiencing something that is the same, even if we had different beliefs about what's causing it or what the solution is. And so I think appealing to the common human experience, the emotional experience can be a way in to communicating, right, to actually bringing in more information. And I'm mindful too, I keep thinking of if you're familiar with Catherine Hayho, but I love the way she communicates.

climate information because she'll always start in her social media post with like, here's the good news, here's the not so great news, and here's what we can do. And I'm like, oh, that's great, right? So it appeals to people's sense of like there is something good that's happening. It's not all terrible. So you don't shut down immediately in the, oh, great, here's another terrible thing that's happening. And it's just, I don't want to know about it. But more like, here's a good thing. And so I think that way also of, of, of, trying to appeal to people's hope and that, you know, that we want to enjoy things in our life, like art, right?

Like this discussion about art or that there are still beautiful things in the world. And I think there's, again, that kind of balanced approach. So we're not kind of like triggering people into an automatic response of hopelessness or helplessness or apathy or overwhelm or something like that. It's more like, can we relate to, you know, relate to each other? and the ways that we're similar, right? And we're feeling the same things. Natalie, Nylu, Amber, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us.

Thank you so much for this very important conversation. Thank you. Thanks. There is an El Nino currently brewing in the Pacific, and it is a doozy. It is being referred to as unprecedented. So how could it affect us here in Ontario? And is climate change playing a role? Joining us now to help break down the science is Janine Bajnath-Rodino,

director of meteorology at UCLA, not too far from these warming waters in the Pacific that we are talking about. Janine, great to have you. Let's start with the basics. What exactly is an El Nino? Hi, Jan. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. And yeah, let's start. Let's get right into what an El Nino is. You know, first of all, an Al-Nino is a warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. And it's this natural climate pattern. It occurs every round two to seven years, and it can last from about nine months to about 12 months. But in order to really understand what an El Nino is, we first have to understand the normal

or the regular conditions of the Pacific Ocean. So normally what we see during like a regular year without an El Nino or a Lenina, we have prevailing winds. These are easterly winds, winds blowing from the eastern Pacific towards the western Pacific. These are trade winds. And when that happens, it takes all the warm surface ocean waters and it pushes it towards the west, towards Asia. And so when that happens, there's a displacement of warm water at the surface, so colder, denser, nutrient waters from deeper below will rise towards the surface. And this is what we call upwelling. This is when we get nice phytoplanting and nutrients and, you know, the fishing industry is booming. So it's not an irregular year, right? So this is a normal state of the ocean atmosphere sort of interoperating.

action. But with an El Nino event, what happens is those easterly trade winds, they slow down, they weaken. They sometimes even reverse. So when that happens, all that warm water now from the Western Pacific slashes back. It moves back towards the Eastern Pacific, towards the Americas, off the coast of South America, North America, right? And so that's the warming that we're seeing, with the sea surface temperatures during an El Nino event. So it's not that the waters are actually getting warmer, it's displacement of that warm water. And so when that warm water slashes back towards the east,

it really suppresses that upwelling. So we don't longer have that nutrient-filled waters from the deeper ocean. It's now warm and it's now suppressed. Help me understand here. As you mentioned, this is a natural climate pattern, And as you talked about, you know, two to seven, two to seven years. But this one is being considered, has been called a number of things, unprecedented, supercharged, all of that. What does that actually mean?

Is this different than the other El Nino's? Super El Nino, supercharged. All these things that we're hearing in the media, right? And so forecasters, scientists usually coined the phrase, just a very strong El Nino. So in order to even classify whether we're going to have an El Nino year or not, We have to see temperatures within the equatorial Pacific region to be about 0.5 degrees warmer than average for that time of year and for that particular period. With us, call it what you may, but with a really strong El Nino, that temperature anomaly is about two degrees or more greater, right? So we're seeing temperatures above the normals, about two degrees.

In this particular case, the models are showing, and now observations that we're seeing, are over 3 degrees Celsius from the average. So that's unprecedented. All right. So we're going to have to think of some new adjectives here as well. Help me understand. You're obviously, you're in L.A. We are here in Ontario.

What does this mean? Canadians have seen some pretty extreme weather over the last couple of months. when we talk about wildfires, when we talk about flooding, what does this actually mean for Canada and Ontario specifically with this El Nino? Yeah, you know, so with this specific El Nino, we're going to have to just wait and see, wait it out and sort of see, just because it's unprecedented. We haven't reached this like 3.0 and higher before.

But in general, when we are talking about El Nino's and linking that to, you know, land, atmosphere, interaction, and weather conditions. Canada, especially western Canada, into central Canada and parts of Ontario, tends to see more of warmer, milder winters. When El Nino does peak, it usually peaks in the winter, and we tend to see milder winters. We tend to see drier conditions around Ontario as well.

And, you know, this is all because it's shifting the jet stream. The jet stream is the winds in the higher part, the atmosphere, which really steers our weather. It steers our storm tracks and it veers it from one region to another. And so once that sort of shifts, it moves where we're going to see precipitation, where we're going to see drier versus wetter conditions and warmer versus cooler conditions. So, yeah, we can usually expect, in general, a milder winter, a drier winter. But every El Niño is different.

So with this particular one, we're going to have to wait and see. However, when things are intensified, such as the sea surface temperatures intensifying, becoming warmer, you know, that could potentially mean that our weather conditions that we see, if it's generally tends to be drier, will it be even more dry, right? So we're going to be see possibly more extreme conditions than what we're used to. Around this conversation of El Nino, a lot of people were talking about climate change versus the difference between weather change. And some people have explained it to me as a little bit like climate change is like a personality and weather change is like a mood, which can kind of change here and there. Help me understand what is the key difference between those two.

Yeah, when we talk about weather and we talk about climate, we have to consider the difference in the temporal, the time period that we're looking at. and the spatial regions that we're looking at, right? So whether you can just think of it as a short-term state of the atmosphere. And those conditions, the state of the atmosphere can change from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, right, weeks to weeks. With climate change, it's different. It's at a larger scale. Usually when climatology, we look at statistics for over 30 years. and more. And so this is the average weather, you can think of it, over many, many years, right?

So I would say that that's the main difference. So when we're looking at weather change, weather can change from day to night. This is what we call diurnal variations, right? Changes in weather conditions. Your humidity levels can change because of temperature. But with climate, We're looking at, you know, on a 30-year average, maybe from the 1980s to the early 2000s, what was that average state of the atmosphere? And how is that going to be different from the next 30 years, right? So that's a difference, yeah. So, Janine, how can an El Nino be affected by climate change?

Yeah, you know, when we think about a warming, warming sea surface temperatures, climate change is anthropogenic. It's human-made. So when we're intensifying or increasing the sea surface temperatures, that's the background to this natural variability in an elinio, which is also going to slosh out warm water back towards North America and South America. So it could potentially intensify the strength of the Elinio, the intensity, the duration, and the frequency of these alinios. But there's still a lot of studies that need to be done. We don't have a very long record of these really strong El Nino's yet. So from a statistical standpoint and a climatological standpoint, we need to get those records before we're able to parse through

what anthropogenic climate change is influencing and how it's influencing El Nino events. Seems like one for the record books already, but we will have to wait and see. Janine, I really appreciate you breaking down the science for us. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Dan. So after all that, I need to know

where does climate change rank for you and what, if anything, would make it a bigger priority? Let us know, send us an email at rundown at tbO.org or as always, you can drop us a comment on our YouTube page. Until then, I will see you tomorrow. Starting this year, grade 10 students must complete the financial literacy graduation requirement to earn their Ontario Secondary School diploma.

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