Doctor tells youth climate trial children face unique harm

VANCOUVER – A child psychiatrist and pediatrician told Canada’s first youth-led climate trial on Thursday that children are disproportionately vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as the case before Federal Court in Vancouver entered its fourth day.

Dr. Elizabeth Pinsky, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, outlined risks that range from extreme heat, air pollution and tick-borne illness to anxiety and depression, The Canadian Press reported.

Pinsky said babies and very young children have immature systems for regulating body temperature, which limits their ability to cope in a heat wave. Children also breathe more rapidly than adults and take in more air pollution relative to their size, she said.

She added that younger people are “simply at increased risk” from climate hazards over the course of their lifetimes. “There’s just no question left in the medical literature about whether that’s true,” she said.

Pinsky is a witness for the 15 young plaintiffs, who argue that federal legislation violates their constitutional rights by continuing Canada’s trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions. She said knowing that the people who should be safeguarding their future are “knowingly failing to do so” is a unique harm for children.

She also described “eco-anxiety” and the term “solastalgia,” which she defined as the experience of feeling homesick when you are at home, but home has changed around you. A childhood home engulfed in wildfire smoke every summer is one example, she said. Nothing could fully protect children from climate harms other than halting climate change, she testified.

The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Catherine Boies Parker, told the court in her opening statement on Monday that the case is not about whether climate change exists. It hinges, she said, on whether the government is “constitutionally required to stop making it worse.” Our earlier report covers the opening of the trial.

Earlier Thursday, the court heard from Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson, an expert in environmental engineering and atmospheric science. He said it is “definitely” possible for Canada to shift to full renewable energy by 2050, and that the obstacles are social and political rather than technical or economic.

Jacobson said Canada could meet its energy demand with wind, solar and geothermal power along with existing hydroelectric capacity. Electrifying transportation and heating would cut energy use by about 60 per cent, he said, and would also reduce air pollution that kills thousands of people in Canada every year.

Under cross-examination by a federal government lawyer, Jacobson agreed that his report did not present policy proposals for Ottawa and did not account for potential bottlenecks such as supply-chain constraints. He also said his study projected a net job loss in the shift to renewables, though it excluded jobs in producing electric vehicles, heat pumps and other electric equipment, as well as some transmission jobs.

Pinsky is to be cross-examined by Ottawa’s lawyers on Friday.

The trial comes as other reporting has put a price on climate risk. Our recent coverage looked at projected wildfire costs of $2.1 trillion by 2100.

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