B.C. climate news: More than 100 wildfires burning in B.C. | Federal government sets aside $34.2 million for climate adaptation | Report finds climate change made Canada's forests more likely to burn

Here’s the latest news concerning climate change and biodiversity loss in B.C. and around the world, from the steps leaders are taking to address the problems, to all the up-to-date science.

• Federal government sets aside $34.2 million for climate adaptation • Report finds climate change made Canada’s forests much more likely to burn • More than 100 wildfires continue to burn in B.C. • Natural habitat diversity key to protecting threatened salmon in B.C.’s Indian River watershed: report

Human activities like burning fossil fuels and farming livestock are the main drivers of climate change, according to the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change. This causes heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere, increasing the planet’s surface and ocean temperature.

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The panel, which is made up of scientists from around the world, including researchers from B.C., has warned for decades that wildfires and severe weather, such as the province’s deadly heat dome and catastrophic flooding in 2021, would become more frequent and intense because of the climate emergency. It has issued a code red for humanity and warns the window to limit warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial times is closing.

According to NASA climate scientists, human activities have raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 per cent in less than 200 years, and “there is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.”

As of Aug. 5, 2026, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 429.12 parts per million, down slightly from 431.44 ppm the previous month, according to the latest available data from the NOAA measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory, a global atmosphere monitoring lab in Hawaii. The NOAA notes there has been a steady rise in CO2 from under 320 ppm in 1960.