Partly this is because we all get fooled by the Mercator projection used on most maps, which stretches the northern parts of Canada into something about the size of Russia. But it's also because nearly all of Canada is completely empty. About 99% of the population lives in the narrow red strip on the map below. That's the real Canada.
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As a Canadian I completely disagree. Even though you're right about the population distribution, much of what makes Canada Canada is the vast northern area"the true north strong and free". A large part of our selve image is bound up in that sparsely populated northen area and importantly alot of our most international competative economic activity occurs there from the large hydroelectic projects in Northen Quebec to the diamond mines in the Northwest Territories.
OK, but the bottom line is that Canada has around one-eighth the population of the U.S. - 40M vs 334M. And yes, that population is overwhelmingly concentrated within a couple hundred miles of the U.S. border. That's the point Kevin is making, and it may well be news to a lot of Americans who haven't really thought about it.
California’s population is slightly bigger than Canada’s.
39M vs. 38M
Why have you lopped off the Maritimes, Kevin? They collectively account for something like 6% of the country.
Well, they are quite far from California.
ha
Not only left out the Maritimes, but the red zone doesn't seem to quite touch on Quebec City. Very un-Canadian, eh?
Oui.
Also insulted all the folks in Yellowknife too.
Populated Canada may be smaller than I think, but Canada is still the fourth largest country in the world by land area (2nd largest by total area).
So I still think it is pretty big.
Of course, after all the glaciers have melted, Canada will have a lot less northern Canada.
Maybe less area, but the area will be more habitable. Canada will be the new Brazil.
That sparesely settled land is likely to become more densely settled as global warming drives people out of the tropics. Populations will be migrating toward the poles.
That sparesely settled land is likely to become more densely settled
You think? Seems unlikely. Canada's a sovereign country with zero obligation to admit millions of climate refugees to settle its north, even if such people wanted to. Which is doubtful: Canada does allow extremely generous immigration inflows (at least 2-3x the USA's net immigration rate recently), but her immigrants overwhelmingly settle in the country's existing major cities, all of which are in the southern tier. Also "warm" in comparison to the long term Arctic/Subarctic average hardly means "warm" by the standards of what humans consider comfortable. In other words, northern Canada isn't terribly likely to be a place most humans regard as desirable in terms of climate anytime soon, even if it becomes uninhabitable for polar bears or caribou. Think north-central Maine.
And in any event, it's pretty likely long before the worst of this plays out, the earth's human population is going to be rapidly shrinking, thus reducing population pressures in general.
"More" densely? Sure, I guess any increase in density satisfies "more"—and we may see a northwards spread of agriculture. But that's like saying Mongolia is more densely populated than Antarctica, especially given the extreme degree of farm mechanization in North America (farms will need very few workers).
“Canada's a sovereign country with zero obligation to admit millions of climate refugees to settle its north, even if such people wanted to.”
Pretty sure some of the millions of climate refugees will be skilled workers. (It’s not like skilled workers are immune to the oceans rising or water running out in dry climates.) And for skilled workers, Canada welcomes them like no other democracy on earth.
Also, you mistake current trends for lasting forever. The reason why new immigrants to Canada settle in the south is because that’s where all people in Canada settle. Not too dissimilar to how in the 1700s all immigrants to America settled on the coast. Once land in the far north is habitable, it’s likely Canada will have its own version of Manifest Destiny, with homesteading acts giving free or cheap land to immigrants and citizens alike, in an attempt to keep Americans, Chinese and Russians from claiming territories of their own up there. (The previously deemed inhospitable midwest of the US suddenly got influxes of people when the US pursued such policies to ensure that no other country took the land first.)
Also, you mistake current trends for lasting forever.
And you mistake trends observable in the 19th century with what is likely to transpire in the 25th or 27th centuries. A century and a half ago, homesteaders in the US moved west to set up farms. The economics of this aren't going to repeat themselves in the Canada of two or three hundred years from now.
And again, global population is going to be shrinking very soon: 60 or 70 years from now is practically nothing measured against the entirety of human history. There simply aren't going to be huge numbers of people who need to move—even given climate change—once the shrinkage gathers momentum. That's not to say Canada won't continue to grow for many decades. It will! But that population is going to overwhelmingly be clustered in its southern tier (call it southern 1/3rd)—a piece of land that is very far indeed from being anything remotely resembling "crowded" (comparable in size to the entirety of Western Europe with perhaps one-tenth Western Europe's population).
Another way to look at it is this: even if Canada's population were to fully treble in (a process that could easily take take another century if it happens at all), we'd be looking at a Japan-sized region, population-wise, with about seven times Japan's land area (and mabe 20x Japan's habitable territory: Canada's southern tier has mountains, but it's nothing like Japan). I don't think you comprehend just how uncrowded Canada is—even its southern third. Nova Scotia—to cite one of the country's most densely populated provinces—would have to undergo a seventeen fold population increase just to reach that of today's Massachusetts. Yeah, yeah, I know: Massachusetts is a densely populated state. But still, 17! My point is, Canada's north is empty, but even Canada's south is extremely lightly populated by any reasonable standard.
There's simply no reason—even if the climate of its vast north transitions from today's Yukon to today's Michigan—that millions of immigrants would need or want to eschew Canada's far more pleasant south. This is especially true if, by virtue of climate change, southern Canada one day enjoys winter weather similar to, say, that of today's Mid-Atlantic states. You may be the exception, but most people will opt for DC's winters over Lake Superior's.
“My point is, Canada's north is empty, but even Canada's south is extremely lightly populated by any reasonable standard.”
Yes I’ve lived in Canada so I know this. 🙂
And that’s my biggest point: right now Canada depends on 90% of its land being very hard to live on to deter illegal immigrants from settling there.
But once those lands are fertile prairies or whatever, Canada is going to face a future in which everyone knows they don’t have the manpower to enforce their laws everywhere, because of the low densities of current development… and in which it’s remarkably easy to just show up on the coast of, say, northern Yukon and build a house. How exactly is Canada going to stop millions of displaced people from around the world who have access to a boat or snowmobile or whatever from just arriving in middle-of-nowhere Nunavut and staying there forever? Even enlisting the entire population of Canada in the effort to enforce the borders will likely not be enough to patrol all of the square miles of land that Canada controls. And the problem compounds if those illegal squatters first stop in the US to pick up weaponry….
There is no plausible climate change projection that will render Canada's (or Alaska's, or Russia's) Arctic coast warm enough to be desirable real estate, or to make it easy to get to.
It doesn't take a large population to keep track of what is happening. Canada's north is under satellite surveillance and is regularly patrolled by military reconnaissance airplanes.
By REASONABLE standards, Canada is not extremely lightly populated; most of the rest of the world is heavily overpopulated.
Which projection of human population are you using? The median on the chart at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population has it going to ~10 billion and staying there through 2100.
Ok. Do you think Canada is going to have the manpower to keep squatters from just sitting on lands that (prior to now) were all but unhabitable but (assuming global warming does happen to precipitate mass movement of people across the globe) suddenly are inhabitable but there is nobody within hundreds of miles to enforce any rules whatsoever?
I think, in the event of global warming, the choices Canada faces are either (1) open up northern lands to settlers on some kind of organized basis (eg replicating the homesteading acts of the US) or (2) watching as millions of people just fly in or arrive over land/by boat and squat there, and then face the prospect of needing all the 40m-ish citizens living there to forcibly evict the squatters.
Canada would be smart to do (1) before (2) is thrust upon it. As Israel has shown, squatters eventually can gain enough momentum by putting “facts on the ground” to keep the authorities from evicting them later.
“And again, global population is going to be shrinking very soon: 60 or 70 years from now is practically nothing measured against the entirety of human history. There simply aren't going to be huge numbers of people who need to move—even given climate change—once the shrinkage gathers momentum.”
If this is true - that populations are going to shrink *uniformly* everywhere - then what the hell are we talking about?
But I doubt populations are going to just shrink uniformly everywhere. They’ll probably shrink more in countries that are educated (“if I have a second child, he/she is going to starve, better not!”) and in countries when starvation actually occurs (“I can’t feed myself today, so I can’t give birth to another mouth to feed”). Between those two of course are a lot of countries in which individuals will make lots of independent decisions to have babies (and in which a good percent will accidentally get pregnant as people have been doing for millennia even when they can’t afford it). And so it’s highly likely the population will keep growing in unsustainable places for longer than the models predict.
Why wouldn’t settlers just go to the Northern US? Vast empty lands in Northern NY, Vt, Maine and probably Penn, Ohio, Mich, Min not to mention the Western States ( which may not have water something that is abundant in the Northern Northeast).
Don't forget Alaska.
Current projections see populations falling everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa. Remember that the greater bulk of the human population is in the relatively small area bounded in the north and west by China, India, and Pakistan. China's and Japan's populations are already falling. India's and Indonesia's growth rates are slowing and their populations can be expected to peak in the fairly near future and then begin falling. Northern Asia, Europe, the Americas and Australia are at or below replacement birth rates; much of Europe and Northern Asia has negative population growth rates.
Future immigrants/climate refugees can be expected to come mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, and the idea of a flood of African refugees landing on the Arctic coasts is just not plausible under any circumstances.
Also, just as a matter of practicality, in a future where billions are displaced from southern latitudes, Canada would be smart to welcome (productive) immigrants to settle its newly inhabitable northern territories. Without people on the ground who identify as Canadian or Canadian-want-to-bes, Ottawa and provincial capitals are going to be hard pressed to hunt down and find “illegal” immigrants scattered across a land mass bigger than the US. (I mean the Us already struggles to do this with 10x the population to recruit soldiers and police from. How will Canada patrol all those acres of land with just 40m or so “legal” residents to enlist in the effort?)
Right now the only thing that protects most Canadian soil from illegal immigration is the harsh cold. Once that goes away, they’re going to find out you either “use it or lose it” when it comes to having lots of land with few people in it to enforce immigration laws and property rights.
Numbers are important. Worst case scenarios see maybe three degrees C. of global temperature increase. The Arctic is warming faster than the tropics so it might see 5 degrees C. of average temperature increase. That extreme case would have the effect of moving the northern limit of "habitability" a few hundred miles; the greater part of the country will continue to experience "harsh cold". The difference between -55 and -60 is just not all that significant.
The same applies to Alaska; the most extreme plausible climate change is not going to make Alaska much more habitable or suitable for agriculture.
+1
Exactly. Southern Canada might well have a pleasantly milder climate in a century or two. Think Virginia. But the country's northern 2/3rds or so will still remain quite uncomfortable by the standards of most human beings, especially compared to the (now much warmer) south.
Will there be some movement of people to Canada's north in the coming centuries? Maybe! Subarctic grain farms will probably need someone to look after the robots. But this idea of big cities sprouting up in Yukon or Baffin Island is the stuff of science fiction. And moreover, Canadian voters might well want to preserve large swaths of the country's vast north from the encroachment of human civilization.
On top of everything else, if the climate gets warm enough that the tundra thaws, much of Canada'a north will become a sea of cold mud deep enough to drown in.
You could say the same about the US, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, and China as well. None of those countries with vast land areas have evenly distributed populations and they all have vast regions that are lightly inhabited. The only large country in land area with a dispersed population is India.
(Please do not reply to this comment if you checked your sense of humor at the door.)
Apparently, Kevin may think Greenland is MUCH smaller than you think. Is our perception distorted because of a Mercator distortion? I doubt it. Greenland's area of 836,000 square miles is not "perceived," it's measured. That's significantly more than Texas, California, Montana, New Mexico and Arizona combined. On the other hand, Greenland's documented population of about 56,000 may be suspect. That's so sparsely populated that there is probably no graphic that can show where any of those folks live.
Consider, at the other extreme, the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Dare County, which is what most tourists envision as the Outer Banks, stretches from Duck and Kitty Hawk in the north to Hatteras in the south. That's a distance of about 83 miles, but it encompasses only about 383 square miles of land. Obviously, then, 100.0% of its population lives in a narrow strip along the coast.
I refuse, however, to believe that Dare County, NC, has a size approaching Greenland.
Dare County…. Hyde County is where it’s at on the Outer Banks !-)
While climate change will no doubt have a massive effect on the Outer Banks, I’ll assert that the installation of municipal water systems were what truly started their decline…
If the red part is "Real Canada" then the green part needs a name. How about Canino (Canada in name only)?
My real Canada is over on the left coast. A region of great beauty. As a small boat sailor the San Juans and the Straits of Georgia were a favorite cruising ground. Then there is the Canadian Rockies. Woot!!!
Still won’t be much light!
Kevin, Kevin. You are not giving credit where credit is due. A whole lot of Canada is covered with indigenous peoples who have been on the land long before any of us. There are also trappers, miners, fisherpersons, etc. all over, not being accounted for. And don't forget the folks living off the grid. As I Canadian, I resent folks calling Canada "mostly empty".
Those indigenous peoples are very thinly spread. The Northwest Territory, for instance, has a land area of 442,000 square miles and a total population of about 42,000, not all of whom are indigenous.
The point is not that Canada isn't big. The point is that Canada has a NIMBY problem. It lets parochial concerns about preservation of natural habitat, rights of native peoples, and parking minimums for snowmobiles get in the way of greedy developers who just want to build, build, build. If Canada could just elect some forward-thinking leaders with a vision of creating a Canada with the population density of New York City, the country could grow to as many as 100 billion people. Maybe some caribou would need to move to Greenland, but so what.
How could this happen? Look for the details in a new book from Yglesias.
Looks like Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI didn't make the cut, and it is unclear if Montreal and Ottawa are included in the Real Canada.
Only advice I would give to potential climate refugees going to check out the northern regions of Canada is from Frank Zappa, "don't you eat that yellow snow".
Probably should keep this in mind too:
“ New data obtained by CBC News shows a major spike in the number of frostbite amputations performed in Edmonton last winter — more than the previous three years combined, and more than double any other year over the past decade.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/frostbite-amputations-hit-10-year-high-in-edmonton-last-winter-new-data-show-1.6709778
It is even smaller if you don't use a Mercator projection.
https://www.nature.com/nature-index/news-blog/data-visualisation-animated-map-mercater-projection-true-size-countries