When it comes to climate change, we have the approach all wrong. And the fracturing of views in the media and the polarization of public opinion in Canada are going to make it particularly difficult to make good public policy around this issue any time soon.

How can that be said with any certainty? Two meetings on successive days in Ottawa recently underlined each point.

One of these was a day-long series of events sponsored by the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, and the Royal Canadian Geographic Society, publishers of Canadian Geographic magazine.

To summarize its presenters, when it comes to climate change, almost all the efforts in Canada and the industrialized world to deal with global warming is aimed at either stopping or at least slowing down the Earth getting hotter.

But no matter how hard we work at doing that, temperatures are going to continue to rise, for the next 50 years and perhaps well beyond.

This means that as Canadians we have to get our collective heads around dealing with the consequences of living in a warmer country and a warmer world.

Unexpectedly heavy rains in the spring, as shown here in Irvine, Alta., led to the fewest acres on crop across the Prairies in over a decade, Statistics Canada reported. (Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)

Spurred on by environmental groups, almost all the effort so far has been focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by a measurable amount within a specific time period.

Good idea. But guess what? The expert panel at this event agreed that even if GHG emissions were capped immediately, the amount of greenhouse gases already in the air will mean temperatures are going to continue to rise.

For how long was the only area of disagreement. Optimists said for the next 40 years, others more pessimistically predicted "several generations of grandchildren."

Fire and rain

Of course these answers are merely speculative. Greenhouse gas emissions are nowhere close to being capped. And a chart produced by the two sponsoring groups sets out just how things will change as our world gets warmer.

An average temperature rise of one degree Celsius, for example, will mean a continuing shrinkage of Arctic sea ice, more irregular and violent weather patterns, and noticeable impacts on both forestry and agriculture.

An increase of two degrees accelerates all these problems. Prairie agriculture will be affected by declining water run offs from the Rocky Mountain glaciers that feed the farmlands.

The Great Lakes will suffer from less oxygen and lower water levels and, as a result, there will be fewer fish.

A three-degree temperature rise will bring even less Prairie rain and the increased danger of droughts and desertification in what has been Canada's granary. In the East, the Atlantic salmon habitat in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Grand Banks will disappear and extreme rainstorms will increase.

If temperatures rise four degrees on average, 20 per cent of Canada's forests would disappear and the Halifax waterfront would be below sea level.

So, brace yourselves for the warmer times ahead.

Building consensus

To build a national consensus — and political will — around this problem is not going to be easy.

Particularly in a country where jurisdiction over the environment is divided between the federal and provincial governments, where different provinces have different agendas when it comes to resource extraction and emissions, and where environmental interest groups focus on stopping global warming instead of adjusting to the realities that are about to arise.

More dialogue? Famed Hollywood director James Cameron, flanked by Assembly of First Nations national chief Shawn A-in-chut-Atleo, talks to the press in Edmonton in September 2010 after touring northern Alberta's oilsands for two days. (John Ulan/Canadian Press)

We also have to deal with a fractured media landscape in which there is so much conflicting information on the internet that, too often, simply confirms certain prejudices and is not necessarily factual.

Many of these points were underlined at a panel discussion put on by Canada 2020, the public policy group on which I serve as chairman of the advisory board.

Three of Canada's top pollsters — Bruce Anderson of Harris Decima, Frank Graves of Ekos Research and Nik Nanos of Nanos Research — illustrated just how divided public opinion is on this subject.

They also reported that there is a general national malaise in this country about public policy and politicians. The reasons for this vary, depending on where you live, how much education you have, how much you earn and, interestingly, how often you go to church.

The upshot, though, is that the likelihood of a national consensus building on any major issue is declining.

A real dialogue

One of the big reasons for this is that more and more people are getting their information from the internet.

And while websites like this one operated by established news organizations apply the same journalistic standards they use for their broadcasts or newspapers, many sites don't. They are often highly readable and watchable. Just not accurate.

There is an old saying, pre-dating the web, that someone who shares your prejudices is a genius.

In the current age, it seems, more and more people are searching online for "geniuses" to reinforce their own views, rather than to help them truly figure out what is going on.

As a result, consensus-building is going to be very difficult these days and it is not just global warming that we need to be concerned about.

We need a national consensus as well on health care, the economy, energy policy and a host of other important issues.

The challenge for all of us — politicians, policy experts, communicators and concerned citizens — is to figure out how to keep a national dialogue going. Or even how to get one started.