The summer of smoke

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  By Guest Blogger Doug Rowat

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The world’s cooking.

Global temperatures started to pick up in the 1940s, accelerated in the 1970s and have been rising dramatically ever since:

Global land and ocean average temperature departure

Source: NOAA

NOAA also just announced that this July was the hottest ever, eclipsing the previous record set during the Dust Bowl in 1936. And anyone who has ever read Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath knows exactly how bad things must be getting to beat a Dust Bowl record. And please, this is all a result of climate change, not the weather, as Ronny Chieng of The Daily Show calmly explains:

Unfortunately, what these hotter temperatures mean for my part of the world—the Okanagan—are increasingly more severe wildfires. This year’s particularly bad. More than 150 square kilometres are currently burning uncontrollably near Peachland and Summerland—the two happiest-named places in Canada that are now effectively surrounded by infernos. Summerland’s being hit particularly hard. Thousands of residents have been displaced and have no idea what they might return to and therefore have no idea what they might have lost. For some, it’ll be everything they own. Presently, there’s a province-wide state of emergency.

Meanwhile, plumes of smoke cover most of the region making breathing difficult and, occasionally, even stinging the eyes. If only it were just ‘clean’ forest ash that filled the air, but of course it’s not. It’s the toxins from painted houses, the contents of garages, sheds, old RVs and generally stuff that should never be lit on fire.

I’m a portfolio manager, so I’ve always taken a clear-eyed approach to climate change and recognize, to the irritation of many environmentalists, that it actually has almost no effect on financial markets. I wrote as much in a recent blog:

However, this doesn’t mean that climate change is without consequence and for most consumers it’s felt most acutely in food prices. In fact, over the past 16 years, multiple Canadian universities have collaborated on an annual food price report, aptly titled Canada’s Food Price Report. Here’s what this year’s edition had to say about climate change and its effect on food supply:

Climate change and weather events have become a growing concern for agricultural producers as they face more extreme and unpredictable conditions year after year. Since the supply chain starts with producers, the entire chain is highly sensitive to climate-related disruptions that impact agri-food output. Hot temperatures, droughts and wildfires damage crops and threaten agricultural land, and warmer winters can make crops and livestock more susceptible to pests and disease. When supply cannot meet demand, businesses need to pivot quickly or take the losses, neither of which is economically viable. These extra costs will show up in food prices on the shelves. In June 2025, 66% of agricultural land in Canada was experiencing moderate to extreme drought…

And that was last year. What will the 2027 report say about this year’s conditions?

So, let’s take that NOAA land-and-ocean-temperature chart highlighted above and zoom in on the date range starting in the mid-1940s when things first start to get steamy. Then, as a simple example, let’s overlay the wheat producer price index, which tracks the change over time of wheat selling prices. Wheat also happens to be Canada’s largest crop. Prices have not only become much more volatile over the decades, but they’ve also steadily risen as global temperatures have increased.

Global land and ocean average temperature departure (upper panel) vs produce price index: wheat (lower panel)

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Source:NOAA, FRED, Turner Investments

It’s not an encouraging trend. And many other key crops have similar pricing patterns.
Here in Canada this has meant a dramatic rise in food prices. This year alone the Food Price Report estimates that the average family of four is expected to spend $17,572 on food, an increase of up to $995 from last year. That’s pretty significant when two in five Canadians report that they’re 200 bucks or less away from financial insolvency each month, according to the MNP Consumer Debt Index. Further, the Food Price Report also notes that food prices in Canada are 27% higher than they were just five years ago. And this doesn’t include the increases from this year.

Naturally, I don’t enjoy inhaling toxic smoke. For many BC residents it’s become like a pack-a-day cig habit that they’re forced to take up at the end of each summer. But the consequences of this particular aspect of climate change are hard to measure. Higher food prices resulting from climate change are now quite easy to measure.

And it’s not a cost that any of us can avoid. We all have to eat.

Doug Rowat, FCSI® is Portfolio Manager with Turner Investments and Senior Investment Advisor, Private Client Group, Raymond James Ltd.

Source: https://www.greaterfool.ca/2026/08/15/the-summer-of-smoke/