A man from Victoria, British Columbia, chose the wrong summer to unicycle across Canada to raise awareness for global warming, as this year has been unseasonably cool for our northern neighbor.
Joseph Boutilier, 24, has for months been unicycling across the southern part of Canada to highlight what he says are the dangers of global warming.
He said that his reason for this trip is that global warming is “terrifying” to him. He said he began to get active after Canada backed out of the Kyoto protocol in 2011.
“The campaign is called Unity for the Climate, because I feel like unity between or across partisan lines among our MPs will be required to really mitigate climate impacts,” he said to the Toronto Star.
Yet as he enters Toronto in Ontario just across from Ohio on Lake Erie, Boutilier has come upon a city that has been experiencing cooler summer temperatures of late.
On August 14, for instance, the day dawned chilly enough for residents to put on light jackets and sweaters, with temperatures hitting only 59 degrees. The average for a typical August is more like 70 degrees.
“People think fall is here, but no, no: Fall is not here,” said David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada. “We still have more than a month to go astronomically, and there is some promise that things will improve.”
This cool summer comes after record colds during this past winter and spring. For instance, Edmonton Airport in Alberta, through which Boutilier cycled earlier this summer, had the lowest March 10th temperature ever this year ringing in at -42 degrees. This smashed the previous record by twelve degrees.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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