No matter how abnormal, every climate impact seems to get enthroned as the “new normal” these days. Smoke-choked cities, crippling heat waves, torrential flooding or blazing landscapes — all quickly categorized and boxed away.

Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, the term is deployed with the best of intentions. Emergency officials who are trying to prime the public for the necessity of adaptation measures and spending on preparedness. Editors and reporters grasping for language to convey our predicament.

But “the new normal” is a pitifully inadequate phrase, a stumbling step towards accuracy that results in misdirection. On the plus side, it does capture the irreversibility of global heating — of fossil fuel pollution creating an ever-thickening blanket of heat-trapping gases around our planet. It correctly implies that we’ve got to adapt to what we’ve already spewed. But it totally obscures the essential point: it’s not a “new normal,” it will keep getting worse.

This fire season has been Canada’s second-worst. The past three years have been the three worst. An area equivalent to two Maritime provinces have already burned this year and fire season is not yet over. At various points across the summer, different Canadian cities vied for the title of worst air quality in the world while Europe is having its worst ever year for........

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