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COMMENTARY: Ember's prayer: How a tiny red squirrel made me feel the heat we keep ignoring

I have spent last few years writing about climate change. I have recited the statistics: degrees of warming, hectares burned, species at risk of extinction. I’ve summarized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and quoted climate scientists. And after every column, my inbox fills with the same responses: “Interesting. But what can I do as an individual?” or “I do not trust those climate scientists.” Or “It is already too late anyway.”

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The data numbs us. The numbers are too big. The crisis is too vast. We read about 1.5 C warming and feel a flicker of concern — then we scroll on. We click “like” and forget. The statistics slide off us like rain off a window.

So, I’m trying something different. I’m telling you about a red squirrel named Ember.

His home was a towering eastern white pine in the Wabanaki-Acadian forest — one of the most endangered forests in Canada. He dashed through the canopy, gathered cones, and dodged the great horned owl that haunted the twilight. He was small, fierce, and perfectly adapted to his world. The forest was his cathedral — green, cool, alive with the rustle of needles and the whisper of salt-tinged wind.

It didn’t arrive with a warning. It arrived like a fever in the bones of the earth. The rain that used to fall gently became a stranger. Spring arrived too early, tricking the sugar maples and yellow birches into blooming before a late frost killed the buds. Summer was no longer a season — it was a merciless brand that baked the forest floor until the creeks ran dry.

Ember felt it in his paws first. The bark that used to be cool and damp became hot and rough. The moss that once held moisture curled into brittle husks. He........

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