Canada and global warming: a state of denial

Canada is also facing droughts as a result of climate change. 

A study released in March 2018 looked at 29 different climate change models examining drought caused by global warming until 2100 would impact different regions of Canada in terms of precipitation both if greenhouse gas emissions grew unchecked and if they were significantly reduced. 

Prairie provinces

All three Prairie provinces, stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the shore of Hudson Bay, are vulnerable to drought, says David Price, a scientist for Natural Resources Canada who models climate change outlooks. ...

Southern parts of those provinces are vulnerable to drought, Barrie Bonsal, a research scientist with the Water Science and Technology Directorate of Environment Canada, agrees, and droughts could become more severe later in the century. Alberta will be particularly vulnerable as glaciers in the Rockies melt, ending a formerly reliable source of water.

South-central British Columbia

British Columbia's Okanagan Valley is one of the driest places in Canada, and agriculture puts pressure on water supplies. Climate change could mean even hotter summers in the region, making it more vulnerable to drought. "Most models show it getting drier toward the end of the century," said Barrie Bonsal, a research scientist with the Water Science and Technology Directorate of Environment Canada.

British Columbia has been dependent on snowpack to provide moisture through the spring and summer, but it may get more rain in winter, which would run off the land rather than melting slowly as snow does, Bonsal said. 

The Lower Mainland of B.C. is accustomed to seeing lots of rain, but with places like the lower Fraser region and Vancouver Island seeing less of it, they'll have to rely more and more on water reservoirs, according to John Pomeroy, professor of geography and director of the Centre for Hydrology at the University of Saskatchewan. However, since those regions don't usually have to rely on reservoirs, he says, the ones they have aren't adequate to offset the lack of rain. In fact, the shortage has prompted water restrictions in the province and instances of hydrological drought, which is when lakes, rivers and ground water supplies are depleted.

Yukon and Northwest Territories ...

"The impact of climate change is being felt rapidly in the far North," Price said. "We could see a dry winter followed by a hot summer that would make drought quite possible."

Ontario and Quebec

Southern parts of Canada's two most populous provinces are mainly protected from drought because of the Great Lakes, which create their own wet weather systems. Climate change models vary in their predictions of whether water levels in the Great Lakes will rise or fall as weather patterns change. But there still could be a need for water restrictions if demand exceeds supply, Bonsal said. ...

Northern parts of Ontario and Quebec are less influenced by the Great Lakes, and their forests could be threatened. "You only need a couple of years of very dry conditions to make those forests tinder-dry," Price said. That means elevated risk of forest fire.

Atlantic Canada

By contrast, Atlantic Canada and eastern Quebec are predicted to become wetter as the century progresses, under most climate change models. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/water-at-risk-canada-drought-1.4570333

While Jerry Brown has received praise for his climate change measures for his climate change measures, he also has been strong criticized for being too friendly to oil, not unlike Trudeau and Notley. 

Anti-oil protesters tried to shout down California Gov. Jerry Brown as he spoke at last November’s climate-change conference in Bonn, Germany, one of many interruptions in his appearances there. The occasionally feisty governor didn’t miss the opportunity to debate with the “Keep It In The Ground” campaign troops pushing for no new oil or gas drilling anywhere.

“Keep it in the ground? Let’s put you in the ground,” Brown shot back, before veering into a well-worn admonition that the industrial world would suffer if fossil fuels suddenly stopped flowing. ...

To some it’s jarring to attack the environmental bona fides of a public figure who has been talking about conservation since the 1970s and has arguably signed more environmental legislation than any American governor. As state attorney general and then governor, Brown has championed regulations supporting clean energy, energy efficiency and a broad suite of laws aimed at reducing greenhouse gases that warm the planet.

But even as they acknowledge those gains, some fault Brown for a persistent and significant blind spot in his green worldview: oil. ...

The governor declined to comment for this article. His spokesman, Evan Westrup, said the critics are myopic, ignoring the changes already occurring at Brown’s hand. ...

But not to R.L. Miller, chairwoman of the state Democratic Party’s environmental caucus and president of the political action committee Climate Hawks Vote, which supports environmental issues and candidates. She said Brown used to be a committed environmentalist, and she gave him credit for promoting solar energy, for example. But oil exploration is another matter, she said. Like many critics, Miller noted Brown’s controversial dismissal of the state’s top two oil and gas regulators in 2011, two days after they warned the governor that oil activities were imperiling the state’s groundwater. Industry representatives, who had complained that the state’s enforcement noose was pulling too tightly, welcomed the move. Brown never publicly gave a reason for firing the officials, who serve at the pleasure of the governor.

Two years later, to great fanfare, Brown signed legislation regulating fracking, calling it the toughest in the nation. But the law didn’t go as far as some environmentalists would have liked; they wanted a fracking ban. “His blind spot is bigger than just fracking; it’s really the entire oil industry,” Miller said. “He goes out of his way to be friendly to them.” She calls Brown “Chevron’s stenographer.”

Critics howled again last year when oil interests were given key concessions so that Brown’s signature climate policy—the cap and trade system for reducing industrial pollution—could be extended. The governor himself lobbied legislators for passage. ...

Brown has approved more than 20,000 new drilling permits since 2011. But his staff points out that fewer than 1,500 have been issued in the last two years, mirroring the decline in the price of oil and in statewide production. ...

Oil interests, like many others, have donated to the governor’s campaigns and causes. Chevron and Occidental oil companies, for example, have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars since 2010 to Brown’s gubernatorial runs and the two charter schools he founded in Oakland. Occidental gave $250,000 to a Brown-backed ballot-measure effort about two months after the 2011 oil-regulator firings.

https://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2018/09/09/critics-accuse-environme...

A National Wildlife Federation (NWF) report looked at the impact of sea level rise caused by global warming on the Pacific Northwest, including British Columbia. Based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report the NWF report concluded: 

Using the IPCC’s projection of 0.69 meters (27.3 inches) of global sea level rise in this century, the NWF study predicts, by 2100:

• 65% loss in estuarine beaches
• 61% loss of tidal swamp
• 52% of brackish marsh will convert to tidal flats, transitional marsh and saltmarsh
• up to 44% loss of tidal flats
• 25% loss of tidal fresh marsh
• 13% loss of inland fresh marsh

Coastal habitats such as beaches, marshes, tidal flats and estuaries are vital to wildlife.

Millions of birds – from 29 countries and three continents – rely on the Fraser estuary and mudflats of Roberts Bank and Boundary Bay, to feed and rest as they migrate along the Pacific Flyway each year.

For over 80% of BC’s wildlife – including wild salmon as well as birds – estuaries are essential during some part of the life cycle.

Such coastal habitat loss could tip the balance for threatened and endangered species. It would mean, for example:

• declines in forage fish, along with the salmon and other marine life that rely on them
• reduced stopover and wintering habitat for migratory shorebirds and waterfowl
• loss of essential salmonid habitat, especially for juvenile Chinook and chum salmon

These changes would also have massive impacts on the economy of our region, hitting especially hard at BC’s tourism industry, shellfish aquaculture and fisheries.

Many of our Strait of Georgia communities and sensitive estuaries face flooding by rising seawater. Salmon runs will perish as they encounter the warming waters of the Fraser River and countless other streams. The cumulative impacts across the many watersheds that drain into our inland sea will change the Strait in ways no one can foresee.

Complicating the issue, many of our coastal areas have already been developed, polluted, dredged or otherwise damaged. Dikes, seawalls and other structures have reduced the possibility for critical habitats to simply move inland to adapt to sea level rise – so we cannot afford any further losses in terms of coastal habitat.

https://georgiastrait.org/issues/climate-change/sea-level-rise/

The 2016 Ontario Greenhouse Gas Progress Report describes some of the problems the province is already facing as a result of global warming. 

In Ontario, climate change is already contributing to many impacts. Coldwater fish are losing habitat. Heat is stressing moose populations, which are already in decline. Invasive species are flourishing. Wildfire risk is increasing. Disease-carrying pests are spreading. Northern communities’ ice roads are becoming less reliable. The season for ice fishing and snow sports is shrinking. Heat waves are posing health risks for vulnerable populations. Cities like Toronto, Burlington, Windsor, Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie have suffered extreme storms and devastating floods. Severe heat and drought have crimped water supplies and damaged crops.  ...

What used to be “normal” weather is gone.

As a result, 2016 has continued to break all temperature records. January to August had the highest land and ocean temperatures ever recorded.  ...

While not all impacts are harmful, on balance, climate change will bring more extreme weather, ecological damage, financial loss and human misery.  ...

Warmer and wilder weather is already affecting the province, and much more lies ahead. Ontario is warming faster than the world average, especially in the north. It is too late to avoid some disruptive and expensive changes to our environment and economy. But we still can influence how destructive those changes will be. By working together, we can still protect much of what we love, by reducing the GHGs that we emit, and by preparing for the changes ahead.  ...

Ontario still depends on fossil fuels for 80% of its energy. Transportation is our biggest challenge: Ontario’s largest and fastest growing share of GHG emissions. Industry, homes and commercial buildings are other major emitters. 

Ontarians have high emissions per person, compared to most people around the world, even those in other rich northern countries. Ontario’s per capita GHG emission footprint (12.6 tonnes) compared to Sweden (5.8 tonnes), the UK (9.1 tonnes), Norway (10.6) and worldwide (4.9 tonnes). 

And these emission numbers underestimate our true carbon footprint, because they leave out:

•the full impact of some emissions, such as methane and black carbon (soot);

• the emissions we cause by consuming things grown or made outside the province; and

•the emissions we cause through international aviation and shipping.

If these additional emissions were reflected in Ontario’s annual GHG totals, our reported emissions would be much higher. We have lots of room to improve, and many opportunities to do so. 

http://docs.assets.eco.on.ca/reports/climate-change/2016/2016-Annual-GHG...

Yesterday in post 262 I summarized the 2016 report of the Ontario Environmental Commissioner, Dianne Saxe, where she described the climate change problems that were already impacting Ontario two years ago. This September she criticized the Ford Progressive Conservative's government termination of the cap and trade system without putting an effective climate change program in its place. (https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/environmental-watchdog-criticizes-pcs-move-to...)

The good news is that Ford, from his viewpoint, has quickly solved Ontario's environmental problems. The bad news is he did it by shutting down the Environmental Commissioner office, which was established by the Ontario NDP government in 1994.

After almost a quarter century, the office of Ontario's environmental commissioner is no more. ...

The move was announced in the Progressive Conservatives' Fall Economic Statement, released Thursday at Queen's Park. ...

 The commissioner's office has existed for 24 years. It's tasked with reporting on the province's progress on energy efficiency and emissions reductions.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/11/15/ontario-pcs-do-away-with-enviro...

On Saturday November 10th, 50,000 Quebecois joined in a march called La planète s’invite au Parlement (The Planet Goes to Parliament) in order to demand that the Quebec government establish a concrete plan to deal with climate change. This demonstration was one of a series of marches called La planète s’invite dans la campagne aimed at insisting that all political parties develop a plan that prioritizes the "transition to green jobs, divest from fossil fuels, respect Indigenous sovereignty and protect their land and biodiversity."

The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government of François Legault hasn’t discussed clearly what their plan is to start transitioning to a green economy for future generations. Previously in the campaign’s early stage, Legault had no problem with the fracking industry and fossil fuel projects. But after the tornado that destroyed houses and communities in Gatineau and surrounding areas, the CAQ changed their message a little. However, they still didn’t offer concrete measures. On the party’s official page, general topics such as Green Economy, National Architecture and Planning Policy, Greenhouse Gas and Energy Efficiency are listed without any references nor real proposals.

On the other hand, Quebec Solidaire had a breakthrough in this year’s election, winning 10 seats as they ran a campaign supporting an energy transition program divesting from oil companies, providing better conditions for workers, public dental insurance, free education, and increasing the minimum wage. These are important measures and to fight climate change we also need decent wages and working conditions for people, instead of targeting individuals and how much time they spend in the shower. As per an article from The Guardian, in July 2017 by Tess Riley, it shows that 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions.

The latest mobilization brought once again the following list of demands, which is also based on the Transition Pact (Le Pacte de transition), a document signed by 400 prominent figures in Quebec stating their commitment to put the fight against climate change as a priority and what needs to be done in the short term (2 years) to make progress on this matter.

1- Recognize that the climate emergency and the protection of biodiversity are the greatest challenges of our time, and raise public awareness about them.

2- Develop a climate plan that meets the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) targets of reducing GHG emissions by 45% by 2030 (compared to 2010 levels) and eliminating them completely by 2050. Provide a detailed annual report to the public on the progress towards achieving these targets.

3- Ban any new oil and gas exploration or development projects, and end all direct and indirect fossil fuel subsidies.

The Pact also demands that the government commit to "Adopting a strategy to ensure that the energy transition brings social justice for workers and their communities that will face economic impacts."

Indigenous peoples, political figures from Quebec Solidaire, workers from the CSN, the FTQ, environmental groups like Greenpeace and more political organizations were part of this event which shows a great level of solidarity and understanding about the importance of a mass movement that will keep us on a path to environmental justice.

More marches are already scheduled to happen through November and December to keep the pressure on. Groups will be marching in Quebec City by the end of the month and on December 8th, another event will take place in Montreal.

http://www.socialist.ca/node/3718

In California, the climate change related wildfires have destroyed the city of Paradise, which had a population of 27,000. Searchers are now looking "for more than 1,000 people reported missing in the northern California town reduced to ashes by the deadliest wildfire in the state’s history, as the death toll increased to 71." Of the dead "only bones and fragments" remain.

Authorities attribute the death toll in part to the speed with which flames raced through the town of 27,000, driven by wind and fueled by desiccated scrub and trees.

Nearly 12,000 homes and buildings burned hours after the blaze erupted, the California department of forestry and fire protection (Cal Fire) said. The fire left a ghostly expanse of empty lots covered in ash and strewn with debris.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/15/california-camp-fire-mis...

A burned neighborhood is seen from the air in Paradise, Calif., on Nov. 15

The October 2018  United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report says that "carbon pollution would have to be cut by 45% by 2030 – compared with a 20% cut under the 2C pathway – and come down to zero by 2050" to keep the temperature rising by no more 1.5 degrees celsius. (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-...)

The complete inadequacy of the Saskatchewan government's August 2018 climate change plan, which "announced new emissions performance standards for more large industrial emitters that, if successful, are expected to reduce the province's overall emissions by 1.1 per cent by 2030", can be seen when it is compared to the IPCC Report.

The government's plan looks at reducing emission intensity, as opposed to emissions themselves, he said.

"So if you get five per cent more efficient in producing output, but you produce 10 per cent more, your emissions have gone up by five per cent," Brett Dolter, an ecological economist at the University of Regina, said. "For industry, a hard cap would likely be tougher to meet." ...

David Forbes, the Saskatchewan NDP's environment critic, denounced the province's strategy. ...

Forbes said that while today's announcement fills in some details, others remain elusive. "Today we saw an announcement that would deal with a very small part of the question," he said. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/sask-gov-t-climate-change-updat...

Considering what the damage and death toll created by the climate change-related California wildfires described in posts 268 and 269, you would think that the Canadian prairie provincal governments would start making major changes in their climate change plans. But, they remain in a state of denial.

Governments around the world are now being sued for failing to meet greenhouse emission targets and the October 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report is giving plaintiffs new ammunition in these lawsuits. Already more than 1,000 such lawsuits have been filed. "Investors are also increasingly having to take into account the legal risks associated with global warming".

Climate-related litigations are set to break new grounds following a landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) earlier this month, which provided lawyers with new evidence that limiting global warming to 1.5°C is still possible. 

“This report provides us strong arguments to use in the Court rooms: There is an important threat to people and their fundamental rights. By not stepping up their climate action, governments are failing to do their duty to protect citizens,” lawyer Roda Verheyen told EURACTIV.

“Besides showing the devastating impacts of above 1.5°C warming, the IPCC report made it clear that limiting the temperature rise to 1.5°C is still possible and doable,” she stressed. 

The report, released on 8 October, demonstrates that limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5ºC is still achievable.

But it will require unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society, including energy, agriculture, transport, urban and industrial systems. It will also require the engagement of non-state actors, and the integration of climate action into broader public policies and development frameworks. ...

Verheyen explained that plaintiffs are already being affected by climate change. “Plaintiffs are families who have to deal with heat waves, drought, too much water, not enough water, ice melt, rising sea level. They are people who are impacted by climate change now and on an every day basis,” the lawyer said.  Many of them are farmers or depend on agriculture who are already feeling the impact of global warming on their activities.  “For them, it is not a loss of revenue, it is also the loss of their fundamental right to live. Yes, climate justice is a human right,” she said.

According to figures from the Sabin Centre for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, more than 1,000 climate cases have been filed worldwide, and confirms that these cases could have a significant impact in holding governments accountable for climate change. 

Of these 1,000 or more cases, 20 are directly targeting private companies.

Already, the financial community is being sensitive to this new environment. Philippe Desfossé, chief executive officer of the pension fund ERAFP, the additional retirement pension for French civil servants worth €30 billion euros, recently told EURACTIV that investors increasingly have to take into account the legal risks associated with global warming.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/climate-environment/news/climate-litiga...

Bill McKibben, one of the world's top climate change experts and leader of 350.org, has just written an excellent article, in The New Yorker on where we are and where we are going because of global warming. How Extreme Weather  is Shrinking the Earth discusses how global warming is decreasing the global space in which people can survive on the earth. 

This past October, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a special report stating that global warming “is likely to reach 1.5 C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.” ... The report did not mention that, in Paris, countries’ initial pledges would cut emissions only enough to limit warming to 3.5 degrees Celsius (about 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, a scale and pace of change so profound as to call into question whether our current societies could survive it. ...

As a team of scientists recently pointed out in the journal Nature Climate Change, the physical shifts we’re inflicting on the planet will “extend longer than the entire history of human civilization thus far.” ...

The extra heat that we trap near the planet every day is equivalent to the heat from four hundred thousand bombs the size of the one that was dropped on Hiroshima. As a result, in the past thirty years we’ve seen all twenty of the hottest years ever recorded. The melting of ice caps and glaciers and the rising levels of our oceans and seas, initially predicted for the end of the century, have occurred decades early. “I’ve never been at . . . a climate conference where people say ‘that happened slower than I thought it would,’ ” Christina Hulbe, a New Zealand climatologist, told a reporter for Grist last year. This past May, a team of scientists from the University of Illinois reported that there was a thirty-five-per-cent chance that, because of unexpectedly high economic growth rates, the U.N.’s “worst-case scenario” for global warming was too optimistic. “We are now truly in uncharted territory,” David Carlson, the former director of the World Meteorological Organization’s climate-research division, said in the spring of 2017, after data showed that the previous year had broken global heat records. ...

When I say the world has begun to shrink, this is what I mean. Until now, human beings have been spreading, from our beginnings in Africa, out across the globe—slowly at first, and then much faster. But a period of contraction is setting in as we lose parts of the habitable earth. Sometimes our retreat will be hasty and violent; the effort to evacuate the blazing California towns along narrow roads was so chaotic that many people died in their cars. But most of the pullback will be slower, starting along the world’s coastlines. Each year, another twenty-four thousand people abandon Vietnam’s sublimely fertile Mekong Delta as crop fields are polluted with salt. As sea ice melts along the Alaskan coast, there is nothing to protect towns, cities, and native villages from the waves. In Mexico Beach, Florida, which was all but eradicated by Hurricane Michael, a resident told the Washington Post, “The older people can’t rebuild; it’s too late in their lives. Who is going to be left? Who is going to care?” ...

In one week at the end of last year, I read accounts from Louisiana, where government officials were finalizing a plan to relocate thousands of people threatened by the rising Gulf (“Not everybody is going to live where they are now and continue their way of life, and that is a terrible, and emotional, reality to face,” one state official said); from Hawaii, where, according to a new study, thirty-eight miles of coastal roads will become impassable in the next few decades; and from Jakarta, a city with a population of ten million, where a rising Java Sea had flooded the streets. ...

“Like it or not, we will retreat from most of the world’s non-urban shorelines in the not very distant future,” Orrin Pilkey, an expert on sea levels at Duke University, wrote in his book “Retreat from a Rising Sea.” “We can plan now and retreat in a strategic and calculated fashion, or we can worry about it later and retreat in tactical disarray in response to devastating storms. In other words, we can walk away methodically, or we can flee in panic.”

But it’s not clear where to go. As with the rising seas, rising temperatures have begun to narrow the margins of our inhabitation, this time in the hot continental interiors. Nine of the ten deadliest heat waves in human history have occurred since 2000. In India, the rise in temperature since 1960 (about one degree Fahrenheit) has increased the chance of mass heat-related deaths by a hundred and fifty per cent. The summer of 2018 was the hottest ever measured in certain areas. For a couple of days in June, temperatures in cities in Pakistan and Iran peaked at slightly above a hundred and twenty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, the highest reliably recorded temperatures ever measured. The same heat wave, nearer the shore of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, combined triple-digit temperatures with soaring humidity levels to produce a heat index of more than a hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit. June 26th was the warmest night in history, with the mercury in one Omani city remaining above a hundred and nine degrees Fahrenheit until morning. In July, a heat wave in Montreal killed more than seventy people, and Death Valley, which often sets American records, registered the hottest month ever seen on our planet. Africa recorded its highest temperature in June, the Korean Peninsula in July, and Europe in August. ...

About a decade ago, Australian and American researchers, setting out to determine the highest survivable so-called “wet-bulb” temperature, concluded that when temperatures passed thirty-five degrees Celsius (ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit) and the humidity was higher than ninety per cent, even in “well-ventilated shaded conditions,” sweating slows down, and humans can survive only “for a few hours, the exact length of time being determined by individual physiology.” As the planet warms, a crescent-shaped area encompassing parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the North China Plain, where about 1.5 billion people (a fifth of humanity) live, is at high risk of such temperatures in the next half century. Across this belt, extreme heat waves that currently happen once every generation could, by the end of the century, become “annual events with temperatures close to the threshold for several weeks each year, which could lead to famine and mass migration.” By 2070, tropical regions that now get one day of truly oppressive humid heat a year can expect between a hundred and two hundred and fifty days, if the current levels of greenhouse-gas emissions continue. ...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/26/how-extreme-weather-is-shr...

(continued in next post)

jerrym wrote:

Andrew Scheer hope of winning more seats in Quebec are fading fast because of the Conservatives anti-carbon pricing approach to climate change. The 50,000 person march in Montreal last week to demand government action on climate change is just one example of the level of support for dealing with climate change now. Last week, 150,000 Quebecois signed a pledge to reduce their own carbon footprint and to insist that governments take a more proactive approach to global warming. This pressure is already affecting the new right-wing CAQ government and other provinical parties. When this is combined with the Ontario Ford government's abolishing of the Ontario's Office of the French Language Services Commissioner and the cancelling of a proposed Ontario French language univsersity that has raised another outcry in Quebec, the federal Conservatives  are expected to see a significant drop in Quebec support in upcoming polls. 

In Quebec, the anti-carbon pricing platform Scheer has been spending the fall shoring up is dead on arrival both in the National Assembly and on the ground. As for his commitment to the Energy East pipeline — a project designed to transport oil from the Prairies through Ontario and Quebec to the Atlantic Coast — it amounts to a target on the back of his candidates as well as an incentive for Quebec’s premier to keep at a safe distance from the federal Conservatives. Among the right-of-centre premiers and leaders who have emerged since Justin Trudeau became prime minister, Premier François Legault already stands alone in support of the federal climate-change framework. The Quebec cap-and-trade system put in place under previous governments is there to stay. ...

Legault has reversed his party’s position on allowing shale gas exploration on Anticosti Island. He has admitted his platform did not make the grade on the environment and promised the CAQ would do better in government. Legault dispatched three of his ministers to Saturday’s Montreal march. And while he did not sign on to the “Pacte pour la transition” — the carbon-footprint-reduction pledge sponsored by a coalition of hundreds of artists, climate change activists, scientists and academics — the premier met with one of its leading organizers on Friday. ...

But among the backers of the Transition Pact, there are more Quebec household names than Scheer can ever hope to get to know between now and the federal election. Together, they command a larger audience than he ever will. In the recent past, more formidable leaders than Scheer have taken on similar Quebec coalitions…and lost.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2018/11/12/demand-for...

 

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

I do not agree with Hébert here. The logic does not support her in my opinion. It is true Quebec does not have a large percentage of climate deniers. However, it has had recently an even small percentage of conservatives.

Even with a 70-30 proportion in the province in favour of those who that care about the environment, that leaves a 30% margin that may be inclined to vote Conservative for other reasons. In other words the 30% who would be most likely available to the Conservatives may also be aligned with them on terrible environmental policy. In this sense, they may have calculated that in the proportion it is realistic for the Conservatives to obtain, this move is a net positive. this number goes when you take out of the 70% those who may not agree with Conservative policies on this one issue but would vote for them anyway. As we have seen in the past, minority opinions can actually help parties get that minority of votes they need and be more effective than appealling to the majority that would not ever vote for them. People not only have positions on the issues but relative importance for the issues so a position alone is not certain to be able to move voters.

[/quote]

[quote=jerrym]

Scheer now has problems on two major fronts with Quebecois voters: with his anti-carbon pricing policy and with Ford's cutting of the French language university and the French language services commissioner in the budget update. The latter is causing an increasing level of anger among Francophones not just in Ontario, but also in Quebec, New Brunswick and Manitoba that could create electoral problems for Scheer. Even Rachel Curran, director of policy under former prime minister Stephen Harper, admitted as much on CBC's Power and Politics. The intersection of the view that federal Conservatives are not willing to vigorously fight for the protection of the French language with policies that are not viewed favourably in Quebec, such as being against measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increases the tendency to see Conservative views on issues as alien to Quebec culture, thereby affecting the Conservative chances of doing well in the next election in Quebec. 

What's been called a "sad day for Franco-Ontarians" presents a challenge for Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer — not only in Ontario but in every part of the country where francophones live. The Conservatives are hoping to replicate Premier Doug Ford's electoral success in Ontario and see him as a key ally in the fight against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's carbon tax. But they also have great hopes of wooing Quebec voters — hopes that could be dashed if Scheer is unable to reconcile his support for Ford with his pitch to the francophone voters now angered by Ford's actions. ...

Quebec's French-language media — which normally would pay little attention to a provincial fiscal update in Ontario — also jumped on the news. Le Devoir reported the decision under the headline, "Doug Ford sacrifices Ontario francophones." Le Journal de Montréal, a widely-read and generally conservative-leaning paper, called it a "sad day." Quebec Premier François Legault, a small-c conservative himself, also expressed his concerns and said he would take up the issue with his Ontario counterpart. The mayor of Quebec City — the municipality at the centre of the region where most of the Conservatives' seats in the province are located — denounced the move as mean-spirited and provocative.

It all puts Scheer in a difficult position. Ford's Progressive Conservative government in Ontario is not only ideologically aligned with the federal Conservatives, it's in lockstep with Scheer's campaign against the federal carbon tax. It's not likely that being seen as close to the Ford government will do Scheer many favours in the 96 ridings across the country with significant francophone populations. ...

Scheer has very publicly allied himself with Ford, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney (who may become Alberta's premier after next spring's provincial election) in his fight against Trudeau's carbon tax. He may prove reluctant to take Ford to task over a separate issue that he'd prefer to avoid altogether.

That alliance could compound the potential for problems facing Conservatives in Quebec. Quebec will not be affected by the federally-imposed carbon tax; the province already has a cap-and-trade system in place.

But voters in Quebec are worried about climate change. Polls show that it rates as an issue most highly in Quebec, putting the environment and climate change among the top issues for voters in the province.

The Liberals' plan to put a price on carbon is also more popular in Quebec than anywhere else in the country. A recent Angus Reid Institute poll put approval of the plan at 69 per cent. Mainstreet Research not only found support for the plan higher in Quebec than elsewhere, it reported that 77 per cent of Quebecers told the polling firm they strongly or somewhat agreed that "it is more important for the government to solve the issue of climate change even if that means that the economy suffers."

That puts Scheer at risk of being out of step with Quebecers in the next federal election on one major issue — a risk that could be amplified if francophones also sense the Conservative leader is unwilling to distance himself from Ford's approach to funding services for Franco-Ontarians.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-scheer-ford-1.4908611

Last month, before the Paradise fire happened, five wildfire experts looked at what BC could learn from the California wildfires, which are expected to be much more frequent in both places in the future because of global warming. Below is an article on that discussion. 

One thing they did not cover was the importance of looking at whether there are sufficient escape routes for rapidly spreading fires. Paradise had only two roads out of town because of its mountain location, a factor that contributed to the large death toll in this fire. Mountainous BC has some similarly located communities. Some people also had close escapes from the Fort McMurray fire in 2016. More attention needs to be paid to this issue. 

Wildfires in British Columbia could become just as deadly within 20 years as those burning now in California, says top Canadian forestry expert Bruce Blackwell. While British Columbia’s 2018 wildfire season burned more than double the land of California’s, no lives were lost in British Columbia from fire or during evacuations in the last two fire seasons. In contrast, 14 people died, and another 41 were injured during California’s latest wildfire season.

B.C.'s capability to recover from forest fire damage, potential loss of life, and unsustainable suppression costs will be overwhelmed, says forestry expert Bruce Blackwell. @mike_ruffolo reports #wildfire #BCpoli #climate 

"I think the pace of [housing] development, in combination with the growing probability of wildfire, are on a collision course where we will continue to see growing levels of wildfire damage, potential loss of life, and unsustainable suppression costs that will overwhelm our capabilities to recover in the short term and impact the quality of life of all British Columbians," stated Blackwell.

British Columbia just experienced two record-breaking fire seasons back to back. The 2018 season was the worst, with more than 3.2 million acres of land scorched. Five of the largest 11 wildfire seasons in British Columbia since 1950 occurred since 2010. ...

The discussion came hot on the heels of the special report by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Leading climate scientists warn in the report that there are only a dozen years to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius; even half a degree more will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat, wildfires, and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. ...

Scott Stevens, fire science professor at University of California, Berkley, said that the fatalities in California were due to developing homes in fire prone areas without taking the necessary precautions to prevent future fires. ... The panelists were in unison that prescribed burns are necessary to prevent future fires, and that B.C. needs to increase the amount it burns. Prescribed burns are controlled forest fires in a specific area, aimed at reducing fuel that spreads fire.

Blackwell recalled that before the 1990s, “we used to burn about 485,000 hectares of land a year. That number through the nineties declined to where we’re burning, on average, less than 20,000 hectares a year.” Blackwell noted that in B.C., wildfires spread through areas that would have historically been subject to a prescribed burn. He said a drastic decline in prescribed burning is a result of negative public perception and from a concern for health. Smoke particulates in the air are harmful for those with asthmatic condition and respiratory diseases.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/10/25/news/bc-wildfires-could-be-d...

David Suzuki recently discussed how to deal with the polarized opinions on global warming. 

Canadian climate-change opinion is polarized, and research shows the divide is widening. The greatest predictor of people’s outlook is political affiliation. This means people’s climate-change perceptions are being increasingly driven by divisive political agendas rather than science and concern for our collective welfare.

Over the past year, the Alberta Narratives Project gathered input from a broad range of Albertans (teachers, faith groups, health professionals, farmers, artists, industry, environmentalists, etcetera) to better understand how they feel about public discourse on global warming. Participants said they want less blame and a more open, balanced, and respectful conversation. Many don’t see themselves in the conversation at all. No one is speaking to them, using language that reflects their values and identity. Albertans are deeply divided in their climate-change perceptions. In 2017, just over half the population was doubtful or dismissive. When an issue is highly polarized, people find it difficult to discuss. The Alberta Narratives Project found people rarely, if ever, speak to others about climate change.

Climate disruption is a collective threat, not just an environmental issue. We must all see ourselves as part of the effort to prevent extreme impacts and ensure sustainable, resilient communities. But how can we take shared action when we can’t even talk to each other about the problem? ...

Rising populist politics are weaponizing climate action as a wedge issue for political advantage—with tragic implications. How can we reverse this?

Cities are responsible for 70 percent of global emissions. According to C40 Cities research, they can lead the way by acting across four key areas: energy supply, buildings, mobility, and waste.

Recently, Regina’s council unanimously passed a motion to run on 100-percent renewable energy by 2050, a meaningful target in line with the international Paris Agreement and the most recent IPCC report. Victoria has adopted the same target. ...

In March, Edmonton partnered with the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy for the Change for Climate Global Mayors Summit. They developed the Edmonton Declaration, asking signatories to recognize the urgent need for action that will limit global warming to 1.5 C. ...

Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples is also crucial. Dene elder François Paulette says: “First Nations are in a unique position to be leaders in climate-change initiatives because of our knowledge of the sacred teachings of the land. We must not be situated as passive recipients of climate-change impacts. We must be agents of change in climate action.” 

To tackle climate change, we must heal the divide and act—as individuals, families, neighbours, communities, and societies. We can’t afford to wait.

https://www.straight.com/news/1164041/david-suzuki-tackling-climate-chan...

epaulo13 wrote:

Risking It All: New report shows how Export Development Canada’s support for fossil fuels drives climate change

quote:

Disclosures and analysis of transaction-level data reveals that EDC provides, on average, over $10 billion in government-backed support for oil and gas companies every year. Between 2012 and 2017, EDC provided twelve times more support for oil and gas than it did for clean technologies.

The International Monetary Fund, which is the furtherest thing one can imagine from a left-wing environmental organization, puts Canada's subsidies to the fossil fuel industry at a much higher amount, $34 billion. 

Justin Trudeau has a problem. How can Canada meet our international climate commitments so recently inked in Paris with an increasingly empty economic larder? The International Monetary Fund may have the answer. Last summer, the IMF updated its global report on energy subsidies and found that Canada provides a whopping $46.4 billion in subsidies to the energy sector in either direct support or uncollected taxes on externalized costs.

IMF Pegs Canada’s Fossil Fuel Subsidies at $34 Billion

Globally, this figure balloons to US$5.3 trillion or 6.5 per cent of the world’s GDP. To put that enormous sum in perspective, the global giveaway to the energy sector amounts to 40 times more money than is contributed in aid to the world’s poorest people.

To be clear, the IMF is including all untaxed externalized costs of energy use under their definition of subsidies. The figures flagged for Canada still include $1.4 billion in direct “pre-tax” subsidies -- the kind of direct public giveaways that Trudeau campaigned to eliminate. The remaining $44.6 billion is in the form of externalized costs to society from dirty and dangerous fossil fuels -- things like air pollution, traffic congestion and climate change. ...

According to IMF economists, Canadian carbon-based fuels should be taxed an additional $17.2 billion annually to compensate for climate change, $6 billion for air pollution, $14.9 billion for traffic congestion and $2.1 for traffic accidents. Tacking on another $3.5 billion for uncollected value-added taxes, $880 million for road damage and of course the $1.4 billion in direct subsidies, we arrive at almost $50 billion annually that could help transition to a greener economy.

For instance, $30 billion of our total subsidies flagged by the IMF are for petroleum. Canadians buy around 58 billion litres of gas and diesel each year. Covering all externalized costs of that fuel use would require additional taxes of about $0.50 per litre, a tall order even for a politician of Trudeau’s current popularity.

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/02/01/IMF-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies/

Today, driven by the strong and growing Quebec climate change movement, the province's three opposition parties formed a common front in demanding emergency action be taken by the CAQ government to deal with climate change. 

Saying they are dissatisfied with the Coalition Avenir Québec government’s stand on environmental issues, Quebec’s opposition parties united on Thursday to demand the creation of estates general on climate change as well as concrete action on the issue.

Accompanied by candidates defeated in the last general election, the opposition — the Quebec Liberals, Parti Québécois and Québec Solidaire — unveiled a tripartite statement calling upon the Legault government to initiate a socioeconomic transition in Quebec that will take into account changes to the environment.

The opposition cited recent comments by United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres, noting that if governments do not change their existing policies by 2020, it will be too late to slow the effects of climate change.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/liberals-pq-qs-demand-emerge...

The United States Global Change Research Program, which consists of a team of more than 1,000 researchers from 13 federal agencies, issued a report today that documents the human and economic impacts of global warming. The report warned that the costs would reach hundreds of billions annually by 2100 and in the worst case scenario reduce the GDP by 10%, as well as having wide impacts on peoples' health. 

Since 85% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border, most will face the same economic and health problems as those of the neighbouring northern US states. 

A new US government report delivers a dire warning about climate change and its devastating impacts, saying the economy could lose hundreds of billions of dollars -- or, in the worst-case scenario, more than 10% of its GDP -- by the end of the century. ...

Humans are living with the warmest temperatures in modern history. Even if the best-case scenario were to happen and greenhouse gas emissions were to drop to nothing, the world is on track to warm 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit. 

As of now, not a single G20 country is meeting climate targets, research shows. Without significant reductions in greenhouse emissions, the annual average global temperature could increase 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 Celsius) or more by the end of this century, compared with preindustrial temperatures, the report says.

The costs of climate change could reach hundreds of billions of dollars annually, according to the report. The Southeast alone will probably lose over a half a billion labor hours by 2100 due to extreme heat. 

Farmers will face extremely tough times. The quality and quantity of their crops will decline across the country due to higher temperatures, drought and flooding. In parts of the Midwest, farms will be able to produce less than 75% of the corn they produce today, and the southern part of the region could lose more than 25% of its soybean yield.  Heat stress could cause average dairy production to fall between 0.60% and 1.35% over the next 12 years -- having already cost the industry $1.2 billion from heat stress in 2010. ...

Higher temperatures will also kill more people, the report says. The Midwest alone, which is predicted to have the largest increase in extreme temperature, will see an additional 2,000 premature deaths per year by 2090. 

There will be more mosquito- and tickborne diseases like Zika, dengue and chikungunya. West Nile cases are expected to more than double by 2050 due to increasing temperatures. Expect asthma and allergies to be worse due to climate change. No one's health is immune from climate change, the report concludes. People will be exposed to more foodborne and waterborne diseases. Particularly vulnerable to higher temperatures in the summer, children, the elderly, the poor and communities of color will be at a much greater risk for illness and death.

Wildfire seasons -- already longer and more destructive than before -- could burn up to six times more forest area annually by 2050 in parts of the United States. Burned areas in Southwestern California alone could double by 2050. ...  Along the US coasts, public infrastructure and $1 trillion in national wealth held in real estate are threatened by rising sea levels, flooding and storm surges. Energy systems will be taxed, meaning more blackouts and power failures, and the potential loss in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of the century, the report said. The number of days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit will multiply; Chicago, where these days are rare, could start to resemble Phoenix or Las Vegas, with up to two months worth of these scorching-hot days.

Sea levels have already gone up 7 to 8 inches since 1900. Almost half that rise has been since 1993, a rate of rise greater than during any century in the past 2,800 years. Some countries are already seeing land underwater. By midcentury, it's likely that the Arctic will lose all sea ice in late summer, and that could lead to more permafrost thaw, according to the report. As the permafrost thaws, more carbon dioxide and methane would be released, amplifying human-induced warming, "possibly significantly." ...

The report was created to inform policy-makers and makes no specific recommendations on how to remedy the problem. However, it suggests that if the United States immediately reduced its fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, it could save thousands of lives and generate billions of dollars in benefits for the country. ...

"If we're going to run this country like a business, it's time to address climate as the threat multiplier we know it is before more lives are lost," said Robert Bullard, an environmental scientistat Texas Southern University. ...

Scientists who have been raising the alarm about the negative consequences of climate change for years welcomed the findings.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/23/health/climate-change-report-bn/index.html

The United States Fourth National Climate Change Assessement reports that global warming has cost the US economy nearly $400 billion in just the last three years. Furthermore, many US economists agree with the reports findings.

The Canadian government needs to start determining and reporting how much economic damage is being done to Canada by global warming.

The National Climate Assessment report , quietly unveiled Friday, warned that natural disasters are worsening in the United States because of global warming. It said warming-charged extremes “have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration.” The report noted the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015. ...

“The potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century,” the report said. It added that if emissions of heat-trapping gases continue at current levels, labor costs in outdoor industries during heat waves could cost $155 billion in lost wages per year by 2090.

“The potential for losses in some sectors could reach hundreds of billions of dollars per year by the end of this century,” the report said. It added that if emissions of heat-trapping gases continue at current levels, labor costs in outdoor industries during heat waves could cost $155 billion in lost wages per year by 2090. ...

Nearly every country in the world in 2015 pledged to reduce or slow the growth of carbon dioxide emissions, the chief greenhouse gas.

“We’re already there,” said Wesleyan University economist Gary Yohe, who was a reviewer of the national report, which was produced by 13 federal agencies and outside scientists. “Climate change is making a noticeable impact on our economy right now: Harvey, Florence, Michael, Maria.” ...

Economist Ray Kopp, a vice president at the think tank Resources For the Future and who wasn’t part of the assessment, said the economics and the science in the report were absolutely credible. “I believe this is going to be a devastating loss without any other action-taking place,” Kopp said Monday. “This is certainly something you would want to avoid.”

Throughout the 29-chapter report, scientists provide three scenarios that the United Nations’ climate assessments use. One is the business-as-usual scenario, which scientists say is closest to the current situation. That is the worst case of the three scenarios. Another would envision modest reductions in heat-trapping gases, and the third would involve severe cuts in carbon dioxide pollution. For example, the $155 billion a year in extra labor costs at the end of the century is under the business-as-usual scenario. Modest reductions in carbon pollution would cut that to $75 billion a year, the report said. The report talks of hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses in several spots. In one graphic, it shows the worst-case business-as-usual scenario of economic costs reaching 10 percent of gross domestic product when Earth is about a dozen degrees warmer than now with no specific date.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/trump-rejects-key-conclusion-of-...

A UN report released on Tuesday found that the current emission targets for all countries would result in an average global temperature rise of 3.2 degrees Celsius by 2100 causing global dire consequences. We need to decrease emissions by 25% by 2030, according to the UN's October 2018 report in order to have a chance of keeping the global temperature rise to 2.o degrees Celsius by 2100.  However global emissions increased in 2017, instead of decreasing. 

According to a United Nations report released Tuesday, however, projected emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, from nations around the world fall woefully short of the 2 degree Celsius goal set in the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.

In fact, the report states that the current emission targets for all countries would result in an average global temperature rise of 3.2 degrees Celsius (5.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.  A 3.2 degree warmer world by the end of this century would bring about many of the dire consequences for human health, global economies and sea level rise that are projected from the "higher-emission" scenarios (also known as worst-case scenarios).

The 2018 Emissions Gap Report is the flagship annual report from the UN Environment Program and acts as a report card on how countries are doing on their individual contributions to the Paris Climate Agreement; it also helps determine the gap between those expected contributions and what will be necessary to stay within the range of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial temperatures (before burning fossil fuels for industrial needs led to major increases in greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere). 

This year's report shows the largest gap ever, resulting from increasing emissions and slow action to mitigate. The foreboding message in the report aligns with the recent findings in the "Special Report on 1.5 Degrees" issued last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that the world is failing to act fast enough to avoid the dire future climate and weather and time is quickly running out.

According to Tuesday's report, global emissions of CO2 in 2017 were 53.5 gigatons (a gigaton is 1 billion tons), the most ever released into the atmosphere, representing an increase of more than 1% over 2016 emissions. Global emissions need to be 25% lower than this figure by 2030 in order to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius and 55% lower in order to limit to 1.5 degrees, the report claims. The increase in 2017 follows relatively stable global emissions from 2014 through 2016, a period that allowed for optimism that global greenhouse gas emissions may be peaking.

But Tuesday's report shatters that optimism. "Global peaking of emissions by 2020 is crucial for achieving the temperature targets of the Paris Agreement," the report states, "but the scale and pace of current action remains insufficient." Global emissions are not expected to peak by 2030, let alone 2020. In fact, only those of 57 countries (representing 60% of global emissions) are projected to peak by 2030.

The authors of the report conclude that nations must be more ambitious in their projected emission cuts, increasing them by three times in order to meet the 2 degrees goal and by five times to meet the 1.5 degrees goal by 2030. Knowing that level of action is extremely unlikely, the 2018 Emissions Gap Report points to the growing potential of "non-state actors" to help reach global emissions goals.  These include smaller governing bodies such as city, state and regional governments, as well as private entities such as companies, investors and civil organizations.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/27/world/climate-change-un-emission-report-2...

While the federal Liberal government's greenhouse emission goals have been judged to be some of weakest of all countries in a climate change study (see the previous post), the Ontario Ford government's plan released on Thursday is much weaker still and is greatly lacking in detail. As might be expected from a conservative government, it largely involves incentive giveaways to corporate polluters to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The Ford government is also joining Saskatchewan in a $30 million lawsuit with the federal government over carbon pricing. 

The government plans to spend $400 million over four years through a new Ontario Carbon Trust. It includes $350 million that would leverage private investment in clean technologies at a 4:1 ratio. The details of the trust are still being finalized, so how much industries will pay into the fund "will depend on the final design and mandate of the trust," according to the plan.

Another $50 million is set aside for a reverse auction, modelled after Australia’s Emissions Reduction Fund, to encourage businesses, farmers and land owners to bid on government contracts to develop environmentally friendly practices and technologies that produce the lowest cost per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions. Climate experts, however, say that emissions are likely to continue to increase in Australia.  "The Ontario Carbon Trust should be able to leverage over $400 million to unlock over $1 billion of private capital, " the announcement said. The remaining $100 million will be invested in green energy innovation and conservation efforts. 

Few details were laid out on how the funds will work, but as promised, the new plan does not include a carbon price that the Ford government fiercely opposes. ...

Ontario is also joining Saskatchewan in a $30 million court battle against federal carbon pricing for provinces that don’t have their own. ...

NDP MPP and energy critic Peter Tabun noted these reports in his remarking that the plan is "scandalously thin" and would take Ontario down "a path to disaster. These targets are totally reckless and take us into the danger zone that we don't want to be in," Tabuns told reporters. "If you have a forest on fire, worrying about an individual shrub is not enough...Under cap and trade you were generating billions of dollars a year to take action on climate change and their trust is what, $350 million over the next few years. The scale of what has to happen does not match at all." 

Tabuns added that commending Ontario's alignment with Canada's commitment to the Paris agreement ignored the fact that "we need higher targets" to avoid the catastrophe detailed in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which warns there are 12 years left to take serious action before hitting dire consequences. "We need higher targets, we need a consistent plan with investment by government and regulation by government that would actually substantially reduce emissions year over year," Tabuns said.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/11/29/news/ontario-unveils-climate...