Canada and global warming: a state of denial 2

Hunziker: Ignoring Climate Catastrophes

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/08/ignoring-climate-catastrophes/

"The planet is coming apart at the seams right before the eyes of scientists at work in remote fringe areas of the North where permafrost crumbles and collapses. It's abrupt climate change at work in real time, but the governing leaders of the world either don't care or don't know..."

epaulo13 wrote:

Countries across the world need to make their 2030 emission targets much more ambitious if the world is to stand a chance of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a major research report says.

The annual "Brown to Green" report from the Climate Transparency partnership said Canada is far from contributing its fair share toward the 1.5 C goal, with the third most energy-intensive economy in the G20. 

The failure to deal with global warming is a continuation of failures of multiple Liberal and Conservative Canadian governments to live up to promised reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that has been going on since 1992. This "Brown to Green" report from the Climate Transparency itself notes that: 

The climate report card on Canada is pretty grim. Canada’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are much higher than the G20 average, at 18.9 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person. Much of Canada’s failure to limit overall emissions is due to energy-inefficient buildings and rising pollution from two provinces: Alberta and Saskatchewan. ...

On the campaign trail, Trudeau pledged to exceed Canada’s 2030 targets and achieve net zero emissions by 2050 with legally binding five-year targets, but with few details about how to do that. ...

... you have an entire population, or part of society, that was built on that production and you are actually telling them that actually has to be gone very soon.”

Canada will need to have a plan to help oil and gas workers, the report said, similar to what is being set up for dislocated coal workers as that energy source is targeted for a full phase-out by 2030.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/11/11/news/canada-gets-poor-marks-...

However, this is just a continuation of the same pattern carried out by this and previous Liberal and Conservative governments. In other words, a set of campaign promises that shows every sign of being broken as global warming approaches a catastrophic climax. The March 2018  Perspectives on Climate Change Action in Canada—A Collaborative Report from Auditors General, noted that: 

“Canada has missed two separate emission reduction targets (the 1992 Rio target and the 2005 Kyoto target) and is likely to miss the 2020 Copenhagen target as well. In fact, emissions in 2020 are expected to be nearly 20 per cent above the target.” ...

The annual UN Emissions Gap Report states that Canada is well above its pledged target and that gap is expected to widen even further by 2030."

The Liberals were deeply involved in negotiating the 1997 Kyoto Accord agreeing that "Canada's Kyoto target was a 6% total reduction by 2012 compared to 1990 levels of 461 Megatonnes (Mt)". Instead the 1997 emissions of 671 Mt during the year of the signing of the Kyoto Accord had risen to 747 Mt in 2005, the last full year of a Liberal government before the Conservatives took over. This was 33% above the 1997 Liberal Kyoto target. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Kyoto_Protocol)

The Liberals declared a climate emergency in June and then announced today the tripling of the Trans Mountain pipeline to carry bitumen to the coast bringing about a massive expansion of the fossil fuel production. 

In April 2019 Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand concluded "Canada is not on track to hit its 2030 target,". These targets were actually those of the Conservative Harper government. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-commissioner-julie-gelfand-...)

Eugene Kung, lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, and lead on the First Nations case against the pipeline commented on Trudeau's announcement that profits from the pipeline would be used to promote green energy: "That’s like saying we need to keep selling cigarettes to have money to fight cancer". Former Liberal Environment minister David Anderson points out "There is no credible evidence to suggest that Asia is likely to be a reliable or a significant market for Alberta bitumen". (https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/wjvkqq/canada-justin-trudeau-declares...) But the Trudeau government pushes ahead with its pipeline agenda despite all the evidence piling up against it. 

This is not normal: what's different about the NSW mega fires

quote:

"Unprecedented" is a word that we are hearing a lot: from fire chiefs, politicians, and the weather bureau. I have just returned from California where I spoke to fire chiefs still battling unseasonal fires. The same word, "unprecedented", came up.

Unprecedented dryness; reductions in long-term rainfall; low humidity; high temperatures; wind velocities; fire danger indices; fire spread and ferocity; instances of pyro-convective fires (fire storms – making their own weather); early starts and late finishes to bushfire seasons. An established long-term trend driven by a warming, drying climate. The numbers don’t lie, and the science is clear.

Unprecedented dryness; reductions in long-term rainfall; low humidity; high temperatures; wind velocities; fire danger indices; fire spread and ferocity; instances of pyro-convective fires (fire storms – making their own weather); early starts and late finishes to bushfire seasons. An established long-term trend driven by a warming, drying climate. The numbers don’t lie, and the science is clear.

If anyone tells you, "This is part of a normal cycle" or "We’ve had fires like this before", smile politely and walk away, because they don’t know what they’re talking about.

quote:

This year, by the beginning of November, we had already lost about as many homes as during the disastrous 2001-2002 bushfire season. We’ve now eclipsed 1994 fire losses.

Fires are burning in places and at intensities never before experienced – rainforests in northern NSW, tropical Queensland, and the formerly wet old-growth forests in Tasmania.

The series of articles below describe how the Atlantic fishery in Canada and the US is declining: 

Canada's fisheries minister says the impacts of climate change are a fact of life that will have to be factored in the management of Canada's multi-billion dollar seafood industry. ... The State of the Atlantic Ocean report, released [April 12], summarizes the overall health and trends in the Atlantic Ocean based on scientific research and monitoring from DFO and Environment and Climate Change Canada. ... The DFO report says all three Atlantic zones — Newfoundland and Labrador, the Scotian Shelf and the Gulf of St Lawrence — are undergoing environmental changes.

For example, it says warming sea temperatures off Nova Scotia have led to declines in northern shrimp and snow crab, which prefer cooler waters, but have helped drive a big increase in the lobster population.

Species are also shifting. Silver hake has moved into Newfoundland, a possible indicator of changes that will be seen with climate change.

The number of exotic warm-water species, such as John Dory, armored sea robin and deep-bodied boarfish moving into the region has increased. They are being caught more often. ...

Some of the most important trends are taking place at the bottom of the food chain. Take the tiny animals drifting through the water column known as zooplankton. The most abundant, energy-rich species — a copepod called Calanus finmarchicus — is declining, while a smaller, less nutritious and warm-water copepod called Pseudocalanus is increasing and is now at record levels throughout the region.

The change will make the ocean less productive with the potential to ripple throughout the food web.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/climate-change-atlantic-ocean...

Warming waters around Nova Scotia have created a sweet spot for the crustacean over the past decade. ... The Nova Scotian catch makes up the majority of Canada’s lobster industry, bringing more than $750 million in 2018 — about double the $382 million brought in for 2012. ...

The waters are warming above the global average both at the surface and in deep waters, according to this year’s first-ever State of the Atlantic Ocean report, which cites as reasons rising air temperatures driven by climate change (1 degree per century since the 1870s) and changes in currents. ...

Acidification is also increasing as more man-made carbon dioxide emissions enter the ocean. The carbon dioxide dissolves in surface water to form carbonic acid, which is corrosive to calcium carbonate — the compound lobster and other crustaceans need to produce their protective shells. At the same time, the waters are becoming less oxygenated as deeper waters mix less with surface waters. When oxygen levels are too low, called hypoxia, species may flee an area before they suffocate.

Many fishermen and scientists feel an urgency to understand what changes are still to come, warning that it’s easy for complacency to set in as the good times roll. “There’s an unease,” says fisher Lucien LeBlanc, who has outfitted the John Harold to double as a tourist vessel and rely less on the fishery. “Financially, I treat it like it’s my last year ... I try to.”

https://projects.thestar.com/climate-change-canada/nova-scotia/

Wildfires, disease, food scarcity: scientists predict a grim century for Canada

A major academic review of the impact climate change has on human health has found that more than half of the nearly 450,000 Canadians evacuated from their homes due to wildfires since 1980 were displaced in the past decade, and says that more than 1,000 Canadians were killed by air pollution related to the transportation industry in 2015.

Researchers also found that Canada's health-care sector is responsible for four per cent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions and that Canada produces the third-highest per capita emissions from health care in the world.

The findings come from the third Lancet Countdown report, an annual review of the scientific evidence of the impact climate change has on human health. Released Wednesday, it was produced by U.K.-based medical journal The Lancet and 35 partner institutions including the World Health Organization, several UN agencies, the World Bank and Yale University.....

Protesters, joined by faith leaders and members of Extinction Rebellion Toronto, take over the intersection of Yonge and Dundas streets in downtown Toronto as part of a demonstration declaring a climate crisis on June 10, 2019. Photo by Nick Iwanyshyn

As mentioned in the previous post, Canada, with  202,080 km of coastline compared to 58,133 km for second place Norway, has by far the longest coastline in the world (https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-coastline.html), making it extremely susceptible to climate change induced sea level rise, as has just happened in Venice. With their high concentrations of people, coastal cities around the world, including Canadian ones, are threatened by this sea level rise. 

Sea-level rises are inevitable – and cities must prepare.

While all coastal cities will be affected by sea-level rises, some will be hit much harder than others. Asian cities will be particularly badly affected. About four out of every five people impacted by sea-level rise by 2050 will live in East or South East Asia. US cities, especially those on the East and Gulf coasts, are similarly vulnerable. More than 90 US coastal cities are already experiencing chronic flooding – a number that is expected to double by 2030. Meanwhile, about three-quarters of all European cities will be affected by rising sea levels, especially in the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. Africa is also highly threatened, due to rapid urbanization in coastal cities and the crowding of poor populations in informal settlements along the coast. The coming decades will be marked by the rise of ex-cities and climate migrants. 

So-called “delta cities” are already bearing the brunt of rising seas. More than 340 million people live in deltas like Dhaka, Guangzhou, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, Manila, Melbourne, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Rotterdam, Tokyo and Venice. What a difference a few centuries makes. Over the past few thousand years, the 48 major coastal deltas in the Americas, Europe and Asia formed ideal sites for cities to thrive, owing to their access to the sea and fertile farmland. This explains why the Nile, Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra and Yangtze served as cradles of major civilizations. But coastal living is becoming a liability: the costs of sea-level rise could rise to trillions of dollars a year in damages by 2100.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/the-world-s-coastal-cities-are-go...

On the world’s present course, the cost by 2100 of tackling coastal flooding could be beyond the reach of the poorest countries – and ruinously expensive for richer ones.

If global warming continues on its present ominous path, and if no significant adaptation measures are launched, then coastal flooding could be costing the planet’s economies $100,000 billion a year by 2100.

And perhaps 5% of the people on the planet – up to 600 million people – could be hit by coastal flooding by the end of the century, according to new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Jochen Hinkel from the Global Climate Forum in Berlin and colleagues have compiled, for the first time, global simulation results on future flood damage to buildings and infrastructure on the world’s coastal flood plains.

They expect drastic increases in economic damage because, as sea levels rise with the decades, so will population and investment: there will be more people with more to lose.

Right now, coastal floods and storm surge damage cost the world between $10 billion a year and $40 billion. But as the megacities grow – think of Lagos, or Shanghai, or Manila – more people will be at risk, and, among them, greater than ever numbers of the poorest.

“If we ignore this problem, the consequences will be dramatic,” says Hinkel. “Countries need to take action and invest in coastal protection measures, such as building or raising dykes, amongst other options.”

https://climatenewsnetwork.net/coastal-flooding-may-cost-100000-bn-a-yea...

British Columbia is especially concerned about sea level rise caused by climate change producing widespread economic, environmental and social damage.

Surrey’s lower elevation areas are influenced by ocean and river tides. In fact, Surrey's coastal floodplain area alone spans 20% of Surrey’s land.

Canada's sea levels are rising at a dramatic rate, according to new climate change report leaked this week, and that has B.C.'s coastal cities worried.

The report, commissioned by the Environment and Climate Change Department, warns that the country's oceans are going up between one millimetre and 4.5 millimetres each year. ...

On B.C.'s North Coast, for example, without a reduction in global warming, the water is predicted to rise by 50 centimetres over the next eight decades.

"[A few millimetres per year] may not seem like a lot to many people," said John Clague, an earth sciences professor at Simon Fraser University. "But if it's accompanied by strong storms, you really have an exacerbated effect." ...

As glaciers melt and the temperature of the ocean heats up, the water occupies more space and that's why sea levels rise.

That leads to damage along the coast, as low-lying areas previously out of harm's way are flooded. While some municipalities like Delta and Richmond have been preparing for rising water levels, Clague argues much more action needs to be taken across all levels of government. "We don't really see resources being made available to deal with the problem," he said. ...

Des Nobels, a retired fisherman and director with the North Coast Regional District, lives in Dodge Cove across the harbour from Prince Rupert. He's worried that coastal cities across the province are unprepared to deal with the impacts of climate change in the coming decades. "To be frank, we are not equipped at all," Nobels said. "Communities and local governments are beginning to have to grapple with how do we plan into the future for these events."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/climate-change-report-bc...

22 Mayors Want PG&E to Become a Customer-Owned Co-Op

A coalition of public officials representing 5 million Californians — including 22 mayors — wants to see PG&E emerge from bankruptcy as a customer-owned cooperative. And they're asking state regulators to help.

In a letter sent Tuesday to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and Gov. Gavin Newsom, the group of mayors and county supervisors argues that the two factions currently vying for control of the bankrupt utility are made up of "Wall Street titans" concerned only with "a short-term desire to maximize financial gain," and that a co-op structure would go further toward making PG&E a financially stable company capable of addressing its operational challenges while also regaining the public trust.

The group, led by San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, wrote that Californians would be served better by a customer-owned utility that would not have to pay dividends to shareholders or federal taxes.

They noted the recent wildfires and power shutoffs that have plagued communities in PG&E's massive service area.

"A cooperative financial structure will save ratepayers many billions of dollars in financing costs over this next decade," the letter states. "A customer-owned PG&E will better focus its scarce dollars on long-neglected maintenance, repairs and capital upgrade, and mitigating some part of the substantial upward pressure on rates."....

Italian council is flooded immediately after rejecting measures on climate change

Veneto regional council, which is located on Venice's Grand Canal, was flooded for the first time in its history on Tuesday night -- just after it rejected measures to combat climate change.

The historic Italian city has been brought to its knees this week by the worst flooding there in more than 50 years.

And the council chamber in Ferro Fini Palace started to take in water around 10 p.m. local time, as councilors were debating the 2020 regional budget, Democratic Party councilor Andrea Zanoni said in a long Facebook post.

"Ironically, the chamber was flooded two minutes after the majority League, Brothers of Italy, and Forza Italia parties rejected our amendments to tackle climate change," Zanoni, who is deputy chairman of the environment committee, said in the post, which also has photographs of the room under water.

Among the rejected amendments were measures to fund renewable sources, to replace diesel buses with "more efficient and less polluting ones," to scrap polluting stoves and reduce the impact of plastics, he said.....

Borders and the climate emergency

It is extremely welcome that climate change has moved so far up the agenda and is now being discussed outside of the circles traditionally concerned with it. However, climate change and its crises need to be seen in connection with other elements of capitalist crisis, such as imperialism, austerity and the border regime, to name just a few.

Capitalism is crisis

In order to bring these other aspects into focus it is useful to begin by examining on a general level certain aspects of capitalist production. The capitalist mode of production is dependent on continuously escalating the extraction of natural resources, thereby necessitating the non-stop rise of greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and environmental degradation.

Realistically, without ending capitalism, we have no chance of halting or reversing the complete breakdown of the world’s ecosystems. Within our current economic order major petroleum companies are able to manipulate and to a large extent control state policies and act as stakeholders in international agreements, avoiding liability for damage done to people living near pipelines and other oil facilities.

All the big petroleum companies have entire departments dedicated to lobbying states. In addition, states in capitalism are locked in to the pursuit of the maximisation of national economic growth. And so, within this one example, we can see how the reciprocal dependence between fossil capital and the state locks in a logic of climate breakdown.

As Brian Parkin has put it in an article previously published on this site:

It is both an irony and a paradox that [within capitalism] we have developed the scientific means of understanding both the causes and possible means of reducing climate change, whilst being locked into a mode of production for which the appetite for petroleum remains insatiable.

Meanwhile, the numbers of people displaced across the world over continues to grow. The UN is predicting 200 million climate refugees by 2050, or as they call it ‘persons displaced in the context of disasters and climate change’.

However, when we talk about climate refugees we should not think just about people having to relocate due to floods, droughts or other extreme climate phenomena. We must go further and include among climate refugees people moving due to conflict over resources, food insecurity, imperialist wars and economic migration in the wake of whole areas of the world being rapidly made uninhabitable.

It is becoming increasingly evident that more and more people will be forced to flee circumstances which make life unsustainable, whilst there exists a relationship between capital and the state system which guarantees the increasingly intense exploitation of human labour power and degradation of the world’s resources.

Extractivism and border regimes

In this context – the role of the state as a ‘container’ of the crisis facing us starts to become clear. While the pressure builds and breakdown looms, Western states including Britain are fortifying their borders, as border controls creep ever deeper into all strata of our societies.

Borders perform a crucial function: border regimes ensure that the crisis appears ‘contained’ through the regimentation and control of citizenship and the movement of people.

At the same time, borders represent an attempt to maintain the global division of labour through creating areas of the world where social reproduction is significantly cheaper, that is, where the wages and the maintenance costs of the labour force are lower, and where workers are unable to travel between areas of the world to seek better pay and conditions.

This division of labour structures the world in such a way that entire sections of the economy are particularly specialised. Extractive industries, such as oil drilling or coal mining, destroy the capacity to produce in any other way, by polluting the soil, destroying the conditions of production, or simply driving out competing forms of capital. These same regions are also dependent on certain markets, which make up the ‘other side’ of this division of labour.

For example, highly intensive mineral mining in Africa depends on and supports global supply chains for phones made in China and then sold in Europe. This means that entire areas of the world have become less and less able to provide for the varied needs of populations who live there......

There is growing evidence of the impact of climate change both on people's lives and on politics as old line parties fail to deal with the problem. The Greens are now leading the polls in Germany.

Public opinion polls indicate that Germany's Green Party is currently the strongest political force in the country.  With a lack of policy experts, money and even sufficient office space, though, the party isn't quite ready for prime time. Only time will tell if the Greens are up to the challenge. ...

 

The perception of the Green Party has changed dramatically. As the party has risen in the polls, more and more people -- from all different walks of life - are paying closer attention. The week before last, support for the party reached 27 percent in the latest public opinion polls, higher even than Merkel's conservatives. It was just the latest high point in a slow-but-steady rise in recent months. Even last fall, a survey found that half of all voters could imagine casting their ballot for the Greens. 

The biggest challenge now for the party is that of dealing with its newfound status as Germany's leading political force despite having entered this legislative period as the smallest group in parliament, with just 8.9 percent of the votes in the 2017 general election. As the Greens climb toward 30 percent in the polls, they must deal with a flood of new members despite limited personnel and a lack of space at party headquarters and in its chapter offices around the country. It's not unlike a child after a big growth spurt: All its clothes are suddenly too small.

But there are also policy questions for which the party must now find convincing answers. It is solid when it comes to climate change and the environment, but what about those issues that haven't generally been considered classic Green Party concerns? Things like foreign and defense policy and social questions, for example, along with domestic security.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-green-party-leads-in...

More evidence that climate change is becoming a major issue in the British election while Jason Kenney pushes for more and more pipelines here.

The polling company YouGov has tracked views on the environment for nearly a decade and for most of that time the subject ranked pretty low.

There was a spike in interest following the violent storms of the winter of 2013-14 in which many areas were hit by devastating floods but that was an exception, and things slipped back to "normal" soon afterwards.

But this year something has shifted dramatically, according to YouGov. 

Chris Curtis, one of its researchers, says that in the most recent poll 27% of voters cited the environment as one of three top issues - behind Brexit and health. That puts it on par with crime and the economy. 

And he says this is particularly striking among younger voters - 45% of 18-24 year olds put it as their second biggest concern after Brexit. 

His conclusion? "I think over this election campaign politicians are going to have to start discussing the issue of the environment if they want to win over the support of those younger voters." ...

Last Saturday the Conservatives announced a halt to fracking, the controversial process of extracting gas from shale rock. Labour derided the timing as opportunistic and more of a pause than a total ban. 

The very next day, Labour came out with a 'Warm Homes' plan to insulate the country's households - nearly 27m of them - and help with solar panels and heat pumps. The Tories dismissed the scheme's £250bn bill as unaffordable and unrealistic. 

And now, along with the Liberal Democrats, SNP and Green Party, Labour are calling for a live TV debate on climate change, clearly hoping to highlight what they see as government failings.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/17/how-do-the-parties-prop...

While the politicians argue, including in Canada, concern is growing about the impacts of climate change on world. In just the last week devastating problems have occurred in several nations.

Wildfire near Sydney Australia

Extreme floods in Venice, fires in Australia and even an outbreak of plague in China have been attributed to climate change this week, while researchers have warned that global warming could saddle future generations with life-long illness.

Venice declared a state of emergency on Wednesday after "apocalyptic" floods swept through the lagoon city, flooding its historic basilica and inundating squares and centuries-old buildings.

"This is the result of climate change," city mayor Luigi Brugnaro said on Twitter. ...

"Venice is on its knees," said Brugnaro. "The damage will run into hundreds of millions of euros."

On the other side of the world, parts of Australia have been ravaged by wild bush fires this week, with four people killed and communities forced to flee the flames.

Since 2016, parts of northern and inland New South Wales, along with southern Queensland, have been in drought that the Bureau of Meteorology says is being driven, in part, by warmer sea-surface temperatures affecting rainfall patterns. ...

Air temperatures have also warmed over the past century, increasing the ferocity of droughts and fires.

But links between climate change and extreme weather events have become a political football in Australia.

The coal-industry supporting government accepts the need to cut emissions while arguing that stronger environmental action would cripple its economy.

That pits the country against its Pacific island neighbors which are particularly susceptible to warmer temperatures and rising seas. ...

In China, health officials have reported a rare outbreak of pneumonic plague after two cases were confirmed this week in Beijing. ...

The two were infected in the province of Inner Mongolia, where rodent populations have expanded dramatically after persistent droughts, worsened by climate change, state media said.

An area the size of the Netherlands was hit by a "rat plague" last summer.

The wider implications for health are sobering.

The Lancet medical journal published a study this week saying climate change was already harming people's health by increasing the number of extreme weather events and exacerbating air pollution.

A warmer world brings risks of food shortages, infectious diseases, floods and extreme heat.

If nothing is done, the impacts could burden an entire generation with disease and illness throughout their lives, researchers said.

"Children are particularly vulnerable to the health risks of a changing climate. Their bodies and immune systems are still developing, leaving them more susceptible to disease and environmental pollutants," said Nick Watts, one of those who led the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change study.

Health damage in early childhood is "persistent and pervasive," he warned, bringing lifelong consequences.

"Without immediate action from all countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions, gains in wellbeing and life expectancy will be compromised, and climate change will come to define the health of an entire generation," he told a London briefing.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/flood-fire-plague-climate-change-blam...

..like bc under horgan, like alta under notley..it's the concessions to oil and gas that prove to be the downfall. 

Cap and Trade Is Supposed to Solve Climate Change, but Oil and Gas Company Emissions Are Up

Gov. Jerry Brown took the podium at a July 2017 press conference to lingering applause after a steady stream of politicians praised him for helping to extend California’s signature climate policy for another decade. Brown, flanked by the U.S. and California flags, with a backdrop of the gleaming San Francisco Bay, credited the hard work of the VIPs seated in the crowd. “It’s people in industry, and they’re here!” he said. “Shall we mention them? People representing oil, agriculture, business, Chamber of Commerce, food processing. … Plus, we have environmentalists. ...”

Diverse, bipartisan interests working together to pass climate legislation — it was the polar opposite of Washington, where the Trump administration was rolling back environmental protections established under President Barack Obama.

Brown called California’s cap-and-trade program an answer to the “existential” crisis of climate change, the most reasonable way to manage the state’s massive output of greenhouse gasses while preserving its economy, which is powered by fossil fuels. “You can’t just say overnight, ‘OK, we’re not going to have oil anymore,’” he said.

But there are growing concerns with California’s much-admired, much-imitated program, with implications that stretch far beyond the state.

California’s cap-and-trade program was one of the first in the world, and it is among the largest. It is premised on the idea that instead of using regulations to force companies to curb their emissions, polluters can be made to pay for every ton of CO₂ they emit, providing them with an incentive to lower emissions on their own. This market-based approach has gained such traction that the Paris climate agreement emphasizes it as the primary way countries can meet their goals to lower worldwide emissions. More than 50 programs have been developed across the world, many inspired by California.

But while the state’s program has helped it meet some initial, easily attained benchmarks, experts are increasingly worried that it is allowing California’s biggest polluters to conduct business as usual and even increase their emissions.

ProPublica analyzed state data in a way the state doesn’t often report to the public, isolating how emissions have grown within the oil and gas industry. The analysis shows that carbon emissions from California’s oil and gas industry actually rose 3.5% since cap and trade began. Refineries, including one owned by Marathon Petroleum and two owned by Chevron, are consistently the largest polluters in the state. Emissions from vehicles, which burn the fuels processed in refineries, are also rising.

Critics attribute these increases, in part, to a bevy of concessions the state has made to the oil and gas industry to keep the program going. They say these compromises have blocked steps that would have mandated real emissions reductions and threaten the state’s ability to meet its ambitious goal of slashing its emissions 40% by 2030.

“There’s no question a well-designed regulation on oil and gas can have an effect,” said Danny Cullenward, a Stanford researcher and policy director at Near Zero, a climate policy think tank. “And that was traded away for a weak cap-and-trade program.”

Experts say cap and trade is rarely stringent enough when used alone; direct regulations on refineries and cars are crucial to reining in emissions. But oil representatives are engaged in a worldwide effort to make market-based solutions the primary or only way their emissions are regulated......

From Canada’s Election to Public Action

Beyond the Alberta Tar-Sands

For months, during and after Canada’s 2019 federal election campaign, corporate media provided daily frontpage news space for Alberta’s non-stop demands for more tar-sands-export infrastructure through British Columbia, as well as space for discrediting stories on the Trudeau government for his attempt at questionable legal protection of a Quebec big business and for his playing blackface in a youthful costume.

No-one joined the dots or mentioned the words ‘Big Oil’.

Throughout this time, provincial Alberta’s fury was reported daily, coinciding with federal environmental reviews, court proceedings and limits on planned massive transportation of Alberta’s US-dominated tar-sand crude through Canada and First Nations’ territories.

Media Scrubbed

The critical spotlight on Justin Trudeau was never associated with the powerful oil lobby across borders or the Koch brothers and the US Republican far right.

Although all the signs were there, they were media-scrubbed into November after the federal election to cater to ‘Western alienation’. What ruling-party politics and media see instead is a fabled Canadian resource going under instead of more expansion and exports for needy Alberta.

At the front of the dominant narrative is the Conservative Party. No longer ‘Progressive Conservative’ as in the historic centrist days, this century’s Conservative rulers are essentially US Republicans North with the same hate of central government. They are equally blind to the role of Big-Oil as a cause of the climate crisis even as the wild-fires rage from Alberta to California.

The facts that they all especially blinker out are that tar-sand crude is the dirtiest and most toxic fossil-fuel on the planet, that it multiplies carbon pollution against international commitment, and that it is increasingly unacceptable to the public and investors.

In the face of the growing climate and pollution crisis of industrial civilization, Canada’s right long ago attached themselves to an unnamed backroom plan for a right-wing tsunami over Canada’s then governing Liberals.

A Strategic Vote for Public Action against Conservative Retrenchment

With falling provincial governments, media scandals and the Trudeau government’s inability to keep public-action promises, the planned Conservative regime change across America to Canada seemed a sure thing.

But it was defeated in the federal election by a cross-country campaign and a voter shift to a non-establishment mass movement for the common good, which, beneath notice, distinguishes multicultural Canada.

Programs for progressive public action from all other parties – the NDP (New Democratic Party), the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois – combined with the Liberals against the publicly-recognized Conservative policy wrecking balls in relation to the public sector, health and social security programs, as well as environmental regulations.

Yet the corporate media continued to run the campaign of ‘Alberta fury’, ‘Western alienation’, and even a Conservative-rump Senate ‘Wexit’ to force Trudeau to appease them after their defeat and blanket-Conservative Alberta-Saskatchewan votes.

Alberta’s Big-Oil Premier Jason Kenney continued to add fuel to the fire with calls for an immediate pipeline through BC, a provincial referendum for separation from Canada, and an end to the historic federal equalization program, presenting them as his ‘very reasonable’ positions.

That Liberal carbon-pricing and regulations are backed by two-thirds of Canadians in polls and electoral seats, and that all other parties and programs oppose the TMX (trans-mountain BC) pipeline, while the Liberals have in fact over-supported it throughout, but within the rule of law, are facts which do not compute to those touting ‘Western alienation’.

‘Canada has never been so divided,’ mourn Conservatives across the land.

Yet the tar-sand crude fount of free money for Alberta and US Big-Oil refinement-management-export coffers is on the ropes for reasons their value system cannot comprehend: public action on all fronts to maintain life on Earth against pervasive fossil-fuel pollution, corporate deregulation, and collective life capital destruction.....

Those electric buses (with seats configurated to accommodate adults, and reserved seating for disabled people and parents with strollers) could also be used in areas where there is not enough traffic to justify the use of larger buses.

Capitalism versus Life on Earth

These sentences are from a recent report on the consequences of climate change:

“Sea level rise, changes in water and food security, and more frequent extreme weather events are likely to result in the migration of large segments of the population. Rising seas will displace tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people, creating massive, enduring instability.… Salt water intrusion into coastal areas and changing weather patterns will also compromise or eliminate fresh water supplies in many parts of the world…. A warming trend will also increase the range of insects that are vectors of infectious tropical diseases. This, coupled with large scale human migration from tropical nations, will increase the spread of infectious disease.”

Many reports have made such points. What makes this one significant is that it was commissioned by the Pentagon, by the General who is now chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The authors are senior officials of the US Army, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and NASA, and it was published by the United States Army War College.

Their report recommends strengthening the US military, already the biggest war machine on Earth, to protect the US empire from the consequences of the environmental chaos. They call for a “campaign-plan-like approach to proactively prepare for likely conflict and mitigate the impacts.” As we know, when the US military embarks on a campaign, the result is always devastation and destruction for the poor and oppressed.

As this report shows, the US Army, unlike the US president, knows that climate change is real, and that the consequences may be catastrophic. The generals recognize that something has gone terribly wrong in the relationship between human society and the Earth.

Planetary Boundaries

Climate change is the most extreme example of the crisis, but it is not the only one. Earth System scientists have identified nine planetary boundaries — global environmental conditions that define “a safe operating space for humanity.” Crossing any one of those thresholds could have deleterious or even disastrous consequences for civilization. Seven of the nine critical planetary boundaries are close to or already in the danger zone.

Such research leads irresistibly to the conclusion that modest reforms and policy shifts are not enough. We confront not individual problems that can be tackled separately, but an interlocked set of disruptions of Earth’s life support systems. Fundamental natural processes that have evolved over millions of years are being shattered in just a few decades.

Radical remedies are obviously required, but we won’t find a cure unless we identify the underlying cause, the systemic disease that is attacking our planet......

Ecojustice is taking the Kenney Alberta government to court over its public inquiry into alleged "anti-Alberta energy campaigns".

The Alberta government's public inquiry into "anti-Alberta energy campaigns" is facing a legal challenge by B.C.-based not-for-profit Ecojustice. 

This summer the government tasked the inquiry with digging into the role of foreign organizations and funds in creating roadblocks for the energy industry and "disseminating misleading or false information" to that end. 

Ecojustice responded to the inquiry by filing court documents in Calgary on Nov. 15. The documents outline allegations that the inquiry "has been called not to address a matter of pressing public interest, but to justify a predetermined intent to harm the reputations, economic viability and freedom of expression of certain organizations who have opposed the Government of Alberta's position with respect to oil and gas development." ...

In an interview with National Observer, Ecojustice executive director Devon Page said that the lawsuit is necessary because the inquiry is meant to target dissent and create a fear around climate action advocacy. 

"When they announced to the public inquiry this summer, it had the desired effect," Page said. "We received calls from Canadians across the country who were alarmed and were worried about being targeted and victimized by the inquiry. So in its first instance, we believe there's evidence the inquiry had the intended effect and that again, was to intimidate environmental charities and Canadians who were concerned about climate change."

Page says this is a case where the judicial process is being abused to pursue political gains.

No legal response has been filed in court at this time. However, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy Kavi Bal responded to the challenge by email saying, "Ecojustice accepted US$815,000 from the US Tides Foundation for its participation in the Tar Sands Campaign to land lock Canada's natural resources. A foreign-funded activist group opposing the inquiry on foreign-funded attacks on Alberta's oil and gas workers is not surprising and speaks for itself."

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/11/21/news/ecojustice-takes-kenney...

The application for judicial review argues the inquiry should be stopped because it is improper use of the Public Inquiries Act, it impinges on federal jurisdiction, and because the commissioner of the inquiry is biased towards support for the United Conservative Government.

A report from 100 of Canada's top freshwater scientists warns that climate change is placing our freshwater at great risk and little is being done about it. 

 

"We've enjoyed the luxury of the myth of limitless abundance of fresh water in Canada," said Bob Sandford, a co-author of a report by the Global Water Futures project, which involves 22 universities. The report was released Tuesday in Hamilton where 100 of Canada's leading water scientists were meeting. ...

Climate change is rapidly outpacing water use policies that haven't changed in decades and the patchwork of rival jurisdictions that create them aren't moving quickly enough to adapt, said co-author Corinne Schuster-Wallace.

"Climate change impacts are accelerating far faster than we ever thought they would. Our water governance policies are fragmented."

As an example, the authors point to eutrophication, a poisoning of lake water by toxic algae that often affects lakes such as Lake Erie and Lake Winnipeg.

The algae have always been around, but the impacts are increasing from growing amounts of agricultural run-off and the gradual warming of lake water from climate change.

"Lakes in Canada are warming at twice the global rate," Sandford said. "Warmer water reduces the threshold it takes ... to produce algal blooms.  ...

Changing weather patterns also threaten farms. More precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow, which runs off instead of staying on the land.

"Prairie agriculture depends on that snowpack," Schuster-Wallace said. ...

Cities are threatened too, as glaciers — the water tanks of the Prairies — melt away.

"When you think of our glaciers as our savings account and not our checking account, that's a real problem," said Schuster-Wallace. "Our checking account's looking really flush at the moment. But in 10, 20, 30 years time, our savings account will be gone."

Some watersheds are already overdrawn. Sandford said the South Saskatchewan River, which waters a large stretch of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, is now over-allocated.

Overall, water quality is slowly degrading. ...

And climate change continues to increase the number of precipitation-based extreme weather events such as floods, damaging homes and other infrastructure. ...

"We've had three one-in-a-hundred-year events in five years," Schuster-Wallace said.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer says natural disaster relief costs have increased by 660 per cent between 1970 and 2014. The cost from extreme events between 2000 and 2017 exceeds $28 billion.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/fresh-water-policy-1.5366040

If Alberta were a country, which is what some Albertans want, it would be the world's worst greenhouse gas emitter by far on a per capita basis. Investors are now starting to punish companies that are not starting to move towards lower carbon emissions, so Alberta and Canada are going to pay a heavy price for being laggards in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

Alberta would overtake Saudi Arabia as the worst climate-polluter on the planet per-person if the province secedes from Canada.

Saudi Arabia currently holds the title for world’s most dangerous nation, regularly ranking dead lastin analyses of climate performance. ...

On a per-capita basis, Alberta is already three times as bad as Saudi Arabia.

This gap is likely to keep getting more extreme because the province is aggressively expanding its oil and gas industry.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers is campaigning for expansions that would increase GHG emissions from fossil energy by 60 per cent. Alberta is currently planning to open the biggest oilsands mine in history, Teck Resources’ Frontier project.
 

But it turns out that governments and industry have built an economy so dirty that it makes each Albertan almost twice as polluting as Saudis, even if you ignore emissions from Alberta's oil and gas sector entirely.

To be more precise, as you can see on the chart, Albertans — without oil and gas industry pollution — are currently 1.7 times as polluting as Saudis (and note that the Saudi bar includes the kingdom's oil and gas emissions). So, Alberta’s problem runs much deeper than the carbon emissions caused by clearcutting the boreal forest, removing wetlands, and extracting bitumen from the soil and muskeg below. We’ll be unpacking this more in future articles. But, in the meantime, it’s well worth following Alberta economists like Blake Shaffer (If you do, you’ll get a fascinating crash course on the economic folly of Daylight Savings Time to boot). ...

Sweden’s central bank dumped Australian and Alberta bonds just last week because of excessive carbon dioxide emissions. Reporting on the bank's decision, BNN Bloomberg said that "central banks, pension funds and other global investors are increasingly factoring climate change into their portfolio calculations."

Canada’s Mark Carney, now head of the Bank of England, warned last month that investors are now "punishing" laggard companies that aren’t moving quickly to zero carbon. Carney predicts that “companies that don’t adapt will go bankrupt without question.” ...

 

[As this chart shows] Alberta’s carbon pollution and excessively dirty economy are already overwhelming the progress Canadians make against climate change.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/11/21/analysis/independent-alberta...

Nurses’ Unions, Climate Change and Health

quote:

Nurses in the Struggle Against the Climate and Health Emergency

Nurses’ unions are already playing an important role in the fight for climate justice. Nurses have been at the forefront of struggles against the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, and thousands of nurses have provided relief for the victims of extreme weather events in various parts of the world. There are many ways in which nurses can continue and step up these struggles. The following list is not exhaustive, but aims to identify six key areas where nurses and their unions can make use of their expertise and political strength in the fight against the climate and health emergency, and for climate and health justice.

1. Resist New Fossil Fuel Projects

Nurses will continue to support and participate in campaigns to stop the expansion of fossil fuel use.

Despite the officially recognized need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels, new fossil fuel infrastructure projects are either under construction or at the planning stage in many countries around the world. New drilling operations, pipelines, export terminals, and coal- and gas-fired power stations risk creating “carbon lock in” for decades to come, effectively destroying any chance of limiting the danger of global warming and climate change. Reaching “net zero emissions” will require a dramatic phase-down of fossil fuel use. Any new projects will make that task far more difficult.

2. Make Emergency Response and Recovery Services “Climate Ready”

Nurses will demand that vital services are fully staffed and capable of responding to climate instability.

Even if the world stopped burning fossil fuels immediately, global warming will continue for many years to come. This means that extreme weather events are likely to increase in both frequency and severity, and medical services risk becoming besieged by unanticipated outbreaks of diseases like dengue, zika, etc. The experience of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of tropical storm Maria tragically demonstrated the need for emergency services to be able to provide medical care to those suffering chronic health problems. Nurses can play a vital role in strengthening the ability of emergency and health systems to prepare for this challenge.

3. Work with Allies at the Global Level on Preparedness

Nurses can use their voice in helping to ensure that countries and regions plan for the future in ways that can best protect vulnerable populations.

Until mid-century, climate change is expected to primarily exacerbate existing health challenges. This means that investing in health and social safety nets must be a top priority. This includes the need to provide access to safe water and improved sanitation, and enhancing access to essential services such as vaccination. In many vulnerable regions, agriculture-related adaptation will be particularly important. By coordinating at the global level and sharing ideas, experience and expertise, nurses and their unions can ensure essential services are effective and appropriate.

4. Fight Poverty and Racism. Defend Worker Rights and Protections

Nurses will continue to draw attention to the roles that poverty, racism, and the lack of workers’ rights play in exposing oppressed people to the worst impacts of climate change.

Whether in factories or fields, on construction sites or roadsides, rising temperatures pose a threat to economically vulnerable workers and the poor. These workers are often members of racial minorities or ethnic groups that find themselves on the receiving end of various forms of exclusion, discrimination and oppression. A more equal society – including one where everyone has access to heath care as a human right – is therefore crucial to the protection of hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of people against the worst effects of climate change. Addressing these injustices adds to the capacity of communities to adapt to warming temperatures and climate instability.

5. Articulate and Advocate for a Pro-Public Shift in Policy

Nurses will continue to push for a shift toward a “public goods” approach to climate and health policy, anchored in adequately funded public services.

Current policies, committed to an investor-focused and profit-based approach to decarbonization, have failed to alter the rise of energy demand and emissions. We can prepare for a warming world, but the levels of warming that current policies will produce are likely to create a world that, by 2100, will bear little resemblance to the world of today. The problem is not lack of “ambition” or “political will”; the problem is deeply rooted in a capitalist economy that is programmed to pursue ever higher levels of extraction and exploitation of our ecosystems, including our labor. Nurses can play a crucial role in emphasizing that emissions reductions and effective adaptation measures should be seen as “public goods,” rather than as a frontier for speculation and money-making.

6. Energy Democracy: Extend Public Control Over Energy Generation and Use

Nurses understand that a successful struggle for control over energy is crucial, which is why nurses’ unions advocate for ‘energy democracy’ at all levels.

The decarbonization of energy supply and the reduction of energy demand are both essential to reducing emissions over the longer term. This can only be achieved by extending public ownership over energy generation and management. The struggle for new public energy systems anchored in a public goods approach is gaining momentum in many parts of the world. Control over energy will allow us to plan the phase out of fossil fuel use; bring socially owned renewable energy to scale, develop fully electric public transport systems, and reduce energy use in buildings. •

The United States Snow and Ice Data Center released a report this month that the Arctic sea ice cover reached the lowest level ever recorded in October. 

October daily sea ice extent went from third lowest in the satellite record at the beginning of the month to lowest on record starting on October 13 through October 30. Daily extent finished second lowest, just above 2016, at month’s end. Average sea ice extent for the month was the lowest on record.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

The First Nations Power Authority (FNPA) in Alberta and Saskatchewan is using indigenous groups to help create renewable energy projects instead of these provinces traditional focus on the fossil fuels that feed climate change. 

FNPA-Cowessess First Nation launch their solar expansion of their current wind battery site. Photograph courtesy of FNPA - Cowessess

Armed with the backing of dozens of First Nation members and corporate partnerships, an initiative to create renewable energy projects led by Indigenous groups is aiming to make millions of dollars in Alberta and Saskatchewan. With the growing demand for cleaner energy and power, Indigenous groups are open for business and ready to bring it to market. 

“For too long, we’ve had major corporations and entities bring First Nation and Indigenous Peoples along for the ride... that’s not what’s happening now,” First Nations Power Authority (FNPA) CEO Guy Lonechild told an audience of stakeholders at Enoch Cree Nation on Wednesday. 

Playing on the sidelines is not on the agenda, he continued — this is a game changer, a win-win that reinforces treaty relationships and helps pave the way for Indigenous self-determination. ...

First Nations Power Authority is the only North American non-profit Indigenous owned and controlled organization developing power projects. One of its main goals is advancing Indigenous equity ownership and control on renewable energy projects, from start to finish. ...

Turning to the prospects of new, greener technology, the FNPA hopes to provide alternative solutions to consumer energy needs. Lonechild says it’s time Indigenous Peoples have the opportunity to benefit through harnessing the resources of their traditional territories.

Partnering with industry and governments is key to launching forward, he said.  “Indigenous engagement (in the energy sector) has to be more than just a handshake. We want to create transformational relationships.” 

And that includes owning a majority stake in energy projects, he continued, which will help First Nations get out of the cycle of poverty and take part in the mainstream economy. 

“Indigenous engagement (in the energy sector) has to be more than just a handshake. We want to create transformational relationships.”  And that includes owning a majority stake in energy projects, he continued, which will help First Nations get out of the cycle of poverty and take part in the mainstream economy.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/11/24/news/can-first-nations-power...

Water levels in the Great Lakes have always fluctuated. But climate change is throwing past patterns out of whack. Almost every Great Lake reached record levels in 2019. And the latest studies predict that levels might reach even higher in 2020. 

But instead of engineered solutions, we should be concentrating on getting out of the way. ...

Now, pushed by a changing climate, the swings in levels that used to take several decades are occurring in half a decade. Instead of a gradual rise and fall, the lakes are going from extreme to extreme. ...

For example, Lakes Michigan and Huron hit record lows in 2013, and docks on Georgian Bay didn’t reach the water. To compensate, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed putting riffles, basically water speed bumps, on the bottom of Lake Huron’s outflow at the St. Clair River. 

Now Lake Huron is close to record high levels and docks are under water. If those St. Clair riffles had been installed, the water levels on Lakes Huron and Michigan would be even higher today. This is the type of short-sighted thinking we need to avoid.

Moving back

Water needs breathing space. We need to move out of the way, rather than try to move water out of our way.

Humans have removed, impaired or destroyed many of the lakes’ natural buffers, which accommodate fluctuating water. We’ve eradicated shoreline wetlands and beaches and covered them with concrete. ...

If a property along the Great Lakes is getting wet now, it will almost certainly be wetter in the future. While there is some scientific uncertainty about exactly what climate change will do to water levels, the extreme highs and lows will get worse. Volatility is the new normal.

Like climate change, when it comes to addressing Great Lakes levels, the biggest hurdles aren’t scientific — they are political, economic and social. ...

We need to remove structures entirely and avoid building anything near the water’s edge. ...

We should use the opportunity to restore natural shorelines and wetlands. These provide many benefits for both water quality and water quantity. In terms of the latter, they can serve as water retention areas, while wetland plants provide erosion control. 

This is all going to be very hard for many people to hear — there will be major resistance. But not moving is going to cost more in the long run. We think we can control water levels, but we need to think differently.

http://theconversation.com/great-lakes-flooding-the-warning-signs-that-h...