Canada and global warming: a state of denial 2

The Alberta Conservative government has asked Trudeau Liberals for $30 billion to "explore carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technologies " in order to reduce emissions. Kenney describes talks on this with the Liberals as "productive" and that there have been "a lot of good discussions with senior people in the federal government recognizing they need something like this to have any hope, realistically, of achieving their emissions targets. When Harper was in power, he always talked about reducing emissions intensity per barrel as a way of increasing total fossil fuel production. Claiming that this would help Canada reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions is pure BS.

 Kenney said his government will form a working group of officials from the governments of Alberta and Canada in collaboration with Ottawa "to develop CCUS opportunities and technologies".

If the federal government does support pouring billions into carbon capture rather than into shifting to green energy, and into a technology that has failed to show it can work on a large scale, this will only leave Canada further behind in the shift towards a renewable green energy that is already starting to happen in the US, China, Britain, Japan, Germany etc.  This would leave Canada as an economic dinosaur. 

                       Kenney -always the gas station attendant to the oil industry

Alberta is asking the federal government for $30 billion in funding to explore carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technologies.

News of the request was first reported by the Globe and Mail on Monday morning, who said it was outlined in a "discussion document" obtained by the publication ahead of the next federal budget. ...

At a news conference on Monday, Premier Jason Kenney said a robust investment in CCUS technologies are necessary for Canada to reach the federal government's target of net-zero. "We have been world leaders in the (CCUS) technology … [and] we're at risk of falling behind if we don't up our game. That's going to require major investments," Kenney said. "The government of Canada has, of course, committed to very ambitious emissions reduction targets, and it's our view that there's no feasible way for Canada to achieve those targets within the stated timelines without a widespread application of game-changing technology like CCUS." ...

Kenney said the expansion of CCUS technology has been identified by the provincial government as a "potential game-changer for the reductions of emissions," and particularly for Alberta's energy sector. 

He said conversations with the federal government about the importance of the large investment have been productive — particularly because the U.S. has shot past Canada in its application of CCUS technology, and in part because of a tax incentive program the U.S. created for the technology.

"I can tell you that we've ... had a lot of good discussions with senior people in the federal government recognizing they need something like this to have any hope, realistically, of achieving their emissions targets," he said.  ...

Chris Bataille, a researcher with the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, says carbon capture should be shouldered by companies, not taxpayers. "It's a very legitimate part of our decarbonization toolkit but we cannot use it as an excuse to keep on doing things the way we used to," Bataille said. "And it should not be used as a way to keep the oil from going past their natural lifetime."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ucp-federal-government-30-billion...

The Trudeau Liberals are following the same delay, delay, delay climate plan they have since Chretien in 1993 by refusing to have a target for greenhouse emissions reduction target for 2025 and instead setting the target date as 2030, when they would have been in power for 15 years, which given history is unlikely to happen. In other words, they don't want any target that could hold them accountability for failure in the forseeable future, depsite demands from environmentalists that early target dates are critical to dealing with global warming. 

Cartoon by Malcolm Mayes, Edmonton JournalCanada’s environment minister says he is reluctant to ask the public service to come up with a plan to achieve an emissions target in 2025, setting up a possible clash with opposition members over the government's climate bill.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said he would rather his department work on implementing the initiatives contained in the federal government’s new climate plan that are designed to achieve their objectives by 2030.

Bill C-12, the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, would require the federal government to come up with national climate targets for the year 2030 and every five years thereafter, ultimately reaching net-zero carbon pollution by 2050. 

Prominent climate scientist Corinne Le Quéré, who chairs France’s High Council on Climate and is a member of the U.K.’s Climate Change Committee, as well as Canadian environmental lawyers and opposition members of Parliament have all called on the government to plan for a 2025 target instead of waiting for 2030, saying climate action can’t be delayed. 

NDP environment and climate change critic Laurel Collins, an environment committee member, said she would like to see a 2025 target, arguing that waiting until 2030 was “extremely problematic.” The Green Party has also released a plan that calls for “clear enforceable targets and timelines starting in 2025.”

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/03/05/news/wilkinson-not-keen-plan...

A significant event in the fight against fossil fuels and the global warming they produce occurred last August without much notice: Exxon Mobil, which led the climate denier fight and was the largest company globally in terms of capital as late as 2013 and was on the Dow Jones for 92 consecutive years, which is a record, fell out of the Dow Jones average, consisting of the largest 30 companies, as oil prices fell and the increasing demand in a shift to green energy has developed. Environmentalists see this as a major change. 

Corporate duplicity, it seems, knows no bounds.

Exxon Mobil’s demotion from the Dow Jones Industrial Average after nearly a century is being celebrated by environmentalists as a harbinger of the fossil fuelindustry’s demise. 

The oil behemoth was the longest-running member of the blue-chip stock market index after being added in 1928 when it was still called Standard Oil of New Jersey. In 2013, Exxon was the most valuable company on earth, valued at around $418billion. ...

Exxon Mobil’s drop appears emblematic of the changing fortunes of the fossil fuel industry, as calls to tackle the climate crisis gather momentum. Emissions from fossil fuels are the primary cause of global heating, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Some 89 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions came from fossil fuels and industry in 2018, according to CarbonBrief.

In a statement, May Boeve, executive director of environmental non-profit 350.org, wrote: “Big Oil has fallen. Our job is to make sure they don’t take us down with them. Fossil fuel companies like Exxon knew and lied for decades about the main cause of the devastating impacts we’re now experiencing across the globe: from fires, storms and floods to droughts and rising seas. As the finance world wakes up and cuts ties with these climate criminals, we are rising up to make polluters pay for their destruction.” She added: “Exxon’s deep fall today is another powerful reminder of how fossil fuels are too volatile to be the basis of a resilient economy. It is past time for Exxon to recognise that it is not only one of the most responsible for the climate crisis, but also that its assets are quickly becoming stranded as we move towards more sustainable, resilient, and regenerative economic systems, based on renewable, accessible and just energy sources.” 

Dr. Peter Gleick, climate scientist and member of the US National Academy of Sciences, tweeted: “This is some kind of milestone. Exxon-Mobil is out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Fossil fuels are dying. Most people just don’t know it yet.”

“Oil is on its way out,” Greenpeace posted. 

From its peak market value of $446bn in mid-2014 – when crude oil was last above $100 a barrel – Exxon Mobil is now worth $267bn, CNN reported.

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/oil-gas-fossil-fuel-ex...

Mighty Middle wrote:

Conservative delegates reject adding 'climate change is real' to the policy book

Delegates voted down green-friendly policies by a margin of 54 per cent to 46

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-delegates-reject-climate-c...

Yes the Conservatives have a terrible record on climate change, but so do the Liberals, whether under Chretien, Martin or especially Trudeau, as the following examples illustrate: 

The Liberal 25 year history of promising to deal with global warming has been one long series of promises followed by actions that always fail to meet their greenhouse emissions reduction targets and often result in an increase in emissions.

(1) “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.” (https://www.cpacanada.ca/en/news/canada/2018-09-18-canada-failing-to-red...)

The Chretien 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. Martin did little in office to fulfill the Liberals Kyoto promises.  The Liberals have failed previously failed to meet their greenhouse gas reduction goals of 1992, 1997, and 2005. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Kyoto_Protocol)

(2) The Trudeau Liberals declared a climate emergency in June 2019 as he prepared for an election and then announced the next day the tripling of the Trans Mountain pipeline to carry bitumen to the coast bringing about a massive expansion of the fossil fuel production. Trudeau won the understatement of the year award today when he said "Not everyone will agree with this".  

(3) In March 2018 the auditor general concluded  the Trudeau Liberal government "is likely to miss the 2020 Copenhagen target as well". (http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_otp_201803_e_42883.html)

(4) 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-...)

(5) the Trans Mountain pipeline to the BC coast to triple tarsands oil transportation that Trudeau purchased and is building it with "the total cost of taxpayers' investment in the Trans Mountain expansion to more than $17 billion" (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/trans-mountain-pipeline-...) that will further increase emissions, money that could have been used to shift to green renewable energy;

(6) Trudeau looked at approving the Frontier Mine in Alberta, which "would  cover 24,000-hectares (roughly double the size of the City of Vancouver) and would produce 260,000 barrels of bitumen each day at its peak (https://thenarwhal.ca/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-massive-new-o...) making it one of the largest oilsands mines until the company pulled out of the plan;

 (7) Trudeau pushed the completion of Enbridge's Line 3 to Manitoba in December 2019 that " will have oil export capacity of 760,000 barrels per day (bpd)" when the US portion is finished this year (https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/enbridge-line-three-shipping-oil-1.5377031) The final approval and start of construction of the American portion began at the beginning of December 2020 over the legal objections of two American First Nations, thereby contributing to more Canadian greenhouse gas emssions in the future.

(8) Trudeau supported a $14 billion LNG pipeline from Ontario to Saguenay Quebec for export to Europe, Asia and Brazil that only failed to come to fruition when Warren Buffet concluded it was not going to work financially (https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/may-2019/quebecs-natural-gas-ex...)

ETA: (9) Trudeau also supported Energy East to build a pipeline to the Maritimes until he realized its lack of support in Quebec threatened his 40 Quebec Liberal MPs. "The reason Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent billions of taxpayer dollars to keep the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion alive while letting the Energy East pipeline proposal die is simple.“Just do the seat count,” Black, an elected member of the Canadian Senate representing Alberta, told BNN Bloomberg in a telephone interview from Calgary. “Quebec was opposed to Energy East and at that point in time it just became insurmountable.” (https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/do-the-seat-count-why-trudeau-chose-trans-mo...)

(10) The Trudeau government "treated Donald Trump’s election as “positive news” for Canada’s energy industry and welcomed the help of Canada’s main corporate oil group in lobbying the US administration, documents show." (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2018/feb/09/trudeau-g...) Therefore, there is no doubt the Trudeau Liberals are celebrated the announcement that work on the US portion of the XL pipeline would resume in February. Again this fell through, this time because of US court action, not because of the Trudeau government. 

(11) Once again the Trudeau government is speaking out of both sides of its mouth as it changes offshore drilling rules in Newfoundland in order to make it easier for the fossil fuel industry to meet them and then proclaiming that the industry must live up to those standards while environmental organizations complain about the changes.  The Liberal government has also excluded new drilling from environmental assessment there. This has become even more important with the announcement of the discovery of oil in two new places in the Newfoundland offshore. 

(12) The Trudeau Liberals are redefining emissions to make them look lower. 

Canada's vast managed forest lands used to be critical allies in our climate fight and efforts to build a sustainable, carbon neutral forestry economy. That's because these forests used to be healthy enough to absorb the huge amounts of CO2 created by the logging industry's harvests — plus lots more. ...

Unfortunately for all of us, our forests' deep and valuable carbon sink has nearly dried up. Decades of human abuses — from climate disruption to clearcutting — have left them too battered and weakened to even keep up with business-as-usual logging. Put simply: Our continent-spanning managed forests are now being cut down faster than they are growing back. The result has been a rising flood of CO2 pouring out of our managed forests and accumulating in our atmosphere — worsening both the climate and ocean acidification crises. (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/11/02/opinion/co2-forestry-Canada-...)

(13) In December 2020 , the Trudeau Liberals gave $41.5 to Husky Oil in Newfoundland to keep the "idled West White Rose offshore oil project going, particularly to "protect the option of restarting" in the next year — although there is no guarantee that will happen." Meanwhile Trudeau continues to proclaim his devotion to stopping greenhouse gas emissions. I guess he is just following his strategy before the last election of proclaiming a climate change emergency one day and literally the next day buying the Trans Mountain pipeline.  The $41.5 million, which is half the project cost, is in addition to the $325 million the Trudeau government handed the Liberal Newfoundland government to support the Newfoundland oil industry, after Husky stopped construction on the project in April due to the low price of oil. More subsidies poured into a sunsetting industry. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/west-white-rose-1.5...)

(14) The Trudeau Liberals are following the same delay, delay, delay climate plan they have since Chretien in 1993 by refusing to have a target for greenhouse emissions reduction target for 2025 and instead setting the target date as 2030, when they would have been in power for 15 years, which given history is unlikely to happen. In other words, they don't want any target that could hold them accountability for failure in the forseeable future, depsite demands from environmentalists that early target dates are critical to dealing with global warming. 

     A prominent French-Canadian scientist who chairs France’s High Council on Climatesays Canada needs to commit to a 2025 carbon pollution reduction target and strengthen its net-zero advisory body. Le Quéré has led a new scientific analysis of global emissions, published March 3 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change, that found global pollution cuts need to increase tenfold to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. ... The analysis, “Fossil CO​2​ emissions in the post-COVID era,” points out that Canada is one of 150 countries where emissions increased between 2016, after the Paris Agreement was adopted, and 2019, the year before the pandemic.(https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/03/05/news/wilkinson-not-keen-plan...)

"My unpopular take is that the carbon tax has long been a strategic concession advocated by Canada's corporate class as green cover for more frenzied fossil fuel extraction. If our climate debate remains stuck in 'yay' or 'nay' to a carbon tax we're screwed."

https://twitter.com/Martin_Lukacs/status/1375092617856319494

Pondering wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Jerrym, the big difference that I see between the Liberals and Conservatives on environmental issues is that Liberals lie about what they will do and the Conservatives lie about what needs to be done. In the end neither of their governments have been doing even the bare minimum, for the last thirty years.

Well put, but the NDP isn't great on it either. 

Provincially they have been marginally better and federally they have never formed government so they have no record to compare to the parties that have actually ruled.

While the financial sector now proclaims it has seen the light and is shifting to funding green energy, the world's biggest banks are still providing trillions to the fossil fuel industry. Although US and Canadian banks are only 13 of the 60 major fossil fuel funders, these banks provide almost half of the fossil fuel financing. This is despite the fact that renewable energy investments have provided a 367% greater return on investment than fossil fuels since 2010. The banks keep investing in the poorer performer financially. 

A coal-fired power station in China. Despite the pandemic cutting energy use, overall funding of fossil fuel firms remains on an upward trend. Photograph: Wang Meng/Getty Images/iStockphoto

The world’s biggest 60 banks have provided $3.8tn of financing for fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate deal in 2015, according to a report by a coalition of NGOs.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic cutting energy use, overall funding remains on an upward trend and the finance provided in 2020 was higher than in 2016 or 2017, a fact the report’s authors and others described as “shocking”.

Oil, gas and coal will need to be burned for some years to come. But it has been known since at least 2015 that a significant proportion of existing reserves must remain in the ground if global heating is to remain below 2C, the main Paris target. Financing for new reserves is therefore the “exact opposite” of what is required to tackle the climate crisis, the report’s authors said.

US and Canadian banks make up 13 of the 60 banks analysed, but account for almost half of global fossil fuel financing over the last five years, the report found. JPMorgan Chase provided more finance than any other bank. UK bank Barclays provided the most fossil fuel financing among all European banks and French bank BNP Paribas was the biggest in the EU.

Overall financing dipped by 9% in pandemic-hit 2020, but funding for the 100 fossil fuel companies with the biggest expansion plans actually rose by 10%. Citi was the biggest financier of these 100 companies in 2020.

A commitment to be net zero by 2050 has been made by 17 of the 60 banks, but the report describes the pledges as “dangerously weak, half-baked, or vague”, arguing that action is needed today. Some banks have policies that block finance for coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, but almost two-thirds of funding is for oil and gas companies.

The report’s authors said targeting of banks by campaigners and activist shareholders could help change bank policies but that action by governments was also needed.

“When we look at the five years overall, the trend is still going in the wrong direction, which is obviously the exact opposite of where we need to be going to live up to the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Alison Kirsch, at Rainforest Action Network and an author of the report. “None of these 60 banks have made, without loopholes, a plan to exit fossil fuels.”

“We have seen progress in restricting financing for special places like the Arctic or greenhouse-gas-intensive forms of oil, like tar sands, but these are such a small piece of the pie,” she said.

“One bank after another is making solemn promises to become ‘net zero by 2050’,” said Johan Frijns, at BankTrack, part of the coalition behind the report. “But there exists no pathway towards this laudable goal that does not require dealing with bank finance for the fossil fuel industry right here and now.”

“Banks provide the financial oxygen that allows the fossil fuel industry to breathe,” said Mark Campanale, at financial thinktank Carbon Tracker, which was not involved in the report. “It reveals the shocking fact that lending has grown since the Paris Agreement, [which] should concern everyone, not least policymakers and shareholders of the banks themselves.

“The cost of carbon in terms of extreme weather events, lost lives and livelihoods will be borne by society and sadly not the banks, nor the fossil fuel companies,” said Campanale. “Next time the banks come looking to taxpayers for a bailout, they shouldn’t be surprised to find backs are turned.”

The report was produced by six NGOs and is endorsed by over 300 organisations from 50 countries. It used Bloomberg data to analyse both direct loans by banks to fossil fuel companies and funding from other investors that the banks arrange via bond and debt sales.

“A surprising result from the 2020 data is that BNP Paribas, a bank that never loses an opportunity to boast of its clean, green credentials, and those of its US subsidiary Bank of the West, came in as the fourth-worst fossil bank in 2020,” the report said, with the $41bn provided by far the biggest sum in last five years.

BNP Paribas has some of the strongest policies on unconventional oil and gas, such as fracking and tar sands, Kirsch said: “But it’s a relatively small part of their overall funding and the bank hasn’t reined in its financing to the oil and gas supermajors, which get really big deals.”

A spokesperson for BNP Paribas said the report has ranked the bank second for the strength of its restrictions on financing coal, fracking and tar sands. “During the Covid-19 crisis, all sectors of the economy needed support and BNP Paribas, like other banks, played an important stabilising role for the economy. However, BNP Paribas supported the oil and gas sector to a lower extent than other sectors of activity.”

JPMorgan Chase launched a “Paris-aligned financing strategy” in October, pledging to set intermediate emission targets for 2030 for its financing portfolio. It declined to comment on the report. 

A Barclays spokeswoman said: “We have made a commitment to align our entire financing portfolio to the goals of the Paris Agreement, with specific targets and transparent reporting, on the way to achieving our ambition to be a net zero bank by 2050.” Citi did not respond to requests for comment.

A separate report last Thursday from the International Energy Agency and Imperial College London found that investments in renewable energy have seen a 367% greater return than fossil fuels since 2010.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/24/big-banks-trillion-d...

Governments and the private sector are still in a state of denial the rapid decrease in costs of renewable energy nor the ever growing evidence of continuing to depend primarily on fossil fuels as the following article illustrates.

 

For the world to transition to low-carbon electricity, energy from these sources needs to be cheaper than electricity from fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels dominate the global power supply because until very recently electricity from fossil fuels was far cheaper than electricity from renewables. This has dramatically changed within the last decade. In most places in the world power from new renewables is now cheaper than power from new fossil fuels.

The fundamental driver of this change is that renewable energy technologies follow learning curves, which means that with each doubling of the cumulative installed capacity their price declines by the same fraction. The price of electricity from fossil fuel sources however does not follow learning curves so that we should expect that the price difference between expensive fossil fuels and cheap renewables will become even larger in the future.

This is an argument for large investments into scaling up renewable technologies now. Increasing installed capacity has the extremely important positive consequence that it drives down the price and thereby makes renewable energy sources more attractive, earlier. In the coming years most of the additional demand for new electricity will come from low- and middle-income countries; we have the opportunity now to ensure that much of the new power supply will be provided by low-carbon sources.

Falling energy prices also mean that the real income of people rises. Investments to scale up energy production with cheap electric power from renewable sources are therefore not only an opportunity to reduce emissions, but also to achieve more economic growth – particularly for the poorest places in the world.

The world’s energy supply today is neither safe nor sustainable. What can we do to change this and make progress against this twin-problem of the status quo?

To see the way forward we have to understand the present. Today fossil fuels – coal, oil, and gas – account for 79% of the world’s energy production and as the chart below shows they have very large negative side effects. The bars to the left show the number of deaths and the bars on the right compare the greenhouse gas emissions. My colleague Hannah Ritchie explains the data in this chart in detail in her post ‘What are the safest sources of energy?’.

This makes two things very clear. As the burning of fossil fuels accounts for 87% of the world’s CO2 emissions, a world run on fossil fuels is not sustainable, they endanger the lives and livelihoods of future generations and the biosphere around us. And the very same energy sources lead to the deaths of many people right now – the air pollution from burning fossil fuels kills 3.6 million people in countries around the world every year; this is 6-timesthe annual death toll of all murders, war deaths, and terrorist attacks combined.1

It is important to keep in mind that electric energy is only one of several forms of energy that humanity relies on; the transition to low-carbon energy is therefore a bigger task than the transition to low-carbon electricity.2

What the chart makes clear is that the alternatives to fossil fuels – renewable energy sources and nuclear power – are orders of magnitude safer and cleaner than fossil fuels.

Why then is the world relying on fossil fuels? 

Fossil fuels dominate the world’s energy supply because in the past they were cheaper than all other sources of energy. If we want the world to be powered by safer and cleaner alternatives, we have to make sure that those alternatives are cheaper than fossil fuels.

https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

A new Canadian study shows that, surprise, surprise, racism has played a major role on the impacts of pollution, including that of the fossil fuel industry, on who suffers the most from environmental damage. 

 

A sign for the Aamjiwnaang First Nation Resource Centre is located across the road from NOVA Chemicals (mostly petrochemicals) in Sarnia, Ontario on April 21, 2007. File photo by The Canadian Press/Craig Glover

A new tool that measures the environmental quality of any urban street in Canada — and maps it out in colour — illustrates vividly the many neighbourhoods in the country that have poor environment scores, neighbourhoods that are often home to racialized communities.

GoodScore assesses air quality, street greenness, amenities, transit and recreation on a scale of 1 to 100. The prototype tool was made for the public and policy-makers alike “so people can create evidence and stories that will illustrate inequity,” says Eleanor Setton, the Victoria-based managing director of the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium.

"Bad" neighbourhoods have hazards that are linked to poor mental health, cancer, asthma, diabetes, and low birth weights.

Homes in the Aamjiwnaang First Nation reserve, nestled in the midst of petrochemical plants in southwestern Ontario, most often record scores under 10 and appear in blazing red on the map. The neighbouring city of Sarnia shows scores of 50 and above and is presented in less alarming colours of tan and blue.

“This is systemic racism,” says Scott Grant, the air-quality expert at Aamjiwnaang First Nation, as he looks at the red-covered map of the community. “It’s a sensitive topic too, because the community doesn’t want to be seen as a horrible place, and it isn’t, it’s a wonderful community, friendly people. It’s just patently unfair what they’ve had to endure.”

Pollution has been harming people in the community for decades, “and people don’t even think about it. This would not be allowed in Oakville, Ont." ...

Setton and her team have found that Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver all have more impoverished households in neighbourhoods with lower walkability, lower streetscape greenness and worse traffic-related air pollution. They note the health impacts of these features are linked to diabetes, lower physical activity and poorer birth outcomes.

Poor people living in poor-quality neighbourhoods experiencing poor health isn’t revelatory, but when it intersects with race, those impacts can be exacerbated, says Ingrid Waldron in her book "There’s Something in the Water." She explores the long history of environmental racism, such as Africville in Nova Scotia, a Black community that experienced years of industrialization and marginalization.

Waldron explains that socioeconomic status is a key driver for environmental racism: poverty stops people from being able to move out of poor-quality environments, but sociopolitical factors also contribute. These communities can have less political clout in anything from local city planning — such as where the new sports facility will be built — to decisions on large-scale projects.

Waldron points out examples where public hearings are held in places community members can’t easily get to and only in English, or require technology and internet access. ...

Canada needs a national strategy using “data that looks at the links among race, gender, education, employment, income, health and environmental harms, as well as other factors,” Zann says.

Setton and her team have been doing just that. GoodScore is a prototype they will continue to develop over the next three years with a grant from the federal government.

“What can public health people learn from using these data? Visualizing them, intersecting them with low socioeconomic indicators and seeing where we need to change, where we need to prioritize our efforts,” Setton says. “It's really about setting priorities using mapping.”

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/03/27/news/poor-environment-histor...

Global warming is already reducing world food production with its effects expected to get worse over time with the intensification of farming methods in order to increase production further increasing problems. The regions already facing the greatest food insecurity, such as the Sahel and Central America, are the regions where global warming is already doing the greatest damage. Even if Canadian agricultural production benefits in the long run from warming temperatures, there will be a transition period where farmers will have to adjust to changing agricultural conditions that reduce production for a while.

Research shows rising temperatures since 1960s have acted as handbrake to agricultural yield of crops and livestock

A wheat farm in Dixon, Illinois. With the global population set to rise to more than 9bn by 2050, the UN estimates food production will have to increase by about 70%. Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters​

The climate crisis is already eating into the output of the world’s agricultural systems, with productivity much lower than it would have been if humans hadn’t rapidly heated the planet, new research has found.

Advances in technology, fertilizer use and global trade have allowed food production to keep pace with a booming global population since the 1960s, albeit with gross inequities that still leave millions of people suffering from malnutrition.

But rising temperatures in this time have acted as a handbrake to farming productivity of crops and livestock, according to the new research, published in Nature Climate Change. Productivity has actually slumped by 21% since 1961, compared to if the world hadn’t been subjected to human-induced heating.

With the global population set to rise to more than 9 billion by 2050, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that food production will have to increase by about 70%, with annual crop production increasing by almost one 1bn tonnes and meat production soaring by more than 200m tonnes a year by this point.

Meanwhile, global temperatures are rising at a rate that scientists warn is extremely dangerous for human civilization.

“The impact already is larger than I thought it would be,” said Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, an economist at Cornell University who led the research.

“It was a big surprise to me. The worry I have is that research and development in agriculture takes decades to translate into higher productivity. The projected temperature increase is so fast I don’t know if we are going to keep pace with that.”

The research measured productivity by inputs – such as labor, fertilizer and equipment – and the output in food they produce, using a model to determine how climate change has influenced this relationship.

While farming has generally become far more efficient in recent decades, it is increasingly menaced by heatwaves that exhaust farm workers and wither certain crops. Extreme weather events and drought can also affect the output of a farm, particularly smaller operations in poorer countries.

In 2019, scientists who analyzed the top 10 global crops that provide the majority of our food calories found that climate change is reducing the worldwide production of staples such as rice and wheat. Again, less affluent countries are suffering worst from this situation.

The intensification of farming to boost output has in itself caused major environmental damage, through the deforestation of grazing land, loss of valuable topsoil, pollution from pesticides and the release of vast amounts of greenhouse gases that contribute to global heating.

“Ultimately we want to increase productivity in a changing climate but a bad way to do that is by increasing inputs such as land and water,” said Ortiz-Bobea. “If we were more productive we could produce more with less of an environmental footprint.”

Weston Anderson, a researcher of food security and climate at Columbia University who was not involved in the study, said the new research provides fresh insight into the magnitude of the impact upon agriculture.

“The regions that this paper highlights as experiencing the largest reductions in agricultural productivity – Central America and the Sahel – contain some of the least food secure countries in the world, which is a real concern,” he said.

“It means that populations that were already food insecure are shouldering the heaviest burden of climate change, and highlights the importance of doing all that we can to improve agricultural production in these vulnerable regions immediately.”

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/04/06/news/rapid-global-warming-ha...

Enbridge's line 3 which runs from Hardisty Alberta to Wisconsin was built in 1968. Like the Trans Mountain pipeline, it is being expanded under the Trudeau government in a $5.3 billion construction project, with the Canadian portion to Manitoba already finished at the end of last year in order to carry an additional 150,000 barrels per day of tarsands oil  and a doubling of the pipeline's capacity to 750,000 barrels a day if the American section is completed.(https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/oilpatch-gets-much-needed-r...)

The largest inland oil spill in US history was along Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline, giving little confidence that the company will pay much attention to the environment or spills, as so often in its past.

"A study authored by over a dozen climate justice organizations found that the greenhouse gas emissions from constructing the new Line 3 pipeline would be equivalent to building 50 new coal-fired power plants. The EIS estimated that the social cost of carbon from those emissions would total more than $120 billion over 30 years. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_3_Pipeline)

 Once again there are environmental activists, led by indigenous people, attempting to stop this expansion in the United States that includes tunnelling under the Mississippi with all the dangers that that presents in terms of oil spills.

 

Water protectors rally against the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline in Park Rapids, Minn., on March 15, 2021. Photo: Courtesy of Honor The Earth

Enbridge, the Canadian energy-transport firm, is planning to route its Line 3 pipeline under the Mississippi, near where it crosses Highway 40. In winter, a pollution-control rule bars drilling under the frozen waters. As the ice melts away, so do the restrictions. Those organizing against the project worry that Enbridge could begin tunneling under the Mississippi and other local rivers any day — and the pipeline-resistance movement is getting ready for it.

“They got a lot of money, they got a lot of equipment, but we got a lot of people,” said Anishinaabe water protector Winona LaDuke at an event last week with actor and activist Jane Fonda, which took place in front of the flowing Crow Wing River, not far from where Enbridge seeks to drill under its shores. “Spring is coming. Let’s be outdoorsy.” ...

Enbridge’s Line 3 project began construction four months ago. It was designed to replace a decaying pipeline of the same name; however, a large portion of its 338-mile Minnesota section, which makes up most of the U.S. route, plows through new land and waters. The project would double Line 3’s capacity for carrying tar sands oil, one of the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels in the world, at a moment when a rapid shift away from fossil fuels has become critical to address the climate crisis.

The delicate waterway ecosystems through which the pipeline passes have become the central organizing point of the anti-pipeline, or water protector, movement. Hundreds of rivers, streams, and wetlands face the specter of a tar sands leak after the replacement Line 3 begins operating. And the particularly intensive form of drilling required to tunnel the pipeline under rivers holds its own set of risks during construction. ...

Those same waters are central to the Anishinaabe people’s identity, and Anishinaabe women have led opposition to the Line 3 project. Over the past year, women and nonbinary people have organized small camps near planned construction sites. In recent weeks, they’ve led a steady schedule of gatherings and ceremonies at the edges of rivers, with some organizing more obstructive protests, known as direct actions, aimed at slowing pipeline construction. With spring on the horizon, pipeline opponents are poised to take even more obstinate stands to block construction at the river crossings.

Law enforcement agencies, with Enbridge’s support, are also preparing for the time when the rivers open up. Documents obtained by The Intercept confirm that local sheriff’s offices have for months been practicing for direct actions focused on the Mississippi River. ...

An escrow account set up by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission and funded by Enbridge, primarily to cover the costs of policing pipeline resistance, has distributed more than $500,000 to law enforcement agencies as of March 15. ...

People’s greatest fears, however, center around what could happen once the workers leave the construction site: a spill. The largest inland oil spill in U.S. history happened in 1991 in nearby Grand Rapids, Minnesota; 1.7 million gallons of crude oil spilled from Line 3, the same pipeline that Enbridge is now replacing. In 2010, a Michigan community suffered a huge spill from another Enbridge pipeline.

https://theintercept.com/2021/03/23/enbridge-line-3-mississippi-minnesot...

Another sign of financial resources shifting away from Canada's oil sands and other fossil fuel projects around the world: the New York State pension fund has pulled out of financing the oil sands following the lead of many others. 

 

New York State comptroller Thomas DiNapoli on April 9, 2021 announcing New York state pension fund pulling out of Canadian tar sands. 

The third-largest public pension plan in the United States said Monday it would divest from some of Canada’s largest oilpatch companies, arguing they failed to show they are “prepared for the transition to a low-carbon economy.” ...

New York State comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the trustee of the US$247-billion fund, made the announcement following a review of climate-related investment risks. DiNapoli said the fund will sell off over US$7 million in securities connected to oilsands companies and ban future direct purchases and actively managed investments.

“As nations around the world become increasingly serious about addressing the threat of climate change and as market forces drive a low-carbon economic transition, we need to make sure our investments line up with this reality,” DiNapoli said in a statement. 

Scientists say global fossil fuel production must decline by six per cent per year for the next decade to avoid more extreme climate change. Governments have so far planned to go in the opposite direction, producing more coal, oil and natural gas in excess of Paris Agreement temperature limits.

In addition to Cenovus and Husky, DiNapoli said the fund had determined that Imperial Oil, Canadian Natural Resources, MEG Energy, Athabasca Oil and Japan Petroleum Exploration had all “failed to show they are transitioning out of oilsands production.” 

DiNapoli said oilsands companies are “responsible for large greenhouse gas emissions” and that oilsands production is “more costly and carbon-intensive” than other forms of crude. 

The sector has been Canada’s fastest-growing source of emissions, and most of the crude that comes out of the oilpatch is a heavy type of oil that the Canada Energy Regulator considers to be of “lower quality” than light crudes because it is costlier to refine, and results in fewer end-products, like gasoline.

DiNapoli’s announcement is the latest of several in recent years where large funds or financial institutions have turned their back on Canada’s oilpatch over concerns it is misaligned with low-carbon transition goals. ...

Norway’s municipal employees pension fund sold off its stakes in oilsands companies in 2019, for example, and Norway's sovereign wealth fund followed with its own oilpatch divestments in 2020. 

As well, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, Zurich Insurance Group, restricted investments in 2019, and then dropped its coverage of the Trans Mountain pipeline the next year.

Richard Brooks, the climate finance director for Stand.earth, said DiNapoli’s announcement marked the first time a state pension fund in North America was actively divesting from the majority of its oilsands holdings. Brooks said he felt it would lead to similar moves from other such funds. “What we’re seeing here is a really big state pension fund, one of the largest in the United States, with vast holdings, quite a bit of influence, and at the centre of Wall Street,” he said in an interview.  “With New York moving, a lot of attention I think is going to be on this announcement, and we will begin to see other dominoes begin to tumble as a result of this.” ...

A Royal Bank of Canada report in November 2020 said the oil and gas industry “likely won’t meaningfully reduce” its carbon pollution this decade without more government funding. The federal government has already offered hundreds of millions of dollars to oil and gas firms to adopt “greener technologies.”

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/04/13/news/new-york-state-pension-...

Erin O'Toole has dragged the Conservative Party kicking and screaming into the 21st century with the announcement of a climate change plan that involves  a carbon tax "non-tax low carbon savings account", but it doesn't even meet Trudeau's lowbar plan, the one that the auditor general in 2018 concluded  the Trudeau Liberal government "is likely to miss the 2020 Copenhagen target as well". (http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_otp_201803_e_42883.html) and the Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand in 2019 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-...)

"New data shows that the regulations will only achieve a 29% reduction by 2025, not the promised 40 – 45%. That’s a gap of 5 to 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent." (http://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2020/11/12/will-trudeau-make-good-on...) That's why the Liberals dropped any mention of 2025 targets and, like the Conservatives, now only talk about 2030 greenhouse emission reduction targets, which are more than two elections away, meaning both parties can continue to miss targets set in the political distance in the hopes that they will not pay any immediate consequences electorally. Unfortunately the planet doesn't give a damn about that.

Many of O'Tooles' MPs, never mind his base, are upset by what he has done, especially after he portrayed himself as a Conservative's Conservative in the leadership campaign. If he doesn't win the election, I predict he will be gone faster than Scheer.

With their new climate plan, O’Toole’s Conservatives are simply retreating to a new hill, Max Fawcett writes.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which had been in lockstep with federal Conservatives on their shared opposition to the Trudeau government’s carbon taxand rebate, let party leader Erin O’Toole have it with both barrels. “It’s outrageous that O’Toole is now planning to hammer Canadians with higher fuel bills through his very own carbon tax,” said Franco Terrazzano, the CTF’s Alberta director. “When he was running for leader, O’Toole pledged to taxpayers that he would fight carbon taxes. If he goes through with this scheme, he will be breaking his promise to Canadians.” ...

But while O’Toole’s plan will almost certainly trigger the anti-carbon tax part of his base, it’s not clear why it would impress anyone who actually cares about climate change. After all, it would cut Canada’s current carbon tax in half to just $20 per tonne, and put a $50-per-tonne ceiling on it — a far cry from the $170-per-tonne target the current plan intends to reach by 2030. And while the Conservatives' new climate plan has been independently analyzed and they say it will meet Canada’s emissions reductions targets for 2030, the party initially declined to share any of that analysis with the reporters covering the story.

There is some good news in here for Canadians who care about climate change; at least the federal Conservative Party has decided it doesn’t want to keep dying on the same hill it’s been fighting to protect for years.  ...

But make no mistake: O’Toole’s Conservatives are simply retreating to a new hill here. Rather than resisting a carbon tax, they’ll make the case for a rebranded one that does as little as possible. That will mean plenty of talk about how Alberta’s oil and gas industry has reduced its emissions, and why China and India aren’t doing nearly enough. It will also mean new subsidies for higher-emitting industries, and an abiding belief that technology will somehow allow us to avoid actually making the hard decisions climate change demands. 

What it won’t do is offer a credible alternative for climate-concerned Canadians in the next election.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/04/15/opinion/otoole-climate-plan-...

Two progressives, Terry Moore and David Robertson, provide below a detailed analysis of the failures in the Trudeau Liberal's climate change plan put forward in December 2020. The Trudeau climate change plan is based on reducing emissions intensity rather than cutting emissions, which allows emissions to even increase, energy retrofits that are not linked to emissions cuts, carbon capture technologies that don't exist in any substantial form yet, forestry emissions cuts when evidence points that forest emissions are rising, and small nuclear reactor (SMR) that have their own environmental problems. 

Their central critique is that "the government has adopted a 'fossil first' climate action plan instead of a 'climate first' approach." You wonder why any green groups are onside.

Moore and Robertson maintain that the "overarching goal" of the climate plan is "as much about capturing economic advantage as it is responding to the challenges of global warming." Rather than regulating and requiring dramatic reductions in emissions, the Liberals want to "incentivize, challenge, encourage, and invite industry to act differently." There is no mention of a crisis or emergency.  

Even the government's most prominent climate programs -- home energy retrofits, tree planting, and zero-emission vehicles -- "suffer from poor design, inadequate funding, targets that are not ambitious enough, and a failure to link climate programs to expected emission reduction outcomes."

At the same time, the authors note that there are only indirect and very modest investments -- especially compared to the Trans Mountain pipeline -- for the further development and expansion of wind energy and solar power which make up a scandalously small portion of Canada's energy supply.

Carbon pricing won't achieve its emission targets, Moore and Robertson state. And the introduction of complicated rules about emission intensity rather than emissions reductions along with complex carbon credits and offsets make it possible for big emitters to "game the system." ...

The Liberals are also relying on "future-tense" technologies, including their national strategy to become a natural-gas (rather than green) hydrogen superpower, with its accompanying need to spend public money to capture, transport, and safely store millions of tonnes of carbon underground.

Then, incredibly, there's nuclear. The Liberals have a small modular reactor (SMR) action plan. They seem to have forgotten safety concerns and long-term, radioactive-waste storage problems. Again, write Moore and Robertson, the government will use our tax dollars to fund a questionable technology.

Somehow, the Liberals claim that Canada will not only achieve its Paris commitments -- the feeble Harper-era 30 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 over the base year of 2005 -- but will actually surpass them. The intrepid seniors have their doubts. In fact, they claim that the numbers in the climate plan are "problematic."

The government's emissions cuts so far have been based on phasing out coal-fired electricity, but there is another area they're depending on -- land use, land-use change and forestry cuts. According to our wise analysts, the forecasted cuts are "made up." They don't even take account of forestry emissions, due to fires and increasing tree diseases.

SCAN! also takes aim at Bill C-12, the Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, now stalled in the House of Commons. Quite rightly, they point out that it:

"[f]ails to hold the government accountable for setting and achieving climate targets in a transparent and timely manner. By the time the first audit is released ... in 2029, it will be too late to make any adjustments required to meet our Paris commitments."

https://rabble.ca/news/2021/04/environment-trudeau-liberals-offer-recipe...

The Trudeau Liberals are betting with Canadians' tax dollars on carbon capture technologies that don't exist yet and many feel cannot succeed in dealing with greenhouse gas emissions. Bill C-12, introduced in November 2020, laid out its plan to bet on carbon capture and planting two billion trees to capture carbon both of which involve problems that make them highly unlikely to succeed, as the following article explains. The 2021 budget continues down this path of failure. 

Sask Power's expensive, carbon capture facility that has failed to meet its carbon capture goals.

The focus of the federal government is on market-driven solutions, including technologies that remove carbon from the air or emissions and lock them away. But carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) are not silver bullets in the fight against climate change. ...

Canada is home to some of the most successful CCS projects and companies in the world, including the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, Boundary Dam and Carbon Engineering. However, these are expensive demonstration projects. Their use could be targeted to specific sectors (such as aluminium manufacturing), but they will never effectively reduce Canadians’ emissions at scale.  Capturing and storing carbon is expensive, and in some cases outright ineffectual. ...

 

Typically, companies would pay taxes or levies over time into various programs to pay for negative externalities — the side effects of products or systems they run that cause social, economic or environmental harms. These funds would then be used to pay for those associated costs. 

This solution is dubbed “Pigouvian taxation” (after Arthur Pigou). Ireland, for example, introduced a plastic bag tax (as opposed to banning them), which resulted in a 90 per cent decrease in their use. 

The problem is that in Canada companies are not paying into any such funds — nor have they — leaving Canadians with no source to pay for this new expense. 

So how would Canada find the money to pay for expensive projects such as carbon capture and storage? As it stands, that cost will be passed to the taxpayer. ...

What about Prime Minister Trudeau’s promise to plant two billion trees? Planting trees is, after all, a natural method of carbon capture and storage. Planting trees is a useful short-term exercise, but trees don’t live forever. Although the soil in boreal forests contains carbon stored there generations ago, it can be released by logging or forest fires, which are getting more severe due to climate change. These types of changes, if not properly managed, can lead to forests becoming carbon sources. ...

Even if the technology were applied to the energy sector, Canadian oil would likely be a net loss on every barrel produced — and who would pay for the cost of moving it to widespread use? The federal government is still reeling from the cost of the Trans Mountain pipeline, the private sector has no appetite to invest in such a venture without guarantees of profitability and despite claims of well-financed conspiracy, environmental groups aren’t exactly flush with cash.

https://theconversation.com/ottawas-latest-climate-plan-bets-on-expensiv...

The following graphs and article show how Canada and the world continue to head to global climate change disaster despite the promises of greenhouse gas emission reductions by every federal Liberal and Conservative government since 1993 and all the global climate summits during this period. 

#1557 of 1558 articles from the Special Report:Race Against Climate Change

Despite numerous climate summits, the CO2 in our atmosphere continues to climb. Photo by Andrea Booher/FEMA/Wikimedia Commons 

“Whatever our world leaders are 'doing' to reduce emissions, they are doing it wrong … Our political leaders have failed us … We have to understand what the older generation has dealt to us, what mess they have created that we have to clean up and live with.” — Greta Thunberg

Despite decades of Earth Days, international climate summits and even an epic economic contraction caused by a global pandemic, the amount of CO2 piling up in our atmosphere hasn't stopped rising. Or even slowed down a bit. Instead, CO2 levels have continued to accelerate upwards, unchecked.

That's the dismal story revealed by the most recent CO2 data from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Take a look.

This chart shows the accelerating rise of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1960. ...

Now, after a quarter century of international climate summits (officially called United Nations Conference of the Parties, or COPs), we are increasing CO2 in the atmosphere by 2.4 ppm per year — nearly three times faster than during that first Earth Day. And last year, during the global pandemic, CO2 rose even faster still, by 2.6 ppm....

Cumulative fossil fuel CO2 emitted into the atmosphere since 1960 (black line) versus atmospheric CO2 levels (red line).

The bold black line I added to the chart shows the cumulative amount of CO2 dumped into the air since 1960 from fossil fuel burning, plus a bit from cement making.

As you can see, that black fossil fuel pollution line has accelerated upwards, as well. In fact, the top 10 greatest fossil fuel burning years in history were 2010 to 2019 — with each year breaking the record set the year before. ...

Yes, global fossil fuel emissions fell a bit in 2020 because of the worldwide recession brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. But it was such a little blip in comparison to the surging trend that you can't even see it in the chart. And by December 2020, the world's fossil fuel CO2 emissions had already surged back up to record-breaking highs. ....

Roughly a quarter of the CO2 we release gets taken up by increasing growth of bacteria, algae, plants and other photosynthesizing lifeforms.

Another quarter of our fossil fuel CO2 dissolves into surface waters, driving a lake and ocean acidification crisis. Our CO2 has already increased global ocean acidity by 30 per cent.

This acidification is causing widespread harm to many marine species, from corals to oysters. According to NOAA, the pace of ocean acidification is accelerating, as well. And if we continue with business-as-usual fossil fuel burning, they say that within the lifetime of today's kids, ocean acidification levels are projected to reach a level last seen millions of years ago in the Miocene, when they fuelled a global extinction event. ...

Annual increase in CO2 in atmosphere from 1960 to 2020.

Notice how CO2 levels have increased in every single year.

The big swings seen in individual years are mostly because oceans temporarily absorb more CO2 in La Niña years, and absorb less CO2 in El Niño years.....

According to NOAA, “the rate of CO2 growth over the last decade is 100 to 200 times faster than what the Earth experienced during the transition from the last ice age. This is a real shock to the atmosphere.”

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/04/26/news/these-graphics-show-how...

Global warming experts and the Green Party have strongly criticized Trudeau's climate change plan following his Zoom meeting with Biden and other leaders on the issue, noting that the Trudeau's ongoing subsidies to the fossil fuel industry make it impossible to meet its own targets, let alone the higher ones needed to keep global temperature rise below the Paris Agreement's 1.5 degrees celsius maximum increase. 

Green Party Leader Annamie Paul 

Canada’s new greenhouse gas reduction target under the Paris Agreement is now “40 to 45 per cent” below 2005 levels by 2030, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on April 22 at the Leaders Summit on Climate.

This target falls short of U.S. President Joe Biden’s commitment to a 50 to 52 per cent reduction by 2030.

“We see this as a global announcement on the part of the government of Canada that Canada is not seeking at this time to be a leader in the fight against the climate crisis,” said the leader of Canada’s federal Green Party, Annamie Paul. “Even with the full weight of pressure from the Biden administration to do the right thing, the best we could get was 40 to 45 per cent?” said Green MP Elizabeth May. “That is pathetic. It's a disgrace. The new target does not align with what Biden's climate summit was all about,” said May. “It does not align with holding to no more than 1.5 degrees (C warming).”

The Green Party and several climate think tanks have been pushing for a target that reflects Canada’s fair share in tackling the climate emergency, which would mean a 60 per cent reduction below 2005 levels by 2030. 

Canada won't meet its new #emissions targets if the government continues to prop up the #FossilFuel industry, @CanadianGreens and climate experts say. 

To date, Canada hasn’t met a single climate target, and climate experts are doubtful this one will be any different. ...

As it stands, Canada is both a top 10 emitter of greenhouse gases and emits more than double the global average per person, according to the World Resources Institute. Environment Canada reports one quarter of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions are from the oil and gas sector.

The Green Party crunched the numbers to prove a 60 per cent reduction is possible, but it requires Canada to stop subsidizing fossil fuels and building new fossil fuel infrastructure. ...

“The federal government is projecting an enormous expansion of tar sands production over the next 10 years, which is inconsistent with Canada's climate goals,” said Anthony Swift, director of Canada Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. A climate-safe future is not one where either country has an expanding oil industry,” he said. ...

The government’s commitment to fossil fuels doesn’t surprise Bronwen Tucker, an analyst at Oil Change International, which advocates for energy transition. “This is super common, and it’s a pattern we’ve seen for years already, where the Trudeau government loves to have rhetoric of climate leadership but has ignored the fastest-growing source of emissions and is continuing to do that,” said Tucker. “Until we are addressing that and also ensuring a transition for the workers and communities who are relying on that sector, it is really just a smoke and mirrors situation.”

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/04/28/news/pathetic-greens-blast-t...

The BC NDP 2021 budget has come under strong criticism for not doing enough to address global warming. 

The provincial NDP budget reserved most of any new COVID-19 response spending in the next three years to capital projects, health care, business supports, a pandemic response and a contingency fund.

Forestalling environmentalists’ hopes that B.C.’s COVID-19 response would be based on a green recovery, the province earmarked $506 million for its climate plan, CleanBC. This represents a marginal increase over the $419 million in extra funding committed in its 2020 budget, but almost half of the $902 million the province allocated to climate initiatives in 2019.

Reaction to the budget from clean energy think tanks and environmental groups in the province has ranged from at best, tepid, to at worst, scathing. Many expressed concern B.C. won’t be able to meet its climate change targets, particularly given the province’s commitment to the liquefied natural gas (LNG) export industry. ...

The province has legislated targets to drop emissions to 40 per cent below 2007 levels by 2030, and 60 per cent by 2040. Premier John Horgan has also promised a new target of net zero by 2050.

Yet B.C.’s emissions are heading the wrong way. They’ve been on the rise since 2015 and saw a three per cent rise in gross emissions between 2017 and 2018.

Data from 2018 indicates B.C.'s emissions have been on the rise since 2015, and the province predicts they will remain steady before declining in 2021. Chart from B.C. Government trends in GHG emissions.

In 2018, B.C.’s net greenhouse gas emissions came in at 66.9 million tonnes, and according to federal estimates, they remained much the same in 2019 — representing a six per cent rise over the 2007 baseline.

The transportation and fossil fuel sectors, particularly natural gas production and processing, are the biggest sources of emissions in B.C.

Heavy-duty transportation and fossil fuels, particularly natural gas production and processing, are the greatest sources of emissions in B.C. Chart from B.C. Government trends in GHG emissions

The budget’s climate dollars included $96 million to the CleanBC program to help industries reduce emissions and expand the province’s cleantech sector. Another $60 million is heading to the Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy for cleantech investments to build partnership opportunities with the federal government.

Clean transportation initiatives will receive $130 million — including $94 million in rebates for electric cars and charging stations. Some funds will also go to electrifying heavy vehicles, like school buses, ferries and government fleets.  Kids will ride transit for free, and a further $10 million will focus on policy to drop fuel emissions and develop the hydrogen economy in B.C.  There’s also $46 million to improve energy efficiency in buildings such as schools or hospitals and $34 million to shift remote and Indigenous communities from diesel power to electric. ...

Karen Tam Wu, B.C. director at the Pembina Institute, agreed the budget takes small steps towards the province’s climate goals.

However, the institute had been hoping to see the investment necessary to meet B.C.’s reduction targets and secure a strong foothold for the province to compete in a decarbonized global economy, Wu said in a statement. In particular, the investments to reduce emissions from the homes and buildings in communities by at least 60 per cent by 2030 were inadequate to the task, Wu said.  “We have the tremendous task in B.C. of switching more than 80,000 heated homes and apartment buildings each year from natural gas to high-efficiency heat pumps to meet B.C.’s target to reduce emissions,” Wu said. B.C. has reduced emissions from light-duty vehicles, but medium- and heavy-duty vehicle emissions are rising and will also be a challenge to reduce, she added.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/04/29/news/bc-status-quo-budget-im...

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data in its latest report shows that each of the last seven years (2014 t0 2020) has been one of the warmest since records have been kept, reflecting the ongoing increase in global warming. The report also describes the damage done throughout the world by this warming trend. I have excerpted the section on North America. 

The following table lists the global combined land and ocean annually averaged temperature rank and anomaly for each of the 10 warmest years on record.The year 2020 was characterized by warmer-than-average temperatures across much of the globe. Record high annual temperatures over land and ocean surfaces were measured across parts of Europe, Asia, southern North America, South America, and across parts of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans. However, no land or ocean areas were record cold for the year.

January–December 2020 Blended Land and Sea Surface 
Temperature Anomalies in degrees Celsius

January–December 2020 Blended Land and Sea Surface 
Temperature Percentiles

North America

North America's temperature was 1.16°C (2.09°F) above the 1910–2000 average—the 10th warmest year in the 111-year continental record. Nine of North America's 10 warmest years have occurred since 2001, with the year of 1998 among the 10 warmest years on record. The year 2016 is North America's warmest year on record with a temperature departure of +1.92°C (3.46°F). The year 2020 marked North America's 24th consecutive year with temperatures, at least nominally, above average. The yearly temperature for North America has increased at an average rate of 0.13°C (0.23°F) per decade since 1910; however, the average rate of increase is a little more than twice as great (+0.29°C / +0.52°F per decade) since 1981.

• According to the Government of Canada, the year 2020 was a year of destructive and impactful weather with nine weather events that had a preliminary total insured loss estimate close to 2.5 billion Canadian dollars. One of Canada's top 10 weather events was the unusually warm temperatures across the central and eastern Canada in May. Eastern Canada's summer 2020 was the warmest summer since 2012 and ranked among the top five warm summer in the nation's 73-year record. Of note, Montreal had a maximum temperature of 36.6°C (97.9°F) on May 27, 2020—the hottest May temperature and the second highest ever on record for Montreal. The temperature of 37.7°C (99.9°F) set on August 1, 1975 was the hottest. In addition, many records were set during the months of June and July.
• Please see the U.S. national annual report for information on the 2020 climate conditions across the U.S.
• The Hawaiian region had a temperature departure of +0.65°C (+1.17°F), which is lowest annual temperature departure for the region since 2013 and the 11th warmest year since continental records began in 1910. Although the temperature departure for the year was lower than recent years, it marked the eighth the consecutive year with temperatures above average.
• According to Mexico's CONAGUA, the months of April through November (no December 2020 data was available at the time of this write-up) had a temperature that ranked among the six highest for their respective months. Of note, the months of May, July, and November were record warm.
• The Caribbean region had its second warmest year on record, with a temperature departure of 0.98°C (1.76°F) above average. This was only 0.05°C (0.09°F) shy of tying the record-warm year set in 2016. The year 2020 marked the 31st consecutive year where the Caribbean region had above-average temperatures. According to the World Meteorological Organization, a heat wave affected parts of the Caribbean region in April 2020. A national record was set in Cuba when the maximum temperature soared to 39.7°C (103.5°F) on April 12 at Veguitas.

The following information was compiled from previous NCEI monitoring reports and public reports by National Hydrometeorological Services (NHMSs; peers of the U.S. National Weather Service).

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/202013

Two more studies just released this week also bring home the crisis the world faces from sea level rise. 

The melting Longyearbreen glacier during a heat wave on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard last summer.Credit...Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Scientists on Wednesday reported another reason the world should sharply rein in global warming: doing so would likely cut in half the current projected amount of sea level rise from the melting of ice this century.

In a study that averaged results of hundreds of computer simulations from research teams around the world, the scientists said that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius could reduce sea level rise from melting glaciers and the vast Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets from about 10 inches to about five by 2100.

That level of warming, equivalent to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, is the stricter of two targets set by the 2015 Paris agreement to combat climate change. But the world has already warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius since 1900, and is not on course to meet the 1.5 degree target, or even the higher Paris goal of 2 degrees Celsius. ...

In a second study published in the same journal, Nature, a separate group of scientists looking only at Antarctica found that overshooting those targets and reaching 3 degrees Celsius of warming — which the world is roughly on track to do, given current pledges to cut emissions — could trigger an abrupt increase in the rate of melting around 2060, and drive a rate at the end of the century that would be 10 times faster than today.

Together, the two studies are the latest best forecasts related to one of the most concerning impacts of climate change: rising oceans that will cause more flooding, force costly overhauls to coastal infrastructure and potentially create millions of climate refugees ...

The studies are also the latest to starkly illustrate both the benefits to be gained from reducing warming by drastically cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, and the perils of failing to do so. ...

Melting of ice currently accounts for about half of sea-level rise; almost all of the remainder is a result of expansion of ocean water as it warms. A special report published in 2019 by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that total sea-level rise by 2100 could range from about one foot to more than three feet, depending on how much the world warms. ...

Dr. Edwards said that rather than cutting the total ice contribution to sea level rise from 10 inches to five by 2100, the more pessimistic findings suggested the contribution could be 16 inches. And even if warming were limited to 1.5 degrees, she said, there was a 5 percent chance that melting ice would add nearly two feet to the oceans. 

Over all, the range in findings from the first study — which are likely to be incorporated in the next climate assessment reportfrom the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, expected next year — are similar to previous reports. That, Dr. Edwards said, is an indication that the uncertainties are narrowing as the models improve. ...

And as with all forecasts of the impact of melting ice on sea level rise, the melting will continue long after the century ends. Under conditions where greenhouse gas emissions continue at high levels, “things really begin to take off in the next century,” Dr. DeConto said.

Daniel M. Gilford, who as a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University contributed to the study, said that once Antarctic ice shelves become unstable the process would essentially be irreversible. Even if drastic steps were taken — efforts to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, for example — warming would remain at a level where not enough new ice could accumulate to replace what is lost.

That reinforces the idea that urgent action to cut emissions is needed now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/climate/climate-change-sea-level-rise...

The following article discusses the staggering risks associated with sea level rise that could destroy eight primarily coastal cities in the US: Charleston, New Orleans, Miami, Houston,  Atlantic City, New York, Boston, and Virginia Beach. 

No city is immune to the effects of a warming world, but a few are more vulnerable than the rest. As sea levels continue to rise, low-lying coastal cities can expect more devastating floods that ruin buildings, destroy infrastructure, and claim lives. By conservative estimates, cities around the world could witness more than 6 feet of flooding by the year 2100. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has predicted that sea levels could rise by 10 to 12 feet if global emissions continue unabated. 

But these numbers are averages, which means some areas would see higher levels, while others would be less affected. Under the worst-case climate scenario, some cities might even disappear. ...

Most neighborhoods in Charleston, South Carolina, could be underwater by 2100.  A firefighter walks on a flooded street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina.  

Charleston is even more vulnerable to flooding than Atlantic City, with around 64,000 of its residents at risk of coastal flooding in the next 100 years. More than a decade ago, the Charleston City Paper predicted that the city could become "a half-drowned ghost town" by 2050. Under 12 feet of sea level rise, the paper reported, around 77% of the Charleston could be underwater.

New Orleans still hasn't fully recovered from the catastrophic damage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The city's location on a river delta makes it vulnerable to flooding and sea-level rise. Some areas lie 15 feet below sea level. Though wetlands have shielded New Orleans from storm surges in the past, that buffer has gradually been destroyed by human activity.  Much of the city's land is already sinking. A 2016 NASA study found that certain parts of New Orleans are sinking at a rate of 2 inches per year, putting them on track to be underwater by 2100. 

Environmental author Jeff Goodell has referred to Miami as "the poster child for a major city in big trouble." The city's sea levels are already rising fast enough to damage homes and roads. A 2018 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists suggested that 12,000 homes in Miami Beach are in danger of chronic flooding within the next 30 years. That puts around $6.4 billion worth of property at risk — the most of any coastal community examined in that report. ...

Like New Orleans, areas of Houston are sinking at a rate of 2 inches per year. The main culprit is excessive groundwater pumping, which creates a change in pressure and volume that prompts the land to sink. This makes the city more vulnerable to flooding like the kind experienced during Hurricane Harvey, which damaged nearly 135,000 homes and displaced around 30,000 people.  Since Houston isn't a coastal city, it's unlikely to be wiped out by sea-level rise alone. But an increase in storms and hurricanes — combined with its low elevation and sinking terrain — could cause parts of the city to be underwater frequently in the future. ...

Atlantic City is no stranger to coastal flooding. The city was ravaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which left around 70% to 80% of the city underwater at the height of the storm. In some places, residents had to wade through water as deep as 8 feet.  The city is one of the US' most vulnerable areas when it comes to flooding. Research from Climate Central suggests that 37,000 people are at risk of coastal flooding in Atlantic City in the next century.  ...

Scientists have singled out Queens as the New York City borough with the most land at risk of flooding. Data from Zillow and the Union of Concerned Scientists predicts that more than 2,700 homes, or nearly 7,200 residents, in Queens could experience chronic flooding by 2045. If that happens, the borough could end up with $1.2 billion in property damage in less than 30 years.   ...

Boston may not be entirely submerged by 2100, but the city as we know it would cease to exist. A 2016 Zillow report found that 1 out of 6 homes in Boston could be underwater by 2100. That report used NOAA's conservative estimates (6 feet of sea level rise). NOAA has also said there's a near-certain likelihood that Boston will see at least one flood above 6 feet by 2050.  ...

Virginia Beach sits at the intersection of the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. As sea levels rise, both bodies of water threaten to inundate the city during a major storm. The city is already witnessing one of the fastest rates of sea-level riseon the East Coast if you factor in both rising water levels and sinking land. In its most extreme projections, NOAA estimates that Virginia Beach could see up to 12 feet of sea level rise by 2100. We already have a glimpse of what the area might look like during a disaster: In 2018, Hurricane Florence briefly transformed Virginia Beach into a water-soaked wasteland. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/american-cities-disappear-sea-level-rise...

The release of carbon dioxide from perma frost melting due to global warming is helping to speed up climate change - another threat where Canadians would be one of the major victims since we have largest amount of perma frost outside Russia.

Yupik Eskimo children play basketball on a court built above the permafrost in the town of Napakiak on the Yukon Delta, Alaska on April 18, 2019.

A new study says thawing permafrost, or soil that is usually frozen year-round, in the world's arctic regions is releasing greenhouse gases not accounted for in global estimates, making it more difficult to fight climate change.

The study, published Monday in the science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reports that the Siberia region of Russia last year saw a record-setting temperature of 38 degrees Celsius, the highest temperature ever recorded inside the Arctic Circle, where most of the world's permafrost exists.

The researchers behind the study say this permafrost region contains a massive frozen store of ancient organic carbon dioxide, accumulated over tens of thousands of years, totaling approximately twice the amount of carbon dioxide that is in Earth's atmosphere. Freezing temperatures have prevented the carbon dioxide — as well as methane, another greenhouse gas — from escaping, until now.

Meanwhile, unprecedented wildfires in the region last year also prompted a record amount of the gases to be released into the atmosphere.

Researchers say the big problem is that the world's top climate policymakers, including the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, aren't focusing enough on the emissions released from the melting permafrost and Arctic wildfires.

In 2016, when global leaders signed the Paris climate agreement, they established emissions budgets with the goal of keeping average global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius beyond preindustrial levels. But researchers say the data behind those emissions budgets did not account for gases from thawing permafrost.

In an interview, climatologist and co-author of the study Brendan Rodgers said the new figures need to be included if climate change is going to be addressed successfully.

"We're effectively in a race against time to reduce emissions and avoid the most severe impacts of climate change," he said. "Without including permafrost emissions and northern wildfires, we're using the wrong mile markers in that race."

https://www.voanews.com/science-health/study-carbon-released-thawing-per...

In their paper "Meeting Canada’s climate commitments requires ending supports for oil and gas production" Angela Carter and Truzaar Dordi, environmental researchers at the University of Waterloo, discuss why the Trudeau climate change policies are failing and what needs to be done to achieve meaningful greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, which according to its own data will emit "about 16 percent of the world’s remaining carbon budget." under its current plans to increase oil and fossil fuel production. 

What Canada needs to do: end its reliance on fossil fuels. 

While the Government of Canada has begun to strengthen its climate policies, it does so with “one eye shut” as it continues to avoid the climate consequences of increasing oil and gas production. Rather than constraining oil and gas production as the United States is beginning to do, or committing to phase out fossil fuel production as countries like France, Ireland, Denmark, New Zealand and others are announcing, the Canadian government continues to foster growing oil and gas extraction by providing a range of supports to the sector that is driving up emissions. To begin to meet its emission reduction targets, Canada must withdraw its support from oil and gas extraction and begin a gradual phase out of production. ...

1. Based on the Government of Canada’s anticipated expansion of oil and gas extraction—more oil and gas is expected to be produced in 2050 than in 2019—the oil and gas sector in Canada will still be emitting some 200 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2050, the year by which the federal government has committed to achieve net-zero emissions.

2. Canada’s 2021-2050 oil and gas production would exhaust about 16 percent of the world’s remaining carbon budget. Canada is indeed a “carbon bomb” of global significance.

3. Banking on unproven and expensive solutions like carbon capture, utilization and sequestration, without complementary supply-side restrictions, will not help Canada meet its climate target—particularly when these solutions are designed to facilitate increased fossil fuel production over the next decades.

4. The oil and gas lobby plays a dominating role in Canadian policy, obstructing supply side policy implementation. In the first year since the onset of the Covid pandemic, fossil fuel industries and associations met with government officials a total of 1,224 times, or more than 4.5 times per working day.

5. While the provinces have a lead role in regulating oil and gas, the federal government has a variety of policy options (regulatory, economic, and informational) to begin to constrain expansion and implement a managed phase out of oil and gas production. These include:

• prohibiting the leasing of federal lands and waters for fossil fuel production and infrastructure;
• implementing a “climate test” on all new fossil fuel projects and removing federal impact review exemptions;
• canceling the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline;
• divesting federal public investment funds from fossil fuel production; and
• removing federal subsidies and public financing that supports fossil fuel exploration, production, or transportation, including federal funding for technologies that delay a transition away from oil and gas.

https://cascadeinstitute.org/one-eye-shut/

A new study in Nature, one of the world's top scientific journals, concludes that just as in Antarctica (see post #641) and Greenland (see post #642) concludes that the world's glaciers are disappearing at a faster rate than previously thought. Those in Canada's and the US West are disappearing faster than anywhere else greatly increasing the risk of water shortages for a billion people around the world in the future when glaciers are no longer available for summer-fall runoff. The total annual melt from the globe's glaciers is enough to cover all of Canada to a depth of 30 cm and risks displacing 200 million people at least by 2100 because of sea level rise. Yet Trudeau keeps subsidizing the fossil fuel industry's growth to the tune of $15 a billion plus the $18 billion he is spending on purchasing and buying Trans Mountain. 

A new study has used millions of satellite images to generate the clearest picture yet of the world's glaciers and concludes they're getting smaller, faster.

And glaciers along the western edge of North America are thinning faster than almost anywhere else in the world, said co-author Brian Menounos of the University of Northern British Columbia, whose paper was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. ...

Glaciers in the Yukon territory are retreating even faster than expected in a warming climate, scientists warn

Scientists have long known that the world's 217,000 glaciers are in retreat.

That knowledge, however, was based on relatively infrequent satellite images and field monitoring that didn't include all glaciers. Menounos and his colleagues turned to a previously unused trove of images that allowed them to estimate the falling elevation of precise spots with unprecedented accuracy.

"We had (a supercomputer) running for a solid year of compute time," he said.

Once they knew how far the surface of the glaciers had fallen, they could calculate how much ice was lost. The results boggle the mind.

They found glaciers are now losing 267 billion tonnes of ice every year. Just one billion tonnes of ice — a gigatonne — is equal in mass to 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers.

Put another way, that's enough ice melting every year to cover Canada's entire land mass to a depth of 30 centimetres.

But glaciers up the mountainous western spine of North America — including Canada — are melting even faster. Their thawing rate increased fourfold between 2000 and 2019.

Global glacier  thinning rates, different than volume of water lost, doubled in the last 20 years and "that's enormous," said Romain Hugonnet, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich and the University of Toulouse in France who led the study. Half the world's glacial loss is coming from the United States and Canada.

Alaska's melt rates are "among the highest on the planet," with the Columbia glacier retreating about 35 metres a year, Hugonnet said. ...

But glaciers up the mountainous western spine of North America — including Canada — are melting even faster. Their thawing rate increased fourfold between 2000 and 2019.

Global glacier  thinning rates, different than volume of water lost, doubled in the last 20 years and "that's enormous," said Romain Hugonnet, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich and the University of Toulouse in France who led the study. Half the world's glacial loss is coming from the United States and Canada.

Alaska's melt rates are "among the highest on the planet," with the Columbia glacier retreating about 35 metres a year, Hugonnet said. ...

Glaciers are now responsible for about 21 per cent of the roughly 22 centimetres that sea levels have risen since 1880.

That won't stop. By the end of the century, about 200 million people will live on land likely to be submerged at high tide.

"It's becoming increasingly clear that sea level rise is going to be a bigger and bigger problem as we move through the 21st century," said National Snow and Ice Data Center director Mark Serreze.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/glacier-loss-1.6005403