Category: Climate Change

Trans Mountain: A $35+ billion fossil fuel subsidy

“There is a genuine possibility that within the coming century, we will hit temperatures that are deeply incompatible with the continued existence of human life.”

Canadian industrialists, the Trudeau government, and western provinces collectively respond to the warnings of climate scientists, “Forget about it. We’re not limiting fossil fuel production. We’re doing the opposite.”

A safer future for life on earth

Along with Greta Thunberg and Naomi Klein, The Guardian presented on video three other panelists, Prof. Saleem Huq, Prof. Kate Raworth and Ayisha Siddiqa. The panelists did a great job of presenting how the intersecting crisis’s of climate change, climate justice, loss & damages and capitalist biodiversity destruction are all interconnected.

A bias for inaction

In the hugely successful business book In Search of Excellence, co-authors Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman listed eight attributes of excellent, innovative management. Number one proposed a “bias for action.” Leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations prefer the opposite…

Ominous warnings: emissions increasing, not decreasing

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), an intergovernmental organization with 193 member states and territories, issued an ominous climate change warning on October 26, 2022. The cold reality is that G20 nations —  responsible for around 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions — have promised to reduce dangerous emissions but allowed releases of greenhouse gases to increase…

So we don’t all lose

GUEST POST — If you read the climate science, climate breakdown is clearly a civilization if not humanity threatening emergency requiring urgent mitigation action. Reducing GHG emissions by at least half globally by 2030 is an imperative and halting new fossil infrastructure and initiating a managed decline of existing production is absolutely essential. This means coal and gas in BC and also ending forest industry destruction of BC forests, a major global carbon sink. 

Energy storage developments

The world’s long-duration energy storage installations in 2030 are projected to be 15 times the level of storage capacity at the end of 2021. These will facilitate a shift to renewable energy sources. Canada has zero interest in being a leader in this transition.

The natural resource curse

On average, economies of resource-rich countries do not outperform countries lacking those natural materials. According to Jeffrey Frankel, Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard’s Kennedy School, this results from undesirable side effects of resource extraction…

Pessimism seems appropriate

Instead of following science, which says fossil fuel production must decrease immediately, Canadian governments use taxpayer dollars to increase the output of coal, oil, and gas. I will be gone before the worst happens but people I love will face devastation. Pessimism seems appropriate.

BC is good at climate action failure

Peter McCartney wrote about government and industry turning northeast British Columbia into a sacrifice zone: If this destruction were happening in the Lower Mainland or the Capital Regional District, it would be unthinkable. But successive provincial governments have allowed an entire region to be sacrificed to gas development—and even given billions of dollars in tax breaks and subsidies to the companies responsible.