DeBriefed is a weekly newsletter from Carbon Brief, a UK based website that publishes the work of journalists and academics. The focus is on the effects of climate change and the science that ought to dictate energy policies. Each edition of DeBriefed provides information that ought to concern all of us, particularly since climate change deniers are soon to control the American and Canadian governments…

In theory, governments use carbon taxes to shift the costs of climate degradation from the public to those responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. However, contaminators can avoid paying carbon tax. Many economists say carbon pricing is critical to scaling up climate action, so it should be effectively applied. There can be serious flaws in how carbon taxes are imposed, and how the revenue is disbursed…

By exploiting coal, oil and gas, fossil fuel companies are inflaming extreme weather, making climate disasters more frequent and more severe–from hotter heatwaves to more destructive wildfires and unsafe air quality. Greenpeace asks people to support their call for making fossil fuel companies pay into a Climate Recovery Fund because of the climate disasters they’re fuelling.

On October 19, British Columbia voters can choose between three approaches to climate change. Actually, there may be only two choices. NDP and Conservative websites make no mention of climate actions they would institute if victorious in the October election. The BC Green website provides specific policy information about the subject…

Canada is one of 155 nations that signed the Global Methane Pledge. GMP promises to reduce methane (CH4) emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. Despite the commitments, atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gas is increasing faster now than at any time since the 1980s. Methane emissions result primarily from fossil fuel production, agriculture, waste management, and other human activities, including flooding of hydropower reservoirs like the one behind BC’s Site C dam.

In 2023, Canada experienced its warmest and driest conditions in decades, leading to extreme forest fires that released approximately 640 million metric tons of carbon, akin to the annual emissions of a major industrialized nation…

Over the past few months there has been a lot of rhetoric by the BC United Party and the BC Conservative Party on scrapping the Carbon Tax. Of course, this is low hanging fruit and makes for easy political messaging. There is, however, another carbon tax that you may not be aware you are already paying and will continue to pay until, globally and locally, we reverse the effects of climate change.

Pat Mccutcheon is running for the BC Greens in Surrey Cloverdale. He recently pointed me to this video and said: “Probably the most powerful & disturbing video I have ever seen on climate change.  Renowned climate scientist, Johan Rockstrom, lays it all out in this July 2024 TED Talk.

World Marks Full Year of Average Temperatures Above 1.5C Target

Some believe that wealth creation should be the paramount goal of a nation. In Canada, many of those people are political operatives opposing effective actions to mitigate climate change. A 2024 publication by The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) may give pause to climate science revisionists…

Climate change denialism remains strong. It has been strongly linked to right-wing nationalism and to the anti-feminist far-right but it was built primarily with funds from oil companies. Denialists have accumulated wealth by serving fossil fuel interests.