As Canada experiences a record-shattering summer of deadly extreme weather, it’s worth remembering that our national pension fund has poured much of our retirement savings into the primary cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels.
In doing so, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is also undermining its own purpose: to provide Canadians with retirement security by achieving a maximum rate of return without undue risk of loss. Fossil fuel industries, after all, must be rapidly phased out to ensure a safe climate future.
Over the past five years, I have closely followed the signals of climate change, deciphering their significance through the frequency of temperature records and the escalating intensity of wildfires.
At the beginning of July, I mapped out record temperatures that resulted in devastating wildfires in B.C., Alberta and Nova Scotia. It showed record heat that intensified in May and June.
Canada's current wildfire season is devastating evidence of the effects of climate change, scientists say, but for some conspiracy theorists, the thousands of square kilometres of burnt ground isn't enough to convince them.
Inside the fight to save one of the last ancient old growth forests on the planet
Not long past the break of dawn, along a remote road deep in the unceded, forested mountains of southern Vancouver Island, the steady blaring of a conch shell sends a warning through the trees.
A raid is coming.
In the Savage Patch camp, a new front in a years-long struggle over the fate of some of the country’s oldest trees, a small group of forest defenders scurry to pack sleeping bags and douse the fire that kept them warm through the night.
Degrowth identifies and critiques growth as fundamental to the capitalist system. Growth enriches property owners and the wealthy, leaving the rest of humanity behind with devastating environmental consequences. Tempest member Paul Fleckenstein interviews Gareth Dale on the politics of degrowth and the critique of the ideology of growth in capitalist society.
When tallying the economic toll of climate change, flooding tops the list in Canada. But the wildfire smoke that has blanketed many parts of North America this summer also comes with a financial cost.
