Author and environmentalist Naomi Klein published a feature article in the Globe and Mail‘s edition of Saturday, Sept 24 in which she defends against its detractors the Leap Manifesto issued in Canada in April 2016. Her unique argument in this essay explains that Canada’s “founding economic myth” has been that of the ‘good’ created by the vast pillaging of the country’s natural resources following the arrival of settlers from Europe.
Oct 10, 2016 - Canada’s hydropower producers cheered in June when the leaders of Canada, the United States and Mexico committed their countries to raising the portion of continental electricity generated by clean-energy sources to 50 per cent by 2025, from the current 37-per-cent level.
It’s a simple choice: stop all fossil fuel prospecting, or break the Paris agreement on climate change.
published in the Guardian 28th Sepetmeber 2016
Do they understand what they have signed? Plainly they do not. Governments like ours, now ratifying the Paris agreement on climate change, haven’t the faintest idea what it means. Either that, or they have no intention of honouring it.
Sept 16, 2016 - Solar power projects that could jolt Alberta's electricity grid with the addition of hundreds of megawatts of renewable power are being lined up in anticipation of incentives from the provincial NDP government.
According to the Alberta Electric System Operator, 21 proposed solar projects generating a total of 681 MW — about 60 times the existing provincial solar capacity — have been registered on its system access service request list as of Sept. 1.
Sept 7, 2016 - A First Nation in the Nicola Valley has installed B.C.’s largest community-owned solar panel system.
The Lower Nicola Indian Band near Merritt, home to 1,200 members of the Nlaka’pamux Nation, last month installed 330 panels of photovoltaic solar panels to generate up to 85.8 kilowatts of electricity.
Chief Aaron Sam said the system, launched Friday, is designed to help power the community’s school and feed electricity back into the local grid.
“It’s great that it’s come to fruition,” Sam said. “We’re very excited.”
The U.S. is expected to reach a major carbon emissions milestone this year: For the first time, carbon dioxide emissions from burning natural gas in the U.S. are set to surpass those from burning coal — the globe’s chief climate polluter.
Emissions from burning natural gas are expected to be 10 percent greater than those from coal in 2016, as electric companies rely more on power plants that run on natural gas than those that run on coal, according to U.S. Department of Energy data.
Aug 12, 2016 - In the months leading to the December 2015 Paris Climate Conference, representatives of global institutional investors and multinational corporations made headlines after they demanded that world leaders adopt radical emissions reduction targets, among them “net zero” emissions by 2050.
In Washington state, climate hawks have divided over CarbonWA’s Initiative 732, a proposal for a BC-style revenue-neutral carbon tax shift that will appear on the November ballot. The divisions—over both policy and political strategy—are agonizing and strongly felt. I-732 is therefore a contentious subject to publish about, but with the public vote nearing, Sightline is launching a short series analyzing I-732 and the arguments commonly offered against and for it.
