The unprecedented heatwave in the Pacific north-west risks becoming the new normal if we don’t act now
On Sunday, the small mountain town of Lytton, British Columbia, became one of the hottest places in the world. Then, on Monday, Lytton got even hotter – 47.9C (118F) – hotter than it’s ever been in Las Vegas, 1,300 miles to the south. And by Tuesday, 49.6C (121F).
The ‘heat dome’ reminds us, once again, how access to cooling urban forests is concentrated in wealthier areas.
We all know about wealth inequality in expensive Vancouver. But there’s also inequality when it comes to who has the shade, and who’s left to scorch in the sun. In fact, this shady inequality is baked into the landscape of the city itself.
Crumbling infrastructure, billions of dollars of annual costs, and frequent extreme weather events are just a handful of the disasters spelled out for the country’s future in a landmark report from Natural Resources Canada that says the time has come to brace for impact.
The Ontario Green Party is pitching a $23.5-billion plan to transform the province’s approach to housing, aiming to crack down on urban sprawl and infuse the system with environmental initiatives.
Canada is on track to add more than 200,000 clean energy jobs this decade, considerably more than 125,000 that will be lost in a declining fossil fuel industry, Clean Energy Canada concludes in an analysis released last week.
An overwhelming majority of residents in Newfoundland and Labrador want to see a transition away from fossil fuels, yet the province is handing over hundreds of millions of dollars to the struggling industry. That contradiction has national implications, raising questions among experts and politicians about what a just transition might look like.
A century ago, Dr. Peter Bryce demonstrated that residential schools were designed to kill. Canada’s government ignored him.
You have probably never heard of Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce, but I can tell you this: he would not have been shocked or surprised by the discovery of an unmarked grave on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School last week.
