Canada

15/01/14
Author: 
Chief Allan Adam
Diana Krall

My community is largely based in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, 200 km downstream from current tar sands development. It's a place of great beauty and history, but we are now at risk from irreversible impacts that will permanently change our lands and our lives forever. In July of 2010, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) Elders Council issued a declaration on our rights under agreements made over a century ago.

09/01/14
Author: 
Jenny Uechi
David Suzuki

Five environmental groups, including the David Suzuki Foundation and the Wilderness Committee, are taking the federal government to court, claiming it has failed to meet its responsibilities under the Species at Risk Act to protect endangered wildlife threatened by the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. The case will be heard by the Federal Court in Vancouver Jan.

09/01/14
Author: 
Shawn McCarthy
Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions will rise sharply

Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions will rise sharply after 2020 unless there are dramatic efforts to rein in emissions from the oil and gas sector, the Harper government indicates in a new report to the United Nations.

The document was submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in late December with no announcement or press release. As it was being filed, Prime Minister Stephen Harper signalled his government was delaying for as long as two years the release of long-promised regulations to reduce emissions from the booming oil-sands sector.

Category: 
06/01/14
Author: 
Peter Sinclair
polar vortex

Cornell’s Charles H. Greene, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, and Bruce C. Monger, senior research associate in the same department, detail this phenomenon in a paper published in the June issue of the journal Oceanography. “Everyone thinks of Arctic climate change as this remote phenomenon that has little effect on our everyday lives,” Greene said. “But what goes on in the Arctic remotely forces our weather patterns here.”

31/12/13
Author: 
Roger Annis
Toronto iced over

A glaring observation that emerges from this ice storm is the vulnerability of human populations when their electrical service is dependent on complex and capital-intense electricity grids transporting electricity over large distances. This underscores what advocates for science and the humans are increasingly arguing--human society urgently needs to rapidly reduce its energy consumption and waste, end the burning of fossil fuels, switch to renewable energy sources, and localize energy production and distribution to the maximum extent possible.

Category: 
28/12/13
Author: 
Roger Annis
Toronto ice storm Dec 2013

It’s unlikely the storm could be directly linked to changes in weather patterns caused by global warming. But the social crisis it has prompted does portend the kind of scenario for which populations and emergency planners will need to prepare as the frequency and intensity of weather events increase and as ocean levels rise. So how is Toronto faring?

According to Toronto Star columnist Joe Fiorito, the city’s administration had no emergency meeting and coordination center with an emergency power supply ready to go. It had to scramble to hold its first meeting.

Category: 
24/12/13
Author: 
Daniel Tseghay
Climate Refugees

In 2011, the signatories to the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees failed to tackle the reality of climate migration, and Canada neglected to sign up for the 2012 Nansen Initiative (launched by Norway and Switzerland), which is set to publish a report in 2015 providing recommendations on the issue.

“There are these countries in the West which aren’t really doing anything in terms of international agreements,’’ Cap U’s Schreader says. ‘‘I don’t see Canada playing a lead role in the status of climate migrants.’’

Category: 
20/12/13
Author: 
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency
NEB

Vancouver: The Joint Review Panel (the Panel) for the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Project today recommended that the federal government approve the project, subject to 209 required conditions. Based on a scientific and precautionary approach to this complex review, the Panel found that the project, if built and operated in compliance with the conditions set out in its report, would be in the public interest.

10/12/13
Author: 
Bill Rees
Climate Crime and Canada

What continues to be almost entirely missing from media analysis is Canada’s role in all this, particularly the moral dimensions of the nation’s current economic development policies and those of several provinces (e.g., BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland).

Category: 
03/12/13
Author: 
Jacquie McNish and Grant Robertson

Emergency crews ran for cover when they heard the noise, as they fought blasts of burning oil during the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster. The kettle-boil scream meant one thing: Oil vapours were shooting out of a derailed tank car and another fireball was about to rip from the broken train. It wasn’t until four days after the July 6 derailment that the fires finally subsided.

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