We are in real trouble. Global carbon dioxide emissions (the main cause of global warming) continue to rise, hitting a new high in 2023. Last year was also the hottest in recorded history and, year by year, more Americans are feeling the consequences. Yet, we have seen only modest attempts to bring emissions down.
They feel betrayed and ignored — including in BC and Canada.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his federal Liberals are largely regarded to be running on fumes, particularly in the aftermath of the stunning Liberal byelection loss in Toronto-St. Paul’s. The upset is a vivid signal that Canadians are ready for change.
The PR pros will tell you not to bother talking about arcane topics like 1.5 degrees — no normies understand the significance, and it just sounds like a little-bitty thing, anyway. They’re probably right. And maybe that explains why we just lived through the first full year above 1.5 C with only perfunctory coverage by the global media.
New data shows the planet’s fever stayed above a crucial target for a full year, but it would need to do that for decades to breach the Paris Agreement limit.
Last month wasn’t only the hottest June by far in the observed temperature record, but marked the first-ever 12-month stretch of the Earth’s average temperature exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius of temperature rise above the pre-industrial baseline against which human-caused warming is measured.
Blackened trees, dead animals and scorched earth – early wildfires have already devastated Brazil’s Pantanal and local people worry they may lose the battle to save them
Perched atop blackened trees, howler monkeys survey the ashes around them. A flock of rheas treads, disoriented, in search of water. The skeletons of alligators lie lifeless and charred.
As the world inevitably transitions away from fossil fuel extraction, there’s a growing international consensus that mining critical minerals — including copper, nickel, cobalt, zinc and more — will have to ramp up in order to power clean energy sources.
Four years ago, Canada crafted a plan to capitalize on a global hydrogen market the government expected to be worth up to $11.7 trillion by mid-century. Billions of dollars of public money has been provided to seize the country’s share of the pie.
But there’s a problem: the global market is shrinking before their eyes.
Canada's longest river is at historically low levels, stranding communities that rely on it for essential goods and alarming First Nations along its banks who have never known the mighty Mackenzie to be so shallow.
"This has never been seen before," said Dieter Cazon, looking out at the water from his office as land and resources manager for the Liidlii Kue First Nation at Fort Simpson, N.W.T.
"We've asked elders, 'Does anybody have stories about water being this incredibly low?' Nobody has these stories."
