Canada's North is already experiencing significant impacts due to climate change. In Nunavut changes to sea ice cover threatens traditional hunting routes. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
As Canada’s first ministers prepare to meet next month to discuss a national climate plan, a new report from the Yukon shows the toll climate change is taking on the North.
Hope and failure coexist in the Paris climate agreement. One may want to curse or cheer the deal, but it is history now, and we have to get on with it. The agreement provides an opportunity to assess our ecological progress and prepare to be effective in the future.
In a wide-ranging conversation, the journalist and climate activist discusses the recent Paris climate accords, the politics of global warming, climate change denial and environmental justice.
A week and a half ago, just as a blizzard was barreling up the East Coast, I traveled to my hometown, Canandaigua, NY, and before a standing-room-only audience of more than 400 at Finger Lakes Community College, had a conversation with author and climate activist Naomi Klein.
Environmental groups want the eight countries that ring the North Pole to take a stand on banning the use of heavy fuel oil, considered one of the greatest threats to the Arctic ecosystem.
"We believe that measures are desperately needed to reduce the environmental impacts from Arctic shipping, and that a logical place to focus attention is vessel fuel quality," said the letter from 15 international environmental groups to the Arctic Council.
Albertans don’t need to be reminded that an economy built largely on oil extraction isn’t always smooth sailing. Amid 2009’s great recession, Alberta shed over 17,000 jobs, flatlining for most of 2010 before roaring back in 2011 with more than 100,000 new jobs. The job losses of 2015 — 19,600, according to Statistics Canada — are yet another bust in a boom-and-bust cycle that fractures communities.
On Feb. 15, it’s decision day. UBC’s Board of Governors will finally provide an answer to growing calls that the university stop investing in the fossil fuel industry. Students launched the appeal for fossil fuel divestment in 2013, and were soon joined by faculty, staff, alumni and elected officials.
For the last two and half years UBC has failed to act on divestment, and the costs — both financial and moral — are mounting.
