There's a growing global recognition that it's time for banks to stop funding coal: it's financially risky and implicates them in serious environmental and human rights abuses. But the largest global investment banks continued to finance coal mining and power last year.
As the 2015 Coal Finance Report Card, The End of Coal?, published by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, and the Sierra Club, makes clear:
A leading climate scientist gave an alarming warning that limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius may not prevent a catastrophic sea level rise that would leave major coastal cities from Miami to Mumbai at risk of drowning.
“I think that the major implication of that will be that we hand young people a climate system where it’s not possible to avoid a large sea level rise,” said Hansen, who went on to slam the two-degree target agreed upon at the 2009 Copenhagen talks as being “pulled out of a hat.”
In 2014, the most essential indicators of Earth’s changing climate continued to reflect trends of a warming planet, with several markers such as rising land and ocean temperature, sea levels and greenhouse gases ─ setting new records. These key findings and others can be found in the State of the Climate in 2014 report released online today by the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
Record warm ocean temperatures combined with low, unusually warm rivers pose a double threat to B.C. salmon, prompting officials to curtail some fisheries.
The reduced fisheries are part of a cautious approach to ensure that a healthy number of salmon return to river spawning grounds.
Ocean scientist Ian Perry said two unusual weather factors have dealt simultaneous blows to B.C. salmon numbers; Higher than normal ocean temperatures and warmer and lower river levels.
Temperatures are soaring, the province is on fire and Premier Christy Clark has called a rare summer sitting of the legislature.
One hopes our government would call an emergency sitting to address the health and economic crisis facing B.C. communities as a result of climate change-induced water shortages and wildfire.
I was about to head inside the Calgary Petroleum Club for an interview Tuesday when a man dressed up as a cowboy accosted me on the sidewalk, stunned look on his face. This is common during Stampede, even in the afternoon.
It happened to be an oil industry lobbyist, who had just left an investor’s forum where Premier Rachel Notley had delivered her first major (private) speech to an industry crowd, two months after her New Democrats won.
We are inching closer to a tipping point in the environment that is leading to more extreme weather conditions. Lower snow packs and hot, dry summers make for ideal conditions for the kind of wild fires we are seeing now.
