Climate Change

Lost in the political fallout from President Barack Obama’s decision to once and for all reject Keystone XL is the fact that there is no longer an economic context for the pipeline. For that matter, the same can be said for any of the other proposed pipelines that would service the planned massive expansion of production from Alberta’s oil sands.

Suncor Refinery outside of Fort McMurray with the Syncrude Refinery visible in the background. Photo by Colin O'Connor, Greenpeace.

Alberta and its oil sands needs to be the focus of the Trudeau government's climate action if it is serious about helping limit dangerous planetary warming to two degrees this century, warned a national group of environmental thinkers.

View lecture at https://youtu.be/Y-aaZN67y-c  

[Webpage editor's note: A good summary of the history of this project.] 

After seven years of acrimonious court battles, profligate spending and hardball political lobbying, the Keystone XL pipeline is dead. U.S. President Barack Obama rejected the proposal, as most suspected he would.

"Several years ago, the State Department began a review process for the proposed construction of a pipeline that would carry Canadian crude oil through our heartland to ports in the Gulf of Mexico and out into the world market," said Obama in a press conference on Friday November 6.

One of the world's leading experts on permafrost has told BBC News that the recent rate of warming of this frozen layer of earth is "unbelievable".

Prof Vladimir Romanovsky said that he expected permafrost in parts of Alaska would start to thaw by 2070.

Researchers worry that methane frozen within the permafrost will be released, exacerbating climate change

The professor said a rise in permafrost temperatures in the past four years convinced him warming was real.

One of the world's leading experts on permafrost has told BBC News that the recent rate of warming of this frozen layer of earth is "unbelievable".

Prof Vladimir Romanovsky said that he expected permafrost in parts of Alaska would start to thaw by 2070.

Researchers worry that methane frozen within the permafrost will be released, exacerbating climate change

The professor said a rise in permafrost temperatures in the past four years convinced him warming was real.

[An important article: "I would argue that it's much more likely to come from social protest than from the eventual exhaustion of natural resources."- says Chris Williams - read the full article - Editors]

We are now officially living amid the sixth great extinction, according to scientists, but the global economy has still not shifted to prevent climate change's existential threat to human civilization and much of the biosphere.

I’ve often wondered how the media would respond when eco-apocalypsestruck. I pictured the news programmes producing brief, sensational reports, while failing to explain why it was happening or how it might be stopped. Then they would ask their financial correspondents how the disaster affected share prices, before turning to the sport. As you can probably tell, I don’t have an ocean of faith in the industry for which I work. What I did not expect was that they would ignore it.

Reducing the human carbon footprint is a "moral imperative," University of California President Janet Napolitano said Tuesday as she vowed to turn the system's 10 campuses into a living laboratory for solutions that can be scaled up to state, national and global levels.

Napolitano made the comments at a two-day climate change summit at UC San Diego, where researchers discussed their blueprint for actions that they say the state and the world should undertake to tackle the problem — including reducing the carbon footprint of the wealthiest 1 billion people.

 It may have worked during the campaign, but the new PM won’t be able to please both environmental activists and Big Oil for long.