The world is off track in its efforts to curb global warming in 41 of 42 important measurements and is even heading in the wrong direction in six crucial ways, a new international report calculates.
Canada still has eight years to achieve our 2030 climate target. But rising emissions over the last two years look like they've already pushed it out of reach. That’s because we are now at a point where each wasted year makes the remaining task overwhelmingly larger.
Have we already run out the clock on climate hope in Canada? Take a look at these five charts and decide for yourself.
The rising cost of delay
My first chart shows the rapidly steepening path to Canada’s 2030 climate target.
This story was originally published by Grist and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Lawn-care equipment — leaf-blowers, lawnmowers and the like — doesn’t top most people’s lists of climate priorities. But a new report documents how, in aggregate, lawn care is a major source of U.S. air pollution.
“Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics.”
Canada’s environment commissioner said it is not clear how the oil and gas sector will achieve the greenhouse gas emission reductions prescribed under the federal government’s climate plan, and called for more transparency around the modelling.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s symbolic motion calling for more carbon tax carveouts was defeated, but this won’t end the polarizing debate that centres on equity.
For the most part, opposition politicians and provincial governments have focused their attention on pushing for more carbon price carveouts, calling the Liberals’ three-year exemption on heating oil unfair to the rest of Canadians.
Ksi Lisims LNG is a proposal in Nisga’a territory to liquefy almost as much gas as LNG Canada. Although the proponent wants to use hydroelectricity to do so, that will only happen if BC Hydro — and its ratepayers — build it a brand new transmission line. Even then, the fracking required to fill it will make the facility among the province’s worst polluters.
Nuclear proliferation experts are warning that 50 years of policy designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons is unravelling as governments invest in certain small modular reactors that could be misused to build bombs.
The concerns are aimed at Moltex, a Saint John, N.B., nuclear startup building small modular reactors (SMRs) that will be powered with spent fuel from CANDU reactors. To make the fuel, Moltex plans to separate plutonium from uranium in CANDU waste and use the extracted plutonium to power new SMRs.
