Climate Extremes

Spanish oil and gas giant Repsol SA has dropped its plan to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe from a terminal in New Brunswick, citing high shipping costs.

Bailing on an election promise to never again allow drilling on federal lands, United States President Joe Biden has approved a US$8-billion plan to extract 600 million barrels of oil from an ecologically sensitive region in Alaska.

United Nations officials declared partial victory Thursday in a multi-year effort to avert a US$20-billion humanitarian and environmental catastrophe along the Red Sea coast, but warned their mission may still unravel if they can’t raise another $34 million to fully fund the work.

Informed nine months after the fact that its hunting territories may have been poisoned by a leaking oil sands tailings pond, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation is accusing the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) and ExxonMobil subsidiary Imperial Oil of environmental racism, as experts urge Ottawa to close regulatory holes that fossil companies can exploit.

A long-running drought in the Horn of Africa is expected to continue for the next three months, creating severe food insecurity that will be worse than the 2011 famine, when 260,000 people in the region died of starvation.

The Earth is expected to shift from a cooler La Niña state into the heat of an El Niño event as early as autumn, with researchers urging policy-makers to prepare for further warming—and the possibility of breaching 1.5°C as early as 2024.

Just days after more than 190 countries agreed on a unified treaty to protect biodiversity in the high seas—nearly half the planet’s surface—the deal is running into the harsh reality of what it takes to get any major decision out of the United States Senate.

Climate change poses a profound, ongoing threat to Canada’s national security and prosperity, including the possible loss of parts of British Columbia and the Atlantic provinces to rising sea levels, the country’s spy agency warns.

Canada should focus on exporting “clean” hydrogen to Europe as the continent shifts its fuel sources away from Russia, the head of the European Union said this week, ahead of an upcoming visit to Canada.

Locals remain desperate for answers almost a month after a train laden with harmful petrochemicals derailed in a small Ohio town, as government agencies refuse to test for some dangerous toxins, the railroad company shells out paltry restitution, and politicians steal the moment for publicity.

Ontario, Quebec, and Nunavut rank among the 10% most vulnerable places worldwide for climate risk, according to an independent analysis released this week that is geared towards investors.

It took Munich Re almost 50 years since, but the world’s largest reinsurance company is taking steps to detach itself not just from coal, oil, and gas. The company announced in October that it will no longer insure new oil and gas projects as of April, 2023.

Negotiations aimed at solidifying a plan for loss and damage funding ahead of this year’s COP 28 climate summit have already fallen behind schedule, with a lag in nominating committee members raising fears that vital climate recovery dollars for the world’s most vulnerable countries will be delayed.

A clever series of presentation slides at a conference in Ottawa last week placed small communities at the centre of the energy transition and spotlighted Prince Edward Island as Canada’s next source of breakaway climate leadership.

Members of a Texas community are resisting a US$10-billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project that is promising carbon dioxide emissions reductions of “more than 90%” by banking on carbon capture and storage technology (CCS).

A new report chalks out pathways for the United States to heavily reduce the amount of mined lithium it needs to decarbonize transportation and sidestep “irreversible harms” to water, air, and animal habitats—especially near Indigenous lands.

Swaths of North America are slowly emerging from a bone-chilling first week of February, after a fierce ice storm left 10 people dead and hundreds of thousands without power in some South Central states, and an Arctic blast set a new national wind chill record of -77°C in the Northeast.

Type the word “Nemaska” into a search engine and most results refer to Nemaska Lithium, the company that sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 before being partly bought out by the Quebec government’s investment agency. But Nemaska is above all a Cree community in the heart of the boreal forest that shares its territory with a wide variety of species.

Ten years after Ecuador abandoned efforts to get the international community to pay it not to drill for oil in a corner of Yasuní National Park, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, the cash-strapped country’s decision to double down on fossil exploration is signalling the need for a global fossil fuel non-proliferation agreement.

A new study says virtual power plants (VPPs) and their many benefits for electrical grids are at an “inflection point” as consumer demand and legislation propel a shift to greater electrification.

Revelations that almost 95% of the “avoided deforestation” carbon credits issued by the world’s largest certifier have zero climate mitigation value, have sparked calls for rigour, transparency, and accountability in the carbon credit process.

Pressure from several countries has pushed the World Bank to put the climate crisis in sharper focus and reshuffle its leadership just weeks after drafting an “evolution roadmap” to reform operations. But critics say its proposals are “mostly a disappointing mix of navel gazing and finger pointing,” with urgently due financing flowing far too slowly.

The federal government might intervene to stop some of the development the Doug Ford government has in store for the Ontario Greenbelt, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault told a news conference late last week.

The rising cost of international shipping has temporarily torpedoed a United Nations mission to prevent a US$20-billion ecological and humanitarian disaster along the Red Sea coast.

Early 2023 has been a rollercoaster ride for climate watchers: from relief that worst-case climate scenarios are no longer conceivable, to apocalyptic warnings that we could be headed for at least 7°C of warming, to hope that “super-tipping points” of climate action will soon galvanize rapid decarbonization, and concern that El Niño will return with unprecedented heat waves this year.

A nine-month news investigation by The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial, a non-profit investigative journalism organization, revealed that more than 90% of forest carbon offsets from the world’s leading provider are bogus. Indigenous and locally-controlled lands in the Amazon were storing carbon, while the rest of the rainforest was emitting greenhouse gases. Brazil’s new government confronted the “scorched earth” left behind by the Bolsonaro regime and launched its first raids against illegal tree-cutters.

The protracted culture war over environmental policy in the United States was rekindled earlier this month by a controversy over gas stoves, with Republicans declaring that their beloved cooking appliances would have to be pried from their “cold dead hands”—though nobody was coming for them.

The questions are as predictable as the incremental, half-hearted result of this year’s United Nations climate conference, COP 27, in Egypt.

Even at 1.5°C of warming, half of the glaciers on Earth will disappear by 2100, says a groundbreaking study just published in the journal Science.

Toxic, destined to become ecosystem-ravaging microplastics in their own right, and a very long way from being carbon-negative, bioplastics are by no means the antidote to their destructive fossil-kin, researchers say.

The U.S. set out to widen more highways, even though traffic planners know it never reduces congestion. Parking lots were falling out of favour, major U.S. subway systems were falling apart, Toronto’s transit plan was falling far short, Toronto’s parking authority fell for the idea of an EV charging network, and urban transit advocates wanted a federal strategy for zero-emission transit, intercity coaches, and rail.

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says a new lithium mine in northern Quebec can go ahead with more than 270 conditions to protect wildlife and respect Indigenous use of the lands for traditional purposes.

As “once in a century” flooding in northwestern Australia overruns roads—straining food supply chains and isolating communities—experts and industry groups say the country’s freight transport networks must be made more climate resilient.

The Alberta government is refusing to release information on toxic contaminants in snowpacks downwind from mountaintop removal coal mines.

Suncor Energy and a subcontractor faced 28 charges for safety violations after a bulldozer crashed through thin ice on a frozen tailings pond in January, 2021, killing 25-year-old operator Patrick Poitras. “Someone didn’t do their job and I lost my son because of that,” his dad told CBC. “My son gave his life for that job.”

The millions of North Americans who found themselves shivering through late December’s bitter cold snap can surely thank a meandering polar vortex, but whether and how a rapidly warming Arctic might be involved in these intensifying deep freezes remains a subject of fierce scientific debate.

Just as a majority Black community in Florida’s Gulf County has begun to envision a “safe, vibrant, and healthy” comeback from the polluted shadow of heavy industry, local officials risk thwarting those ambitions by saying yes to a waterfront gas terminal.

The killer heat wave that gripped the United Kingdom last summer was 160 times more likely because of climate change, according to analysis released last week by the UK Met Office.

Two of Canada’s biggest pension funds opened the year with new investments in offshore wind and overseas renewable energy projects, after a year of taking sustained criticism for their continuing commitment to fossil fuels. A leading sustainability consultancy profiled Canada’s clean energy powerhouses, Calgary-based ATCO Ltd. bought $713 million worth of solar and wind projects from oilsands operator Suncor Energy, and bids opened for onshore wind projects across nearly 1.7 million hectares of government-owned land in Newfoundland and Labrador.

After nearly half a century of delaying the shift off fossil fuels, and “with the climate crisis breaching our front door,” 2022 may have been the moment when humanity finally turned a corner on emission reductions, says U.S. climate analyst Dr. Leah Stokes.

Ukraine is planning to speed up its shift to clean, green electricity, citing Russia’s drone and missile attacks on its electricity infrastructure as a catalyst to build a more resilient grid.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is signalling a shift away from humanitarian aid toward funding infrastructure projects in developing countries.

At least 91 people died and the eastern United States narrowly averted a massive blackout after a “bomb cyclone” hit much of the continental United States December 21-26. Facing renewed attention to the vulnerability of the Texas power grid, Governor Greg Abbott demanded a probe of fossil gas supplier Atmos Energy, just months after promising the state was ready to withstand the next round of winter storms. A Ford F-150 Lightning still had two-thirds of its battery capacity available after powering its owner through a two-day power outage in southern Ontario, and California utility PG&E distributed home batteries to help some of its customers get through summer blackouts.

Countries attending the COP 15 summit in Montreal have adopted a 2030 deadline to protect 30% of the world’s lands, oceans, coasts, and inland waters, cut subsidies that harm nature by US$500 billion, reduce the loss of areas of high biodiversity importance to near zero, and cut food waste in half, in what some participants and observers have been calling a “Paris moment” for nature.

A municipal climate leader from Halifax came away from this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP 27, with a stronger network of contacts, a wider view of the climate challenges cities face, and a sense that it’s time to “hack the COP” so that participants get more out of the two weeks onsite.

Canada’s climate adaptation strategy is underfunded and does not clearly align its goals with the country’s top climate change risks, a new report says.

Agricultural ponds emit nearly twice as much methane than is accounted for in national emissions inventories, a new study has found.

Representatives from developing countries have walked out the global biodiversity and nature summit, COP 15, over concerns that talks about how those efforts should be funded are lagging behind those on how much land and water should be set aside.

The world’s eighth-largest bank and Europe’s current biggest funder of fossil fuel expansion, HSBC Holdings, has announced it will no longer invest in new oil and gas fields. But its Canadian branch is exempt from the new policy.

Spills from the Keystone pipeline have been increasing in severity in recent years, to the point that the pipeline’s safety record is now worse than the U.S. average, U.S. government data shows.

A peak in global oil demand before 2030, with steady declines afterwards, will make it essential for federal and provincial governments to press the fossil industry for faster decarbonization, the Pembina Institute concludes in a new analysis.

Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau is opening another round of consultation on a national sustainable agriculture strategy, aimed at working with industry partners to build a climate-resilient food system.

A letter backed by 650 scientists says forest bioenergy has “wrongly been deemed ‘carbon neutral’” and calls on world leaders to stop the practice that they say destroys valuable wildlife habitats.

A new report details how widespread changes in the Arctic, from warming air temperatures to sea ice loss, have affected animals, plants, and people living there.

Floating solar panels, or “floatovoltaics” are an emerging technology that could open up new space for the renewable energy capacity countries need. But their environmental impacts are still an open question.

A ruptured pipe dumped enough oil late last week into a northeastern Kansas creek to nearly fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, becoming the largest onshore crude pipeline spill in nine years and surpassing all the previous ones on the same pipeline system combined, according to U.S. government data.

A mining watchdog says calls for less robust assessments and quicker permitting in Canada’s new critical minerals strategy will undo protections for environmental and Indigenous rights, which are being threatened across the globe in the rush for critical minerals.

While the global biodiversity crisis deepens and the COP 15 summit in Montreal enters a final week of high-stakes negotiations, a report this morning points to a yawning gap between the degraded landscapes set aside for restoration and countries’ “aspirational goal” to restore a billion hectares—an area the size of China—by the end of this decade.

The world won’t succeed in halting biodiversity loss without Indigenous participation and leadership, according to leaders attending a major United Nations conference in Montreal.

Power grids in North America have enough supply to keep the lights on during normal weather this year, but a new report predicts some regions will be vulnerable to power outages during extreme or prolonged periods of cold weather.

Low-income households in California are more likely to have their electricity cut off after warmer temperatures drive up their power bills, concludes a new study in the journal Nature Energy.

Newcomer Davante Lewis, a Democrat backed by an environmental political action committee, easily won Saturday’s runoff for a seat on Louisiana’s Public Service Commission, an obscure regulatory body that has received national attention from media, celebrities, climate activists, and major public utility companies.

Key countries around the world are set to add as much new renewable energy capacity over the next five years as they did over the last 20, as governments look for affordable supplies that can address the overwhelming energy security issues raised by Russia’s war in Ukraine, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says in its Renewables 2022 report released Tuesday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged global consensus on conserving 30% of Earth’s land and waters by 2030 as the United Nations biodiversity conference, COP 15, opened in Montreal, presenting Canada as nature’s champion—despite its sizeable oil and gas investments.

With the United Nations biodiversity summit, COP 15, taking place in Montreal, all eyes are on the host country’s efforts to set binding global targets to protect nature.

Ottawa will spend up to C$800 million to support four major Indigenous-led conservation projects across the country covering nearly one million square kilometres of land and water, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Wednesday.

Farmers in the United States need more tools and support to be part of the climate solution, say advocates, urging lawmakers gearing up to draft the new 2023 Farm Bill to increase funding for a rural renewables and energy efficiency.

A weekend shooting attack on two electric substations in Moore County, North Carolina, is raising questions about grid security in the United States, after 40,000 people—including seniors and people in need of medical care—lost power amid freezing winter temperatures.

Opioid and oil companies alike have a history of obfuscating science as a litigation tactic. How does this harm victims, and what can climate litigants learn from opioid lawsuits?

Russia’s war in Ukraine was the catalyst for a surge in global energy efficiency investments this year, as governments and consumers “turned to efficiency measures as part of their responses to fuel supply disruptions and record-high energy prices,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) says in its Energy Efficiency 2022 report released Friday.

Microgrid and electricity system infrastructure providers are stepping up to support civilians left powerless in the dark and cold, after Russia spent weeks blitzing Ukraine’s grid to demoralize the population and force surrender.

As liquefied natural gas (LNG) interests press for political support, British Columbia Premier David Eby must double down on his acknowledgement that any further fossil buildout will sink the province’s climate goals, the president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs says, in an op ed co-published with other leading climate advocates.

Canadian officials have greenlit plans for mining at one mid-northern Ontario site but called into question the future of mineral extraction in the Ring of Fire region northeast of Thunder Bay.

If global biodiversity—the subject of the huge COP 15 summit in Montreal this week and next—is too much of a mouthful, try thinking instead about the white-throated sparrow.

This year’s devastating floods in Pakistan are one front in our clash with the planetary boundaries that define the rules for everything we do, but the war with nature will come to your doorstep soon, writes Corporate Knights Research Director Ralph Torrie.

As Ontario’s newly-minted More Homes Built Faster Act is decried by Indigenous leaders, municipalities, farmers, and health experts alike, elected officials are questioning the “suspicious” link between developer titans buying parcels of protected Greenbelt land and Premier Doug Ford’s push to turn them into housing subdivisions.

Two more reinsurers have joined the slew of companies refusing to provide coverage to a proposed US$5-billion crude oil pipeline in East Africa that campaigners say would be disastrous for the climate and to its host countries.

A Wisconsin judge ordered a Canadian energy giant and a U.S. Indigenous band to water down their wine Monday and come together to avert the “draconian” shutdown of the cross-border Line 5 pipeline.

For most of us, the world’s insects are doubly vital to our well-being, a growing body of research is finding. But warnings by scientists of a probable insect apocalypse are steadily growing more frequent and urgent.

Countries could cut carbon dioxide emissions by 500 million tonnes by 2030—the amount produced by all the cars in Europe today—by adopting heat pump technology that already supplies 10% of the world’s space heating and is poised for faster growth, the International Energy Agency concludes in a report released this week.

Successful debt-for-nature swaps in the Seychelles, Belize, and Barbados have revived interest in a financing model that offers a three-way win: for debt-burdened countries seeking relief, investors chasing net-zero goals, and for the Earth’s declining biodiversity, which must be preserved to meet climate targets.

More than nine out of 10 coal ash impoundments in the United States are contaminating groundwater in violation of federal rules, according to environmental groups’ comprehensive analysis of the latest industry-reported data. 

Cities are at the centre of Canada’s five-year, C$1.6-billion climate adaptation and resilience strategy, with Ottawa looking to local governments to deliver supports to Canadians increasingly facing the threat of wildfires, heat waves, and catastrophic storms and flooding.

Millions of Ukrainians remained without power amid freezing temperatures over the weekend, after Russia rained missiles down on civilian infrastructure in what was called a bid to “freeze the country into submission.”

Municipal politicians in Alberta are troubled by a proposed provincial program that would give oil and gas companies public dollars to clean up abandoned wells, saying the companies owe outstanding taxes and need to clean up after themselves anyway.

A new screening tool that prioritizes 27,000 disadvantaged U.S. communities for billions of dollars in federal climate and energy investments is being criticized for leaving out racial makeup—one of the strongest predictors of environmental burden—as a criterion.

All big emitters—including China and Saudi Arabia—must contribute to a new global fund to compensate developing countries for the losses and damages they incur from climate change, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said toward the end of the COP 27 climate summit in Egypt.

A recent lake effect snowfall in western New York offered researchers a rare opportunity to gather data about how wind turbines trigger “thundersnow”—or lightning within a snowstorm.

A landmark victory on loss and damage funding was muted when COP 27 delegates realized they’d adopted a final declaration placing natural gas at the centre of the transition off carbon.

Negotiations to secure US$11 billion in funding to help Vietnam shift its economy off coal are in the home stretch, with the country’s debt wariness and donor concerns about suppression of dissent among the thorny issues still to be resolved.

Fracking is being pegged as the likely cause of several earthquakes over the past two weeks, including two just a kilometre apart in northern British Columbia and one in west Texas that was the largest ever recorded in the region.

The European Union is laying the groundwork to increase reliance on expensive, emissions-intensive fertilizers, a move that will hit hardest for developing countries looking for funds to deal with the impacts of climate change and reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.

n the last two decades, 13% of the incarcerated people who died in Texas prisons in the hotter months of the year were affected by heat stress that could have been alleviated by air-conditioning, says a groundbreaking new study.

New Alberta government research has found windblown dust from mountaintop removal coal mines has polluted a pristine alpine lake to the point where its waters are as contaminated as lakes downwind from the oilsands.

Immune cells that normally protect against inflammation and infections can be altered by wildfire smoke to promote inflammation.

The 2015 Paris agreement legally bound the world to keep global warming “well below” 2.0°C. Now its architects say nature needs a similar treaty, arguing that without urgent action to protect ecosystems, there will be no hope of accomplishing the Paris mission.

Six weeks before taking power, Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday told cheering crowds at the UN climate conference, COP 27, that he would crack down on illegal deforestation in the Amazon, revive relationships with countries that finance forest protection efforts, and push to host an upcoming world climate summit in the rainforest.

For decades, 40,000 litres per day of toxic effluent have been knowingly released from an oil terminal on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, endangering a super-hardy coral species that may contain the key to climate-proofing the rest of the world’s coral.

Fifteen of the world’s top food-producing companies have a methane footprint equal to 80% of the European Union’s emissions of the super-potent greenhouse gas, says a new report by the Changing Markets Foundation and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

The COP 27 climate summit has been dominated by “false solutions” that ignore the needs of underrepresented people and shun vital principles like energy sovereignty, gender justice, and land rights, according to a panel of community experts on the front lines of the climate crisis.

One of the most important moments in this year’s COP 27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, may have happened 9,550 kilometres away in Indonesia, when U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to restart formal climate cooperation during a side meeting at this year’s G20 summit in Bali.

A COP 27 panel discussion on accountability for climate action revealed an ongoing disconnect between developed and developing worlds, with the former urging faith in a complex-but-sincere process and the latter expressing significant mistrust and frustration.

The federal government still hasn’t provided First Nations with the support they need to respond to emergencies such as wildfires and floods despite warnings almost a decade ago, says a new report from Canada’s auditor general.

Mainstreaming climate action into city financial systems, applying a climate budget to all decisions, and encouraging private sector investment in climate adaptation are strategies that all municipalities, regardless of their situation, can implement to unlock green financing, says C-40 Cities.

As forecasts of a mild winter in Europe and nearly full gas reserves ease Germany’s immediate worries about fossil gas shortages, energy experts are nonetheless warning against complacency.

A new report busts the “fallacy” that boosting gas production in Africa will benefit the continent’s population. Instead, the so-called “dash for gas” will devastate the natural environment, leave local communities powerless, and wreak havoc on the climate, report authors say.

An invisible work force of people in the informal economy should receive the same support as fossil energy workers during a just transition to a green economy, says a lawyer with expertise in international environmental, trade and labour law and agreements.

The climate crisis is expected to create the largest human displacement ever seen in modern history. As many as a billion could be displaced over the coming decades, as more and more people are forced to leave their homes and communities because of floods, droughts, extreme weather events, wildfires, conflict, and extreme heat.

Wide-scale destruction of nature is raising the risk of future pandemics and making climate change worse, the heads of the United Nations biodiversity office cautioned Thursday.

Only seven of 111 key world leaders attending the COP 27 climate conference are women—a concerning disparity, given that women are typically at the centre of mitigation, adaptation, and survival efforts on the ground.

With a new report warning that developing countries will need US$2 trillion per year by 2030 to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and address the impacts of climate change, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry is taking fire for trying to put private finance at the centre of rich countries’ response.

With COP 27 host Egypt and 16 other natural gas-exporting governments pledging to plug the fossil energy source as “the perfect solution” to climate change and energy security, critics warned of a “dash for gas” in Africa—a prophecy taking shape this week in Sharm el-Sheikh, where some African countries said exploiting fossil reserves will help lift people out of poverty.

An inventory of the world’s highest-emitting greenhouse gas sources reveals that oil and gas production emissions are being underreported by as much as three times, due to limited reporting requirements, underestimated methane leaks, and intentional flaring.

Even if all the world’s current climate commitments are met “in full and on time,” Canada will lose 5.8% of its GDP by 2100—$145 billion in today’s dollars—due to higher temperatures, increased precipitation, and changing weather patterns, finds a new report from the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).

Russia’s war in Ukraine has been driving up global greenhouse gas emissions—to the tune of 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in seven months—but the biggest climate impact is expected from rebuilding after the war ends.

With a pro-democracy blogger and activist reportedly being force-fed in prison, a relentless crackdown on protesters and undocumented workers, and a conference app raising serious concerns about unwarranted surveillance, Egypt is not getting the public relations bounce it was counting on as host of this year’s COP 27 climate change summit.

Competition Bureau Canada has opened an investigation into allegations that the Canadian Gas Association is greenwashing fossil methane as clean, following a C$10-million complaint filed in September by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE).

Alberta’s new energy minister has promised to maintain an order protecting the Rocky Mountains in the province from coal development, for now.

Tropical Storm Nicole sent multiple homes in Florida toppling into the Atlantic Ocean Thursday and threatened a row of high-rise condominiums in places where Hurricane Ian washed away the beach and destroyed seawalls only weeks ago.

At last year’s United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, 193 governments promised to strengthen their national climate targets within one year. But only about two dozen of them have delivered on that promise, leaving civil society representatives wary of more empty promises and false solutions at the onset of COP 27.

Countries across Africa could lose 14% of their per capita GDP to climate change by 2050 and 34% by 2100, even if average global warming is held to 1.5°C, according to a report released this morning at this year’s UN climate conference, COP 27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

This year’s COP 27 climate conference may prove UN negotiations on global heating dead for some. But for others, the annual, marathon negotiating summits are a crucial forum to exert soft power, keep checks on Big Oil, and remind corporate interests that the Amazon is much more than just a business opportunity.

With extreme weather events increasing around the globe, concern about climate change is creeping up, but slowly. Canadians still maintain an emotional or psychological distance in their perceptions of the personal risk of harm posed by climate change, with some exceptions.

With 40 countries expected to unveil their methane reduction plans at COP 27, global action on the climate-busting greenhouse gas could get a boost after stalling out under industry pressure over the last year, even after more 100 countries signed on to the Global Methane Pledge at COP 26.

“Relentless” ocean warming is leading to more supercharged storms, pushing marine ecosystems to the brink, and threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, says a new scientific review.

European scientists have identified a new and potentially devastating climate hazard: the Arctic wildfire.

Tuvalu has joined its fellow Pacific Island nation Vanuatu in calling on countries to develop a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT), becoming the second nation-state to endorse the proposal.

As COP 27 opens in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, developing countries and climate justice leaders are urging a notoriously reluctant developed world to get serious about financing for loss and damage, with the immediate and long-term well-being of hundreds of millions hanging in the balance.

An administrative decision on carbon removals, adopted in the dead of night with no community input, is raising alarm with experts attending the COP 27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

A 1.5°C climate future is only “barely within reach,” the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned yesterday in an early draft of its latest State of the Global Climate report, issued as negotiations got under way at the COP 27 climate summit in Egypt.

Leaders of major economies who handed polluting fossil fuels US$693 billion in financial support last year—the highest level since 2014—are among those entrusted with tackling global heating and delivering climate justice at the COP 27 climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

A look at past agendas for United Nations climate conferences sheds light on what is given priority at the annual summit and what gets left out, giving some predictive insight into how vulnerable nations’ push for loss and damage negotiations will fare during this year’s meetings in Egypt.

The world’s 350 million family farmers and smallhold producers are looking to this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP 27, to help avert a global food security crisis by funding climate adaptation and building “a food system that can feed the world on a hot planet”.

In the Putumayo region of the Colombian Amazon, Segundo Meneses’ daily routine took him to the Chufiya river, its banks verdant and waters alive with catfish and piranha. On one morning seven years ago, he noticed a dark film lapping the shore. Where the river turned a bend, it turned to black. It was an oil slick that he says went on to sicken his young family and poison their cows and pigs.

Summer heat waves driven by climate change do more than harm health and claim lives, a new study shows. They also blight national economies, and hit the poorest hardest of all.

Municipal climate and energy leaders in Ontario are scrambling to protect energy-efficient building standards that may be at risk in the provincial government’s rush to push through its More Homes Built Faster Act, Bill 23.

Brazil’s newly-elected president has vowed to reverse the deforestation of the Amazon that occurred under his predecessor, but a hostile Congress is likely to block his efforts, as are the thousands of Brazilians who say the election was rigged and still others convinced that environmental protections equal lost livelihoods.

Global deforestation slowed by 6.3% in 2021, but most countries are still falling short of their 2030 targets for stopping forest loss and degradation, a new report says.

The European Union’s historic decision to ban all new fossil-fuelled cars and vans by 2035 is being hailed as a win for the climate, but equity issues and manufacturing headwinds loom.

U.S. federal judges have ordered a nine-year-old lawsuit calling on oil and gas companies to pay for damage to Louisiana’s wetlands to be returned to state court for trial, potentially clearing the way for at least 41 similar lawsuits to move forward.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian politician known as Lula, scored a hard-fought victory in national elections Sunday, raising hopes for an end to runaway deforestation and violent repression of Indigenous communities in the four years since former army captain Jair Bolsonaro took office.

The world’s seven biggest oil firms are projected to reap gargantuan profits of US$173 billion this year, leading to fresh calls for windfall taxes on a sector that has thrived after Russia’s war in Ukraine led to sky-high fuel prices.

Those who have the most to lose under the Ontario Ford government’s proposed More Homes Built Faster Act—which, if passed, will effectively gut the province’s land conservation and public consultation policies—include neighborhoods and civil society organizations determined to have a say in how development proceeds, municipalities looking to implement sustainable design initiatives, and especially Ontario’s wetlands, early analysis shows.

The world’s biggest provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software is receiving a mixed assessment after opening a carbon credit marketplace to support climate action.

In the lead-up to the COP 27 climate summit, a food systems think tank is calling for more discussion of “agroecology” and warning that corporations can exploit less well-defined terms to greenwash, while maintaining business-as-usual operations.

Whether it was pandemic-driven supply chain delays, Russia’s war in Europe driving up grain prices, or flooding in British Columbia disrupting rail lines and highways, the past 2½ years have shone a light on how vulnerable Canada’s food system is to climate change and other global factors.

Oil and gas demand has levelled off, renewable energy costs are falling, and electric vehicles can dominate major markets by 2030, but countries will still need “unprecedented” emission reductions this decade to keep the worst of climate change under control, according to reports by three international agencies released yesterday and today.

Incoming British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will restore his country’s ban on oil and gas fracking, Reuters reported yesterday, after his predecessor Liz Truss reversed a moratorium originally set out in the UK Conservative Party’s 2019 election platform.

A report from the world’s highest-impact medical journal warns that human health is “at the mercy of fossil fuels” because of the effects of climate change and the world’s reliance on oil, gas, and coal.

For Peggy Savery, the hardest part of the day comes as she leaves work in her Newfoundland community of Port aux Basques and drives to the home she’s been staying in with her husband and son.

Ocheiga Enoch isn’t expecting much of a rice harvest from north-central Nigeria after floodwaters submerged his fields and those of so many other farmers this season.

Reparations for climate damage, international climate finance, and the geopolitical snarls caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine are taking their place as central issues as the clock winds down to the launch of this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP 27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Coastal GasLink and a former prime contractor with alleged links to organized crime are being sued by four companies, working in partnership with three First Nations communities, for allegedly failing to pay an outstanding C$10 million for services rendered.

Hurricane Fiona caused C$660 million in insured damage, according to an initial estimate by Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc.

The first nine months of 2022 saw 29 multi-billion-dollar extreme weather events, with Hurricane Ian in the United States topping the list at more than US$20 billion in damage.

An alarming account by Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Blunt traces the deadly failures of California utility giant PG&E.

Analyst chatter about TC Energy considering selling off the controversial Keystone pipeline could raise the risk of a major spill or leak, but still improve the Calgary-based pipeliner’s rating for environmental responsibility, The Energy Mix has learned.

A new analysis suggests Canada is using questionable methods to dramatically underestimate greenhouse gas emissions from the forestry industry, which it says equal those from Alberta’s oilsands in some years.

New Jersey is taking five colossal fossils and the American Petroleum Institute to court, saying they deliberately deceived the public about their contribution to global heating.

Cities must halve their per capita emissions by 2030 to remain on a 1.5°C trajectory, finds a new report that prescribes low-emissions mass transit, better waste management, decarbonized grids, and energy-efficient buildings as the way forward.

A fuel crisis in Haiti is inflaming security and humanitarian crises, as gangs exploit the country’s oil dependency to pressure interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign after he cut fuel subsidies in September.

Water in all the wrong places due to global heating is leaving communities from Canada to Central Africa hungry, with Prince Edward Island reeling from a severe hurricane while millions of people in Chad face a devastating drought.

About 80 of the famous stone figures on Easter Island were damaged by a wildfire October 5, local authorities say.

Canada is open to supporting “economically feasible” liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects to help countries like Germany reduce reliance on coal in the midst of a global energy crunch, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told media Friday, at the close of annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, DC.

Nearly a million Canadian households live in energy poverty, the David Suzuki Foundation says, in a new report that urges Ottawa to address this social injustice while setting Canada’s path to net-zero electricity by 2035.

The federal government is busy consulting us now, gathering input from Canadians on policy proposals for a just transition to renewables, a carbon emissions cap for the oil and gas sector, a clean electricity grid, and more. But how well informed do Canadians think they are about these potential solutions?

Self-interested and destructive human activity has caused wildlife populations to drop nearly 70% since 1970, says a landmark report from the World Wildlife Fund.

The World Bank is facing calls for far-reaching climate finance reform and vulnerable countries are demanding climate reparations as the clock ticks down to the annual United Nations climate summit, COP 27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Fridays for Future founder Greta Thunberg has come out in favour of Germany extending the life of its controversial nuclear plants, just days after a news analysis traced the decades-long history of nuclear facilities threatened by war or terrorism.

Underfunded and poorly administered, Canada’s C$3.3-billion disaster resilience fund is short on cash—and has become a symptom of Ottawa’s failure to protect small communities from the climate crisis, experts say.

Indigenous involvement is critical to meeting Canada’s ‘30×30’ conservation pledge to protect 30% of its land, freshwater, and oceans by decade’s end, says a recent report by the World Wildlife Fund.

Strategically burying just 5% of power lines could reduce the number of residents affected by a combination of heat waves and blackouts following hurricanes by nearly 40%, researchers have found.

A weekly “bike bus” to school gives 170 elementary students, a 65-pound golden doodle named Phoebe, and the Portland, Oregon neighborhood through which they ride a jolt of “sheer joy,” while helping to build a stronger, safer, more connected community.

Green economies and global climate action were on the agenda Tuesday when Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland declared a new era in geopolitics brought on by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Former Toronto mayor David Miller, now managing director of the C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy, talks about cities’ responsibility to take action on the climate emergency.

Ottawa will invest $222 million to help a Quebec company increase production of critical minerals for goods such as electric cars and batteries while simultaneously cutting emissions, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday.

Nestlé is one of the world’s top producers of plastic waste, but its CEO objects to the idea that corporations should substantially pick up the tab for this toxic pollution.

The head of the World Food Program is urging countries to follow Canada’s lead in trying to avert a looming famine in East Africa, which he warns could get even worse due to sanctions against Russia.

New Zealand’s government on Tuesday proposed taxing the greenhouse gases that farm animals make from burping and peeing as part of a plan to tackle climate change.

Lawyers for the British Columbia government have agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit by a couple whose property flooded after a third of the forest in the surrounding watershed was cut down.

The lobby group whose policy paper helped trigger a wave of misinformation and conspiracy theories about a supposed federal “ban” on nitrogen fertilizer is disavowing attempts to connect its research to a “freedom movement 2.0” follow-up to last winter’s convoy occupation in Ottawa.

Leading plastics polluter Coca-Cola has been named as the primary sponsor of next month’s COP 27 climate summit in Egypt, prompting protests from local climate experts facing government hostility toward their work and grassroots voices from across Africa struggling to get a seat at the table.

British Columbia Premier John Horgan signed a new climate pact with the governors of Washington, Oregon, and California last week that includes investments in cross-border climate infrastructure like electric vehicle charging stations.

As national security experts warn that Canada’s military cannot continue as the country’s first line of defence in domestic disasters, organizations like the Canadian Red Cross are urging greater investment in local civilian emergency preparedness.

As water scarcity becomes a growing threat to global food security, falling groundwater levels have prompted farmers in a Nevada community to share resources despite laws that distribute water rights less equally.

A deal to sell 38,000 hectares of Alberta oil and gas lands to a company controlled by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) is shining a light on large fossils’ favourite path to decarbonization: rather than shutting down some of their assets, they hand them off to smaller operators that then keep them in production.

Emissions of climate-busting methane in the three biggest fracking regions in the United States are five times higher than previously believed, according to a new paper published last week in the journal Science.

The dominance of the Russian state-controlled supply chain for uranium and fuel threatens the future operation of many western reactors if international relations continue to deteriorate, an independent report into state of the nuclear industry worldwide shows.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday announced a $300-million fund to help the East Coast recover from the ravages of post-tropical storm Fiona.

A group of Canadian public health professionals and advocates have filed a C$10-million greenwashing complaint against the Canadian Gas Association (CGA) for a recent ad campaign promoting natural gas as a clean, affordable, sustainable energy option.

Ten years of aggressive “gentrification by upgrading” has left Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood increasingly unaffordable, forcing lower-income tenants to compromise on basic needs like medicine and food to pay soaring rents, finds a recent study.

Ontario can deliver enough distributed energy resources (DER) to clear a large electricity shortage over the next decade, but a prominent analyst says the provincial government is still pivoting between two equally “catastrophic” options—relying more on methane-heavy gas plants, or extending the life of an aging nuclear station outside Toronto.

Australia has violated the rights of a group of Indigenous islanders by not protecting them from the impacts of climate change, the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled last week.

As Pakistan deals with the aftermath of devastating floods and links with global warming become clearer, a demand for climate reparations from the world’s top emitting countries is gaining momentum ahead of next month’s COP 27 climate summit in Egypt.

Canada will see C$25 billion in losses per from climate damage as early as 2025, with individual households bearing the worst of these costs, finds a new report the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI).

Some Maritimers who lost power after Hurricane Fiona are asking whether utilities are prepared for the powerful storms they’re facing.

U.S. Forest Service investigators working to determine the cause of the 76,781-acre Mosquito Fire in California have taken possession of one of Pacific Gas and Electric’s transmission poles and attached equipment.

Pivotal national elections in Brazil will go to a run-off vote October 30, after former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva failed to win a clear majority and a first-round win yesterday over far right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

What may be the broadest and longest study to date has found Canada’s Arctic Ocean is growing more acidic up to four times faster than any other sea on the planet.

Methane leaking from the damaged Nord Stream pipelines is likely the biggest burst of the climate super-pollutant on record by far, and countries in the region suspect this week’s undersea explosions were a case of sabotage.

With post-tropical storm Fiona taking its place as one of the biggest catastrophic events in Atlantic Canada history, communities began to pick up the pieces while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau connected the storm to climate-induced mayhem.

Hurricane Ian made landfall Wednesday in southwest Florida as one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the U.S., swamping streets with water and smashing trees along the coast while moving at a crawl that threatened catastrophic flooding across a wide area.

As power slowly returns to Puerto Rico in Hurricane Fiona’s wake, pressure is building to wean the island’s grid off its 97% dependence on fossils fuels—towards a climate-resilient distributed system that relies on renewables.

As the European Union moves to develop new carbon removal legislation, campaigners are warning against offsetting schemes and corporate greenwashing.

New analysis shows that forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon could drop by 89% if incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro is voted out of office in this Sunday’s general election.

Hurricane Fiona has killed one person, destroyed dozens of homes, and left hundreds of thousands in Atlantic Canada without power—after causing five deaths and widespread destruction in the Caribbean. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned Canadians that things will only get worse as extreme weather becomes more frequent, linking the devastating post-tropical storm to climate change.

Nova Scotia climate campaigner Tynette Deveaux emailed supporters as post-tropical storm Fiona approached Friday. “I’ll be honest,” she wrote. “I’m scared about this one.”

In an historic appeal that further affirms the South Pacific island country as a global climate leader, Vanuatu has thrown its support behind the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

With African countries on the front lines of the climate emergency facing a US$108-billion annual gap in climate finance, loss and damage negotiations will a strong focus at the upcoming COP 27 summit in Egypt.

John Kerry, the United States special presidential envoy for climate, signaled last Tuesday that the Biden administration is working behind the scenes to remove the president of the World Bank, Trump appointee David Malpass. Kerry’s comments came hours after Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president and longtime climate activist, called Malpass “a climate denier” and called on President Joe Biden “to get rid of” him and “put new leadership in” at the world’s largest development bank.

Iconic ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s will work with 15 dairy farms to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2024 as part of its Project Mootopia pilot program.

The effects of climate change are projected to cost Ontario an extra $1.5 billion annually on average in the next few years just to maintain public transportation infrastructure, the province’s financial watchdog said in a report Thursday.

Cities are increasingly footing the bill for climate change as they strain to adapt their infrastructure to rising temperatures, new rainfall patterns, and extreme weather.

The TC Energy subsidiary building the controversial Coastal GasLink pipeline has received more than 50 warnings about environmental violations, CBC reports, citing the British Columbia government.

The United States’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) could change the landscape of energy economics with its unprecedented support for clean energy sources, says a new report.

One of the world’s political hotspots is already a climate crisis zone, with the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East region now warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.

Loss and damage due to climate disasters had a moment in the spotlight during this week’s UN General Assembly in New York, with Pakistan calling for urgent action on flooding and Denmark pledging more than US$13 million in financing.

Authorities in Alaska were making contact Monday with some of the most remote villages in the United States to determine their food and water needs, as well as assess the damage after a massive storm flooded communities on the state’s vast western coast this weekend.

The United Nations hit its fundraising goal Saturday to avert a $20-billion environmental and humanitarian disaster after the Netherlands put up €7.5 million to help salvage the FSO Safer, a disabled oil tanker carrying 1.1 million of barrels of oil in the Red Sea off Yemen.

Ontario’s climate plan is just a “communications product” and a “glossy brochure” with no legal force, not anything for which citizens or the courts can hold the Doug Ford government accountable, a provincial lawyer told a judge last week.

Many people are focused on repairing and upgrading their homes, neighbourhoods, towns, and cities. And the key decisions about these repairs and upgrades are made at City Hall, says Ontario Greenbelt Alliance Coordinator Franz Hartmann.

Climate change likely juiced rainfall by up to 50% late last month in two southern Pakistan provinces, but global warming wasn’t the biggest cause of the country’s catastrophic flooding that has killed more than 1,500 people, a new scientific analysis finds.

Ottawa is promising up to $250 million over four years to help Canadians who currently heat their homes with oil shift to greener—and more affordable—sources like electric heat pumps.

Britain’s new policy of capping home energy bills and subsidizing energy giants fails to address the country’s old, inefficient housing stock, says a new report—with one critic warning such an impractical energy policy could “play into the hands” of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Ensuring that America’s clean energy revolution leaves no one behind will require incentives for domestic production and targeted, collaborative investment in communities most likely to see job losses, two expert authors write.

A South African court sided with environmental groups and local fishing communities to strike down an oil and gas exploration permit after two UK-based companies—Royal Dutch Shell and Impact Africa—failed to consult with local Indigenous communities.

Better, cheaper e-bikes and safer charging systems are the keys to preventing e-bike fires in public housing, not a blanket ban on home storage, say environmental justice advocates.

The World Health Organization and nearly 200 global health associations have endorsed the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT), calling for an end to new fossil infrastructure and a “fair and equitable” phaseout of existing production.

Canada has all the right components to cash in on an electric vehicle battery industry worth C$48 billion per year, but only if governments take ambitious action now to help the sector meet its potential, concludes a new report issued this week.

Habitat loss and global heating are making extreme epidemics like COVID-19 three times more likely, finds a new study.

Witnessing a human being swept away by cruel waves of flood waters while saving five stranded children is not something everyone can bear. This was my experience in early July after a torrential rainfall event in Islamabad and adjoining areas, only a short walk from my house, just a couple of months after a devastating heat wave.

Without concerted global effort to rein in global heating, up to 4.4 million acres of U.S. coastal land may slip under rising seas by 2050.

As the days get hotter, so do tempers, according to new research suggesting that levels of hate speech rise with the thermometer.

Economic, political, and ecological concerns are driving the creation of renewable energy communities in Central Eastern Europe, but more needs to be done to facilitate these local efforts to democratize energy systems.

The risk of serious climate “tipping points” will rise dramatically if countries fail to hold global warming to the Paris agreement target of 1.5°C, according to a new study in the journal Science.

The BC Wildfire Service says a fire in British Columbia’s Peace region has grown out of control due to high winds, noting temperatures are expected to increase and no precipitation has been forecast for the area.

EU parliamentarians are being urged to vote “yes” on a measure that would exclude woody biomass from counting towards renewable energy targets.

The incoming British government is committed to building a new generation of nuclear power stations to provide a quarter of the  nation’s electricity. But how it is going to happen remains a mystery.

Solar saved the European Union up to €29 billion in gas imports this past summer, and is poised for “exponential growth” across five of Asia’s biggest economies, according to two separate analyses released last week by the UK-based Ember think tank.

The salvage of the FSO Safer and its 1.1 million barrels of oil floating on the Red Sea will take place during the most dangerous time of year, after countries and private companies dragged their feet on a United Nations effort to fund the operation.

The Line 5 pipeline has won a stay of execution in Wisconsin, where a federal judge sided with an Indigenous group’s complaint but stopped short of ordering the controversial cross-border energy link shut down entirely.

The Kremlin has declared it will stop shipping gas to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, prompting European leaders to propose price caps to cut into Russia’s financing for its war in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has given Ukraine a chance to lead the world in the war against the coming climate catastrophe by freeing itself from the autocracy of fossil fuels, a webinar audience heard yesterday.

Amid current concerns about the cost of living, the economy, and health care, communicators may not know how to frame their efforts to drum up support for action on climate change and biodiversity loss among receptive audiences, let alone those with a history of hostility to climate action.

A text message may have saved the California power grid from crashing under the weight of a devastating heat wave Tuesday afternoon.

As wealthier communities in Massachusetts electrify, environmental justice advocates are urging policy changes so that poorer households aren’t left with the costs of the state’s dwindling, aging gas infrastructure.

A northern Alberta First Nation has filed what experts say is the province’s first lawsuit claiming cumulative effects from industry, agriculture, and settlements are so pervasive that they violate the band’s treaty rights.

A new analysis has pegged the social cost of carbon at US$185 per tonne, more than triple the figure the Joe Biden administration currently uses.

Greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, and ocean heat all hit record highs in 2021, according to an international science report.

Ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet will contribute at least 10 inches to sea level rise, regardless of human efforts to limit global warming, according to a new study that challenges the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) approach to measuring the phenomenon.

A 90% clean power target by 2035, $54 billion in new spending on clean energy and drought resilience, quicker approvals for power grid upgrades and clean energy projects, and a long-awaited phaseout for oil and gas wells near homes and schools are highlights of a climate package adopted last week by the California state assembly.

Seven youth are in court next week with an “obviously historic” lawsuit challenging Ontario’s climate plan under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Four years after Vancouver pledged to double street tree density in the Downtown Eastside by 2030, lethal summer temperatures and high rates of mental illness among residents show how necessary and challenging it will be to keep its promise.

Local partnerships are helping poorer households in the U.S. overcome cost barriers to installing solar panels, making them critical to the Biden administration’s plan to power five million U.S. homes with community solar by 2025.

As the fallout from civil war, the coronavirus, and the ecological chaos generated by global heating continue to hammer the Tigray region of Ethiopia, a World Food Programme assessment finds 29% of very young children in the region suffering from acute malnutrition.

Upstream from one of the United States’ most biologically diverse wetlands sits a coal ash pond leaking toxic metals into the groundwater, imperiling ecosystems and threatening drinking water supplies as climate change increases flood risks.

A clean energy advocate is questioning the vulnerability of Midwestern U.S. energy supplies after a minor electrical fire at a single oil refinery triggered a fuel supply crisis spanning four states.

The familiar ingredients of a warming world were in place: searing temperatures, hotter air holding more moisture, extreme weather getting wilder, melting glaciers, people living in harm’s way, and poverty. They combined in vulnerable Pakistan to create unrelenting rain and deadly flooding.

As a Canadian deep sea mining company pushes to consummate its 15-year “courtship” of the United Nations agency responsible for overseeing the equitable, ecologically safe extraction of seabed resources, a new investigative report is raising flags about the deal and its impacts.

After emerging from brutal July heat waves, the United Kingdom is headed for a harsh winter, with an 80% jump in energy bills expected to strain millions of households and businesses.

Denmark will increase its planned offshore wind capacity in the Baltic Sea to three gigawatts and hook it up to the German grid, a step toward weaning Europe off its reliance on Russian gas. When the new capacity is in place in 2030, it should be able to supply electricity to up 4.5 million European homes.

Floods, droughts, and major storms that wash out highways, damage buildings and affect power grids could cost Canada’s economy C$139 billion over the next 30 years, a new climate-based analysis predicts.

What’s considered officially “dangerous heat” in coming decades will likely hit much of the world at least three times more often as climate change worsens unless countries move faster to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study.

A new case study from Alberta shows that when regulators force the issue and producers of fossil fuels get serious, the companies can drastically reduce their methane emissions without any immediate reduction in their oil and gas extraction.

America’s petrochemical industry is pushing hard—and with considerable success—to have states reclassify the controversial “chemical recycling” of plastics as a manufacturing process to avoid environmental protection regulations that apply to waste disposal, says a new report by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).

Edward Buckles, Jr. was 13 when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and completely upended his life. Now he’s produced a film to catch up with other “Katrina Babies” who went through the same trauma.

Decrying a decision to exempt golf greens from watering bans in drought-stricken France, Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists have filled golf course holes on several courses around Toulouse with cement.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz signed on to a highly-anticipated but non-binding “hydrogen alliance” during a ceremony Tuesday in Stephenville, Newfoundland, capping three days of meetings that delivered new momentum for green energy development but mixed messages on the two countries’ future interest in liquefied natural gas (LNG) development.

Canada’s East Coast emerged this week as a hotbed of clean energy investment, with a high-profile green hydrogen announcement in Stephenville, Newfoundland by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz augmented—and possibly one-upped—by a new green ammonia project in Nova Scotia and talk of a third production plant in New Brunswick.

For redlined communities like one in South Memphis, Tennessee, a win for grassroots advocates against environmental racism can be quickly followed by new threats and greater losses.

Environmental advocates celebrated when U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law earlier this month. But the joy is tempered by lingering caution about a murky side bargain purported to streamline oil and gas projects, Energy News Network reports.

With extreme heat on the rise in many parts of the world, prison inmates are especially vulnerable to the health and safety risks that result, writes J. Carlee Purdum, research assistant professor at Texas A&M’s Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center, in a post for The Conversation.

A U.S. beermaking behemoth has come up with a unique way to promote one of its brands while also, perhaps, reducing the chances of an illegal campfire starting what could become a devastating wildfire.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is visiting Canada this week while his country faces a level of energy supply risk that many Canadians would have trouble imagining.

Freeport LNG has changed its tune on the cause of an explosion and fire at the company’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility in Texas, according to three trading sources and a document shared with Reuters.

Rural Pennsylvania is facing a continuing onslaught of new natural gas and petrochemical facilities on farmland, despite health and environmental threats that trouble locals.

The international dispute over Enbridge Inc.’s Line 5 pipeline belongs in federal court, a Michigan judge declared Thursday, dealing a critical blow to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s bid to shut down the controversial cross-border oil and gas line.

A Gwich’in-owned company in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, is building a one-megawatt solar farm that will reduce the community’s greenhouse gas emissions by 380,000 tonnes per year, cut annual energy costs by $1 million, and improve air quality by replacing local diesel generation.

Conservation advocates and experts are concerned a proposal for a Calgary-to-Banff passenger train is chugging along without addressing some key environmental issues in and around the national park.

A strong voice for small island states is taking the helm of United Nations climate negotiations with the appointment of Grenada’s former environment minister, Simon Stiell, as the new executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).

With the European Union striving to slash its demand for Russian gas by two-thirds by the end of this year and end all its dependence on Russian fossil fuels by 2027, there’s no path for liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Canada to help the continent meet its short-term energy needs, the International Institute for Sustainable Development concludes in a policy brief released Tuesday.

A new study is bringing new focus to the other form of human-induced climate change that could destroy civilization and all but extinguish the human race: even a “limited” thermonuclear war would darken the skies, blot out the sunlight, and dramatically reduce harvests for four or five years.

Releasing treated tar sands/oil sands tailings into the environment isn’t the only solution being considered to clean up the massive toxic ponds in northern Alberta, federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says.

As the Toronto Community Housing Corporation embarks on an ambitious retrofit that will benefit its tenants and the climate, residents sweltering in a privately-owned low-income building across town are battling a landlord threatening eviction if they turn on the air-conditioning.

In Louisiana—where the impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Ida are still rippling through communities—a non-profit and a seaport are demonstrating two distinct responses to climate change.

For the second year in a row, Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico will face cuts in the amount of water they can draw from the Colorado River as the Western United States endures an extreme drought, U.S. government officials announced Tuesday.

The United States needs a 45% drop in transportation emissions by 2030 to meet its climate pledges, and the country’s web of Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) branches is ideally positioned to help make that happen, says a new report from the Rocky Mountain Institute.

U.S. climate hawks declared victory, Congressional Democrats got credit for a newly pragmatic approach to climate action, community campaigners demanded more ambitious action, and attention shifted to implementation after the U.S. House of Representatives passed the country’s $370-billion climate and clean energy plan and sent it to President Joe Biden’s desk for signature.

Ferocious winds. Weeks of drenching rain and snow. Communities “ravaged beyond resettling” and irrigation dams at risk. Californians have always thought of earthquakes or, lately, wildfires when talk turns to the Big One. But new research points to the devastating impacts the state would face from a future superstorm driven by global warming.

Keeping global heating below 2°C will mean saving the East Antarctic ice sheet, the world’s biggest, from catastrophic melt, but state-of-the-art climate models may well be underestimating the rate of Arctic amplification, according to two new studies from polar climate researchers.

Several common over-the-counter drugs like Benadryl, as well as prescription medications for many common ailments, may increase the health threat of heat waves by affecting the body’s ability to maintain a safe temperature.

Reducing air pollution can improve crop yields by reducing the negative impacts of nitrogen oxides (NOx) on plant growth, scientists say.

The 385 wildfires during the Northwest Territories’ “summer of smoke” in 2014 were just the beginning. Researchers are now collecting the first field data on the “zombie fires” that have been smouldering underground and periodically reigniting ever since.

Sequoias are the largest trees on Earth, can live for more than 3,000 years, but are being increasingly affected in recent years by fire. But management of the giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park and elsewhere has shifted the vulnerability of the huge, mature specimens in the groves.

As the global push for a hydrogen economy accelerates, researchers are urging policy-makers to address new knowledge and fill in some profound data gaps, with recent studies revealing the considerable global warming potential of a fuel that many fossils see as their industry’s best hope for a second life.

Campaigners and local residents are using photos, video, and drone footage to document a Trans Mountain pipeline work site they say is impeding an early salmon run and leaving dead fish along the Coquihalla River in British Columbia.

As the burning of fossil fuels presents us with yet another summer of catastrophic impacts, the pressure is growing for pension funds to either phase out their oil, gas, coal, and pipeline assets or explain how they’re aligned with a safe retirement future for their beneficiaries. And Canada’s seventh-largest fund, the C$121-billion Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System (OMERS), may be getting the memo, three of its members write for Corporate Knights.

The reopening of a Newfoundland highway that had been closed for days because of raging wildfires provided hope Tuesday that much-needed supplies would finally arrive in stranded communities along the island’s south coast.

In the wake of last week’s shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and now G7 foreign ministers are urging Moscow to abandon the “suicidal” gambit of using the plant as a nuclear shield, and return it to Ukrainian control.

Water levels on the Rhine River could reach a critically low point in the coming days, German officials said Wednesday, making it increasingly difficult to transport goods—including coal and gasoline—as drought and an energy crisis grip Europe.

Baby boomers are often derided for not taking the climate crisis seriously enough, but many do feel responsible for the climate crisis, Nexus Media News reports. Some of them say they plan to dedicate the next stage of their lives to the climate movement.

After a marathon series of votes that began just before midnight Saturday, the United States Senate adopted a US$369-billion climate and clean energy plan Sunday afternoon, the country’s biggest-ever investment in climate action.

Heat waves and drought in France are adding to Europe’s energy crisis which began when Russian invaded Ukraine—but the decline in the French electricity production is not just a temporary blip. France’s nuclear industry is in serious trouble.

British Columbia and Alberta residents who endured last summer’s lethal heat dome say they feel fear, anger, and guilt in its aftermath, testifying to the urgent need for Canadians to take personal and political responsibility for climate change as extreme weather threatens the vulnerable.

Australia’s new government announced Thursday it plans to prevent development of a coal mine due to the potential impact on the nearby Great Barrier Reef.

Climate science has left the most severe outcomes of the climate crisis “dangerously unexplored,” says a team of experts who are calling for a new research agenda to prepare for worst-case scenarios.

Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity turned up the heat on swing-vote senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, a wider network of business groups stepped up to defend the deal, and environmental justice campaigners decried concessions to oil and gas as advocates absorbed the details of the $369.75-billion climate and clean energy package announced last week by Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer.

As scientists confirm that climate change made the United Kingdom’s most recent devastating heat wave “at least 10 times more likely,” a frontrunner to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson has invoked a notorious climate denier to defend her tax-cutting plan.

Solar power is keeping the Texas grid from crashing—despite a sharp increase in energy demand due to record-breaking high temperatures, says an energy expert.

Offshore oil and gas activities in Atlantic Canada are a genuine threat to the ocean ecosystem and exacerbate climate change, but the federal government is falling short in its plans to regulate that activity, writes Mark Brooks, senior specialist, oil and gas at WWF-Canada, in a recent post on the WWF blog.

Fifty years in the making, the United Nations’ recent overwhelming approval of a resolution recognizing the right to a “clean, healthy, and sustainable environment” is being heralded as a “victory for people and planet,” and a potential foundation for future legal action.

A scant eight months after Congo President Félix Tshisekedi joined other world leaders in a 10-year pledge to protect the world’s second-largest rainforest, the country is setting out to become “the new destination for oil investments” by auctioning off vast swaths of territory for drilling—including carbon-heavy peatlands and parts of Virunga National Park, the world’s most important gorilla sanctuary.

A campaign of misinformation is working to undermine a 30% fertilizer emissions reduction target in Canada’s next Agriculture Policy Framework (APF), says a national farmers’ coalition, contending that recently announced emissions policies actually don’t go far enough.

Even with La Niña’s cooling effect on the tropical Pacific, 2022 is set to be the fifth warmest year on record after a “scorcher” summer brought record-breaking heat across the northern hemisphere, especially in continental Europe, the United Kingdom, China, and parts of the United States.

As brutal, extended heat waves bring record temperatures across the United States and put millions of residents at risk of heat stroke and death, the government has launched a website aiming to support heat resilience amid a climate crisis.

Unusually warm weather has led to a spike in the steadily rising melt rate of Greenland’s ice sheet, leaving scientists alarmed by temperatures that ran 5°C higher than normal for July.

A new study finds that a full transition to electric vehicles in the United States could rein in future cropland expansion by cutting down the area needed to grow biofuel feedstocks.

Forecaster Warren Dean recalls feeling helpless as a deadly heat dome hovered over British Columbia last summer.

The global slowdown in human activity that occurred during the pandemic left some species healing and others hurting badly—a pattern offering complex and nuanced lessons about humanity’s impact on wildlife, say ecologists.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Nova Scotia last Thursday to promise green energy funds for the province, but he also said the idea of upgraded facilities to help ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe in the “very short term” is back on the table.

Offshore wind proponents are exploring “turbine reefs”—coral habitats planted on wind turbine bases—as a solution to the intersecting crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Two days of negotiations in Berlin last week yielded decent progress on how the world’s richest countries can compensate the poorest for the impacts of climate change. But there’s a lot more ground to cover to deliver a fair, effective result at this year’s UN climate summit in November, Bloomberg Green reports.

When Dutch lawmakers proposed measures to reduce climate-busting nitrogen emissions in agriculture, nearly 40,000 livestock farmers took to the streets. But multiple news reports got the story wrong in ways that amplify myths and delay climate action, and the same problem has been playing out in Canada.

If you’ve been hesitating to talk with your neighbours about climate change, a number of recent studies suggest they’d likely be up for the conversation—as long as you’re ready to really listen, not lecture, and keep the focus local.