Climate Litigation

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.

This month’s EcoA Tip highlights some useful data showing who Canadians tend to blame for climate change. The research comes from a national survey conducted by EcoAnalytics, a non-profit initiative that provides data, analysis, and guidance to strengthen Canada’s environmental movement.

Two years after it closed, and as it contemplates reopening, the Donkin coal mine in Cape Breton is still exceeding Nova Scotia’s greenhouse gas emissions cap without incurring any penalty, as it has since it began operations five years ago.

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.

Canada’s biggest fossil companies are lining up to dismiss the federal government’s new emissions cap for their sector as “very aggressive” and “almost unrealistic”, even as Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault hastens to offer them flexibility and an extended deadline to hit the long-awaited target.

Slamming climate action as “irrational” and “woke,” and positioning themselves as saviours of local economies, many Republican state treasurers have spent the last 18 months working to hobble and punish private and public sector efforts to wean the United States off fossil fuel dependence.

The Trudeau government has released a proposed frame for new Clean Electricity Regulations (CER) aimed at bringing the grid’s greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2035. Comments on the plan close August 17.

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 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.

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.

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.

With Canada lagging far behind Europe and the United Kingdom in tackling carbon pollution from aviation, the country’s upcoming 10-year climate plan for the sector must be developed with public input and enforce a 30% emissions reduction target by 2030, climate advocates say.

With the Canada Energy Regulator still months away from completing its next projection of the country’s future oil and gas production, climate policy watchers are cautiously optimistic that the analysis will chart a real course for a low-carbon future—and rooting for the CER to get its modelling right.

A new survey reveals that less than half of U.S. utility companies are taking steps to reduce emissions, despite roughly 90% citing that activity as a high or moderate priority.

Rebuffing the still widespread narrative that natural gas is a “bridge” fuel, a team of German energy economists is warning that the massive global expansion of gas infrastructure now under way puts both climate mitigation efforts and the transition to renewable energy at risk.

Vancouver City Council voted 6-5 late Wednesday afternoon to help fund a class action lawsuit to hold the world’s biggest fossil companies responsible for their local climate impacts, in what West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL) is hailing as a “historic win”.

An initial proposal for an oil and gas emissions cap that is a cornerstone of Canada’s 2030 climate strategy is generating glimmers of hope but early skepticism on all sides, after Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault opened public consultations on the plan earlier this week.

Britain’s High Court has declared the country’s net-zero emissions strategy “unlawful”, capping a successful court challenge by Friends of the Earth UK, environmental law charity ClientEarth, and the Good Law Project.

Rising clean energy investments and an expanding offshore wind sector are pointing toward a new renewable energy boom in India, as the falling cost of clean technologies paired with the global energy crisis siphons investment away from fossil fuels.

A detailed carbon reduction roadmap for agriculture will have to compete with a menu of other farm sector priorities at a high-level meeting in Saskatoon this week, as federal, provincial, and territorial ministers hash out the details of Canada’s next Agriculture Policy Framework (APF).

The United States’ largest public utility has issued a request for 5,000 megawatts of carbon-free energy before 2029—weeks after it was directed to reconsider plans for converting a retiring coal plant to a natural gas facility.

The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) is urging its member states to support the Escazú Agreement following the release of its final report last month, though some say there’s a lack of political will to implement the world’s first legally binding instrument to include provisions on environmental human rights defenders.

Fossil fuel burning by the United States, China, Russia, India, and Brazil caused more than US$6 trillion in economic harm to other countries between 1990 and 2014, according to a study team that set out to lift the “veil of deniability” that has shielded big emitters from “climate liability and national accountability” for their actions.

In what CNN is calling a “rare move”, more than 200 U.S. congressional staffers have written to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer demanding fast action on climate change and clean energy.

An organization representing eight Mi’kmaq groups in New Brunswick is joining a court challenge to the federal government’s approval of a new offshore oil project in Newfoundland.

Lake Michigan’s shoreline communities face “toxic risks,” says a new report, as extreme weather threatens to damage waste storage sites, nuclear power plants, and industrial facilities in the area.

Controversy over shipping routes in the Arctic Ocean is intensifying in light of recent climate science projections of sea ice melt.

Boris Johnson’s imminent departure as British Prime Minister is raising concern that the country will soon begin backsliding on its climate and nature commitments—even if those commitments consisted primarily of grand gestures, with relatively little practical action to back them up.

A Michigan regulatory panel said Thursday it needs more information about safety risks before it can rule on Calgary-based Enbridge Energy’s plan to extend the Line 5 pipeline through a tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac. The state Public Service Commission voted 3-0 to seek further details about the potential for explosions and fires involving […]

With extreme heat continuing to feed an increasing number of wildfires in northern Canada, Yukon authorities say some residents must prepare to evacuate within two hours of notification, while in the Northwest Territories a government with stretched resources has asked locals to do their part to prevent unnecessary fires.

A slow and steady approach to community consultation is opening the door to car-free cities in Europe, turning many urban dwellers’ initial, visceral resistance to the idea into support.

Two of Canada’s most influential cities stepped up this week with serious action on the climate emergency, with Calgary adopting a new emissions reduction strategy that includes a 2050 net-zero target and Ottawa endorsing the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The European Parliament looks likely to face legal challenges after voting yesterday to temporarily include natural gas and nuclear energy in its “taxonomy” of green energy technologies, potentially triggering billions of Euros in green investment for the two technologies.

Australia’s new government is putting climate change at the top of its legislative agenda when Parliament sits later this month for the first time since the May 21 election, with bills to enshrine a cut in greenhouse gas emissions and make electric cars cheaper, a minister said last Wednesday.

(Part 2 of a series) In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court decision limiting government regulation of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, climate analysts and campaigners are now turning to other legislative options, state and city governments, market forces, and ultimately the ballot box for solutions.

Looking to avoid power blackouts, California may turn to the one energy source it’s otherwise desperate to get rid of: fossil fuels.

As utilities and municipalities rush to conserve water so that no one is left thirsty, the Chicago-based Alliance of Water Efficiency is reminding policy-makers and the public that saving water also means saving energy and reducing carbon emissions.

A deeply radical ruling Thursday by the United States Supreme Court has set back but not ended efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the country’s fossil-fuelled power plants.

The 53 migrants who died from heat exhaustion in Texas after being abandoned in a sweltering tractor-trailer in 100°F heat were victims of vicious smugglers, inhumane laws, dire conditions at home, and a climate crisis that continues to pick off the world’s most vulnerable first.

The European Court of Human Rights said Thursday that a complaint against 33 countries filed by six young Portuguese climate activists will be examined by the tribunal’s top panel of judges, a move reflecting the case’s legal significance.

As early spring heat, increasingly dry summers, and high demand for water drain rivers and aquifers, municipalities across southern Quebec are sounding the alarm on what they know will be a long-term problem they currently have neither the data nor the tax base to resolve.

Marine stewardship, better methane management, and increased recycling figure prominently in Project Drawdown’s latest update on its already vast array of available, scalable, and financially viable climate solutions.

London has become the biggest city so far to endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty—a signal that experts say must be matched by action in the United Kingdom capital, where the London Stock Exchange (LSE) holds gigatonnes of embedded carbon emissions in listed companies.

The federal government is delaying new greenhouse gas emissions standards on gasoline and diesel by another year but will demand the oil and gas sector make bigger cuts to fuel emissions by 2030 given how much more money the companies are now making.

Less than a year after Petaluma, California, became the first city in the world to ban new gas stations, four others have passed similar policies, and at least six more are working on it, including the infamously car-centric Los Angeles—and the British Columbia town of Comox.

While global spending on agriculture has increased, critical support to help the sector build resilience and reduce emissions has decreased, an international agency concludes, even though effective policies are vital to avert a global disaster as food supplies are threatened by climate disasters and the war in Ukraine.

Public vigilance will be vital to preserving the well-being of the world’s greenbelts, which are needed more than ever but increasingly under threat, says a new report produced by the Ontario-based Greenbelt Foundation.

With the United States Supreme Court widely expected to turn its ideological wrecking ball on the country’s greenhouse gas emission controls, a group of climate scientists is pitching a new approach to regulating carbon as a toxic substance.

Canada has inched closer to passing its first-ever on environmental racism, after a private member’s bill passed second reading in the House of Commons last week.

The sudden rise in fertilizer prices since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have implications for global emissions by reducing how much of it farmers use in their fields. But experts say there’s more to the picture, with non-monetary variables like human capital making a big impact on farming decisions.

Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first elected leftist president, will take office in August with ambitious proposals to halt the record-high rates of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

As spiking inflation converges with an unequal post-pandemic recovery and an ever-escalating climate crisis, economists warn of widespread public pessimism about the future that is rapidly curdling into violent despair, especially among young men in many of the world’s poorer countries.

Ottawa is poised to release a new 10-year action plan to reduce aviation emissions—but the document has been crafted in close consultation with the industry, with zero public input planned, according to a recent op-ed.

In a shifting landscape of climate policies in Vietnam—as indicated by the recent arrest of anti-coal activist Nguy Thi Khanh—Japanese and Korean lobbyists are seizing the moment to push gas infrastructure into the country’s energy planning.

There’s a categorical difference between the raw materials of the clean energy economy and those from fossil fuels, writes Canary Media. But to be considered truly sustainable, renewable industries need to restructure to allow their products to be recycled at the end of their lives.

A scathing budget analysis and a new lawsuit alleging police harassment produced a day of bad news Wednesday for the Trans Mountain and Coastal GasLink pipelines in British Columbia.

The federal government is banning companies from importing or making plastic bags and takeout containers by the end of this year, from selling them by the end of next year, and from exporting them by the end of 2025.

Canadian steel giant Dofasco and United States aluminium titan Alcoa are trying to “green” their notoriously polluting industries, as climate and public health concerns escalate. But with technology and energy gaps are complicating the effort.

China’s wind and solar potential is a whopping nine times what it would need to become carbon-neutral, according to new research conducted to help policy-makers figure out whether they can expand the two technologies from combined capacity of 630 gigawatts to a target of 1,200 GW by the end of the decade.

The decision by mammoth California utility Pacific Gas & Electric to report avoided emissions due to its operations could be a progressive step towards climate accountability, but unofficially framing them as “Scope 4 emissions” could open the door to corporate greenwashing, experts warn.

A late winter vote by Toronto’s city council permitting homeowners to build a small secondary residence in their backyards is being received as a positive step to loosen a very tight rental market and reduce the city’s carbon-intensive, resource-gobbling tendency towards “tall and sprawl.”

Wet’suwet’en land defenders are facing the threat of criminal records for their idealistic fight to save precious sacred resources for all of us, writes guest author Susan Tanner.

With the Ford government situated firmly in office for a second term after an election that saw the lowest voter turnout in Ontario’s history, it’s likely that any future climate action will need to be led by the federal government, says Mark Winfield, a professor of environmental and urban change at York University, in a recent op ed.

Delivering “a message of hope and action,” a 93-member coalition of environmental groups, aquariums, and outdoor recreation companies is urging the Biden administration in the United States to recognize that restoring and protecting the world’s oceans can help limit global heating to 1.5°C.

An environmental law non-profit in Vancouver is inviting British Columbia municipalities to join a class action lawsuit to hold some of the world’s biggest fossil companies responsible for their share of the climate damages local communities are experiencing.

The British Columbia coroner’s report on last year’s 619 extreme-heat-related deaths in the province recommends building codes be updated to require cooling systems, but experts call that measure a “necessary but insufficient action” as Canadian summers grow dangerously hotter.

As Canada’s oilpatch scrambles to fill 2,000+ job openings created by shifting geopolitical and economic winds, new analysis is calling on governments to ensure workers aren’t unduly disrupted by the country’s climate pledges, and that clean energy jobs are available to groups that have been shut out in the past.

Two committees of the European Parliament voted earlier this week to exclude natural gas and nuclear power from the continent’s new green “taxonomy” for sustainable finance, in what one legal charity calls the “final nail in the coffin” for efforts to define gas—and its corresponding methane emissions—as a green energy option.

New legislation in Florida gives local governments added support to build resilience against rising sea levels, but stops short of taking direct action to slash state emissions.

Three major oil companies have cancelled plans to drill in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a sign that fossil fuel exploration is losing ground against United States environmental policy priorities.

Two Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have written letters to five public relations and advertising firms, seeking details on their efforts to boost the environmental image of fossil fuel companies.

Deploying different energy storage technologies can optimize the use of increasing but intermittent renewable energy sources and enable the United States to fully shift off fossil-fuelled generation systems by mid-century, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative (MITEI) study concludes.

An “unlikely” alliance of rural conservatives, environmentalists, and Indigenous groups is resisting the potential use of the eminent domain doctrine—a legal tool that allows private land to be seized for perceived public good—to build America’s largest carbon dioxide pipeline.

Unprecedented growth in Alberta’s renewable energy sector signifies a vital shift in the province’s energy economy, says the Pembina Institute, but another expert notes that Alberta’s power market also needs to be fixed—so that consumers aren’t overcharged for new grid infrastructure in the renewables boom.

British Columbians should expect their governments to hold fossil fuel companies accountable rather than passing the costs of climate change on to citizens, said Andrew Gage, Staff Lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law, in a feature interview just days before WCEL’s unveiling of the new Sue Big Oil campaign this Wednesday.

Regulators around the globe are using monitoring tools, from infrared cameras to satellites, to call out oil and gas companies for methane leaks that are often underreported by fossil producers, with one group of U.S. legislators concluding that fossils are not concerned that the technology could fail—but rather that it might succeed.

Public health doctor, pipeline protester, and renowned tree-sitter Tim Takaro doesn’t deserve four weeks in prison for violating a court injunction against blocking construction of the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, climate communicator James Boothroyd writes in an op ed for the Toronto Star.

With pressure continuing to mount on the aviation industry to get serious about its sizable carbon footprint, self-interested greenwashing remains the order of the day for many of the world’s major carriers, particularly European ones.

Europe’s decades-old renewable energy communities (RECs)—where a group of residents produce their own energy instead of buying it from a third-party—can offer policy-makers valuable lessons on how to match renewable energy targets with the goal of energy equity.

Despite the conventional wisdom that Russia stands to benefit from the climate crisis as warming temperatures open frozen lands for agriculture and natural resources, a new book paints a grimmer picture of the country’s future.

As a devastating drought threatens to dry up Utah’s Great Salt Lake, scientists warn of environmental apocalypses to ensue: millions of migratory birds will go hungry after losing their feeding grounds, and nearby residents will be exposed to dust clouds filled with arsenic.

With air pollution from fossil fuels responsible for up to 34,000 premature deaths in Canada, but the fossil industry still allowed to market its products as a boon to all, Ottawa must put an end to the spin-doctoring, says the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE).

Canada and California are kindred progressive spirits on climate change, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday, as he and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled a new blueprint for working together to stave off the worst consequences of a warming planet.

A new study maps out several pathways for the United States to fulfill its pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030, but authors say success depends on making big commitments—now.

The European Parliament on Wednesday threw its weight behind a proposed ban on selling new cars with combustion engines in 2035, seeking to step up the fight against climate change by speeding up development of electric vehicles.

Years after receiving multiple credible warnings about climate risk, Southern Company paid over US$62 million to organizations with a long record of spreading climate disinformation, a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Energy and Policy Institute has found.

The European Union’s plan to build new natural gas infrastructure is illegal under its own climate laws and won’t solve the fossil energy crunch triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, climate lawyers with London, UK-based Client Earth are arguing.

Environmental groups are warning that the 1,200-kilometre Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea could become an environmental hazard and a source of atmospheric methane if it is left to decay after stopping routine service and maintenance.

U.S. President Joe Biden has announced a two-year pause on a controversial tariff that was hobbling his country’s solar panel installation industry and imperiling his administration’s 2035 clean energy goal.

The increasing, intentional use of microplastics in pesticides and fertilizers has driven up their concentrations in soil to between four and 23 times the levels in marine environment, a group of U.S. environmental law experts warns.

While the Boris Johnson government congratulates itself for orchestrating the world’s first climate-neutral COP 26 climate summit, a sustainability report produced for Whitehall shows the Glasgow event was also the most polluting COP ever. And an accompanying report points to serious holes in that climate boast.

As the world invests billions in hydrogen fuel systems, scientists are urging vigilance against leakage, since its release into open air can trigger chemical reactions that significantly warm the atmosphere.

U.S. Republicans are being accused of “greenhouse gaslighting” after releasing a highly-touted climate plan that positions oil and gas extracted within the country’s borders as a climate solution.

Tesla has launched a demonstration project in Texas to show that its Powerwall battery owners can create a virtual power plant that would be able to feed energy back to the state grid.

Climate policy analysts and campaigners were looking to next steps last night as they absorbed the results of a provincial election that delivered a second legislative majority for Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government, after the climate emergency barely scratched the surface of the campaign agenda.

The British Columbia Prosecution Service said 15 people are being charged with criminal contempt of court following protests last fall over a natural gas pipeline being built near Houston in northern B.C. Those charged are alleged to have breached a B.C. Supreme Court injunction granted to the controversial Coastal GasLink pipeline in 2019 that prohibited […]

Calgary city staff have unveiled an $87-billion climate plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, deliver $80 billion in energy savings, and generate $60 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) by mid-century.

As the European Union rushes to wean itself off fossil fuels from Russia, it is exploring a “you collect/we buy” scheme to import more liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Algeria, while simultaneously addressing massive methane leaks in the North African nation’s facilities.

The recently-proposed HEATR Act could accelerate heat pump adoption in the United States, deliver cost savings for consumers, and attract support from both sides of the aisle, say two commentators from opposite sides of the country’s fraught political spectrum.

With long-term care workers and nursing assistants increasingly taking on the role of first responders during climate-driven disasters like wildfires and heat waves, California has launched a pilot project to train them for the new responsibility, while their union pushes for better wages and benefits to match the added work load.

The officially disclosed carbon footprints of Canada’s largest oil companies could balloon in size if tough new climate rules proposed earlier this year by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission come into effect.

A groundbreaking climate lawsuit—filed by a Peruvian farmer who alleges high-emitting German utility RWE knowingly contributed to climate change and the flood threat he faces—entered a decisive phase last week as German court officials travelled to Huarez, Peru, to examine melting glaciers.

The tiny south Pacific nation Vanuatu has declared a climate emergency, hoping to garner global support for its bid to have the International Court of Justice (ICJ) affirm that vulnerable nations must be protected from climate change.

With Ontario voters going to the polls tomorrow, the battle is still on to protect the province’s rural communities from urban sprawl, amped up by Ministerial Zoning Orders (MZOs) that have enabled the Ford government to rezone land without a municipal council’s permission.

While British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec all have clear momentum in their preparations for the global transition off carbon, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and especially Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland & Labrador need to put pedal to the metal, says a new report from the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI).

California is gaining pace on its clean energy targets, with five leases for a combined 380,000 acres of floating offshore wind development a step closer to being auctioned. The most populous state in the United States could serve as a “guiding light” in the energy transition, with research estimating that California could achieve 85% clean electricity by the end of the decade.

The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the Biden administration to use a higher estimate for calculating damages to people and the environment from greenhouse gas emissions, despite a challenge by Republican-led states.

The Ontario Energy Board sent minor shock waves through the province’s energy regulatory and municipal energy communities earlier this month with its refusal to approve the final phases of a $123.7-million pipeline replacement project in Ottawa proposed by Enbridge Gas.

Shouts of “about time” and “what took you so long?” met British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak’s announcement in Parliament of a 25% windfall tax on oil and gas profits, even as critics slammed simultaneous tax relief for oil extraction as a “bone-headedly stupid” move during a climate emergency.

Business-as-usual inaction on climate change could cost the world’s economy US$178 trillion by 2070, while a concerted and collaborative global push for net-zero could see $43 trillion in economic growth over the same period, says a new report from the Deloitte Center for Sustainable Progress.

A lethal combination of energy shortages and searing heat is poised to generate enormous suffering in many parts of the world this summer, especially for the poor, the elderly, and those living in Asia, southern Africa, eastern Europe, and the American Midwest.

To keep global heating below 2°C, the world must cut short-lived climate pollutants like methane, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), black carbon (soot), and low-level ozone in tandem with carbon dioxide emissions, says a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Forty years of largely unregulated growth have left 1.4 trillion litres of toxic tar sands/oil sands tailings sloshing around in “ponds” on the shores of the Athabasca River, devastating ecosystems and First Nations communities with neither plan nor budget for reclamation, says a new report from Environmental Defence.

Canada can achieve 100% zero-emission electricity by 2035 with an electricity system that prioritizes renewable energy, storage, energy efficiency, and interprovincial transmission and avoids the pitfalls of nuclear generation, fossil gas, carbon capture and storage, and carbon offsets, the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF) concludes in a modelling study released this week.

Colossal fossil ExxonMobil faced three financial and legal setbacks in 48 hours earlier this week, with shareholders demanding a formal audit of the company’s climate-related risk and a Massachusetts court rejecting its bid to dismiss a legal challenge to its climate transparency.

Environmental degradation and rising insecurity are twin crises that, together, threaten to turn back decades of economic and social progress while governments look away instead of taking action, a new report warns.

High River, Alberta says it has become the first municipality to endorse a community-developed policy that calls for a ban on new coal exploration and development in the Rocky Mountains.

The current linchpin in Canadian Big Oil’s plan to be carbon neutral by 2050 is its apparent success at reducing the emissions intensity of each barrel of oil produced, a claim that relies on a form of creative accounting that treats a tonne of emissions exported to another country as a tonne removed from the atmosphere.

British Columbia is changing its decades-old royalty system, the fees it charges companies to extract publicly owned oil and gas, in an effort to align with provincial climate goals, but still maintaining subsidy support for fracking wells.

Invoking economic opportunity while avoiding language that conjures reduced choice or increased regulation—including the polarizing term ‘climate change’—is a key strategy to get renewable power projects approved in Republican states, say the authors of a new study.

With many of the world’s cities, and especially their poorest citizens, facing increasing risks of drought and water shortages, faster emissions cuts and the long overdue establishment of an international fund for loss and damage are needed, says a new report.

The war in Ukraine is increasing gasoline prices in America despite the country’s status as the world’s largest oil producer, demonstrating why the United States “cannot drill its way to energy security” and should instead invest in renewables, writes Princeton University energy specialist Jesse Jenkins.

Newfoundland and Labrador’s oil industry regulator is releasing its 2022 call for bids on new offshore exploration licences.

After six power plants in Texas unexpectedly failed on Friday, causing a loss of about 2,900 megawatts of electricity—enough to power 580,000 homes—the state’s main grid operator is asking residents to conserve energy as they head into another weekend of record-high temperatures.

Police in the United Kingdom arrested 15 Greenpeace activists on Monday after they blocked a Russian tanker from docking in Essex. The campaigners said the tanker contained diesel fuel worth US$36.5 million that would fund Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Ontario voters concerned about global heating and other environmental problems will find no champion in Doug Ford, given his track record of catering to developers and heavy industry at the expense of the public good, warns a recent op ed in the Toronto Star.

A floating tidal energy project in the Bay of Fundy has been successfully connected to Nova Scotia’s grid, an undertaking that marks a milestone for Canada’s marine energy ambitions, say proponents, as the bay’s tidal resources could be harnessed for thousands of megawatts of clean energy in the future.

The extreme rainfall that triggered deadly flooding on the eastern coast of South Africa in April was made twice as likely and 4 to 8% more intense by climate change, concludes a new study by the World Weather Attribution Service.

California’s attorney general subpoenaed ExxonMobil late last month as part of what he called a first-of-its-kind broader investigation into the petroleum industry for its alleged role in causing a global plastic pollution crisis, allegations that the company called meritless.

The Trudeau government is talking up prospects for a new gas export deal to Germany involving a project that has already been proposed and withdrawn, a gas field in the Alberta foothills that has drawn scrutiny from provincial regulators, a financing scheme that will likely need federal backing to succeed, a route that may need U.S. regulatory approval, and a timeline that will likely be cut short by Europe’s rapid decarbonization plans, The Energy Mix has learned.

As they struggle with the immediate impacts of the flooding that has inundated HayRiver, Northwest Territories, anxious locals are questioning their municipality’s ability to respond in a climate-changed world where such disasters are growing more common and severe.

The international community is gearing for global market shocks after India, the world’s second-largest wheat producer, halted most wheat exports to protect its national food security, while advocates call for greater attention to the entire Southeast Asian region gripped by the same deadly heat wave.

Ontario Conservative leader Doug Ford is promising to install new charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) if his government is returned to office in provincial elections June 2, but has no plans to reinstate the EV rebates it cancelled when he took office in 2018.

With Ontario on the cusp of locking in its reliance on natural gas infrastructure, The Atmospheric Fund says emissions of climate-busting methane due to the province’s existing gas consumption are nearly double the amounts reported in Canada’s latest emissions inventory report.

The Biden administration is cancelling three scheduled oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, removing millions of acres from possible drilling as U.S. gas prices reach record highs.

The current narrative linking international human migration with increased security risks should not be accepted at face value, say experts, and policy-makers must focus on building cohesive strategies and support systems for migration within borders in anticipation of large influxes of climate refugees, a conference audience heard last week.

As distributed solar that put the technology closer to consumers, rather than at a centralized generating station, gains serious ground in the United States, distributed energy resources (DERs) are running into barriers in Canada, especially in Ontario.

Fossil fuel companies have access to an obscure legal tool that could jeopardize worldwide efforts to protect the climate, and they’re starting to use it. The result could cost countries that press ahead with those efforts billions of dollars.

Canadian Solar Inc. has announced an investigation to determine whether any workers at its photovoltaic plant in China’s Xinjiang region were hired against their will, though the company claimed in the past it would be impossible to determine if its supply chain used forced labour.

Canada’s collective failure to protect endangered boreal caribou herds and the forests on which they depend owes to a longstanding determination to put jobs and profits above the health and well-being of wildlife—a determination on particularly short-sighted display in Quebec, a new analysis concludes.

Environmental law charity Ecojustice launched a suit in federal court and local opponents staged a rally outside the St. John’s office of Norwegian state fossil Equinor as opposition to the controversial Bay du Nord offshore oil and gas megaproject entered a new stage.

Campaigners in Australia’s federal election are caught in a balancing act between appeasing the majority of citizens who want the government to prioritize climate goals—and seducing voters in a handful of constituencies where a major source of livelihood is the world’s dirtiest fuel.

A recent state court ruling in India that Nature has the same legal status as a human being is being celebrated for breaking with environmental law as usual, but also criticized as a missed opportunity to invoke the less legally vexing but still evolving principle of “legal naturehood”.

Alberta’s top court said Tuesday the federal government’s environmental impact law is unconstitutional, and Ottawa almost immediately announced its plan to appeal.

The Doug Ford government in Ontario is relying on a “known climate change denier” to defend against a youth-led constitutional challenge to its climate change policies, Toronto-based Environmental Defence Canada contends, citing one of two affidavits filed as part of the province’s response to the case.

Utilities across several states are warning of rolling blackouts caused by electricity shortages, as the United States braces itself for a summer of record-breaking heat waves that will drive up energy demand.

The changing agricultural landscape of Canada’s Northwest Territories is showing how rising global temperatures could affect food production, as growing conditions in the North become increasingly favourable, while heat waves and drought desiccate farmland in other regions.

Pushed by customer and shareholder pressure, and by the need to meet their own climate and sustainability goals, some Big Tech companies are finally making it easier for you to fix your phone, on your own, at home.

Lack of corporate transparency about climate-related exposure will allow the Canadian economy to continue growing in a “climate bubble”—until the bubble suddenly bursts, wreaking economic destabilization and damage.

A gas pipeline in Texas released enough methane in just over an hour in mid-March to equal the climate impact of running 16,000 internal combustion cars for a year.

A Texas state program to allocate federal aid for rebuilding after Hurricane Harvey unfairly overlooks Houston’s Black and Hispanic neighborhoods after it designed a competition-based application process that favoured smaller, predominantly white counties, community advocates say.

North Carolina is making a bad bet on biogas and biomass projects that contaminate the environment, raise environmental justice concerns, and “crowd out real clean energy solutions,” Inside Climate News reports in a recent exposé.

A Wisconsin Indigenous band is seeking a permit to immediately evict the Line 5 pipeline from its land, creating a second shutdown risk for a piece of fossil infrastructure that has already faced closure threats from the Michigan government, as well as other Indigenous and environmental groups.

Carbon dioxide pipelines supporting a fast uptick in carbon capture and storage (CCS) could threaten the safety of countless communities across the United States, say experts, due to federal pipeline safety regulations that are woefully inadequate to cover the “flurry of multibillion-dollar CO2 pipeline proposals” now eligible for tax credits.

Thirteen years ago, Canada began promising to scrub out all inefficient fossil fuel subsidies from the government’s books. But first, Ottawa has to decide what it means by “inefficient”.

“Collective complacency” in the face of the climate crisis and other human-caused catastrophes is setting the world up for 560 disasters a year by 2030, according to a new UN report that says humans are overly optimistic and have made short-sighted decisions so far.

Mining of lithium in South America’s Atacama Plateau creates “severe” impacts for local communities and the environment that need to be addressed as production surges to meet growing demand for electric vehicle batteries and other power storage.

Hawai’i is set to become the first state in the United States and the world to ratify the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT), a proposed global plan to manage the phaseout of coal, oil and gas.

The “deep entanglement” between Canada’s 10 biggest pension funds and a roster of 76 fossil fuel companies raises serious questions about whether fund managers and trustees are looking out for the best interest of the beneficiaries who depend on them, according to a scathing, 40-page report released yesterday by Toronto-based Shift Action for Pension Wealth and Climate Health.

Canada’s electricity system will have to get bigger, cleaner, and smarter to help power the country’s net-zero transition, the Canadian Climate Institute concludes in a collection of three reports issued Wednesday.

More than 85 investment firms, academic organizations, and environmental groups from across Canada and around the world are lending their support to a climate-aligned finance bill introduced by Sen. Rosa Galvez (ISG-Quebec) in late March.

The City of Hamilton’s decision to freeze its urban boundary has become an issue in Ontario’s provincial election, with the incumbent Progressive Conservatives denouncing it as municipal overreach and the opposing New Democrats defending it as local democracy in action.

National politics and Russia’s war in Ukraine are impeding efforts to negotiate multi-billion-dollar financing packages to help poor countries get off coal. 

A wholesale switch to electric vehicles in the United States could save more than 100,000 lives and more than US$1.2 trillion in public health costs by 2050, says a new report by the American Lung Association.

BC Hydro is falling short of its obligations to fund habitat conservation under the Fish & Wildlife Compensation Program, according to a brief from the B.C. Wildlife Federation and the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre that asks the provincial auditor general to look into the matter.

Most Canadian politicians still don’t understand the most important thing about fossil fuel subsidies, writes UNB’s Jason MacLean: Eliminating all financial support for the fossil fuel industry is a necessary first step in completely phasing out fossil production and consumption in Canada.

State, local, and federal emissions policies already stand to cut United States transportation emissions in 2030 by 19% from 2019 levels, but an expanded “all-in” climate strategy could boost the cuts to 34% by the end of the decade, new analysis finds.

A growing body of research published over the past two decades has found that most reservoirs, including those used for hydropower, aren’t emissions-free. Despite the green reputation of hydropower among policy-makers, some reservoirs emit significant amounts of methane, along with much smaller amounts of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide.

A hundred European Union cities, and 12 non-EU ones, have pledged to achieve climate neutrality by 2030, and will get support from the EU to make it happen.

After persuading his colleagues to support free transit for under-19s and low-income seniors, Victoria city councillor Ben Isitt is working hard to push his city to join the 100 or so municipalities around the world that already make public transit free for all riders.

South Melbourne, Australia-based Montem Resources has announced plans to pursue a renewable energy project at its Tent Mountain site in Alberta’s Crowsnest Pass instead of its planned coal mine, but some environmental advocates remain suspicious of the company’s plans.

In a U.S. state where coal is still king, solar energy is beginning to come on strong, as West Virginia gradually begins to prepare itself for the transition off fossil fuels.

Canada’s latest climate plan makes “overly optimistic” about the role of hydrogen, fails to map out a just transition for fossil fuel workers and communities, relies on “aspirational numbers” for carbon capture and storage technology, and may ultimately fall short of the country’s 2030 emission reduction target, Environment and Sustainable Development Commissioner Jerry DeMarco warned Tuesday.

Binding, science-based climate targets, respect for Indigenous sovereignty, and investment in a “thriving, regenerative, zero-emissions economy” are the top demands from more than 125 organizations that were scheduled to launch the Ontario Climate Emergency Campaign at the provincial legislature later today.

The Biden administration is scrapping old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs, speeding an ongoing trend toward more efficient lighting that officials say will save households, schools, and businesses billions of dollars a year.

United States laws that make plastic manufacturers bear some responsibility for recycling their ocean-clogging products are actually inhibiting progress, say experts, and bear the fingerprints of plastic lobbying groups that are determined to prevent effective restrictions.

Electric vehicle sales grew almost 60% last year but they need to pick up the pace even more to hit the new federal sales mandates expected by the end of this year.

The federal and Newfoundland and Labrador governments are in a squabble over who will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties on the Bay du Nord offshore oil development, even as Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault declares the controversial megaproject may be the last ever approved in the province.

With pre-election announcements in full swing ahead of a June 2 vote, Ontario has shifted its net metering regulations to make it easier for homeowners, farms, and businesses to generate income from rooftop solar or other renewable energy systems by selling surplus electricity back to the grid.

U.S. President Joe Biden has gone back on his campaign pledge of “no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period,” with the Interior Department announcing plans earlier this month to auction off drilling leases on 145,000 acres of public lands in nine states.

The largest private land conservation project in Canadian history is unfolding in northern Ontario.

Europe has a dirty secret at sea,” say researchers whose investigation found that the liquified natural gas (LNG) ships touted as “green” by policy-makers are actually methane-leaking carbon bombs.

A new liquified natural gas (LNG) project advertised as the “lowest-emission LNG export facility in the world” is set to proceed in British Columbia, but environmental groups say the facility will increase fracking in the northeastern part of the province, with adverse effects on water, climate, wildlife, and human health.

California has unveiled a plan to ban new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, a move that is expected to set a bar for the auto industry and propel electric vehicle (EV) policy in the United States.

Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions fell by 66 million tonnes during the first year of the pandemic. But not all of those gains likely survived the economic recovery in 2021, and only a small share of the emission cuts came from the Alberta tar sands/oil sands, according to the government’s latest National Inventory Report released late last week.

Less than two months shy of the next provincial election, the Doug Ford government has quietly watered down the climate plan it announced with great fanfare in 2018, while claiming it’s still on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% from 2005 levels by 2030.

Canada’s new Emissions Reduction Plan is “reckless”, doesn’t meet the criteria of credible net-zero emissions plans, and lacks any vision of a future capable of inspiring Canadians to change their lives, says Jason MacLean, assistant professor of law at the University of New Brunswick.

In what campaigners are calling a world first, Quebec’s National Assembly voted Tuesday afternoon to ban new oil and gas exploration and shut down existing drill sites within three years, even as the promoters behind the failed Énergie Saguenay liquefied natural gas (LNG) project try to revive it as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Germany’s energy security and climate policies leapt forward in a recently-announced Easter Package that outlines ambitious transition targets as the country struggles to unyoke itself from Russian oil.

Canada’s new 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) is a comprehensive, ambitious, and transparent policy roadmap for achieving Canada’s climate goals. It uses credible modelling to demonstrate a path to 2030 targets. It’s a big step forward. It’s also not enough, write Dave Sawyer, principal economist, and Dale Beugin, VP of research, at the Canadian Climate Institute.

A company hoping to develop coal in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains says it will decide by the end of June whether to convert its open-pit mine proposal into a renewable energy project.

The Alberta government has released recovery plans for two herds of threatened caribou in the province’s north that it says will bring the amount of usable habitat on their ranges up to the level required by a deal signed with Ottawa, The Canadian Press reports.

The federal cabinet administered what one critic called a “slap in the face” to climate science with a decision today to approve the massive Bay du Nord oil and gas megaproject off the Newfoundland coast.

Fossil fuel companies are using stock buybacks to profit from Russia’s war on Ukraine—at the expense of consumers, workers, and just about everyone else, says a new report released by advocacy groups just as the United States holds hearings to scrutinize oil and gas profits.

The European Union must shift its farming policies to prioritize regenerative agriculture and expand the practice to a landscape scale, says a new report by the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC).

A price tag in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, and a project scope akin to that of the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1800s. That’s the scale of the massive investment in Canada’s electricity grid that experts say will be required in the near future, as the phaseout of fossil-fired power generation combined with a rapid increase in demand for electricity puts never-before-seen demands on this country’s electrical grid.

Land management for forestry and agriculture can support global climate targets if it is backed by strong domestic and international policies, but will need to consider a “wide range of landowners” and “billions of consumers in diverse contexts,” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes in yesterday’s report on climate change mitigation.

If global warming is to be limited to 1.5°C by 2050, the world’s transport emissions need to fall by 59% from 2020 levels, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), calling for “transformative” changes in the sector in its latest mitigation report.

International cooperation on climate action has grown since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to yield modest progress, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but stronger collaborations are needed to overcome barriers in countries with limited capacity.

Lands held by Indigenous peoples and other local communities (IPLCs) sequester emissions equivalent to about 30% of the 2030 carbon reduction targets in four countries that are the focus of a new study by the Forest Declaration Platform.

Provincial and territorial energy efficiency programs are failing to reach the 20% of Canadians who are struggling to cover their home energy costs, but federal investment can stop those households from being left behind in the push for net-zero emissions, Efficiency Canada says in a new report.

Amid pushback from industry groups and both Republican and Democratic politicians, U.S. energy regulators scaled back plans late last month to consider how natural gas projects affect climate change and environmental justice.

New vehicles sold in the United States will have to average at least 40 miles/64 kilometres per gallon of gasoline in 2026, up from about 28 mpg, under new federal rules unveiled Friday that undo a rollback of standards enacted under Donald Trump.

Canada’s oil and gas industry says it’s been left in the dark about exactly how much it will be required to reduce its emissions in the coming decade, after the federal government’s new Emissions Reduction Plan made it clear that fossils must bring their carbon pollution down 42% from 2019 levels by 2030.

The inclusion of “anthropogenic removals” in the legislation establishing Canada’s climate goals leaves ministers with “considerable latitude” to develop plans that lean on negative emissions technologies (NETs) instead of prioritizing emissions reductions, legal experts warn.

When lifetime ownership costs are factored in, electric vehicles (EVs) are often significantly cheaper than their fossil counterparts, according to a new report by Clean Energy Canada.

With midterm elections looming, the success of U.S. President Joe Biden’s push for Congress to approve $45 billion in climate funding in the White House budget is expected to set the tone for future domestic and international climate policy.

As it seeks to decarbonize the grid, Canada’s “balkanized” power sector has much to learn from longstanding Nordic co-operation, policy advisor Shawn McCarthy writes in a recent case study for the Canadian Climate Institute.

The fossil and transportation sectors get a relatively free ride and electricity producers do the most to decarbonize in the much-anticipated 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan released yesterday by Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault.

Canada’s National Research Council has quietly released a new set of national building codes that show how provincial and territorial governments—which actually hold authority for codes and standards—can make new buildings net-zero ready by 2030.

A bankruptcy hearing that could determine whether more than C$200 million in oilpatch environmental liabilities wind up on the public dime will have to go back to court.

Experts say renewables will be a critical component of India’s climate plan—which rightfully sets its net-zero deadline two decades later than wealthier high-emitters like the United States and Europe—as the country balances urgent climate adaptation alongside pressing support for food security.

An agreement by a Michigan public utility to expand its low-income efficiency programs and study how the energy burden of vulnerable households can be reduced is being hailed by environmental justice advocates as a crucial move towards fighting energy inequality.

Weeks away from Canada’s first federal budget announcement following a natural disaster-ridden year, governments and private investors will need to collaborate to fund climate adaptation and prevention at the municipal level, a Globe and Mail op ed asserts.

European environmental law charity ClientEarth is launching a legal action against colossal fossil Shell and its board of directors, and inviting other Shell shareholders to join the fight.

Bitcoin miners claim they can help stabilize Texas’s vulnerable electricity grid, but they can also be a drain on utilities as they cash in on the state’s cheap energy.

Federal financial institutions and federal-regulated entities would have to line up their investment activities with Canada’s climate commitments under Bill S-243, the Climate-Aligned Finance Act introduced in Senate yesterday by Sen. Rosa Galvez (ISG-Quebec).

Canada’s long-awaited 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) must set legally-binding limits for the oil and gas industry that are “coherent with national targets”, since “other sectors would be required to do even more for Canada to achieve its target” if fossils failed to pull their weight, the country’s Net-Zero Advisory Body said in its official advice to the government earlier this week.

The controversial Bay du Nord exploration project off the coast of Newfoundland is running into new headwinds in Ottawa, with Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault busting the myth that new oil and gas wells can help Europe free itself from Russian supplies and the NDP questioning how any new fossil project can align with the government’s climate promises.

The damage to public groundwater resources in Minnesota from missteps during construction of the Line 3 oil pipeline is more severe than previously known, state environmental regulators said earlier this week.

The federal Liberals and New Democrats must make good use of the next three-plus years of political stability by embracing more decisive climate action than they promised in the supply and confidence agreement (CSA) unveiled yesterday, leading climate policy analysts have told The Energy Mix.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has adopted a new plan to force all publicly traded corporations to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and the climate risks they face.

A group of civil organizations has called on Ottawa to reject the Bay du Nord offshore oil venture in Newfoundland and Labrador, recalling the province’s gutted cod fishing business as a lesson on the long-term impacts of environmental devastation.

Canadian cities already have the authority to take bold action on climate solutions, and the world’s best municipal climate leaders have shown how other communities can cut their emissions and embrace climate and environmental justice, former Toronto mayor David Miller told an online community meeting in Ottawa Monday evening.

The Biden administration’s climate plans have one less constraint after a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling stayed a Louisiana District Court’s order preventing agencies from considering the social cost of carbon.

An announcement that Germany’s emissions increased last year has put pressure on the country to expand its renewable energy infrastructure or risk delaying its climate goals.

Business leaders from the United States and Canada are again wading into the fray over Line 5, citing the energy crisis brought on by Russia’s war in Ukraine to accuse the state of Michigan of dragging its heels to keep the controversial cross-border pipeline in a state of legal limbo.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is suffering another mass bleaching due to high ocean temperatures.

Economy ministers across the European Union have adopted the world’s first carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), bringing the continent one step closer to a levy on imports in emissions-intensive industries like electricity, steel, cement, aluminum, and fertilizer.

An activist investor group in Montreal is calling on Canada’s seven biggest banks to conduct annual “say-on-climate” votes to let shareholders pass judgement on their climate risk strategies. The Globe and Mail says the banks aren’t keen on the idea.

More new electric vehicles hit the road in Canada last year than ever before but the growth is nowhere near what is happening in Europe.

Experts are suggesting nature-based solutions for coastal erosion while Newfoundlanders look to save homes and cemeteries from rising sea levels, but Canada’s coastal risk management policy is not keeping pace with the impacts from climate change.

Canada’s mining industry is pushing back against proposed tougher federal coal effluent rules, saying the draft regulations aren’t practical or backed by science.

U.S. fossil companies’ efforts to defend climate denial messaging as “free speech” are part of a decades-long strategy of “idea advertising”, environmental journalist and podcaster Amy Westervelt writes for the Guardian.

Two recent reports have raised questions about California’s carbon cap-and-trade program, concluding that the system worsens environmental justice disparities and could undermine progress towards the state’s emissions reduction targets without effective policy reforms.

Virginia’s Republican governor is going all out to withdraw from a multi-state carbon reduction initiative, even after the program netted the state US$74.2 million for flood protection and low-income energy efficiency programs.

The water woes of Rio Verde Foothills, an unincorporated community in the outer orbit of Phoenix, are being interpreted as a symptom of Arizona’s remorselessly thirsty sprawl and a harbinger of far worse to come.

An April 30 deadline for the federal government’s just transition consultation, announced as part of a virtual roundtable last Thursday, is being taken as a sign that Ottawa will be getting started on legislation to help fossil fuel workers and communities navigate the shift off carbon, more than two years after then-environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s pre-pandemic promise to make it happen.

Like wind and solar, tidal and other forms of marine power consume no fossil fuels and produce no carbon emissions. Freelance writer Alexander Gelfand dives into why tidal has been so slow to develop.

The Trudeau government may be left with big gaps in its 2030 climate strategy if it delays its oil and gas emissions cap until 2023, or holds off on setting tough carbon reduction targets for the industry, according to news reports this week.

As power loss at Chornobyl’s power plant became a prominent media concern over the last few days, experts responded that their immediate concern wasn’t a nuclear meltdown, but rather Russia’s continuing control over Ukraine’s nuclear sites.

Advocates are urging Ottawa to fully and rapidly phase out all financial support for fossil fuel development—at home and abroad, abated and unabated—to correct Canada’s abysmal record of being the worst climate performer of all G7 nations since the landmark Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015.

Sixteen Indigenous communities along the Coastal GasLink pipeline route have signed option agreements for an equity stake in the project, a move that one Indigenous leader hopes will set a precedent for future energy infrastructure projects in Canada.

Philanthropic organizations must step up and fund climate adaptation, say advocates, in light of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report warning that vulnerable people and regions are enduring the worst of the climate crisis due to systemic inequalities.

Following a dramatic pledge yesterday to reduce its dependence on Russian gas by 65% this year and phase out all Russian fossil fuels “well before 2030”, the European Union is under pressure to replace gas from all sources through a rapid transition to energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Hawaiian households with rooftop solar will soon be rewarded for sharing electricity with the grid at peak hours, while in California, three utilities are pushing to make solar-equipped homes pay extra fees as their monthly power bills go down.

As a Canadian expert urges governments to address the climate impacts of their trade and investment policies in light of a grim report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a small shift is already under way in the United States, with Republicans extolling the benefits of carbon border adjustments to thwart Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Alberta government is renewing and expanding its restrictions on coal mining in the province’s Rocky Mountains in response to a strong public outcry and two reports written following extensive consultations on the issue.

The prospect of a new tax credit for carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technology in this year’s federal budget has battle lines drawn across the Canadian climate community, with sharp disagreements on whether fossil companies should qualify for taxpayer support and a former federal environment minister maintaining it’s time for them to pay their own way.

Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault has announced a 40-day delay, until April 13, in his assessment of Norwegian state fossil Equinor’s plan to extract up to a billion barrels of crude from its proposed Bay du Nord oilfield off the coast of Newfoundland.

With new satellite data revealing that some United States oil and gas operators are flaring nearly double the volume of natural gas they self-report to regulators, observers are urging the Biden administration to keep its COP 26 pledge to regulate methane emissions.

Investor-owned utilities in the United States have underestimated the financial risks of stranded assets, future carbon costs, and penalties for inaction, which will cost them more than the expenses of rapidly decarbonizing now, according to a Deloitte report.

New Brunswick’s provincial utility and its government must work together to ensure that low- and middle-income households can afford energy retrofits, a new report says, in a critique of the province’s failure to make energy efficiency accessible to all.

Canada cannot realistically expect to hit its current target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40 to 45% by 2030, and should instead set a more modest goal while leaning heavily on the electricity and fossil fuel sectors for deep carbon cuts during this decade, a new think tank report concludes this week.

Canada’s push to require energy efficiency audits for houses before they’re listed for sale is drawing flak from the real estate sector, even if it’s a basic building block for the amped-up energy efficiency effort the country needs to pursue.

Bronzeville, the epicentre of Chicago Black history and culture, will soon be home to America’s first community microgrid, after concerted efforts resolved the question of how to smoothly connect and disconnect a microgrid serving more than 1,000 buildings from the larger state electricity system. 

With climate dangers coming on faster, ranging wider, and hitting harder than scientists previously expected, and major impacts unavoidable in the immediate future, a United Nations agency report described by observers as “grim”, “harrowing”, and “unflinching” is looking at how humanity can adapt to climate risk, how much climate adaptation can achieve—and how climate justice has moved to the centre of the conversation.

Finance emerged as a key enabler of climate change adaptation, and the concept of loss and damage took its place as an “important topic in international climate policy”, in sections of this week’s mammoth, 3,675-page assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Despite efforts by the Biden administration in the United States to strike loss and damage language from this week’s climate impacts and adaptation report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is standing by its finding that the world’s poorest and most marginalized are unfairly paying the highest price for human-driven climate change.

Ecosystem-based adaptation strategies are essential to address climate disruptions to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and aquaculture, but with the caveat that incautious strategies can have “maladaptive outcomes” that further harm the most vulnerable groups, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says in its report this week on climate impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability.

With the occupation of Ukraine by Russian military forces, observers fear for the safety of the country’s nuclear installations, beginning with the infamous Chornobyl station—shuttered but still radioactive—but also extending to nuclear waste facilities, and operating reactors responsible for over half of the country’s electricity generation.

British Columbia’s emissions reduction plan is “based on a fantasy” of bountiful hydroelectric power, and should be replaced with an effort to expand solar and wind capacity while promoting energy efficiency, a new report urges provincial policy-makers.

The United Kingdom’s highly-esteemed Committee on Climate Change has declared that ministers must have the final say on further North Sea oil exploration, despite finding that new drilling permits will harm the country’s climate reputation while doing little to combat domestic energy prices.

BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, has reaffirmed its friendship with the oil and gas industry in the face of new Texas legislation blacklisting financial firms that boycott fossils.

Countering ongoing concerns about the heightened fire risks associated with electric vehicles, a new study shows that EVs are less likely to be set ablaze than either gas-powered or hybrid vehicles.

The European Union has adopted legislation that gives member states until 2024 to implement a new road toll system that offers discounts of at least 50% on distance-based road tolls as an incentive for zero-emission trucks.

A recent appearance by Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray at an industry annual meeting has set off a sea squall of controversy, with harvesters and unions warning of the “dire social and economic effects” of federal catch limits and Murray stressing her interest in keeping fish stocks sustainable in an era of climate disruption.

The operator of the contested Dakota Access pipeline in North and South Dakota has failed in its effort to sidestep a new environmental review that could ultimately shut it down, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

A study of climate migration in Mexico and Central America says big cities in the region must prepare for a huge influx of internal climate migrants, with lessons for all metropolitan areas on how best to accommodate new arrivals seeking better climate conditions and livelihoods.

United Kingdom fracking firm Cuadrilla will seal its two shale gas wells in Lancashire forever, six months after the country’s oil and gas authority called for the wells to be shut down.

As climate awareness increases in the United Kingdom—and energy prices soar—interest in either building or retrofitting to the Passivhaus green building standard is skyrocketing.  

Emissions of climate-busting methane from fossil fuel operations are 70% higher than national governments are reporting, according to the 2022 edition of the Global Methane Tracker released this morning by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The world currently spends at least US$1.8 trillion each year—or 2% of global GDP—on subsidies that are driving ecosystem destruction and species extinction, according to a new study.

The Biden administration is delaying decisions on new oil and gas drilling on federal land and other energy-related actions after a federal court blocked the way officials were calculating the real-world costs of climate change.

Pressure is beginning to build against Newfoundland and Labrador’s latest offshore oil venture, the 200,000-barrel-per-day Bay du Nord offshore oil development, with provincial NDP leader Jim Dinn speaking out about the climate costs of the proposal and demanding a just transition for the province’s oil and gas work force.

A stunning news report suggests IKEA is heavily entangled in a “delirium of deforestation” that is ravaging much of the last of Europe’s old-growth forests in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains.

There’s virtually no chance private financiers will put up billions of dollars to complete the Trans Mountain pipeline without a federal loan guarantee, analysts say, despite Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s assurance Friday that “no additional public money” will be invested in a project whose cost has now ballooned from $5.4 to $21.4 billion.

As Brazil mourns the more than 120 people killed and nearly as many missing after mudslides hit the mountain city of Petropolis, experts are warning that the country’s land use policies are severely deficient in the face of extreme weather.

Alberta will toughen its emissions standards and close a loophole that would have allowed tar sands/oil sands companies to gain financially from their emissions.

The U.S. regulator responsible for natural gas infrastructure is taking a closer look at whether new projects are needed and how they affect people and the environment, and floating new policy to address the climate impact of fossil gas development.

WWF Italy is hailing a recent amendment to include the safeguarding of ecosystems and biodiversity in the Italian constitution as an “important first step” in harmonizing the country’s legal system with European and international environmental principles.

There are viable, cost-effective shipping alternatives to the contested Line 5 pipeline in Michigan—both for crude oil and natural gas—according to a new report that contradicts Enbridge’s claim the pipeline is a critical piece of infrastructure for refineries in Michigan, Ontario, and Quebec.

Iron ore prices surged after China announced it will allow its huge steel industry an extra five years of rising carbon emissions, a move revealing to investors that the nation would be prioritizing its fragile economy.

Corn-based ethanol may have worse environmental impacts than fossil fuels, according to a new study that concludes the United States biofuel program has failed to meet emissions targets while delivering negatives impacts on water quality, land used for conservation, and other ecosystem processes.

Describing a “hostile” workplace rife with racial slurs and pervasive discrimination, California’s civil rights regulator is suing Tesla for “severe” racism against Black workers at its Fremont factory near San Francisco.

Nearly four years after Premier Doug Ford’s government abruptly cancelled Ontario’s cap-and-trade program, furious investors have filed two lawsuits against the province for money lost on emissions credits.

As United States officials offer road safety policies to address the 20,000 car-related deaths in just the first half of 2021, transport experts say streets will be much safer for everyone only when the government invests more in public transit and rethinks old patterns of land use.

Anxiety is running high in Newfoundland and Labrador as the province waits on a federal decision about a proposed offshore oil project about 500 kilometres east of St. John’s.

The federal government has bowed to provincial and industry lobbying in weakening proposed standards for coal mining effluent, critics say.

Every day, thousands of miners, loggers, farmers, and ranchers burn or cut roughly 10,000 acres of forest, working to satisfy a growing demand for the resources it contains. They are tiny cogs in a sprawling global machine that has destroyed nearly one-fifth of the Brazilian rainforest over the last 35 years.

The influential right wing lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is driving a surge in new state laws in the United States to block boycotts of the oil industry.

The conflict between using land for renewable energy and protecting land essential for biodiversity isn’t as severe as it sometimes seems, according to new research that recommends policy and regulatory controls as a solution.

The Boris Johnson government in the United Kingdom is neglecting science and will “torpedo climate action” if it follows through with plans to approve six new oil and gas fields in the North Sea, advocates say.

Frustrations are mounting over the slow pace of recovery in wildfire-ravaged Lytton, British Columbia, though hopes remain that the town will be rebuilt into a sustainable, resilient community, despite the loss of its property tax base.

Embroiled in a drought that has afflicted the region since May, communities in the American West and High Plains are finding new solutions for water conservation, but exploitative corporate practices can thwart their progress.

New battle lines are being drawn between Canada’s financial regulators and Alberta’s oilpatch over the country’s climate change policies.

A letter released today by more than 150 non-government organizations is calling on 27 financial institutions led by the Royal Bank of Canada to pull their investment dollars out of the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

Authorities trying to determine the cause of December’s devastating wildfire in Colorado are considering whether the culprit was an underground coal fire.

As British Columbia responds to recent extreme weather events with pledges to “harden” their communities against climate impacts, sustainability expert Alison Shaw is urging them to “build back softer,” in ways more attuned to nature’s determined ebb and flow.

In the vast peatlands of Ontario’s James Bay Lowlands, a new region-wide approach to considering the potential impacts of northern mining development is dangerously close to sliding completely off the rails. And it may take Canada’s new “activist” Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault with it.

Ontario has announced a new voluntary registry for businesses that want credit for using non-emitting electricity, both renewable and nuclear.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday extended tariffs imposed by Donald Trump on most solar panels imported from China and other countries. But in a nod to his efforts to combat climate change and boost clean energy, Biden loosened restrictions on some panels used in large-scale utility projects.

A group of six young people who developed thyroid cancer in the years following the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster are suing the plant operator for US$5.4 million, citing irreparable damage to job prospects and higher education hopes as a result of exposure to radiation from the plant.

Five environmental organizations have followed through on a threat to sue Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and the provincial government for defamation.