Canada and the climate crisis: a state of denial 3

Environmental Commissioner Jerry DeMarco in another of the five audit reports (see last report for two of the other reports) on Trudeau's environmental policies that "the country’s carbon pricing system is disproportionately hard on Indigenous communities and small businesses and not hard enough on the biggest emitters."

The Syncrude Canada upgrader plant in the Athabasca oil sands near Fort McMurray, Under Trudeau's climate change plan the big emitter's are not paying their fair share Alberta © Ben Nelms/Bloomberg

“As is recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada and many international organizations, effective carbon pollution pricing drives changes in consumer and producer behaviour that in turn reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions,” he says in a written statement. “Carbon pricing is therefore essential if Canada is to finally succeed in significantly reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.”

But he says Canada’s system hasn’t done enough to ensure the carbon price is applied fairly to the biggest industrial emitters.

There is not enough sunlight exposing how well provincial systems compare to the federal benchmark, he adds, and grant money to help small businesses become more energy efficient has been slow to roll out.

Most provinces have their own pricing systems for big emitters that Ottawa has approved. But the audit says there aren’t enough controls to ensure they are on par with what the federal benchmark would do, and the cost to industries varies widely between provinces.

DeMarco says the weakness of the big industrial system is undermining the “polluter pays” principle of carbon pricing.

In general, heavy industries pay the carbon price only on a small portion of the emissions they generate rather than on all of the emissions produced by the fuels they purchase. That plan attempts to prevent economically devastating impacts on companies that could compel them to move elsewhere, while still ensuring there is an incentive to cut their emissions.

A fuel purchase levy is how consumers and smaller businesses pay the carbon price. Consumers get rebates from the federal government to offset those higher costs, while still having an incentive that they would save money by cutting their fuel use.

DeMarco’s report also says the government is both “unprepared and slow off the mark” responding to the need to help more than 170,000 fossil fuel workers prepare for a transition to a cleaner energy economy.

The government has been promising legislation for what it calls the “just transition” for more than two years but has yet to deliver it. A just transition plan is a critical part of getting public buy-in for moving away from fossil fuels and toward lower-emitting and zero-emitting sources of energy.

DeMarco’s audit says there is no implementation plan and no monitoring or reporting system to support this transition.

He also says a transition program created for coal-industry workers relied heavily on existing unemployment training policies without good measurements of how effective they are.

DeMarco adds Infrastructure Canada isn’t requiring or receiving reliable information about the climate impact of the projects it funds. He says the original climate lens to be applied to new infrastructure projects in 2018 was watered down in 2021, and no longer can accurately account for the impact the projects will have on climate action.

https://www.vicnews.com/news/carbon-pricing-too-hard-on-indigenous-group...

Heat waves in India are breaking records for this time of the year as a result of global warming. With the resulting high demand for air conditioning "India is facing the worst electricity shortage in more than six years as Delhi saw its hottest April in 12 years on Thursday at a maximum of 43.5C." (https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/india-heatwave-2022-de...) Further contributing to the problem is drought conditions.
In fact "A new UN report has warned that climate change repercussions for India will be irreversible if New Delhi doesn't take drastic measures by 2030. ... The report finds that water is central to adaptation. ...According to the report, more than 40% of India's population will face water scarcity by 2050, and at the same time the country's coastal areas, including big cities like Mumbai, will be affected by rising sea levels" (https://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-why-it-is-now-or-never-for-india/a-...)

jerrym wrote:

 

IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES

Image caption, 

India's weather department has issued a severe heatwave warning as temperatures soar, throwing millions of lives and livelihoods out of gear.

Quote:

India's weather department has issued a severe heatwave warning as temperatures soar, throwing millions of lives and livelihoods out of gear.
But many experts say India is now recording more intense, frequent heatwaves that are also longer in duration.
Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, agrees that several atmospheric factors have led to the current heatwave. But adding to all that, he says, is global warming.
"That's the root cause for the increase in heatwaves," he says, adding that more research is needed to link climate change to other, less extreme weather fluctuations.

Fossil fuel companies in the United States want to build more  pipelines allegedly needed for the carbon capture and storage process. This would require 30,000 to 65,000 more miles of pipelines, according to experts mentioned in the article below, which would be a staggering increase in pipelines as there are only 5,ooo miles of pipelines in the US. The rupture of such a system would be catastrophic according to the experts. Those same companies operate in Canada  and the Trudeau Liberals say carbon capture and storage (CCS) is central to their climate change plan and will even allow Canada to extract much more oil and natural gas because we can store the carbon with CCS. 

Considering what has happened with the Trudeau Liberal purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline and its cost ballooning from the original purchase price of $4.5 billion to $21.4 billion (https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/trans-mountain-says-pipeline-ex...) and the fact that carbon capture and storage being a utter failure with the largest CCS project in the world in Australia shutting down after five years because of it failure to capture anything more than a tiny fraction of emissions (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/12/australias-only-w...), what could possibly go wrong with this? Taxpayers get out your wallets for another financial and environmentally disastrous boondoggle.

Companies want to build pipelines to capture and store carbon, but a new report warns that regulators aren’t prepared. Photo by Getty/Grist

A year ago, a different kind of pipeline project was announced in the Midwest. Most pipelines pick up oil or gas from a well and deliver it to customers who burn it, emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This one would run almost in reverse. A company called Summit Climate Solutions planned to capture carbon dioxide from ethanol refineries in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, and then transport it via the proposed pipeline to a site in North Dakota where the CO2 would be buried deep underground. 

In the months since, two more companies have proposed similar CO2 pipeline projects in the Midwest, and another wants to expand an existing pipeline in the South. The sudden boom is being driven by federal and state incentives for carbon capture and storage, or CCS, as well as a new low-interest loan program for CO2 pipelines passed by Congress last year and general support from the Biden administration to grow the “carbon management” industry in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. 

But as the number of pipeline proposals multiplies, a new report commissioned by the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group, warns that CO2 pipeline regulations aren’t up to the task of keeping communities safe. 

“The country is ill prepared for the increase of CO2 pipeline mileage being driven by federal CCS policy,” writes report author Richard Kuprewicz, an independent pipeline safety consultant hired by the Pipeline Safety Trust. “Federal pipeline safety regulations need to be quickly changed to rise to this new challenge, and to assure that the public has confidence in the federal pipeline safety regulations.” ...

Today, there are just over 5,000 miles of CO2 pipelines in the U.S., most of which deliver CO2 to oil fields, where companies pump it underground to stimulate oil production. But researchers assert that capturing carbon dioxide from industrial facilities and sucking CO2 directly from the air will be essential tools to tackle climate change. In order to deliver that CO2 to sites where it can be permanently sequestered underground, they estimate the U.S. could need between 30,000and 65,000 miles of pipeline. ...

The most concerning finding in the new report, according to Bill Caram, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, is that regulations for assessing the potential impacts of a CO2 pipeline rupture were not developed specifically for CO2. ...

The report warns that such an event would be difficult for people in the vicinity and first responders to detect, since CO2 is colorless, odorless, and nonflammable.

The residents of Satartia, Mississippi, learned this the hard way in 2020 when a CO2 pipeline ruptured and a plume of CO2 settled over the town, causing people to feel dizzy, nauseous, and disoriented. Many passed out. Forty-nine people went to the hospital. PHMSA has yet to release an incident report detailing the cause of the rupture. “If I had to pick one finding of the report that would keep me up at night as a public safety advocate, it’s that one,” said Caram.

https://grist.org/regulation/co2-pipelines-are-coming-a-pipeline-safety-...

Trudeau's climate plan is a mess of contradictions proclaiming greenhouse gas reduction goals while increasing fossil fuel production. 

Canada’s approach to climate is a hot mess of incoherence and contradictions, and it is fundamentally at odds with what the IPCC demands of us, writes columnist Seth Klein.

He skilfully avoided what was wrong

Without saying what was right,

And never let his on the one hand

Know what his on the other hand was doing …

 

Postpone, postpone, abstain …

 

Truly he will be remembered

Wherever men honour ingenuity,

Ambiguity, inactivity, and political longevity.

 

Let us raise up a temple

To the cult of mediocrity,

Do nothing by halves

Which can be done by quarters.

— F. R. Scott from a poem written to mark the death of Prime Minister Mackenzie King ...

 It [the poem] brilliantly captures the essence of the Liberal Party for decades. And those last two lines not only speak to the spirit of our government’s current approach to the climate crisis, they may prove to hit with uncanny accuracy the mathematical mark with respect to our greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Should such quarter measures be lauded for at least getting us on the right path, for achieving what seems possible in the present? Pundits and government validators who see matters through the “realistic” lens of politics are inclined to do so. The problem with this view is the climate does not give a damn about the art of the politically possible; it is governed by the laws of nature, and there is no bargaining to be had with those laws. 

For those of us who follow the climate file closely, the last few weeks have been rough, marked by one step forward two steps back, and by the release of pivotal reports that provide a study in contrasts and contradictions. ...

In late March, the Trudeau government released its 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan(ERP), its updated plan to reduce Canada’s GHGs 40 per cent by 2030 after 20 years of Canada’s GHG emissions plateauing at a historic high.

 Too many of the target dates in the plan are back-end loaded to the post-2025 period, leaving them politically vulnerable. Tellingly, the ERP was unveiled at Globe in Vancouver, an annual business and environment conference whose sponsors include fossil fuel corporations and financial enablers Shell, Suncor, FortisBC, Enbridge and RBC. Most troubling, the new federal plan also projects that Canadian oil production will continue to increase by 22 per cent — or 910,000 barrels per day — over this decade.

Then, in early April, we saw the release of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, urging the world to undertake immediate and deep cuts to GHG emissions before the goal of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 C slips out of reach. Speaking in response to the IPCC release, UN secretary-generalAntónio Guterres condemned high-emitting governments and corporations for “adding fuel to the flames.” In a speech where he appeared to lose patience, Guterres declared, “Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness”...

But Guterres’s message clearly failed to penetrate the federal cabinet. Two days later, when faced with its first major post-ERP test, in a move more dissonant than many could fathom, the Trudeau government gave approval to the Bay du Nord deep-water oil extraction project off Newfoundland. If Equinor, the Norwegian company behind the proposal, chooses to proceed (a final investment decision is expected in the next year), the project could produce a billion barrels of oil over its lifetime, or an annual amount equivalent to adding seven million gas cars to the road. ...

 

At this late hour in the climate emergency, with the International Energy Agency and IPCC telling us our global carbon budget cannot abide any new fossil fuel projects, our government’s Bay du Nord decision amounts to an act of arson.

Proponents claim the project is “low-carbon” and will be “net-zero” by 2050. Don’t be fooled. This dubious claim relates only to emissions at the point of extraction. In reality, the majority of GHG emissions (over 80 per cent) are generated at the point when that oil is burned. Those combustion emissions (what’s technically known as “Scope 3” emissions) are what matter to the climate. ...

When governments send contradictory messages by approving new fossil fuel projects, they are effectively telling the public the emergency isn't real. But it is, with the current heat wave in India and Pakistan just the most recent devastating reminder. ...

Follow the Money

annual federal spending on climate mitigation amounts to about $2.9 billion this year and will rise to just over $4 billion in each of the following two years. ...

As Mertins-Kirkwood and Lee note, that may sound like a lot of money, “but it only accounts for 2.8 per cent of total federal spending and just 0.4 per cent of GDP this year. Given the scale and urgency of the climate crisis, it’s not nearly enough. Climate economist Nicholas Stern has proposed governments spend two per cent of GDP on climate-related investments. For Canada, that would be about $56 billion this year.” The Trudeau government isn’t merely spending a little less than it should, it is off by at least a four-fold magnitude.

The most underdeveloped elements of both the ERP and the budget are with respect to “just transition,” a point reinforced by the latest report from the federal environment commissioner who has rebuked the government for its failure to deliver on this promise. The money in the budget designated for this purpose amounts to a rounding error. Yet in the absence of a robust and compelling just transition plan for fossil fuel workers and the communities that rely on those jobs, the government feels trapped into making odious decisions like the Bay du Nord approval. ...

Most revealing, the largest single “climate” spending measure in Budget 2022, clocking in at $2.6 billion over the next five years and $1.5 billion annually after that, is the new tax credit for carbon capture and storage (CCS), the bulk of which will go to oil and gas companies even as they rake in record profits ($34 billion in 2021). This represents a huge and brand-new fossil fuel subsidy from a government purportedly committed to ending such subsidies. 

The CCS tax credit lays bare the government’s strategy. When the Liberals broke new ground in the last election by promising an oil and gas emissions cap, the intention was never to actually curtail fossil fuel production, but rather, to focus solely on dubious efforts to lower extraction and production emissions by means of offsets and CCS — while lavishing public dollars on some of the richest companies on Earth to assist them in extending their production activities. ...

The uncomfortable conclusion is this: Canada’s approach to climate is a hot mess of incoherence and contradictions, and it is fundamentally at odds with what the IPCC demands of us. As Canada’s National Observer columnist Barry Saxifrage has documented, Canada’s record is that of a rogue super-emitter.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/05/05/opinion/canada-versus-ipcc-d...

The extreme record heat wave in India is already threatening its grain crops. Since India exports a considerable amount of wheat normally this is making the situation even more perilous for low-come nations around the world that depend of grain imports as prices rise and global grain supplies are low due to the war in Ukraine. This means other grain importing countries will be hoping the crops can be save from the heat wave.

Farmer trying to quench his thrist and save his wheat crop in the record heat wave in India.

Record-breaking heat wave in India exposing hundreds of millions to dangerous temperatures is damaging the country’s wheat harvest, which experts say could hit countries seeking to make up imports of the food staple from conflict-riven Ukraine.

 

With some states in India’s breadbasket northern and central regions seeing forecasts with highs of 120 Fahrenheit this week, observers fear a range of lasting impacts, both local and international, from the hot spell. 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told U.S. President Joe Biden earlier this month that India could step in to ease the shortfall created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The two countries account for nearly a third of all global wheat exports, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that the conflict could leave an additional 8 million to 13 million people undernourished by next year.

India’s wheat exports hit 8.7 million tons in the fiscal year ending in March, with the government predicting record production levels — some 122 million tons — in 2022.
But the country has just endured its hottest March since records began, according to the India Meteorological Department, and the heat wave is dragging well into harvest time.

The heat wave is hitting India’s main wheat-growing regions particularly hard, with temperatures this week set to hit 112 F in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh; 120 F in Chandigarh, Punjab; and 109 F in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.

Devendra Singh Chauhan, a farmer from Uttar Pradesh’s Etawah district, told NBC News that his wheat crop was down 60 percent compared to normal harvests.

“In March, when the ideal temperature should rise gradually, we saw it jump suddenly from 32 C to 40 C [90 F to 104 F],” he said in a text message. “If such unreasonable weather patterns continue year after year, farmers will suffer badly.”
Harjeet Singh, senior adviser to Climate Action Network International, said the heat wave would have a “horrific” short- and long-term impact on people in India and further afield. 

″[Wheat] prices will be driven up, and if you look at what is happening in Ukraine, with many countries relying on wheat from India to compensate, the impact will be felt well beyond India,” Singh said. ...
“I don’t know if India will be able to meet export demand because it is going to create issues in domestic supply, as wheat prices go up,” Damodaran added. “India cannot replace Russia and Ukraine with its wheat exports, mainly because of this heat shock.” 

Monika Tothova, an economist with the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, was more measured. She said although the heat wave would likely cause some “localized crop losses … a significant impact on the world market is not implicit.” 

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/27/heat-wave-in-india-threatens-residents-a...

In the US, the fossil fuel firms are threatening the public school system in some states by saying fossil fuel production must continue or there won't be enough money for public education. 

Could that happen in Canada?

An April 6 Facebook post by the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association underscores the idea that public education in the state is dependent on the oil and gas industry. 

Here in New Mexico — the fastest-warming and most water-stressed state in the continental United States, where wildfires have recently devoured over 120,000 acres and remain uncontained — the oil and gas industry is coming out in force to deepen the region’s dependence on fossil fuels. Their latest tactic: to position oil and gas as a patron saint of education. Powerful interest groups have deployed a months-long campaign to depict schools and children’s wellbeing as under threat if government officials infringe upon fossil fuel production. 

In a video spot exemplary of this strategy, Ashley Niman, a fourth-grade teacher at Enchanted Hills elementary school tells viewers that the industry is what enables her to do her job. “Without oil and gas, we would not have the resources to provide an exemplary education for our students,” she says. “The partnership we have with the oil and gas industry makes me a better teacher.”

The video, from September last year, is part of a PR campaign by NMOGA called “Safer and Stronger.” It’s one of many similar strategies the Guardian tracked across social media, television, and audio formats that employs a rhetorical strategy social scientists refer to as the “fossil fuel savior frame.”

“What NMOGA and the oil and gas industry are saying is that we hold New Mexico’s public education system hostage to our profit-motivated interests,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “There’s an implied threat there.”

Last year, New Mexico brought in $1.1 billion from mineral leasing on federal lands — more than any other U.S. state. But the tides may be turning for the fossil fuel industry as officials grapple with the need to halve greenhouse gas emissions this decade. Before mid-April, the Biden administration had paused all new oil and gas leasing and the number of drilling permits on public lands plummeted.

In response, pro-industry groups are pushing out what some experts have called “sky is falling” messaging that generates the impression that without oil and gas revenue, the state’s education system is on a chopping block. NMOGA did not respond for comment.

Since February, NMOGA has flooded its social media pages with school-related motifs like buses and books, but also with images of empty, abandoned classrooms accompanied by reminders about how the state’s schools “rely on oil and gas production on federal land for more than $700m in funding.” Elected officials have parroted this framing. “This is a matter of critical importance to all, but especially to New Mexico’s schoolchildren, who have suffered greatly during the pandemic,” state representative Yvette Herrell co-wrote in the Santa Fe New Mexican, in February. ...

But tax, budget, and public education funding experts say linking the federal leasing pause to a grave, immediate risk to public education is deceptive.

“Any slight reductions stemming from pauses or other so-called ‘adverse’ actions would have zero immediate effect on school funding overall, much less whether students get the services they need to recover from the ill effects on their learning from the pandemic,” said Charles Goodmacher, former government and media relations director at the National Education Association (NEA), now a consultant. The sale of leases does not lead to immediate drilling, he said. Often, companies sit on leases for months or years before production occurs. ...

The commissioner of public lands, Stephanie Garcia Richard, herself a former classroom teacher, has been at the forefront of efforts to diversify the New Mexican economy since she was elected to manage the state’s 13 million acres of public lands in 2018. ...

Balderas said. But four of the state’s major solar farms are severely behind schedule. Balderas, who has accepted $49,900 in campaign contributions from oil and gas over seven election cycles, said that a sudden disruption in new oil and gas leasing such as the blanket moratorium the Biden administration originally proposed in January last year, would have an outsized impact on New Mexico’s most vulnerable. ...

In some states, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts, state attorneys general have taken it upon themselves, as the leading law enforcement and consumer protection officials, to sue oil and gas companies for deceiving consumers and investors about climate change through their marketing. Balderas’s office said it was not actively pursuing that strategy.

https://www.desmog.com/2022/05/06/oil-gas-industry-new-mexico-public-sch...

The Tyee notes that the "Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), whose Vancouver office is shown here, proposed a ‘new climate bargain’ that assumes oilsands output rises while emissions drop". RBC own documents say “There isn’t a moment to lose” if we are to keep the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. However,  RBC also needs fossil fuel production to rise for the fossil fuel producers to be profitable and pay off RBC. The transition away from fossil fuels is a "ticking time bomb" for Canada's bank with the possibility of the fossil fuel companies defaulting rising by almost 200% and nearly 400% for the more costly oilsands projects if the transition occurs in the next 20 to 30 years and drops oil below $50 a barrel for an extended period. After all, RBC is the largest banker of oilsands production in the world and the world's fifth biggest banker of fossil fuels. 

This puts RBC in total sync with Trudeau's goals because in 2021 with nine years to go until 2030  "Trudeau said Canada will reduce emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030" and reach net zero by 2050.(https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-climate-emissions-40-per-cent-1...). This is amazing since, with fourteen years to go before 2030 ""In 2016, Justin Trudeau ratified the Paris Agreement with a commitment to reduce emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030." (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fact-check-ghg-emissions-1.6167437) But this has been the way its been since 1993 for the Liberals under Chretien, Martin and Trudeau. When you fail to meet your target make a bolder, larger cut over a shorter period and sell it with all the earnestness you can muster despite what even your own hand-picked auditor generals and environmental commissioners say. 

In 2018 Auditor General Michael Ferguson concluded  the Trudeau Liberal government "is likely to miss the 2020 Copenhagen target as well". (http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_otp_201803_e_42883.html)

In April 2019 Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand concluded "Canada is not on track to hit its 2030 target,". These targets were actually those of the Conservative Harper government. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-commissioner-julie-gelfand-...)

IIn 2022 current Environmental Commissioner Jerry Demarco's report concludes "the country may not be able to reach its 2030 emissions reductions targets because the federal government's current plan is based on "unrealistic" assumptions about the role hydrogen will play in the energy mix in years to come." (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-commissioner-emissions-redu...)

Trudeau's own government data shows that the Liberals do not plan to reach peak oil production until 2039 and then only drop slightly from this high level by 2050. But hey, the voters, or at least many of them, are still buying his climate change plan. 

The graphs below are from the Canada Energy Regulator, part of the Trudeau government. The dark dotted lines of the graphs clearly show that both total oil and  total natural gas production climbing steadily upward until 2040 and then levelling off at a very high level. 

Figure R.7: Total Crude Oil Production Peaks in 2039 and then Declines through 2050 in the Evolving Scenario

https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/canada-energy-future/2020/res...

So the Royal Bank of Canada is following Trudeau's climate change plan of claiming to produce more oil while reducing emissions, or more likely Trudeau is following the fossil fuel and banks' climate change plans. And of course the mainstream media gave it favourable coverage. 

Royal Bank of Canada, whose Vancouver office is shown here, proposed a ‘new climate bargain’ that assumes oilsands output rises while emissions drop.

In late April, Royal Bank of Canada put out a report claiming that oil and gas production in Canada could rise by 500,000 barrels per day without compromising the country’s climate targets. This would be possible, the financial institution explained, by capturing the emissions from oilsands projects and burying them underground.

The largest and most influential bank in Canada deems this a “new climate bargain,” and under its terms federal and provincial policy-makers must lay off on environmental regulations that limit the oil and gas industry’s growth. 

RBC warned politicians to “avoid emissions policy that restricts or cuts near-term production.”

The technology for capturing emissions is highly expensive and not widely in use. Which has some wondering why RBC is so adamant that its version of the future is essential.

A hint may lie in an inconvenient fact omitted in the RBC report and the favourable media coverage it received in national media outlets like the Financial Post and Globe and Mail.

Under a scenario where Canada makes relatively conservative progress towards its Paris Agreement climate goals, the risk of oilsands projects defaulting on their financial obligations skyrockets.

Under a scenario where Canada makes relatively conservative progress towards its Paris Agreement climate goals, the risk of oilsands projects defaulting on their financial obligations skyrockets. 

RBC is not only aware of this ticking financial bomb, it’s actually attempted to quantify the potential damage. That’s according to internal projections it helped produce along with the Bank of Canada and federal regulators. 

And even while measuring and acknowledging those risks, RBC provided $5.4 billion worth of financing for the oilsands last year alone. 

The contradiction that grips RBC — public pressure to signal awareness of the climate threat and internal pressure to finance projects that hasten the crisis — is shared by other banks, who also stand to lose big if their oil investments tank in the shift to a low-emissions economy.

“The transition risk for RBC and the other Canadian banks from climate change is massive,” Matt Price, director of corporate engagement for the advocacy and research organization Investors for Paris Compliance, told The Tyee. ...

RBC’s need for oilsands production to rise is tied to another must. In order for oilsands projects to remain profitable while producers invest in technology that lowers greenhouse gas emissions, the price of oil needs to stay above US$50 per barrel for the next several decades. 

That’s what’s required “to meet investor expectations,” RBC recently calculated in its April report. “While that has largely been the case since 2005, uncertain future demand means that may be a high bar,” the bank acknowledged. Though oil is above $100 per barrel now, it wasn’t too long ago that the pandemic caused it to go below $0 per barrel. 

If that $50 per barrel bar isn’t met consistently for the next 20 or 30 years, RBC knows that the financial consequences could be severe. It recently collaborated with five other Canadian financial institutions, along with the Bank of Canada and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, to calculate what would happen to the oil and gas industry and other sectors if “starting in 2020, collective global action is taken to reduce emissions toward a target of below 2 C by 2100.”

This was described in a report from last year as a fairly conservative scenario, where “the pace of technological change is moderate.”

If that is what happens in Canada and globally, the probability of conventional oil and gas extraction projects defaulting by 2050 rises by nearly 200 per cent. Oilsands projects, owing to their much higher production costs and carbon emissions, face an even bigger risk. Their probability of defaulting rises more than 400 per cent. 

RBC knows that addressing the climate emergency requires massive changes to our fossil fuel-based energy system. “To have a 50-per-cent chance of meeting a 1.5 C warming target (the stretch goal for the Paris Agreement), the world will need to leave 60 per cent of the world’s remaining oil and gas, and 90 per cent of its coal in the ground,” RBC wrote last month. “There isn’t a moment to lose.”...

Yet RBC itself has directed more than $206 billion worth of financing towards fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement was signed in late 2015 — and it is currently the world’s leading banker of oilsands expansion in Alberta.

Those calculations come from the report “Banking on Climate Chaos” that was released in late March by Stand.earth, as well as several other environmental organizations. It found that RBC is globally the fifth biggest banker of oil, coal and gas, beating out massive financial institutions such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.

“It’s not like they’re one of these enormous global players that are funding every oil and gas player around the world,” said Alison Kirsch, a research manager with the Rainforest Action Network, which worked on the Climate Chaos report. “They have a very North American focus and still they make it up to the fifth biggest level.”

RBC frequently tries to burnish its climate credentials by pointing out that it has pledged $500 billion towards “sustainable finance” by 2025. But even some of this investing is going towards fossil fuels. A sustainability linked loan it made last year went to Enbridge, builder of the Line 3 pipeline, a cross-border oilsands project that was heavily opposed by Indigenous and environmental organizations in Minnesota, as well as Democratic politicians like U.S. member of Congress Ilhan Omar.

For this reason, campaigners with several environmental groups recently requested that Canada’s Competition Bureau open an investigation into whether RBC is intentionally trying to mislead Canadians by releasing reports and other public materials saying it is committed to meeting the country’s climate goals. ...

 

To climate experts like Richard Brooks, director of the climate finance program at the advocacy group Stand.earth, RBC’s current climate strategy is merely an excuse to keep fossil fuel profits flowing as long as possible.  “RBC says it wants to achieve net zero by 2050,” he said. “But you scratch slightly below the surface, not very far, and you can see that they have no plan to get there.”

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/05/04/Green-Pivot-From-Oilsands-Banks-C...

United Nations meteorologists are warning that "The average global temperature could exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2026". On the other hand, despite the ever worsening effects of global warming, the Trudeau Liberals just approved a $10 billion loan guarantee for the Trans Mountain pipeline that is in addition to the annual $78 billion subsidies for the fossil fuel industry that were described in the last post while proclaiming they are aiming at reducing emissions by 45% by 2030. 

• 

  When the global community agreed in 2015 to limit warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, it was not clear that climate change would progress as rapidly as it has. The impact is evident in damaged ecosystems. In the Marmara Sea in Turkey, heavily polluted by wastewater, 60% of all animal species have disappeared.

Global temperatures have a 48% chance of reaching 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels at least once within the next five years, according to new findings from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).  

The 1.5-degree Celsius threshold is the lower limit of warming agreed in the Paris Agreement and exceeding this long-term will lead to potentially irreversible damage, such as rising sea levels, and both the warming and acidification of oceans.  

Surpassing the threshold in just a single year does not violate what was agreed in Paris, but it shows that the earth is perilously close to exceeding this global average temperature on a long-term basis, according to scientists at the United Nations agency.  

"When we reach 1.5 degrees, it doesn't mean that the Paris Agreement is over. It just means that it's a clear signal that efforts really need to be redoubled to reach what we call net-zero or a carbon-neutral economy," Maxx Dilley, WMO's Deputy Director for Climate told DW.  

Dilley said that if the world acts the temperature will come down, although not overnight, urging people not to lose hope.  

"It doesn't mean that if the temperature is 1.5 degrees up for a year that we should give up. On the contrary, it means that more urgent efforts are needed to keep the temperature increase rate from rising and also to try to try to bend the curve back downwards again."

While WMO scientists said that any surge over 1.5 degrees Celsius may be temporary, there is a clear trend towards rising temperature.  

In the five years from 2015, the chances of temperatures breaching 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming in a single year was close to zero compared to one-in-two today.  

And now, there is a 93% chance that at least one of the years between 2022 and 2026 will be the warmest on record — surpassing the 2016 high, which was exacerbated by the El Nino climate pattern. The average temperature over those entire five years is also 93% more likely to be higher than the previous five years.  

From 2022 to 2026, the annual mean global near-surface temperature is forecast to be between 1.1 degrees and 1.7 degrees higher than pre-industrial levels.  

These new figures were reported in the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, which combines highly accurate climate forecasts from around the world.  

"I've been involved in climate forecasting now for 25 years. I've never seen skill levels, anything like what we have in terms of the ability of these models to accurately predict global average annual temperature," WMO's Dilley said.  ...

Extreme weather patterns, including deadly heat waves and storms, will be far more frequent, droughts become more common, water becomes scarcer, species will die off as biomes change and biodiversity suffers, and the risk of chain-reaction-like emission events increases with the melting of permafrost and the reduction of forests.   

"We're seeing already glimpses of what a climate change world is going to look like. And I hope that is a wake-up call for everyone, policymakers and the public alike, that we need to do something," Dilley said. 

https://www.dw.com/en/global-warming-world-has-50-50-chance-of-hitting-1...

"Nearly one in eight people on Earth are enduring a relentless, lethal heat wave that is stretching into its third week. .... South Asia’s heat wave is unusual because it’s happening much earlier in the season than normal, before summer weather typically sets in, so it caught people off guard." Pakistan is already encountering 50 degree Celsius days and the combination of extreme heat and drought has resulted in the Indus River losing 65% of its volume according to an Al Jazeera broadcast today. The extreme temperatures caused by global warming have already caused flash flooding form glacier melt and is rapidly accelerating the melting of the glaciers the source of water for the Indus and Ganges water. Some of these glaciers also feed rivers in China and Nepal, so in addition to the extreme temperatures that are already causing heat deaths among people and animals, there are long range deep water problems as the Himalayan glaciers disappear. This has led to poor crop production further endangering lives beyond the damage done to harvests and food distribution by the Ukraine war. With India, like Russia and Ukraine exporting vast quantities of food, this raises the risk of starvation. The heat is also radiating into neighbouring countries causing health and crop growth problems there.

Pakistanis cool off in a canal during hot weather in Lahore, Pakistan, on May 7, 2022. Muhammad Reza/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

 

Nearly one in eight people on Earth are enduring a relentless, lethal heat wave that is stretching into its third week. 

Triple-digit temperatures are continuing to bake swaths of India and Pakistan, a region home to 1.5 billion people. Extreme heat has also scorched Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in recent weeks. For India, this past April was the hottest in 122 years and followed the hottest March on record. For Pakistan, it was the hottest April in 61 years. Jacobabad, Pakistan, already one of the hottest cities in the world, saw temperatures rise above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Nighttime temperatures are staying in the 90s, granting little relief for the overheated. And more heat is in store for the coming days. 

The sweltering weather has reportedly killed at least 25 people in India and 65 people in Pakistan, though the true number of casualties is likely much higher. Even birds are getting heat stroke.

The heat wave has had critical knock-on effects. Surging electricity demand and stress on the power grid triggered power outages for two-thirds of Indian households. Outages in Pakistan have lasted up to 12 hours, cutting off power when people need cooling the most. Without electricity, many households have lost access to water. The hot weather has also increased dust and ozone levels, leading to spikes in air pollution in major cities across the region. The heat melted mountain glaciers faster than normal, triggering flash floods in Pakistan. At the same time, ongoing political disruptions and the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic are further hampering the response to the heat wave.

And South Asia’s heat wave is poised to radiate into other countries. The high temperatures are threatening wheat production, which could push already rising food prices even higher around the world.

And South Asia’s heat wave is poised to radiate into other countries. The high temperatures are threatening wheat production, which could push already rising food prices even higher around the world.   .

Climate change is already rendering parts of the world unlivable, and in South Asia, survival now depends on artificial cooling. That cooling demands power. Fans and air conditioners in India and Pakistan run on electricity from burning fossil fuels, which emit greenhouse gases that heat up the planet. About 75 percent of India’s energy comes from coal, oil, and natural gas, while Pakistan gets about 60 percent of its energy from the same mix. The ongoing heat wave has already increased demand for coal imports. Because of its immense scale, how South Asia cools off will shift international energy markets and shape the global climate. ...

South Asia’s heat wave is unusual because it’s happening much earlier in the season than normal, before summer weather typically sets in, so it caught people off guard. It also spread out over a much larger area, covering most of the landmass across Pakistan and India instead of concentrating in a few pockets.

https://www.vox.com/23057267/india-pakistan-heat-wave-climate-change-coa...

Wild weather has also hit Manitoba this spring as global warming hits home harder every year. 

Highway 75 near Morris is flooded on May 12, 2022.

Quote:

Within the span of a year, Manitoba went from having one of its driest summers in decades to having one of its worst floods on record.

"Everybody who lives on the Prairies for any length of time knows that we have lots of swings, but this is a pretty crazy one," said Danny Blair, co-director of the Prairie Climate Centre and a climatologist at the University of Winnipeg.

Several climate experts told CBC that while they can't say definitively that recent weather events are a result of human-driven climate change, they agree it may be a sign of things to come — and a reminder that people need to be prepared for more extreme weather in the future.

Last summer Manitoba set a record for the driest July since 1873; it was the 42nd driest summer in 146 years of records. The winter of 2020-21 was the fifth driest on record.

Fast forward to spring 2022, and while March this year was drier than normal, April was the second wettest in 151 years, with four times the normal amount of precipitation.

Variability is a normal part of Prairie climate, but the swings could become even more dramatic, Blair said.

"We need to make sure that we are ready for, in the years ahead, even wilder swings in the weather," he said.

"And that includes our frequently flooded communities. Floods are not going away with climate change; they may even become worse."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report in March on the impacts, adaptation and vulnerability humans face with rising temperatures.

The report's authors said they had "high confidence" that unless countries step up their efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the planet will on average be 2.4 C to 3.5 C warmer by the end of the century — which experts say is sure to cause severe impacts for much of the world's population.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/climate-change-manitoba-prairies...

ETA: The combination of climate change and the war in Ukraine has caused the editor of the Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes, to predict on CNN that we could be heading for the worst global hunger crisis since World War I, a hundred years ago. Climate change is producing extreme heat in India, South America, Africa, and the US and Canadian farming heartland, reducing the amount of crops grown.

Carleton projects that today’s suicide rate will only rise as temperatures continue to warm.

By 2017 "Climate change has already caused more than 59,000 suicides in India over the last 30 years, according to estimates in a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS) that suggests failing harvests that push farmers into poverty are likely the key culprits." (https://news.berkeley.edu/2017/07/31/study-climate-change-already-causin...)

Yesterday, as temperatures hit 50 Celsius before summer even began and the war in Ukraine reduces Ukrainian and Russian crops and their availability internationally due to Russia's blocking of Ukranian ports and Western sanctions, the threat to India's crops harvest caused it to establish an export ban. 

India has banned exports of wheat effective immediately, citing a risk to food security, partly due to the war in Ukraine and as a scorching heatwave curtailed output and domestic prices hit a record high. Although not one of the world’s top wheat exporters, India’s ban could drive global prices to new peaks given already tight supply, hitting poor consumers in Asia and Africa particularly hard. ... Wheat prices in India have risen to record highs, in some spot markets hitting 25,000 rupees ($320) per tonne, well above the government’s minimum support price of 20,150 rupees ($260).

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/14/india-bans-wheat-exports-cites-...

The three major agricultural producers in South America, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, "are currently experiencing a prolonged period of drought and low water levels in their main rivers. This is severely impacting harvests, as well as river transport of important summer crops, with maize and soybeans the main casualties. Although conditions may yet improve, the grain harvests of 2021 and 2022 could result in losses that will impact the economies of three countries, though experts say the potential magnitude is still difficult to foresee." (https://dialogochino.net/en/agriculture/50488-drought-south-america-soy-...)

Climate change and extreme weather are threatening human health and safety, food, water and energy security and the environment in Latin America and the Caribbean. The impacts span the entire region, including Andean peaks, mighty river basins and low-lying islands, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It flags concerns about fires and the loss of forests which are a vital carbon sink. ...

Widespread drought across Latin America and the Caribbean had significant impacts, including lowering rivers level, thus hampering inland shipping routes, reduced crop yields and food production, leading to worsening food insecurity in many areas.

https://reliefweb.int/report/world/new-report-shows-impacts-climate-chan...

In Africa climate change induced drought is greatly reducing crop yields. 

The continent’s section of new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report delivers the biggest assessment ever of effects, adaptation and vulnerability to climate change.

About 80 percent of the world’s food is produced by family farms, according to the United Nations, so climate change’s effect on agriculture could have repercussions that reach far beyond individual farmers and their families. Unless humans take significant steps to reverse course and cut greenhouse gas emissions, the situation may continue to intensify. No one knows for sure what impact this will have on future food supplies, but models by the International Food Policy Research Institute estimate that global maize production could shrink 24 percent by 2050. ...

Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa are particularly vulnerable, in part because they mostly rely on rain-fed agriculture instead of irrigating. In central Tanzania, the rainy season typically lasts from November through April, after which the weather becomes too dry to support growing crops. Every year, farmers need to produce enough food from their single annual harvest to feed their families until the next season. In good years, farmers have enough grain left over to sell as income, but when crops fail, families often experience an annual “hunger season,” a time of meal skipping and substitution until the next harvest.

Every year has its own challenges, but thanks to climate change, farmers are now facing greater difficulties from three main threats:

• Extreme weather: Volatile weather is a hallmark of climate change, and it can manifest in any number of ways -- droughts, floods, severe storms, heat waves, cold snaps, frosts. Extreme weather events are expected to increase in frequency as the Earth’s atmosphere warms. Farmers in Eastern and Southern Africa are already experiencing the effects -- in 2016, the region saw the most severe drought in decades, which dramatically reduced harvests and left many families hungry.
• Pests and diseases: Changes in temperatures and moisture conditions can allow crop diseases and pests to migrate into new areas. Recently, Sub-Saharan Africa has witnessed the spread of fall armyworms, an invasive caterpillar that can devastate maize yields when left unchecked. We still don’t know for sure what caused this outbreak, but some scientists have linked its spread with climate change.
• Hotter temperatures long term: Average global temperatures are expected to rise over the coming decades, which could lead to desertification and smaller harvests in Sub-Saharan Africa. If global temperatures increase by 4 degrees Celsius by the year 2100, maize yields in some African countries would probably decline by more than 20 percent, according to a study published last year.

https://oneacrefund.org/blog/what-climate-change-means-agriculture-africa/

Both Canadian and the US West are facing drought due global warming that is greatly affecting crop yields.

Western ​Canadian drought parched farmland

Chile, Argentina and the American West are in the midst of a decade-long, megadrought – the driest conditions those regions have seen in a century. And many areas in Western Canada and the United States are experiencing extreme drought – a once in 20-year event.

Drought makes agriculture less productive, reduces crop yields and increases heat-related deaths. It adds to conflict and migration, as marginalized people are dispossessed of their land. In short, it leaves people more vulnerable.

Drought is part of natural climate variability, but it is also one of the many outcomes of climate change that is increasing in frequency and intensity. Droughts that used to occur in dry regions once every 10 years are now projected to occur more than four times a decade, if the Earth’s average temperature warms by 4 C.

Unless countries dramatically reduce their emissions from burning coal, oil and natural gas, we are bound to overshoot the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 C. Dryland areas could expand by a quarter and encompass half of the Earth’s land area, including parts of the Prairies.

https://www.canadianunderwriter.ca/insurance/the-window-of-opportunity-t...

Russia and Ukraine exports account for 12% of all global calories. The war in Ukraine has crippled crop and fertilizer exports from both countries.

The Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports risks causing a global food crisis, given that Ukraine is one of the world’s top agricultural exporters. Analysts say this shows how Russia is weaponising food in its geopolitical games – but it’s a weapon the EU plans to neutralise by creating a land corridor to Poland’s Baltic Sea ports, allowing Ukraine’s vital food exports to reach the rest of the world.

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220512-russian-blockade-of-ukraine-...

Western sanctions have prevented the export of Russian fertilizer further crippling food production globally. 

An agricultural worker drives a tractor spreading fertilizer in a soybean field, near Brasilia, Brazil February 15, 2022.

Sky-high fertilizer prices have farmers worldwide scaling back its use and reducing the amount of land they're planting, fallout from the Ukraine-Russia conflict that has some agricultural industry veterans warning of food shortages.

Western sanctions on Russia, a major exporter of potash, ammonia, urea and other soil nutrients, have disrupted shipments of those key inputs around the globe. Fertilizer is key to keeping corn, soy, rice and wheat yields high. Growers are scrambling to adjust.

https://www.reuters.com/business/sanctions-bite-russia-fertilizer-shorta...

Maybe some good news for a change with regard to the war in Ukraine that the Russian blocades of Ukranian ports and Western sanctions could be lifted for food and fertilizer exports to feed the 400 million people around the world that are dependent on it due to UN led negotiations. Hopefully, the talks work. 

However, even if the Ukraine ports blockade and the western sanctions on food are lifted, the climate change induced agricultural problems that are hitting major crop and livestock producers on every continent around the world that are described in the last two posts will continue and get worse with ever increasing greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures, so the reprieve will be only a temporary one of several more years even in a best case scenario for the war in Ukraine

Russian Federation Blockade of the Mariupol and Berdyansk Ports: trends and statistics

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that he is in "intense contact" with Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, the United States and the European Union to try and restore Ukrainian grain shipments and revive Russian fertilizer exports.

"I am hopeful, but there is still a way to go," he told a food security meeting at the United Nations hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. "The complex security, economic and financial implications require goodwill on all sides."

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/un-chief-hopeful-about-talks...

We are also losing our birds at a very high rate, in part because of climate change.

The most threatened families of birds are those which are larger and take longer to reproduce, including the Australian brushturkey. Photograph: thomasmales/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Billions of birds have been lost in recent decades in North America and Europe alone, and while there are more species in the tropics, a higher proportion are at risk of extinction in temperate and largely richer nations, the review found.

Conservation efforts have been successful at rescuing individual species in specific locations from the brink, but political will and funding are needed to reverse the global decline, the researchers said....

 “Birds truly are the canary in the coal mine as indicators for the health of our planet, given their sensitivity to ecosystem changes, their ubiquity around the planet, and how well studied they are. [We] need to listen and act upon what birds are telling us, as they disappear ever faster.” ...

The review, published in the journal Annual Review of Environment and Resources, found that 48% of bird species are known or suspected to be undergoing population declines, compared with 39% with flat trends, 6% showing increases and 7% with unknown trends. ...

2.7m are estimated to die every year in Canada alone from eating pesticides, ...

Another lever is voting – we get the politicians we vote for.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/05/canaries-in-the-coal...

TransitionZero.org has shown that it is time to shift awat from the coal to gas transition to a coal to renewables transition with the costs of gas far higher than coal to renewables, thanks in part to the war in Ukraine, "Most recent data points ($488/tCO2 and -$44/tCO2 for coal-to-gas and coal-to-clean, respectively) are based on April 2022"

 The "Carbon price to switch from coal-to-gas and coal-to-clean globally from 2010 to 2022" graph at the following url illustrates this: https://www.transitionzero.org/blog/fuel-switching-coal-to-clean

Meanwhile the Trudeau federal government many provincial governments keep betting on fossil fuels.

TransitionZero is a climate analytics not-for-profit established to clarify complexity with data transparency. We do this by developing open data and open source projects to support economic and financial decision-making in electricity and industry sectors. C3PI is an open data project that tracks the carbon price required to incentivise fuel switching from existing coal to new onshore wind or solar PV plus battery storage in 25 countries. C3PI is based on a methodology report by TransitionZero and a database of coal plants developed by the Global Energy Monitor. We hope C3PI will be a useful proxy to allow:

• Policymakers to understand how subsidising fuel and energy (both directly and indirectly) can undermine the effectiveness of carbon pricing policies

• Traders and investors to predict zero-carbon fuel switching costs in near-real-time independent of regulatory constraints and non-price barriers

• Civil society shape the debate about the cost-competitiveness of zero-carbon technologies, especially during periods of fossil fuel price volatility 

To capture fossil fuel price volatility, C3PI will be updated weekly for Europe and the US and monthly in the rest of the world.

https://www.transitionzero.org/blog/fuel-switching-coal-to-clean

Mother Jones article Revenge of the Barbecued Koalas discusses the impact of climate change on the Australian election results on Saturday.

PORT MACQUARIE KOALA HOSPITAL The bushfires that raged in Australia are threatened more than just homes, they're threatening tens of thousands of koalas and raised major questions about Australia's role in climate change.

It was a koala massacre. Two years ago, Australia’s worst wildfire crisis left an unprecedented number of the country’s cherished wildlife charred or dead, among them tens of thousands of koalas. Photos of our iconic marsupial with barbecued paws shocked the world. In large parts of Eastern Australia, koalas are now endangered.

On Saturday, as the country went to the ballot box for a national election, I couldn’t shake those indelible images of destruction and what they foretold for a country increasingly swept up by extreme climate disasters. I wasn’t alone.

Australia resoundingly turfed out its conservative government on Saturday after the ruling coalition led by Scott Morrison sustained brutal losses across a wide swathe of districts. While votes were still being counted into the early hours of Sunday morning in Australia, it became clear that “ScoMo,” as he’s known, simply didn’t have the numbers to form a government, even in a minority. That honor will go to the center-left Labor party and its leader, Anthony Albanese, who will become the country’s 31st prime minister. The election ends nine years of conservative governments that have low-balled climate commitments and underplayed the urgency facing a continent uniquely vulnerable to global warming.

It remains to be seen what kind of government Albanese, dubbed “Albo” by Aussies, can pull together, but an outright parliamentary majority remains a possibility. While a Labor victory was long predicted by national polls, the battle was always going to be fought across a string of swing districts on bread-and-butter economic issues like inflation and wage growth. Labor seized districts from conservatives across the country, riding a strong anti-Morrison wave. But there was a big twist this election cycle: A field of so-called “teal” independent candidates focused on climate change appeared poised to topple a string of top conservatives in key blue-ribbon constituencies in Sydney and Melbourne, helping erode the government’s numbers and position Labor for victory. These “teals” put climate action and anti-corruption reform at the top of their agenda, and their efforts were backed by an unusually active grassroots effort. That’s a potentially game-changing result that could open an unusually hopeful chapter in Australia’s ongoing dramas over climate action, which has contributed to a head-spinning crisis in political leadership over the last decade.

“Together we can end the climate wars,” Albanese said in his victory speech in Sydney. “Together we can take advantage of the opportunity for Australia to be a renewable energy superpower.”

Scott Morrison will likely be remembered as a thin-skinned spin doctor who couldn’t spin his mistakes hard enough to win another election. …

 But if there’s one message I’m taking away from the early results: The climate wars that have dominated Australian politics just got a reset. Two weeks ago I wondered if the image of burned koalas during Australia’s wildfire crisis would be enough to sway Australians to make different choices.

There are more votes to be counted, and more trends to be analyzed. But, for now, I’m ready to call it: This one’s for the koalas.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/australia-election-results-...

For anyone wondering where to bank considering that all of our five major banks are deeply involved in fueling fossil fuel development and ranking in the top 20 globally even though they are much smaller than that in overall assets and loans, here's an article discussing the choices you have. I am sure many of you already have a good idea of what the best of them are. 

If you’ve been reading the news, you’ll know we’re in the “follow the money” stage of the climate debate. For too long, the role of banks and investors in enabling the climate crisis was overlooked. Big Oil was the big villain, even though it can’t operate without Big Finance. 

Canada’s banks are particularly carbon entangled, with our big five each featuring in the top 20 largest funders of fossil fuels in the world. While we need to keep lobbying governments to better regulate both the fossil fuel sector and the financial sector, climate-concerned Canadians can also take action by letting their bank know they are unhappy with its performance and either threatening to shift their business elsewhere or actually doing it.

But shift where? We get this question a lot because we carefully parse the climate disclosures of Canada’s banks to compare them with best practices given by science. They are each now talking a good game about getting to “net zero” by 2050, but the reality is unfortunately less than advertised. ...

First, the usual caveat: none of this is intended to provide investment advice. ...

Shifting your banking business all at once can be tricky, so it’s best to ask the advice of the institution you are moving to about how to do it. Maybe it’s partial or in stages — you can open new savings or chequing accounts and shift credit cards relatively quickly.  Moving mortgages or registered savings accounts may take more time. Finally, if you shift, you’ll have a bigger impact if you tell your old bank — as well as friends and relatives — why you are leaving, rather than slipping away quietly. ...

This ranking deals with shades of grey and the messiness of compromise. There is no perfect answer, since even the greenest banks invest in or do business with other banks who do business with fossil fuels.

1. Credit unions The first choice for climate-concerned Canadians may not, strictly speaking, be a bank at all but a credit union. Many don’t consider credit unions, possibly because the big banks are so ubiquitous and visible, but they are viable alternatives for most banking needs. ...

A primary reason credit unions are more climate-friendly is that they are generally not large enough to engage in bigger commercial lending like to the oil and gas industry. In addition, many of them, like Vancity, have strong environmental policies, and if they don’t, you have a good pathway as a member to push for them. 

Some credit unions also put screens on their investments — where your RRSPs and RESPs end up, but you’ll need to keep a close eye on that aspect. Ask lots of questions and ask for options for investments that don’t lead to more greenhouse gas emissions. ...

2. Laurentian  Laurentian is the eighth-largest bank in Canada, although operating primarily in Quebec. So far, it is the only Canadian chartered bank to make a commitment to not directly finance the exploration, production or development of coal or oil and gas. This commitment coincides with the appointment of Rania Llewellyn as president and CEO, the first woman to head a chartered bank in Canada. 

3. HSBC and BMO  Now we enter into the zone of banks with deep fossil fuel entanglements. The shades of grey to explore within this zone concern whether the banks are making meaningful decisions to reduce those entanglements. HSBC is the largest foreign bank in Canada and seventh-largest in size overall in this country. It is the 13th largest funder of fossil fuels in the world but has made some commitments the large Canadian banks haven’t, including restrictions on financing new oilsands and coal activities, and it recently made a commitment to strengthen its action on phasing down fossil fuel financing.  Something to note, though, if you are considering HSBC: the bank also has a spotty ethics record when it comes to money laundering. 

The Bank of Montreal is the other big bank that is doing slightly more than others to change course. Specifically, BMO is the only major Canadian bank to set a target to reduce its financed emissions in the oil and gas sector in absolute terms. The other banks set so-called “intensity” targets that only reduce emissions per unit of production, which leaves the door open for absolute emissions to keep going up with more production. BMO is also the only North American bank to make the Corporate Knight’s “100 most sustainable companies” list in 2022, which ranks companies with revenues over US$1 billion.  Whether BMO follows through on its fossil fuel reduction target remains to be seen. It is currently the 15th largest fossil fuel funder in the world and needs to do much more to change.

4. CIBC, Scotiabank, TD and National  We come to the peloton. But unlike in cycling, it’s unclear whether this group is pedalling to catch up to the leaders or prefers to stand still. CIBC, Scotiabank, TD and National Bank have all committed to reach net zero in financed emissions by 2050, but none has set targets that would actually get them there. Each is a major funder of fossil fuels and has set intensity targets that will let them maintain or even expand that funding. Each one talks about “working with” its fossil fuel clients on the energy transition but lays out no criteria for what that will look like nor commits to holding any of its clients accountable should they fail to transition.  Customers of these banks should be skeptical about their net-zero rhetoric. Much more ambition by these banks is required to take them seriously on climate.

5. RBC  RBC is Canada’s largest bank and, as such, sets the tone. Unfortunately, RBC is Canada’s largest funder of fossil fuels, fifth largest in the world. Moreover, the tone we are hearing from RBC is decidedly pro-fossil fuels. Incredibly, RBC is doing less than even the banks in the prior category. Unlike the other banks, it is yet to set any targets for its financed emissions and underestimates its current emissions by failing to account for what’s called “Scope 3” or downstream emissions. 

Recently, RBC put out a report that called for increasing oil and gas production in Canada. Note that the International Energy Agency found getting to net zero means no investment in new fossil fuels — we already have enough to cook the planet. Only dodgy math could argue the opposite. ...

Finally, you'll notice that this ranking doesn't deal with purely online banks, which may be a good option, particularly in the future as they become more established. But watch out who owns them — for example, Scotiabank owns Tangerine and CIBC owns Simplii Financial, so you may not be getting away from the problem.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/05/20/opinion/where-should-climate...