Canada and the climate crisis: a state of denial 3

Four in five people around the world support ‘whatever it takes’ to limit climate change, But there’s a disconnect between what politicians say and what the public wants.

A child holds an inflatable Earth at a climate demonstration. Photo by Getty Images/Grist

“There will be a fair amount of gobbledygook coming out of COP28,” said John Marshall, the CEO of Potential Energy, a nonpartisan, non-profit marketing firm.

A lot of that jargon is bound to go over people’s heads, but a new survey, the largest of its kind, shows that people around the world want their governments to take action. Some 78 per cent of those polled agree that it’s essential to do “whatever it takes” to limit the effects of climate change, according to the survey released by Potential Energy, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, and other organizations. The research also gauged what messages resonated with people the most. The best one? “Later is too late.”

That fits with the reason people want action: to protect the planet for the next generation. What the report called “generational messaging” was 12 times more effective than other options, such as increasing job opportunities or reducing social inequality. “The thing that moves people the most is putting right in front of them the things that they care about and showing them that those things are at risk,” Marshall said. “It was the leading message in every segment in every country and every age group and every political persuasion.” 

According to Marshall, who has 35 years of experience in corporate marketing, keeping the message simple, straightforward, and jargon-free is best. The phrase “later is too late” increased people’s support for immediate action on climate change by an average of 11 per cent in randomized controlled trials. It had nearly double the effect of a message about making polluters pay, the runner-up.

While people around the world are united in supporting government action on climate change, some of that support evaporated when it came to specific policies. They were most enthusiastic about clean energy instead of coal and subsidies for renewable energy companies, and least enthusiastic about phasing out fossil fuels and ending subsidies for polluters. Messages that used the words “mandate,” “ban,” or “phaseout” generated nine percentage points less support, on average, than those that didn’t. For example, only 54 per cent were in favour of “banning” gas appliances in buildings, but 74 per cent approved of requiring “better technologies” and “smart upgrades” in all new construction. That could be bad news for popular climate catchphrases like “keep it in the ground.”

“I think the data is saying we need to lean into the messages that get us the wins, as opposed to the messages that make us feel good about ourselves,” Marshall said. Talking about upgrading appliances and heating and cooling systems and setting clean energy goals increased people’s support for climate policies. The only kind of limitation people liked was reducing pollution. For that reason, Marshall said, it’s important to stress that burning fossil fuels causes pollution that’s overheating the planet.

Among the 23 countries surveyed, the United States had the lowest support for climate policies — but still, nearly 60 per cent supported action. Germany, Japan, Australia, Norway, and Saudi Arabia also had relatively low levels of support, suggesting that political polarization and fossil fuel production might have something to do with it. The United States had the biggest difference between liberals and conservatives, with almost a 50 per cent gap in policy support. Republicans had the lowest support for climate policies in the world, followed by Germany’s far-right Alternative for Deutschland Party, or AfD. ...

On the other end of the spectrum, Chile, Kenya, Argentina, Colombia, and Indonesia all had strong support for action, with more than 70 per cent of people in each country approving the climate policies tested.

In every country, people largely blame the government and businesses for climate change, not individuals, the report found. Only 26 per cent of people worldwide said that individuals should be most responsible for tackling the problem. 

People often underestimate the popularity of climate action, and Marshall said it’s a mistake for politicians to shy away from talking about climate change directly. He thinks there’s “too much cleverness going on” when it comes to how to talk about the problem.

“It’s the largest crisis that humanity has ever faced, and we feel the need to go in the side door,” he said. “I hope this data helps people not chicken out — like, just go through the front door. It’s not that hard.”

https://grist.org/language/4-in-5-people-around-the-world-support-whatev...

Almost a quarter of the world's freshwater fish, including salmon in BC and Atlantic Canada, are on the road to extinction with global warming playing a major role as the climate crisis hits every living thing on this planet harder and harder. 

Jumping salmon. Almost a quarter of the world's freshwater fish face extinction due to global heating, pollution, say experts. Photo by Thomas Bjørkan / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED)

Nearly a quarter of the world’s freshwater fish are at risk of extinction due to global heating, overfishing and pollution, according to an expert assessment.

From the large-toothed Lake Turkana robber in Kenya to the Mekong giant catfish in Southeast Asia, many of the world’s freshwater fish are at risk of disappearing, the first International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list assessment of the category has found.

Nearly a fifth of all threatened freshwater species are affected by climate change, from impacts such as falling water levels, shifting seasons and seawater moving up rivers. Of the assessed species, 3,086 out of 14,898 were at risk of vanishing.

The latest assessment also found that mahogany, Atlantic salmon and green turtles were increasingly threatened, according to scientific assessments, but there was good news about the saiga antelope, which has moved up from the critically endangered category to near threatened after the population increased by 1,100 per cent in just seven years, mainly in Kazakhstan.

“[The] update to the IUCN red list shows the power of co-ordinated local, national and international conservation efforts. Success stories such as that of the scimitar horned oryx show that conservation works. To ensure the results of conservation action are durable, we need to decisively tackle the interlinked climate and biodiversity crises,” said the IUCN president, Razan Al Mubarak.

Big leaf mahogany, among the most commercially sought-after plants on the planet, is now classified as endangered after its numbers fell by 60 per cent over the past 180 years due to unsustainable harvesting. Mahogany wood remains valuable for furniture, musical instruments and decorations, which has driven illegal logging of the tree across Central and South America.

The Atlantic salmon, previously common and classified as a species of least concern, is now near threatened on the IUCN red list after its global population fell by 23 per cent, having vanished from many rivers in the U.K. The fish, which lives in both fresh and saltwater, has been affected by widespread habitat loss, global heating and dams that block access to breeding sites. Breeding with farmed salmon has also weakened their ability to adapt to global heating while invasive Pacific pink salmon is spreading across northern Europe.

“Freshwater fishes make up more than half of the world’s known fish species, an incomprehensible diversity given that freshwater ecosystems comprise only one per cent of aquatic habitat. These diverse species are integral to the ecosystem and vital to its resilience. This is essential to the billions of people who rely upon freshwater ecosystems, and the millions of people who rely on their fisheries,” said Kathy Hughes, co-chair of the IUCN species survival commission freshwater fish specialist group.

“Ensuring freshwater ecosystems are well managed, remain free-flowing with sufficient water, and good water quality is essential to stop species declines and maintain food security, livelihoods and economies in a climate resilient world,” she said.

Central South Pacific and East Pacific green turtles are also at risk of vanishing, according to scientists. They are a major bycatch in industrial and artisanal fishing while their eggs are a delicacy in some countries. Rising global temperatures are also affecting their hatching success and rising sea temperatures are flooding nests.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/11/quarter-of-worlds-fr...

In an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists entitiled "The Nuclear Energy Numbers Racket", atomic scientists explain that although nuclear energy was brought up at COP 28 as a solution for the climate crisis, there are major reasons that that won't work. It would be most expensive and slowest option to reach net-zero emissions, with wind adding 15 times the electrical capacity and solar adding 14 times the electrical capacity created by new nuclear in the last 20 years. 

It also has major safety risks.

Image by ArtPhoto_studio on Freepik

Nuclear energy made a big splash at the COP28 climate meeting in Dubai with a declaration by 22 countries calling for a tripling of nuclear energy by 2050. It seems like an impressive and urgent call to arms. On closer inspection, however, the numbers don’t work out. Even at best, a shift to invest more heavily in nuclear energy over the next two decades could actually worsen the climate crisis, as cheaper, quicker alternatives are ignored for more expensive, slow-to-deploy nuclear options. Here’s what the numbers say:

22: That 22 countries signed the declaration may seem like a lot of support, but 31 countries (plus Taiwan) currently produce nuclear energy. Notably missing from the declaration are Russia and the People’s Republic of China. Russia is the world’s leading exporter of nuclear power plants and has the fourth largest nuclear energy capacity globally; China has built the most nuclear power plants of any country in the last two decades and ranks third globally in capacity. Thirteen other countries that have key nuclear programs are also missing from the declaration: five in Europe (Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain), two in South Asia (India and Pakistan) three in the Americas (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico), South Africa (the only nuclear energy producer in Africa), and Iran.

5: Five of the countries signing the declaration do not have nuclear power — Mongolia, Morocco, Ghana, Moldova, and Poland. Only Poland’s electricity grid can support three or four large nuclear reactors — the rest would have to invest billions of dollars first to expand their grids or rely on smaller reactors that would not overwhelm grid capacity. Poland wants to replace its smaller coal plants with almost 80 small modular reactors (SMRs), but these “paper reactors” are largely just plans and not yet proven technology. One American vendor, NuScale, recently scrapped a six-unit project when cost estimates rose exponentially. In any event, none of these five countries is likely to make a significant contribution toward tripling nuclear energy in the next 20 years.

17: The 17 remaining signatories to the nuclear energy declaration represent a little more than half of all countries with nuclear energy, raising the issue of how much support there really is for tripling nuclear energy by 2050.

3x: The idea of tripling nuclear energy to meet climate change requirements is not new. In fact, it was one of eight climate stabilization “wedges” laid out in Sciencemagazine in 2004 in a now-famous article by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala of Princeton University. A stabilization wedge would avoid one billion tons of carbon emissions per year by 2055. In the case of nuclear energy, this would require building 700 large nuclear reactors over the course of 50 years. (In 2022, there were 416 reactors operating around the world, with 374 gigawatts-electric of capacity). In 2005, to reach the one-billion-ton goal of emissions reduction would have meant building 14 reactors per year, assuming all existing reactors continued operating. (In fact, the build rate needed to be 23 per year to replace aging reactors that would need to be retired.) Given the stagnation of the nuclear power industry since then, the build rate now to reach wedge level would need to be 40 per year. ...

10: Average annual number of connections of nuclear power plants to the electricity grid, per year, over the entire history of nuclear energy. Between 2011 and 2021, however, the average annual number of nuclear power reactors connected to the grid was five.

42 GWe: New nuclear energy capacity added from 2000 to 2020. ...

605 GWe: New wind capacity added from 2000 to 2020.

578 GWe: New solar capacity added from 2000 to 2020. Growth in renewables has vastly outpaced that of nuclear energy in recent years.

73 billion: In US dollars, the amount lent or granted by the World Bank in fiscal year 2023 through the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association for projects. The December nuclear energy declaration called upon shareholders of the World Bank, international financial institutions, and regional development banks to encourage the inclusion of nuclear energy in their lending policies. This sounds like it would improve the chances for nuclear energy investment, but like many things associated with nuclear energy, any such move would be far too little and too late. The recently cancelled NuScale project estimated that it would cost $9.3 billion for six small modular reactors (77 megawatts-electric each); that is, the six reactors would have half the electricity capacity of a single large reactor. If the World Bank decided to spend all its funds on nuclear energy, it could afford to pay for the construction of seven NuScale projects, which would increase nuclear energy capacity by three gigawatts-electric — or one per cent of total global capacity. The opportunity costs of using scarce development funds on nuclear energy is another issue.

15 trillion: In US dollars, the cost to build enough NuScale reactors (9,738) to triple nuclear energy capacity, assuming existing reactors continue to operate. There are less expensive SMRs, perhaps, but none further along in the U.S. licensing process.

13: An unlucky number in some cultures, but this was the time from design to projected operation of the NuScale VOYGR plant. Nuclear power plants have to be “done right,” and cutting corners to speed deployment is in no one’s interests. The design-and-build phase for a country’s first nuclear reactor, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, is 15 years. If the great expansion of nuclear energy is supposed to occur in more than the 22 countries that signed the declaration, this lead-time cannot be ignored.

The climate crisis is real, but nuclear energy will continue to be the most expensive and slowest option to reach net-zero emissions, no matter how you cook the numbers.

https://thebulletin.org/2023/12/the-nuclear-energy-numbers-racket/

One Earth also discusses why nuclear energy is not the solution to the climate crisis below. Instead "we can prevent the worst impacts of climate change while unlocking trillions in economic benefits through rapid decarbonization of our energy systems, a transition to 100% renewable energy, and large-scale land restoration."

Cofrentes Nuclear Power Plant located about 2 kilometers southeast of Cofrentes, Spain

1. Long Time Lag Between Planning and Operation

The time lag between planning and operation of a nuclear reactor includes the times to identify a site, obtain a site permit, purchase or lease the land, obtain a construction permit, obtain financing and insurance for construction, install transmission, negotiate a power purchase agreement, obtain permits, build the plant, connect it to transmission, and obtain a final operating license.

The planning-to-operation (PTO) times of all nuclear plants ever built have been 10-19 years or more. For example, the Olkiluoto 3 reactor in Finland was proposed to the Finnish cabinet in December 2000 to be added to an existing nuclear power plant. Its latest estimated completion date is 2020, giving it a PTO time of 20 years.

The Hinkley Point nuclear plant was planned to start in 2008. It has an estimated the completion year of 2025 to 2027, giving it a PTO time of 17 to 19 years. The Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors in Georgia were first proposed in August 2006 to be added to an existing site. The anticipated completion dates are November 2021 and November 2022, respectively, given them PTO times of 15 and 16 years, respectively.

The Haiyang 1 and 2 reactors in China were planned to start in 2005. Haiyang 1 began commercial operation on October 22, 2018. Haiyang 2 began operation on January 9, 2019, giving them PTO times of 13 and 14 years, respectively. The Taishan 1 and 2 reactors in China were bid in 2006. Taishan 1 began commercial operation on December 13, 2018. Taishan 2 is not expected to be connected until 2019, giving them PTO times of 12 and 13 years, respectively. Planning and procurement for four reactors in Ringhals, Sweden started in 1965. One took 10 years, the second took 11 years, the third took 16 years, and the fourth took 18 years to complete. 

Many claim that France’s 1974 Messmer plan resulted in the building of its 58 reactors in 15 years. This is not true. The planning for several of these nuclear reactors began long before. For example, the Fessenheim reactor obtained its construction permit in 1967 and was planned starting years before. In addition, 10 of the reactors were completed between 1991-2000. As such, the whole planning-to-operation time for these reactors was at least 32 years, not 15. That of any individual reactor was 10 to 19 years.

2. Cost

The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for a new nuclear plant in 2018, based on Lazard, is $151 (112 to 189)/MWh. This compares with $43 (29 to 56)/MWh for onshore wind and $41 (36 to 46)/MWh for utility-scale solar PV from the same source. 

This nuclear LCOE is an underestimate for several reasons. First, Lazard assumes a construction time for nuclear of 5.75 years. However, the Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors, though will take at least 8.5 to 9 years to finish construction. This additional delay alone results in an estimated LCOE for nuclear of about $172 (128 to 215)/MWh, or a cost 2.3 to 7.4 times that of an onshore wind farm (or utility PV farm).

Next, the LCOE does not include the cost of the major nuclear meltdowns in history. For example, the estimated cost to clean up the damage from three Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor core meltdowns was $460 to $640 billion. This is $1.2 billion, or 10 to 18.5 percent of the capital cost, of every nuclear reactor worldwide. 

In addition, the LCOE does not include the cost of storing nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years. In the U.S. alone, about $500 million is spent yearly to safeguard nuclear waste from about 100 civilian nuclear energy plants. This amount will only increase as waste continues to accumulate. After the plants retire, the spending must continue for hundreds of thousands of years with no revenue stream from electricity sales to pay for the storage.

3. Weapons Proliferation Risk

The growth of nuclear energy has historically increased the ability of nations to obtain or harvest plutonium or enrich uranium to manufacture nuclear weapons. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes this fact. They concluded in the Executive Summary of their 2014 report on energy, with “robust evidence and high agreement” that nuclear weapons proliferation concern is a barrier and risk to the increasing development of nuclear energy:

Barriers to and risks associated with an increasing use of nuclear energy include operational risks and the associated safety concerns, uranium mining risks, financial and regulatory risks, unresolved waste management issues, nuclear weapons proliferation concerns, and adverse public opinion. 

The building of a nuclear reactor for energy in a country that does not currently have a reactor allows the country to import uranium for use in the nuclear energy facility. If the country so chooses, it can secretly enrich the uranium to create weapons-grade uranium and harvest plutonium from uranium fuel rods for use in nuclear weapons. This does not mean any or every country will do this, but historically some have and the risk is high, as noted by IPCC. The building and spreading of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) may increase this risk further.

4. Meltdown Risk

To date, 1.5 percent of all nuclear power plants ever built have melted down to some degree. Meltdowns have been either catastrophic (Chernobyl, Russia in 1986; three reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi, Japan in 2011) or damaging (Three-Mile Island, Pennsylvania in 1979; Saint-Laurent France in 1980). The nuclear industry has proposed new reactor designs that they suggest are safer. However, these designs are generally untested, and there is no guarantee that the reactors will be designed, built, and operated correctly or that a natural disaster or act of terrorism, such as an airplane flown into a reactor, will not cause the reactor to fail, resulting in a major disaster. 

5. Mining Lung Cancer Risk

Uranium mining causes lung cancer in large numbers of miners because uranium mines contain natural radon gas, some of whose decay products are carcinogenic. A study of 4,000 uranium miners between 1950 and 2000 found that 405 (10 percent) died of lung cancer, a rate six times that expected based on smoking rates alone. 61 others died of mining-related lung diseases. Clean, renewable energy does not have this risk because (a) it does not require the continuous mining of any material, only one-time mining to produce the energy generators; and (b) the mining does not carry the same lung cancer risk that uranium mining does.

6. Carbon-Equivalent Emissions and Air Pollution

There is no such thing as a zero- or close-to-zero emission nuclear power plant. Even existing plants emit due to the continuous mining and refining of uranium needed for the plant. Emissions from new nuclear are 78 to 178 g-CO2/kWh, not close to 0. Of this, 64 to 102 g-CO2/kWh over 100 years are emissions from the background grid while consumers wait 10 to 19 years for nuclear to come online or be refurbished, relative to 2 to 5 years for wind or solar. In addition, all nuclear plants emit 4.4 g-CO2e/kWh from the water vapor and heat they release. This contrasts with solar panels and wind turbines, which reduce heat or water vapor fluxes to the air by about 2.2 g-CO2e/kWh for a net difference from this factor alone of 6.6 g-CO2e/kWh.

In fact, China’s investment in nuclear plants that take so long between planning and operation instead of wind or solar resulted in China’s CO2 emissions increasing 1.3 percent from 2016 to 2017 rather than declining by an estimated average of 3 percent. The resulting difference in air pollution emissions may have caused 69,000 additional air pollution deaths in China in 2016 alone, with additional deaths in years prior and since. 

7. Waste Risk

Last but not least, consumed fuel rods from nuclear plants are radioactive waste. Most fuel rods are stored at the same site as the reactor that consumed them. This has given rise to hundreds of radioactive waste sites in many countries that must be maintained and funded for at least 200,000 years, far beyond the lifetimes of any nuclear power plant. The more nuclear waste that accumulates, the greater the risk of radioactive leaks, which can damage water supply, crops, animals, and humans.

Summary

To recap, new nuclear power costs about 5 times more than onshore wind power per kWh (between 2.3 to 7.4 times depending upon location and integration issues). Nuclear takes 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation and produces on average 23 times the emissions per unit electricity generated (between 9 to 37 times depending upon plant size and construction schedule). In addition, it creates risk and cost associated with weapons proliferation, meltdown, mining lung cancer, and waste risks. Clean, renewables avoid all such risks. 

Nuclear advocates claim nuclear is still needed because renewables are intermittent and need natural gas for backup. However, nuclear itself never matches power demand so it needs backup. Even in France with one of the most advanced nuclear energy programs, the maximum ramp rate is 1 to 5 % per minute, which means they need natural gas, hydropower, or batteries, which ramp up 5 to 100 times faster, to meet peaks in demand. Today, in fact, batteries are beating natural gas for wind and solar backup needs throughout the world. A dozen independent scientific groups have further found that it is possible to match intermittent power demand with clean, renewable energy supply and storage, without nuclear, at low cost.

Finally, many existing nuclear plants are so costly that their owners are demanding subsidies to stay open. For example, in 2016, three existing upstate New York nuclear plants requested and received subsidies to stay open using the argument that the plants were needed to keep emissions low. However, subsidizing such plants may increase carbon emissions and costs relative to replacing the plants with wind or solar as soon as possible. Thus, subsidizing nuclear would result in higher emissions and costs over the long term than replacing nuclear with renewables. 

Derivations and sources of the numbers provided herein can be found here.

The Solution

A breakthrough climate model shows that we have a window to stay below the dangerous threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, achieving net-zero emissions before 2040. The two-year collaboration with 17 leading scientists, entitled Achieving the Paris Climate Agreement Goals(APCAG), shows that we can prevent the worst impacts of climate change while unlocking trillions in economic benefits through rapid decarbonization of our energy systems, a transition to 100% renewable energy, and large-scale land restoration. 

Download the APCAG Executive Briefing to read more about the solutions to the climate crisis.

https://www.oneearth.org/the-7-reasons-why-nuclear-energy-is-not-the-ans...

COP 28 has resulted in an agreement that "For the first time in nearly three decades of climate change negotiations, countries have agreed to signal the end of the fossil fuel era. But the coal, oil and gas industries are making it clear they won’t go without a fight." And the agreement is full of holes through which emissions can escape. Of course Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault called the decision a “historic agreement” with “breakthrough commitments”, leaving out the fact that Canada, despite being one of the five countries having the greatest economic means to rapidly phase out production, they are responsible for a majority (51 percent) of planned expansion from new oil and gas fields through 2050, is actually the second largest after the US in terms of the planned expansion of "oil and gas production predicted between now and 2050: these countries are the USA, Australia, Canada, Norway and the United Kingdom”. (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/12/13/news/first-time-nearly-three...)

Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, COP28 President speaks during the Closing Plenary at the UN Climate Change Conference COP28 at Expo City Dubai on December 13, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Photo by UN Climate Change/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Deed)

On Wednesday morning, after two weeks of intense negotiations, COP28 president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber swung the gavel to formally adopt the “UAE Consensus” on climate change. That 10,000 word text entails a wide range of things countries agreed to, touching on issues of finance, adaptation, nature and slashing global greenhouse gas emissions.

Arguably the most important part of the agreement is a section that says countries should transition away from fossil fuels “in our energy systems, beginning in this decade, in a just, orderly and equitable manner,” to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

To date, it’s the clearest sign to come out of a UN climate summit to signal the end of the fossil fuel era, although some countries and climate advocates were quick to criticize the agreement for referring to some fossil fuels as a “transitional fuel” and supporting carbon capture technology, which could be used to increase overall fossil fuel production.

Wednesday’s decision was celebrated as a major improvement from an earlier draft that suggested countries “could” reduce the consumption and production of fossil fuels “by, before, or around 2050.” Responding to that draft, former U.S. vice president Al Gore said the entire negotiations were “on the verge of complete failure”under the United Arab Emirates’ leadership.

At this year’s summit, called COP28 and hosted by the UAE, the battle was plain to see. In the lead up to the conference it was revealed the COP28 president, and CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company Sultan Al Jaber, intended to use the conference to strike new oil deals, and falsely argued there’s no science that says fossil fuels must be phased out to address climate change.

Throughout the negotiations, more than 2,400 fossil fuel lobbyists were on the ground, including at least 65 individuals from Canada advocating for fossil fuels – an unprecedented number – pushing for gas as a transition fuel and using carbon capture technologies to justify increased oil and gas production; two things climate science is unequivocally clear are not climate solutions.

The public conversation around the negotiations also revealed an intensifying fight over the future of coal, oil and gas. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said oil and gas companies face a “moment of truth” to decide whether to continue fuelling the climate crisis or invest in clean energy. OPEC fired back, saying it was “undiplomatic” of the IEA, and implied it was infringing on the sovereignty of other countries. Later it was revealed, OPEC sent letters to its members urging them to tank any negotiation that tried to highlight the role of fossil fuels driving the climate crisis.

Between the high-profile institutional spats, record number of fossil fuel lobbyists, and civil society groups who effectively made the litmus test for success a question of whether fossil fuels would finally be addressed head on is an undeniable sign the battle lines between fossil fuel interests and those advocating for a climate safe future are actively being drawn. ...

Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault called the decision a “historic agreement.” He described “breakthrough commitments” on renewable energy, transitioning away from fossil fuels, and energy efficiency, noting it creates opportunities for near term action to prevent the Paris Agreement’s goal of holding global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures from dying....

The UAE Consensus, calls on countries to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030; rapidly phase down “unabated” coal; accelerate the uptick of “low carbon fuels,”; scale up renewables, nuclear, carbon capture technologies and “low carbon” hydrogen; transition away from fossil fuels; substantially reduce methane emissions by 2030; advance zero emission vehicles and infrastructure; and phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies “that do not address energy poverty or just transitions.” ...

Canada is part way there, having recently announced new proposed methane regulations that would require a 75 per cent cut by 2030, and earlier this year made significant progress to phase out some fossil fuel subsidies. ...

Global Industry Campaign Manager with Oil Change International David Tong, told Canada’s National Observer civil society groups around the world called for a full, fast, fair and funded phaseout of fossil fuels. “It’s a big win to get a reference to the transition away from fossil fuels, but this deal isn’t full, it’s not fast, it’s not fair and it’s not funded,” he said. Specifically, there’s nothing in the agreement that would require wealthy countries to phase out their fossil fuel production first and fastest, in order to create space in the world’s carbon budget to allow developing countries to pull off a more manageable transition.

“This isn’t a fair deal, and it doesn’t call out the five big planet wreckers responsible for more than 51% of the oil and gas production predicted between now and 2050: the USA, Australia, Canada, Norway and the United Kingdom,” Global Industry Campaign Manager with Oil Change International David Tong said. ...

Already, the planet has reached at least 1.1 C warming above pre-industrial averages, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the gold standard for climate science. That means more than three billion people live in areas “highly vulnerable” to climate change, with roughly half the world’s population suffering from “severe water scarcity” for at least part of the year, according to the IPCC’s findings. Almost all regions of the planet are baking under extreme heat, leading to higher mortality rates. Food, water, and vector-borne diseases are on the rise, as are mental health issues associated with trauma from extreme weather events and loss of culture. Climate change is already causing economic damage across the agriculture, forestry, fishery, energy and tourism sectors, with those losses and damages concentrated in more vulnerable countries.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/12/13/news/first-time-nearly-three...

Two years after a heat dome killed 619 people in Vancouver, the BC government has put aside $10 million for air conditioning units for thousands of British Columbians vulnerable to heat-related illness and death. The problem is that there are "more than a million British Columbians are considered to have a disability, and a quarter of them are poor." 

B.C. Hydro says about 360 free air conditioning units were distributed by August under the $10-million provincial program. (CBC / Radio-Canada)

Two years since the mercury started rising ahead of an exceptionally fatal heat wave, the provincial government has announced a $10 million program to provide air conditioning to thousands of British Columbians vulnerable to heat-related illness and death.

The funds will be administered through BC Hydro, which already has a list of people eligible for financial assistance and will buy and install the 8,000 units. The minister of health was vague about eligibility details and how the process would work, saying there would be an application process through the utility, with input from health authorities as to who should be prioritized for the program.

The province’s leading advocacy organization for people with disabilities applauded the move, but noted that more than a million British Columbians are considered to have a disability, and a quarter of them are poor.

“It's probably much higher than 300,000 low income people with disabilities that would need access to this,” said Helaine Boyd, executive director of the Disability Alliance of BC. “There's lots of people who need an air conditioner that don’t have a case manager under the health authority, so they might fall through the cracks.”

Minister Adrian Dix acknowledged that the program might prove insufficient, but insisted it’s a significant amount of money and that “it may be that demand will exceed and we will have to do more, but this is an extremely strong statement and start in focussing in on vulnerable people.”

EXTENDED TIMELINE FOR DISTRIBUTION

The funding does not include any provisions for the increased energy expenses, though the minister is considering support in the future. When CTV News pointed out some strata bylaws prohibit air conditioners, even for seniors, Dix said the health authorities are working on the issue for rentals and multi-unit homes to allow for the devices.

“We're seeing a range of health impacts directly linked to changing climate patterns,” said Dix, insisting that several measures were required in response and that the three-year timeline for distribution of funds and units was reasonable.

“We still have to purchase and acquire and install air conditioners and that can take some time, so we'll proceed and we're hoping to do significant amount in the first year,” he said.

Dix was defensive when asked about the province’s slow response, particularly when Washington and Oregon states had high death tolls and responded much faster to the provision of cooling units, outlining the many fixes he had to do to the province’s emergency services and healthcare system after the disastrous response to the 2021 heat dome.

HEAT DOME FALLOUT

The multi-million dollar investment is a direct result of criticism that arose from the province’s response to the exceptional heat dome of event of 2021, when an unusual weather pattern developed over western North America early in the summer, with sudden high temperatures lingering for days without cooling down at night.

A total of 619 people died over the course of several weeks, as some people who were hospitalized or sickened by the heat slowly died (opens in a new tab)from their injuries. 

Another 16 people died from hyperthermia during heat waves last year, but the coroner’s service(opens in a new tab) did not recommend the designation of air conditioning as medically-necessary devices at that time, nor in its report on the heat dome.

However, all levels of government have taken notice of the fact so many people died in sweltering indoor temperatures, and the City of Vancouver has already updated its building code to require AC in certain new homes.

At Tuesday event unveiling the federal government’s “National Adaptation Strategy(opens in a new tab)” for climate change in Vancouver, one of the targets presented in the strategy is to eliminate deaths due to extreme heat waves by 2040.

The province has also implemented a new Heat Alert Warning System(opens in a new tab) (HARS), which began last year and provides much clearer and more timely information to the public.

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-heat-preparedness-free-air-conditioning-for-a-...

Below is a broader discussion of how bogus carbon credits, which both Trudeau and Danielle Smith are trying to sell to the public as a means to increase Canadian fossil fuel production in Canada, are a "perevasive problem" around the world, according to scientists. "A study covering almost 300 carbon offset projects found that the industry’s top registries have consistently allowed developers to claim far more climate-saving benefits than justified."

A study covering almost 300 carbon offset projects found that the industry’s top registries have consistently allowed developers to claim far more climate-saving benefits than justified.

Researchers led by Barbara Haya from the University of Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy assessed the methods underpinning forestry projects responsible for 11% of all carbon offsets ever issued. They found shortcomings in each that resulted in bogus credits.

“Across the board, they fall far short from good practice in carbon accounting,” Haya said. “It’s pervasive.” The study, the first of its type, was published Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change.

Haya and her team looked at the methods applied to projects that sought to improve forest management — one of the most popular sources of offsets on the market. In theory, this might involve waiting to harvest trees when they’re older, limiting the number of trees that can be cut per hectare, or minimizing the environmental impact of logging infrastructure such as roads. In reality, the researchers found, project developers were often able to generate credits even when no changes were made.

In the unregulated carbon offsets market, standards are upheld by a handful of groups that host their own registries. The organizations generate revenue by issuing credits, a business model that incentivizes leniency over conservativeness. And if one body tightens its standards, a developer can just go to another. The system is structured to maximize entry for projects that seek to mitigate climate change. But without higher standards and stricter oversight, it’s in fact fueling a race to the bottom, Haya said.

The bulk of credits generated using the approaches Haya’s team studied came from Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard, Winrock International’s American Carbon Registry and the Climate Action Reserve. The three registries, among the world’s biggest, also host credits for the California Air Resources Board, which itself sets standards for credits that can be used under the state’s regulated emissions scheme.

All four groups stood by their approaches, which they said had undergone scientific reviews and incorporated feedback from experts and the public. A spokesperson for the California Air Resources Board said its methods have been upheld in court.

Haya’s team found that the registries’ methods failed to uphold basic criteria that would ensure projects make a real difference to carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. That includes ensuring their carbon credits funded tree-protecting activities that wouldn’t have otherwise happened, and making a reasonable baseline assessment of that alternate future. Developers also have to address if they are displacing harmful activities elsewhere and should account for risks such as wildfires.

For example, the researchers found that most of the credits of the type they studied had been generated against a baseline of aggressive harvesting practices that didn’t align with past practices in the area. That meant developers could be credited for operating as usual, rather than for improvement.

The shortcomings show that companies can’t rely on offsets generated using these methods to make claims of carbon neutrality or climate advances, Haya said. Any that are doing so are portraying a misleading sense of progress. “It makes the global community think that we’re doing more than we’re really doing at this brief moment we have to dramatically reduce our emissions to prevent runaway climate change.”

Haya said her team’s findings amount to a systemic failing in the market. The challenge of placing a precise number on how much carbon is saved to generate each offset sold impacts all projects, not just forest management. Last year, a Bloomberg investigation found that almost 40% of the offsets purchased in 2021 came from renewable energy projects that didn’t actually avoid emissions.

Haya and her team have suggestions for improvement that include using dynamic rather than static baselines which would adjust to market conditions over time. Verra said it recently introduced a new methodology adopting this approach. But ultimately Haya, whose been studying the offsets market for over two decades, has been left feeling jaded.

“Offsetting is a misnomer — you can’t ‘offset’ your emissions,” she said. “We need alternative ways of supporting climate mitigation because the current offset market is deeply not working.”

https://time.com/6264772/study-most-carbon-credits-are-bogus/

"It was the hottest year on Earth in 125,000 years, and #climatescam is taking off." Below is a review of a study examining why so many still fall for fake climate crisis news, with the outreach method, invented by LGBTQ+ advocates that involves hearing people’s concerns and helping them work through their conflicted feelings, working in the mine smelting city of Trail BC with high greenhouse gas emissions to convert the population and city council  to a 100% renewable plan. 

Protesters march after a demonstration near Heathrow Airport west of London, on Aug. 20, Photo by Getty Images/Grist2007. However, a recent study in Nature Human Behavior found that climate change disinformation was more persuasive than scientific facts. 

In 1995, a leading group of scientists convened by the United Nations declared that they had detected a “human influence” on global temperatures with “effectively irreversible” consequences. In the coming decades, 99.9 per cent of scientists would come to agree that burning fossil fuels has disrupted the Earth’s climate.

Yet almost 30 years after that warning, during the hottest year on Earth in 125,000 years, people are still arguing that the science is unreliable, or that the threat is real but we shouldn’t do anything about climate change. Conspiracies are thriving online, according to a recent report by the coalition Climate Action Against Disinformation released in time for the UN climate conference in Dubai. Over the past year, posts with the hashtag #ClimateScam have gotten more likes and retweets on the platform known as X than ones with #ClimateCrisis or #ClimateEmergency. 

By now, anyone looking out the window can see flowers blooming earlier and lakes freezing later. Why, after all this time, do 15 per cent of Americans fall for the lie that global warming isn’t happening? And is there anything that can be done to bring them around to reality? New research suggests that understanding why fake news is compelling to people can tell us something about how to defend ourselves against it.

People buy into bad information for different reasons, said Andy Norman, an author and philosopher who co-founded the Mental Immunity Project, which aims to protect people from manipulative information. Due to the quirks of psychology, people can end up overlooking inconvenient facts when confronted with arguments that support their beliefs. “The more you rely on useful beliefs at the expense of true beliefs, the more unhinged your thinking becomes,” Norman said. Another reason people are drawn to conspiracies is that they feel like they’re in on a big, world-transforming secret: Flat Earthers think they’re seeing past the illusions that the vast majority don’t.

The annual UN climate summits often coincide with a surge in misleading information on social media. As COP28 ramped up in late November, conspiracy theories circulated claiming that governments were trying to cause food shortages by seizing land from farmers, supposedly using climate change as an excuse. Spreading lies about global warming like these can further social divisions and undermine public and political support for action to reduce emissions, according to the Climate Action Against Disinformation report. It can also lead to harassment: Some 73 per cent of climate scientists who regularly appear in the media have experienced online abuse.

Part of the problem is the genuine appeal of fake news. A recent study in Nature Human Behavior found that climate change disinformation was more persuasive than scientific facts. Researchers at the University of Geneva in Switzerland had originally intended to see if they could help people fend off disinformation, testing different strategies on nearly 7,000 people from 12 countries, including the United States, India, and Nigeria.

Participants read a paragraph intended to strengthen their mental defences — reminders of the scientific consensus around climate change, the trustworthiness of scientists, or the moral responsibility to act, for example. Then they were subjected to a barrage of 20 real tweets that blamed warming on the sun and the “wavy” jet stream, spouted conspiracies about “the climate hoax devised by the UN” and warned that the elites “want us to eat bugs.” 

The interventions didn’t work as hoped, said Tobia Spampatti, an author of the study and a neuroscience researcher at the University of Geneva. The flood of fake news — meant to simulate what people encounter in social media echo chambers — had a big effect. Reading the tweets about bogus conspiracies lowered people’s belief that climate change was happening, their support for action to reduce emissions, and their willingness to do something about it personally.

The disinformation was simply more compelling than scientific facts, partly because it plays with people’s emotions, Spampatti said (eliciting anger toward elites who want you to eat bugs, for example). The only paragraph that helped people recognize falsehoods was one that prompted them to evaluate the accuracy of the information they were seeing, a nudge that brought some people back to reality.

The study attempted to use “pre-bunking,” a tactic to vaccinate people against fake news. While the effort flopped, Norman said that doesn’t mean it shows “inoculation” is ineffective. Spampatti and other researchers’ effort to fortify people’s mental defences used a new, broader approach to pre-bunking, trying to protect against a bunch of lines of disinformation at once, that didn’t work as well as tried-and-true inoculation techniques, according to Norman.

Norman says it’s crucial that any intervention to stop the spread of disinformation comes with a “weakened dose” of it, like a vaccine, to help people understand why someone might benefit from lying. For example, when the Biden administration learned of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade Ukraine in late 2021, the White House began warning the world that Russia would push a false narrative to justify the invasion, including staging a fake, graphic video of a Ukrainian attack on Russian territory. When the video came out, it was quickly dismissed as fake news. “It was a wildly successful attempt to inoculate much of the world against Putin’s preferred narrative about Ukraine,” Norman said.

For climate change, that approach might not succeed — decades of oil-funded disinformation campaigns have already infected the public. “It’s really hard to think about someone who hasn’t been exposed to climate skepticism or disinformation from fossil fuel industries,” said Emma Frances Bloomfield, a communication professor at the University of Nevada, Los Vegas. “It’s just so pervasive. They have talking heads who go on news programs, they flood media publications and the internet, they pay lobbyists.” 

Bloomfield argues that disinformation sticks for a reason, and that simply telling the people who fall for it that there’s a scientific consensus isn’t enough. “They’re doubting climate change because they doubt scientific authorities,” Bloomfield said. “They’re making decisions about the environment, not based on the facts or the science, but based on their values or other things that are important to them.”

While political identity can explain some resistance to climate change, there are other reasons people dismiss the evidence, as Bloomfield outlines in her upcoming book Science v. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators. “In the climate change story, we’re the villains, or at least partially blameworthy for what’s happening to the environment, and it requires us to make a lot of sacrifices,” Bloomfield said. “That’s a hard story to adopt because of the role we’re playing within it.”

Accepting climate change, to some degree, means accepting inner conflict. You always know you could do more to lower your carbon footprint, whether that’s ditching meat, refusing to fly, or wearing your old clothes until they’re threadbare and ratty. By contrast, embracing climate denial allows people to identify as heroes, Bloomfield said. They don’t have to do anything differently, and might even see driving around in a gas-guzzling truck as part of God’s plan. It’s a comforting narrative, and certainly easier than wrestling with ethical dilemmas or existential dread.

Those seeking to amplify tensions around climate change or spread doubt, such as fossil fuel companies, social media trolls, and countries like Russia and China, get a lot of bang for their buck. “It’s a lot easier and cheaper to push doubt than to push certainty,” Bloomfield said. Oil companies including Shell, ExxonMobil, and BP spent about $4 million to $5 million on Facebook ads related to social issues and politics this year, according to the Climate Action Against Disinformation report. To sow doubt, you only need to arouse some suspicion. Creating a bullet-proof case for something is much harder — it might take thousands of scientific studies (or debunking hundreds of counterarguments one by one, as Grist did in 2006).

The most straightforward way to fight disinformation would be to stop it from happening in the first place, Spampatti said. But even if regulators were able to get social media companies to try to stop the spread of conspiracy theories and falsehoods, dislodging them is a different story. One promising approach, “deep canvassing,” seeks to persuade people through nonjudgmental, one-on-one conversations. The outreach method, invented by LGBTQ+ advocates, involves hearing people’s concerns and helping them work through their conflicted feelings. (Remember how accepting climate change means accepting you might be a tiny part of the problem?)

Research has shown that deep canvassing isn’t just successful at reducing transphobia, but also that its effects can last for months, a long time compared to other interventions. The strategy can work for other polarizing problems, too, based on one experiment in a rural metal-smelting town in British Columbia. After convincing several local governments across the West Kootenay region to shift to 100 per cent renewable energy, volunteers with the non-profit Neighbours United kept running into difficulties in the city of Trail, where they encountered distrust of environmentalists. They spoke to hundreds of residents, listening to their worries about losing jobs, finding common ground, and telling personal stories about climate change like friends would, instead of debating the facts like antagonists. A stunning 40 per cent of residents shifted their beliefs, and Trail’s city council voted in 2022 to shift to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050.

Both facts and stories have a place, Bloomfield said. For conservative audiences, she suggests that climate advocates move away from talking about global systems and scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a “nameless, faceless, nebulous group of people” — and toward local matters and people they actually know. Getting information from friends, family, and other trusted individuals can really help. “They’re not necessarily as authoritative as the IPCC,” Bloomfield said. “But it helps you connect with that information, and you trust that person, so you trust that information that they’re resharing.”

https://grist.org/politics/why-people-fall-for-climate-conspiracies-fake...

The sad truth about Smith's proposed carbon capture and storage (CCS) of all of Canada's emissions and the fossil fuel industry's promotion of this technology that was discussed in the last post is that the fossil fuel industry has known for decades that it doesn't work, and so do the governments that want to increase revenue from fossil fuels for themselves and the industry. How poor is the performance of these CCS projects - at least one of them is known to emit more greenhouse gases than it recovers. "“The push for carbon capture is a way to distract us from the real solutions to climate change,” Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, said, which include phasing out society’s use of oil and gas entirely.

 

Imperial Oil’s refinery in Nanticoke, Ontario. The Exxon subsidiary first examined carbon sequestration in the 1980s.

In late June 2022, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney flew to Washington, D.C., with the heads of major oilsands producers to make the case that Canada’s most carbon polluting industry cares deeply about fixing climate change. ...

But the climate solution that Kenney and executives touted in the U.S. Capitol — known as carbon capture and storage — has a major disqualifying flaw. It may be technically feasible to bury oilsands emissions, but it is also prohibitively expensive, so much so that the technology doesn’t “appear to be economic” and would “achieve a relatively minor impact in reducing CO2 emissions.” ...

That blunt assessment didn’t come from an environmental group, but rather from a company leading the current carbon capture and storage effort: Imperial Oil.  More than three decades ago, the Exxon-owned oilsands producer undertook one of Canada’s first major studies of “underground carbon dioxide disposal.” The company’s findings, which were published in a newly reviewed 1991 Imperial Oil research paper, were not encouraging. The technology requires massive expenditures, would only mitigate a small fraction of Canada’s carbon output and comes with “large net costs to society,” Imperial concluded.

Imperial’s early negative assessments of the technology proved prescient. “The problems that they identified back then are the same ones we’re talking about now,” Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, told The Tyee. A report last year from the Global CCS Institute, a proponent of the technology whose membership includes Exxon, found that the global capacity of carbon capture and storage projects was slightly lower in 2021 than it was a decade earlier. 

“This represents a decade of very limited progress in terms of CCS project development,” noted a separate report from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which identified poor economics and high financial risk as major barriers holding the technology back. 

“Despite years of hype,” a libertarian think tank called the Manhattan Institute concluded in 2018, “CCS still costs too much and cannot come close to matching the scale of growing global carbon-dioxide emissions.” The institute has reportedly received more than $1 million in donations from Exxon.

Despite those pessimistic appraisals, Exxon’s subsidiary Imperial Oil belongs to a consortium of oilsands companies called the Pathways Alliance that argues carbon capture will help the industry “achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.”  But the organization predicts a steep price tag. Deploying carbon capture and storage in the oilsands could cost $2.5 billion per year. This massive investment would shave off only 20 million tonnes per year of emissions by 2030 from an industry that annually emits 70 million tonnes. And Canadian oil producers like Cenovus are asking federal and provincial policy-makers to use taxpayer money to cover a huge part of the bill, saying “more help” is necessary. 

So why is Imperial Oil, a top oilsands producer, continuing to push carbon capture and storage technology despite knowing for decades that it’s a subpar solution to the climate crisis? That’s simple, Stewart told The Tyee. “It extends the life of fossil fuels,” he said. ...

The carbon disposal network would not generate enough profit to be “self-supporting.” Therefore, Imperial warned, the high costs of deploying the technology “would need to be shared not only by contributors of the emissions, but more broadly by society. ...

High costs, modest climate benefits and big public subsidies — these are the same issues still preventing carbon and storage from being deployed widely in Canada, Stewart argued. There are only a handful of such projects currently operating in the country, and one of them, Shell’s Quest plant in Alberta, emits more greenhouse gases than it buries according to the watchdog group Global Witness.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2022/07/07/Carbon-Capture-No-Fix-Big-Oil-Known-D...

The Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Jerry Demarco's audit has concluded that the Trudeau Liberal government is on track to miss its 2030 of cutting greenhouse gas output by 40% to 45% below the 2005 level".

The Trudeau Liberal government's response to the audit, was create new even more ambitious targets further off in time, such as "making all new car sales be electric by 2035, , mandate a 70% cut in methane output from the oil and gas sector by 2030 and produce a framework for a cap on oil and gas emissions" (https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/canadas-emissions-reductions-unli...(Reuters),auditor%20general%20said%20on%20Tuesday.) which is the same strategy the Liberals have been following and failing to meet every time since 1990. So if you didn't think our last target was strong enough and you hate our failure to meet that target, relax, we've an even strong target for you. Therefore, trust us, you can vote for us in the next election. Missing the 2030 by 40% below 2005 levels means the Trudeau Liberal government won't even make the 2030 emissions reduction below 2005 target of the Harper Conservative government announced by its Conservative Environment Minister (an oxymoron) Leona Aglukka in 2015 that Trudeau then copied as his own after the election. Of course Harper never intended to meet it either. As The Narwahl noted in 2015, as Trudeau adopted Harper's emissions reduction targets: "The two previous federal governments were nowhere near to meeting the targets they set, so Canada is working to catch up right now. ...  Clare Demerse, federal policy advisor for Clean Energy Canada, agrees. “We have, in this country, a long history of having targets and a very short history of having actual plans to meet them. We have been in a situation where Canada has really established a credibility problem in terms of hitting targets. We need to fix that.” (https://thenarwhal.ca/why-trudeau-s-commitment-harper-s-old-emissions-ta...)

 With oilsands emissions looking like this, what do you think are the chances of reaching ANY emissions reduction targets?

 Canada's emissions reduction plan is flawed and will not reach the target of cutting greenhouse gas output by 40% to 45% below the 2005 level by 2030, the country's auditor general said  [in November.] 

Falling short of the minimum 40% target for 2030 would mean Canada missing its commitment under the United Nations' Paris Agreement on climate change. Ottawa's plan is insufficient because key measures needed to meet the 2030 target were delayed or not prioritized, the office of the auditor general said in a statement.

The audit, by Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Jerry, found responsibility for reducing emissions was split among multiple federal entities not directly accountable to Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, making progress and course correction difficult....

In the next few weeks Ottawa will unveil measures on zero-emissions vehicles, mandate a 70% cut in methane output from the oil and gas sector by 2030 and produce a framework for a cap on oil and gas emissions, Liberal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeaul said. ...

Canada has missed every emissions reduction target it has ever set. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says fighting climate change is one of his government's top priorities. ...

The audit found the plan had potentially strong measures, such as carbon pricing and regulations, but also had many weaknesses, "including missing and inconsistent information and unreliable projections that hindered the plan's credibility".

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/canadas-emissions-reductions-unli...(Reuters),auditor%20general%20said%20on%20Tuesday.

So much for the world moving off fossil fuels. We can't even move off the dirtiest fossil fuel - coal. Accoring to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2023 we set new records for coal production globally with "The three largest coal producers – China, India and Indonesia – all produced record amounts in 2022. In March 2023, both China and India set new monthly records, with China surpassing 400 million tonnes for the second time ever and India surpassing 100 million tonnes for the first time." Meanwhile in 2021 Canada at 14.08 tonnes of emissions per capita and the US at 14.93 tonnes of emissions per capita still lead China at 7.95 tonnes of emissions per capita, India at 1.9 tonnes of emissions per capita and Indonesia at 2.25 tonnes of emissions per capita (click on dots for each country on the chart at CO₂ emissions per capita, 2021 (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita) are still well ahead in per capita emissions. We simply are not progressing fast enough anywhere to prevent the climate crisis from having even greater catastrophic effects. 

Tug pulling coal barge.

Continued strong growth in Asian economies offsets declines in Europe and North America, highlighting need for stronger policies and investments to accelerate growth of clean energy

Global coal consumption climbed to a new all-time high in 2022 and will stay near that record level this year as strong growth in Asia for both power generation and industrial applications outpaces declines in the United States and Europe, according to the IEA’s latest market update.

Coal consumption in 2022 rose by 3.3% to 8.3 billion tonnes, setting a new record, according to the IEA’s mid-year Coal Market Update, which was published today. In 2023 and 2024, small declines in coal-fired power generation are likely to be offset by rises in industrial use of coal, the report predicts, although there are wide variations between geographic regions.

China, India and Southeast Asian countries together are expected to account for 3 out of every 4 tonnes of coal consumed worldwide in 2023. In the European Union, growth in coal demand was minimal in 2022 as a temporary spike in coal-fired power generation was almost offset by lower use in industry. European coal use is expected to fall sharply this year as renewables expand, and as nuclear and hydropower partially recover from their recent slumps. In the United States, the move away from coal is also being accentuated by lower natural gas prices. 

After three turbulent years marked by the Covid-19 shock in 2020, the strong post-pandemic rebound in 2021 and the turmoil caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, coal markets have so far returned to more predictable and stable patterns in 2023. Global coal demand is estimated to have grown by about 1.5% in the first half of 2023 to a total of about 4.7 billion tonnes, lifted by an increase of 1% in power generation and 2% in non-power industrial uses.  

By region, coal demand fell faster than previously expected in the first half of this year in the United States and the European Union – by 24% and 16%, respectively. However, demand from the two largest consumers, China and India, grew by over 5% during the first half, more than offsetting declines elsewhere.

“Coal is the largest single source of carbon emissions from the energy sector, and in Europe and the United States, the growth of clean energy has put coal use into structural decline,” said IEA Director of Energy Markets and Security Keisuke Sadamori. “But demand remains stubbornly high in Asia, even as many of those economies have significantly ramped up renewable energy sources. We need greater policy efforts and investments – backed by stronger international cooperation – to drive a massive surge in clean energy and energy efficiency to reduce coal demand in economies where energy needs are growing fast.”

The shift of coal demand to Asia continues. In 2021, China and India already accounted for two-thirds of global consumption, meaning together they used twice as much coal as the rest of the world combined. In 2023, their share will be close to 70%. By contrast, the United States and the European Union – which together accounted for 40% three decades ago and over 35% at the beginning of this century – represent less than 10% today.

The same split is observed on the production side. The three largest coal producers – China, India and Indonesia – all produced record amounts in 2022. In March 2023, both China and India set new monthly records, with China surpassing 400 million tonnes for the second time ever and India surpassing 100 million tonnes for the first time. Also in March, Indonesia exported almost 50 million tonnes, a volume never shipped by any country before. By contrast, the United States, once the world’s largest coal producer, has more than halved production since its peak in 2008. 

After the extreme volatility and high prices of last year, coal prices fell in the first half of 2023 to the same levels as those seen in summer 2021, driven by ample supply and lower natural gas prices. Thermal coal returned to being priced below coking coal, and the big premium for Australian coal narrowed following the easing of disruptive La Niña weather that had hampered production. Russian coal has found new outlets after being barred in Europe, but often at considerable discounts.

Cheaper coal has made imports more attractive for some price-sensitive buyers. Chinese imports have almost doubled in the first half of this year, and global coal trade in 2023 is set to grow by more than 7%, outpacing overall demand growth, to approach the record levels seen in 2019. Seaborne coal trade in 2023 may well surpass the record of 1.3 billion tonnes set in 2019. 

https://www.iea.org/news/global-coal-demand-set-to-remain-at-record-leve....

 

 

One myth about dealing with the climate crisis is that we should deal with methane first because it allegedly has 80 times the heating effect of carbon dioxide. The following article from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists explains why this problematic: in brief, methane lasts about 20 years in the atmsophere, while carbon dioxide and its effects last for millenia. Methane is still a major problem in creating global warming, by the effects of carbon dioxide are more long-lasting. 

Methane gas bubbles are seen trapped in the ice of a frozen thermokarst lake. This gas is released into the Arctic atmosphere from both the frozen layer and the underlying waters during the spring thaw. Photo by Kevin Hand, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The popular narrative suggests that tackling methane emissions is the “low-hanging fruit” in the climate-solutions toolbox. The belief that turning off the taps on this “super-pollutant” could “buy us time” to address the climate crisis is widespread, shared by politicians, journalists, and even some scientists. ...

The greenhouse gas methane is responsible for roughly 30 percent of the increase in global temperature since the industrial revolution and is often described as 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Sometimes news outlets remember to qualify that with “over 20 years,” and sometimes they don’t. In a press call during the 28th Conference of Parties, the annual United Nations climate conference, US Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said methane was his “number one” priority at the conference. Shortly after, the Biden administration announced a new EPA rule targeting methane emissions. The press release announcing the rule stated, “Sharp cuts in methane emissions are among the most critical actions the United States can take in the short term to slow the rate of climate change.” ...

But this is a dangerous fallacy, according to Raymond Pierrehumbert, a professor of physics at the University of Oxford and a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board.

In an in-depth interview with Bulletin climate editor Jessica McKenzie, Pierrehumbert dissects the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter—the voluntary pledge made at COP28 by some oil and gas companies to slash operational emissions of greenhouse gases, including bringing methane emissions to “near-zero.” He goes on to explain why describing methane as “80 times as potent as carbon dioxide” is inaccurate and misleading and why the widespread hope that sharp cuts to methane emissions will bring about immediate and significant reductions of global temperatures is both wrong and distressing.

Jessica McKenzie: I was wondering if we could start just by talking about the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter and what it is and what it isn’t.

Raymond Pierrehumbert: Altogether this Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter is very small potatoes. It refers only to decarbonization of the operations of the oil companies, which means that they’re not counting the much bigger carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of their product, just the operation, which is really a small part of the of the total, especially in the Middle Eastern countries where the cost of oil production is actually very low compared to the US and not very energy intensive to begin with. It’s less energy intensive than fracking; you don’t have to redrill the wells as often. But no matter what the country, the carbon emissions from operations is a small part of the total compared to actually burning the fossil fuels.

A second part is putting money into carbon dioxide removal, Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage. Just about everybody agrees we’ll need a certain amount of that, once we’ve gotten carbon dioxide emissions down to nearly zero, but right now, as Pierre Friedlingstein has said recently, the existing air capture projects are capturing one-one-millionth of what they would need to, and even under outrageously optimistic projections, where they improve by a factor of 1,000, or even 10,000, that’s still not going to do the job of decarbonization.

The role of carbon dioxide air capture, or capture and sequestration, is in dealing with the last 10 percent or so of emissions that we can’t easily avoid. That would include things like hard-to-decarbonize sectors, maybe aircraft, it would include include rogue nations; you know, North Korea isn’t likely to sign on to emission reductions. Whether you call it a phase-down or a phase-out, the fact is that we have to get emissions down by about 90 percent before we can even think about a possible role of air capture in sopping up the rest. So while it is useful to have another entity putting money in to develop the technology, because we will need some of it, it’s not the game changer. It only becomes an important part of the strategy once we get down to within shouting distance of net zero.

And it should also be noted that a lot of the existing air capture and what is being talked about actually uses this captured carbon dioxide to produce more oil. They call that low carbon fuel, but it’s a kind of a dodge, because right now, oil companies are already using carbon dioxide injection that they buy commercially to produce oil. And if you just switch that commercially purchased carbon dioxide from say, leftovers from the Haber process [the process used to produce ammonia, of which carbon dioxide is a by-product], and switch that for air capture, it’s just a wash, it doesn’t actually change anything. Except that they [the fossil fuel companies] get to look greener.

If companies can reduce their operational emissions, that’s a good thing. It’s just that’s such a small part of the total. It’s not a game changer. These are baby steps. And we’re at a time in the climate crisis when baby steps are not going to cut it.

Now as far as methane goes—that’s where we get into the subtler issue of just what is carbon dioxide equivalent, or just all the fallacies associated with the term carbon dioxide equivalent, because the standard way that companies claim credit for their methane emissions reductions is to use a carbon dioxide equivalent number. And what’s come into favor is this figure based on 20 years, which is what gets you methane is 80 times [as potent as carbon dioxide].

McKenzie: Could you explain a little bit more about where that comparison came from and why that is a flawed descriptor?

Pierrehumbert: The 80 times figure comes from the standard Global Warming Potential framework, which was introduced in the very first IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report, but what everybody forgot was that it was introduced as an example of how to do a comparison, and not as something people should actually use to make decisions. Nonetheless it stuck.

The main thing is that there is no true equivalence between carbon dioxide emissions and methane emissions, because the climate responds in different ways to a short-lived gas than to a long-lived gas. If you put a kilogram of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere it has a warming effect that lasts millennia. You put a kilogram of methane in the atmosphere, the warming effect will disappear almost entirely after 20 years. So the amount of warming you get depends on the emission rate of methane, not the amount of emissions you put in the atmosphere. A kilogram per year gives you a certain amount of warming, because it doesn’t accumulate in the atmosphere beyond about 20 years. Whereas a kilogram per year of carbon dioxide will mount up to a certain amount of warming in the first 20 years. But if you keep emitting that kilogram per year, the amount of warming you get continues to increase indefinitely, which does not happen with methane. So any equivalence that says that a certain mass of methane is equivalent to this other mass of carbon dioxide, one megaton of methane is worth a certain number of megatons of carbon dioxide, anything like that is going to distort the climate response.

There is a way to compare them, which is to compare the actual amount of warming produced by different strategies.

McKenzie: That’s not what the 80 times of warming comparison does?

Pierrehumbert: No, it’s not really what the 80 times does. Or it does it in a very flawed way that only looks at what happens in the first 20 years and doesn’t look at the way carbon dioxide outstrips the effect of methane, eventually. Also, these equivalences compare the wrong quantities. The thing that’s wrong about these equivalences is that the methane warming is determined by a rate—megatons per year—where the carbon dioxide warming is determined by a number of megatons of cumulative emissions over any period of time. So it literally is comparing apples and oranges, because to do an actual equivalence between carbon dioxide and methane requires something that compares a rate to a mass.

It’s like comparing a distance traveled to the speed at which your car is going. These are two different things. Carbon dioxide is like the total distance your car has gone, so it’s the cumulative progress towards your destination, and our destination, in this case is making the world too hot to be livable. Whereas methane is just like the speed at which the car is going. That’s not a good analogy, really—it’s a fair analogy mathematically, but in terms of people getting their heads around it, it’s maybe not so good.

But the basic thing is that the standard 80 times figure, which is used in many attempts to say what the value is of methane and in avoided warming—that 80 times figure does not take into account the fact that after about 20 years, methane essentially stops causing further warming.

https://thebulletin.org/2023/12/mass-delusion-and-wishful-thinking-why-e...

With no companies willing to pay to search for fossil fuels off Newfoundland and Labrador’s coast this year the once rabid interest in Newfounland's offshore oil has largely disappeared. By comparison, in 2022 there was almost $240 million bid for the rights to explore for offshore Newfoundland oil.

No companies wanted to pay to search for fossil fuels off Newfoundland and Labrador’s coast this year.

Each year, companies are invited to offer money to explore areas in the Atlantic Ocean for oil and gas deposits. But last week, the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board announced there were no new bids to explore the region in 2023. The lack of interest contrasts sharply with 2022 when over $238 million worth of exploration licences were awarded by the provincial-federal regulator.

“This is really telling because it comes on the heels of Equinor withdrawing or being reluctant to develop the Bay du Nord field,” Angela Carter, energy transitions specialist at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), told Canada’s National Observer. Carter is also an associate professor of political science at Memorial University of Newfoundland teaching courses on topics like climate policy, the energy transition and politics. In May, Equinor announced Bay du Nord — Canada’s first deepwater offshore oil project — will be on hold for up to three years because of “challenging market conditions.” Then in June, BP announced it was abandoning a high-profile exploratory oil well, which was poised to be a multibillion-barrel deposit. 

Equinor changing course is a “red flag” for other firms, said Carter.

Awarded Offshore Oil Bids in Newfoundland and Labrador (2019-2023)
Infogram

Awarded offshore oil bids in Newfoundland and Labrador (2019-2023). Chart by Cloe Logan

Other factors include global oil demand changing and the challenges inherent to Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore oil — high cost, harsh environment, a lot of dry exploration holes that have been drilled, and difficulties getting drilling rigs into position, to name a few, she said.

“There's a realization playing out that this is not a desirable location to drill exploration wells,” said Carter. The timeline from bidding on a parcel, doing the exploratory drilling to developing oil resources means production is 10 to 15 years out, she said. In 10 or 15 years, firms will have to contend with a changing energy demand, prices and landscape, so some firms, like Exxon, are instead focusing investments on oil where it already exists, she added.

The International Energy Agency’s most recent forecast shows oil, coal and gas demand peaking before the end of the decade. This scenario, based on world governments’ existing policies, still overshoots the global goal to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 C to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Since 2015, firms have been showing less interest in these parcels that the government is putting up for bids, said Carter. Pre-2015, a majority of the bids offered were snapped up by companies. The one exception, she noted, was in 2018 when the regulator awarded a record bid amount of more than $1.3 billion and a record single bid of around $621 million. One parcel from that year, valued at $32 million, turned into the Bay du Nord project.

From 1988 to 2014, the board offered up 183 parcels for exploration and licences were awarded for 128 of those. In contrast, from 2015 to the present of the 163 parcels offered, only 30 licences were awarded.

“The long-term trend is [that] firms are now less willing to step forward and bid on offshore parcels,” said Carter. “Why is that? Well, because the economics have changed and it's not looking like it's going to get any better. In fact, it's gonna get worse as we get closer and closer to that peak global oil demand.”

Forty-seven parcels were offered up this year with no bids, the province’s offshore petroleum board announced last week.

“This is not the outcome we wanted from this call for bids, and of course, we are disappointed with the results,” a spokesperson from the province’s Department of Industry, Energy and Technology told Canada’s National Observer in an emailed statement. The statement said the department will be reaching out to companies to better understand what factored into their decisions not to bid, but said they “remain optimistic about the future of the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore oil and gas industry and the role of its secure, lower-carbon oil in meeting global demand.”

It also pointed to ongoing offshore activity, including $2.1 billion in exploration commitments and 17 current exploration licences. There are also three currently producing projects offshore — Hibernia, Hebron and White Rose — and a fourth project, Terra Nova, which “is expected to be back in production in the coming weeks.”

The provincial government is pushing for expansion of offshore oil and gas: specifically, it has a plan to double offshore oil and gas production by the end of the decade.

“The writing is on the wall,” said Carter. “We're at the tail end of the oil economy here, so there's an urgent need for the provincial government to work with labour and work with communities to create a plan for an equitable transition.

“We're not ready for the trends that are clearly playing out now in front of us,” she added.

The bump in bids last year is also likely related to the “unprecedented profits” fossil fuel companies were raking in, giving corporations more room to manoeuvre, compared to when oil prices tanked at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Carter.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/11/08/news/interest-offshore-oil-e....

As the climate crisis warms the planet, diseases are already spreading from the tropics further and further around the world, with the situation expected to worsen with further global warming. 

Scientists have warned that climate change would alter the prevalence and spread of disease, particularly those caused by pathogens that are sensitive to temperature. Photo by Getty Images/Grist

It was also an active year for Vibrio vulnificus, a type of flesh-eating bacteria. There were 11 deaths connected to the bacteria in Florida, three deaths in North Carolina, and another three deaths in New York and Connecticut. Then there was the first-ever locally transmitted case of mosquito-borne dengue fever in Southern California in October, followed by another case a couple of weeks later.

Scientists have warned that climate change would alter the prevalence and spread of disease in the U.S., particularly those caused by pathogens that are sensitive to temperature. This year’s spate of rare illnesses may have come as a surprise to the uninitiated, but researchers who have been following the way climate change influences disease say 2023 represents the continuation of a trend they expect will become more pronounced over time: The geographic distribution of pathogens and the timing of their emergence are undergoing a shift.

“These are broadly the patterns that we would expect,” said Rachel Baker, assistant professor of epidemiology, environment and society at Brown University. “Things start moving northward, expand outside the tropics.” The number of outbreaks Americans see each year said Colin Carlson, a global change biologist studying the relationship between global climate change, biodiversity loss and emerging infectious diseases at Georgetown University, “is going to continue to increase.” 

That’s because climate change can have a profound effect on the factors that drive disease, such as temperature, extreme weather, and even human behaviour. A 2021 study found water temperature was among the top environmental factors affecting the distribution and abundance of Naegleria fowleri, which thrives in water temperatures above 100 F but can also survive frigid winters by forming cysts in lake or pond sediment. The amoeba infects people when it enters the nasal canal and, from there, the brain. “As surface water temperatures increase with climate change, it is likely that this amoeba will pose a greater threat to human health,” the study said.

Vibrio bacteria, which has been called the “microbial barometer of climate change,” is affected in a similar way. The ocean has absorbed the vast majority of human-caused warming over the past century and a half, and sea surface temperatures, especially along the nation’s coasts, are beginning to rise precipitously as a result. Studies that have mapped Vibrio vulnificus growth show the bacteria stretching northward along the eastern coastline of the U.S. in lockstep with rising temperatures. Hotter summers also lead to more people seeking bodies of water to cool off in, which may influence the number of human exposures to the bacteria, a study said. People get infected by consuming contaminated shellfish or exposing an open wound — no matter how small — to Vibrio-contaminated water. 

Mosquitoes breed in warm, moist conditions and can spread diseases like dengue when they bite people. Studies show the species of mosquito that carries dengue, which is endemic in many parts of the Global South, is moving north into new territory as temperatures climb and flooding becomes more frequent and extreme. A study from 2019 warned that much of the southeastern U.S. is likely to become hospitable to dengue by 2050. ...

Other warmth-loving pathogens and carriers of pathogens are on the move, too — some of them affecting thousands of people a year. Valley fever, a fungal disease that can progress into a disfiguring and deadly illness, is spreading through a West that is drier and hotter than it used to be. The lone star tick, an aggressive hunter that often leaves the humans it bites with a life-long allergy to red meat, is expanding northward as winter temperatures grow milder and longer breeding seasons allow for a larger and more distributed tick population. 

The effect that rising temperatures have on these diseases doesn’t necessarily signal that every death linked to a brain-eating amoeba or Vibrio that occurred this year wouldn’t have happened in the absence of climate change — rare pathogens were claiming lives long before anthropogenic warming began altering the planet’s dynamics. Future analyses may look at the outbreaks that took place in 2023 individually to determine whether rising temperatures or some other climate change-related factor played a role. What is clear is that climate change is creating more opportunities for rare infectious diseases to crop up. Daniel R. Brooks, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto and author of a book on climate change and emerging diseases, calls this “pathogen pollution,” or “the accumulation of a lot of little emergences.” 

State and local health departments have few tools at their disposal for predicting anomalous disease outbreaks, and doctors often aren’t familiar with diseases that aren’t endemic to their region. But health institutions can take steps to limit the spread of rare climate-driven pathogens. Medical schools could incorporate climate-sensitive diseases into their curricula so their students know how to recognize these burgeoning threats no matter where in the U.S. they eventually land. A rapid test for Naegleria fowleri in water samples already exists and could be used by health departments to test pools and other summer-time hot spots for the amoeba. States could conduct real-time monitoring of beaches for Vibrio bacteria via satellite. Cities can monitor the larvae of the mosquito species that spreads dengue and other diseases and spray pesticides to reduce the number of adult mosquitoes. 

“If we were looking proactively for pathogens before they caused disease, we could better anticipate local outbreaks,” Brooks said. In other words, he said, we should be “finding them before they find us.”

https://grist.org/health/the-link-between-climate-change-and-a-spate-of-...

Newly discovered documents now show the fossil fuel industry knew the severe problems ongoing fossil fuel production would create as it increased global warming and brought on the climate crisis as early as 1954. "There is overwhelming evidence the oil and gas industry has been misleading the public and regulators around the climate risks of their product for 70 years. ... Muffett said the documents add further impetus to efforts in various jurisdictions to hold oil and gas firms legally liable for the damages caused by the climate crisis."

‘They were omnipresent in this space. There is overwhelming evidence the oil and gas industry has been misleading the public and regulators around the climate risks of their product for 70 years " said Carroll Muffett, chief executive of the Center for International Environmental Law. Composite: The Guardian/Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego/Lyndon B Johnson Library

The fossil fuel industry funded some of the world’s most foundational climate science as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents have shown, including the early research of Charles Keeling, famous for the so-called “Keeling curve” that has charted the upward march of the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels. ...

A coalition of oil and car manufacturing interests provided $13,814 (about $158,000 in today’s money) in December 1954 to fund Keeling’s earliest work in measuring CO2 levels across the western US, the documents reveal. Keeling would go on to establish the continuous measurement of global CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This “Keeling curve” has tracked the steady increase of the atmospheric carbon that drives the climate crisis and has been hailed as one of the most important scientific works of modern times.

The fossil fuel interests backed a group, known as the Air Pollution Foundation, that issued funding to Keeling to measure CO2 alongside a related effort to research the smog that regularly blighted Los Angeles at the time. This is earlier than any previously known climate research funded by oil companies.

In the research proposal for the money – uncovered by Rebecca John, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center, and published by the climate website DeSmog – Keeling’s research director, Samuel Epstein, wrote about a new carbon isotope analysis that could identify “changes in the atmosphere” caused by the burning of coal and petroleum.

“The possible consequences of a changing concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate, rates of photosynthesis, and rates of equilibration with carbonate of the oceans may ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization,” Epstein, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology (or Caltech), wrote to the group in November 1954.

Experts say the documents show the fossil fuel industry had intimate involvement in the inception of modern climate science, along with its warnings of the severe harm climate change will wreak, only to then publicly deny this science for decades and fund ongoing efforts to delay action on the climate crisis.

 “They contain smoking gun proof that by at least 1954, the fossil fuel industry was on notice about the potential for its products to disrupt Earth’s climate on a scale significant to human civilization,” said Geoffrey Supran, an expert in historic climate disinformation at the University of Miami. “These findings are a startling confirmation that big oil has had its finger on the pulse of academic climate science for 70 years – for twice my lifetime – and a reminder that it continues to do so to this day. They make a mockery of the oil industry’s denial of basic climate science decades later.”

Previous investigations of public and private records have found that major oil companies spent decades conducting their own research into the consequences of burning their product, often to an uncannily accurate degree – a study last year found that Exxon scientists made “breathtakingly” accurate predictions of global heating in the 1970s and 1980s.

The newly discovered documents now show the industry knew of CO2’s potential climate impact as early as 1954 via, strikingly, the work of Keeling, then a 26-year-old Caltech researcher conducting formative work measuring CO2 levels across California and the waters of the Pacific ocean. There is no suggestion that oil and gas funding distorted his research in any way. The findings of this work would lead the US scientist to further experiments upon the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii that were to provide a continual status report of the world’s dangerously-rising carbon dioxide composition.

Keeling died in 2005 but his seminal work lives on. Currently, the Earth’s atmospheric CO2 level is 422 parts per million, which is nearly a third higher than the first reading taken in 1958, and a 50% jump on pre-industrial levels.

This essential tracking of the primary heat-trapping gas that has pushed global temperatures to higher than ever previously experienced in human civilization was born, in part, due to the backing of the Air Pollution Foundation.

A total of 18 automotive companies, including Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, gave money to the foundation. Other entities, including banks and retailers, also contributed funding. Separately, a 1959 memo identifies the American Petroleum Institute (API), the US’s leading oil and gas lobbying body, and the Western Oil and Gas Association, now known as the Western States Petroleum Association, as “major contributors to the funds of the Air Pollution Foundation”. It’s not clear exactly when API started funding the foundation but it had a representative on a research committee from mid-1955 onwards.

A policy statement of the Air Pollution Foundation from 1955 calls the problem of air pollution, which is caused by the emissions of cars, trucks and industrial facilities, “one of the most serious confronting urban areas in California and elsewhere” and that the issue will be addressed via “diligent and honest fact finding, by wise and effective action”.

The unearthed documents come from the Caltech archives, the US National Archives, the University of California at San Diego and Los Angeles newspapers from the 1950s, and represent what may be the first instance of the fossil fuel industry being informed of the potentially dire consequences of its business model. The oil and gas industry was initially concerned with research related to smog and other direct air pollutants before branching out into related climate change impacts, according to Carroll Muffett, chief executive of the Center for International Environmental Law. "You just come back to the oil and gas industry again and again, they were omnipresent in this space,” he said. “The industry was not just on notice but deeply aware of the potential climate implications of its products for going on 70 years.” Muffett said the documents add further impetus to efforts in various jurisdictions to hold oil and gas firms legally liable for the damages caused by the climate crisis. “These documents talk about CO2 emissions having planetary implications, meaning this industry understood extraordinarily early on that fossil fuel combustion was profound on a planetary scale,” he said.

“There is overwhelming evidence the oil and gas industry has been misleading the public and regulators around the climate risks of their product for 70 years. Trusting them to be part of the solutions is foolhardy. We’ve now moved into an era of accountability.”

API and Ralph Keeling, Charles’s son who is also a scientist, were contacted for comment about the documents but did not respond.

 

 

 

The fossil fuel interests backed a group, known as the Air Pollution Foundation, that issued funding to Keeling to measure CO2 alongside a related effort to research the smog that regularly blighted Los Angeles at the time. This is earlier than any previously known climate research funded by oil companies.

In the research proposal for the money – uncovered by Rebecca John, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center, and published by the climate website DeSmog – Keeling’s research director, Samuel Epstein, wrote about a new carbon isotope analysis that could identify “changes in the atmosphere” caused by the burning of coal and petroleum.

“The possible consequences of a changing concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate, rates of photosynthesis, and rates of equilibration with carbonate of the oceans may ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization,” Epstein, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology (or Caltech), wrote to the group in November 1954.

Experts say the documents show the fossil fuel industry had intimate involvement in the inception of modern climate science, along with its warnings of the severe harm climate change will wreak, only to then publicly deny this science for decades and fund ongoing efforts to delay action on the climate crisis.

 “They contain smoking gun proof that by at least 1954, the fossil fuel industry was on notice about the potential for its products to disrupt Earth’s climate on a scale significant to human civilization,” said Geoffrey Supran, an expert in historic climate disinformation at the University of Miami.

“These findings are a startling confirmation that big oil has had its finger on the pulse of academic climate science for 70 years – for twice my lifetime – and a reminder that it continues to do so to this day. They make a mockery of the oil industry’s denial of basic climate science decades later.”

Previous investigations of public and private records have found that major oil companies spent decades conducting their own research into the consequences of burning their product, often to an uncannily accurate degree – a study last year found that Exxon scientists made “breathtakingly” accurate predictions of global heating in the 1970s and 1980s.

The newly discovered documents now show the industry knew of CO2’s potential climate impact as early as 1954 via, strikingly, the work of Keeling, then a 26-year-old Caltech researcher conducting formative work measuring CO2 levels across California and the waters of the Pacific ocean. There is no suggestion that oil and gas funding distorted his research in any way.

The findings of this work would lead the US scientist to further experiments upon the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii that were to provide a continual status report of the world’s dangerously-rising carbon dioxide composition.

Keeling died in 2005 but his seminal work lives on. Currently, the Earth’s atmospheric CO2 level is 422 parts per million, which is nearly a third higher than the first reading taken in 1958, and a 50% jump on pre-industrial levels.

This essential tracking of the primary heat-trapping gas that has pushed global temperatures to higher than ever previously experienced in human civilization was born, in part, due to the backing of the Air Pollution Foundation.

A total of 18 automotive companies, including Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, gave money to the foundation. Other entities, including banks and retailers, also contributed funding.

Separately, a 1959 memo identifies the American Petroleum Institute (API), the US’s leading oil and gas lobbying body, and the Western Oil and Gas Association, now known as the Western States Petroleum Association, as “major contributors to the funds of the Air Pollution Foundation”. It’s not clear exactly when API started funding the foundation but it had a representative on a research committee from mid-1955 onwards.

A policy statement of the Air Pollution Foundation from 1955 calls the problem of air pollution, which is caused by the emissions of cars, trucks and industrial facilities, “one of the most serious confronting urban areas in California and elsewhere” and that the issue will be addressed via “diligent and honest fact finding, by wise and effective action”.

The unearthed documents come from the Caltech archives, the US National Archives, the University of California at San Diego and Los Angeles newspapers from the 1950s, and represent what may be the first instance of the fossil fuel industry being informed of the potentially dire consequences of its business model.

The oil and gas industry was initially concerned with research related to smog and other direct air pollutants before branching out into related climate change impacts, according to Carroll Muffett, chief executive of the Center for International Environmental Law. “You just come back to the oil and gas industry again and again, they were omnipresent in this space,” he said. “The industry was not just on notice but deeply aware of the potential climate implications of its products for going on 70 years.” Muffett said the documents add further impetus to efforts in various jurisdictions to hold oil and gas firms legally liable for the damages caused by the climate crisis. “These documents talk about CO2 emissions having planetary implications, meaning this industry understood extraordinarily early on that fossil fuel combustion was profound on a planetary scale,” he said. “There is overwhelming evidence the oil and gas industry has been misleading the public and regulators around the climate risks of their product for 70 years. Trusting them to be part of the solutions is foolhardy. We’ve now moved into an era of accountability.”

API and Ralph Keeling, Charles’s son who is also a scientist, were contacted for comment about the documents but did not respond.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/30/fossil-fuel-industry-air...

I have referred to the early discovery in the 19th century of the relationship between global warming and carbon dioxide in a number of previous posts. However, the significance of the discovery of internal documents of the fossil fuel industry to understanding how fossil fuels contributed to climate change as early as 1954 and the subsequent denial of the link is important from a legal point of view in lawsuits brought against the fossil fuel industry for its climate change denialism, just as it was in leading to the successful lawsuits for $246 billion by 2013 (https://www.npr.org/2013/10/13/233449505/15-years-later-where-did-all-th...) against the cigarette industry for its cancer-cigarette link denialism. Below is a photo of Charles Keeling, who did research for the fossil fuel industry in 1954,  pointing at graphs of Keeling curves, which are "a daily record of global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration maintained by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego" (https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu). They show the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over time as the fossil fuel industry grew.

Charles David Keeling with Keeling Curve graphs. Credit: Keeling Papers, Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.

These never-before-seen documents from the Caltech Archives and the U.S. National Archives, along with material from the Charles David Keeling papers at the University of California, San Diego, and local Los Angeles newspapers from the 1950s, establish the Air Pollution Foundation’s sponsorship of Keeling’s research at Caltech as the earliest-known instance of climate science funded by the fossil fuel industry. It’s possible it was also the first time that the oil industry was directly informed about CO2-induced climate change — five years before physicist Edward Teller warned the API of the disruptive consequences of burning fossil fuels....

In a proposal sent to the Air Pollution Foundation in November 1954, Keeling’s research director Epstein wrote, “It is clear that several factors contribute to the variations in the isotopic composition of carbon in trees.” Among these factors, Epstein explained, were the various ecological conditions under which the tree grew, including the isotopic composition of the carbon in the atmosphere. “Since 1840, the carbon-isotope ratio (C12/C13) has increased in the trees so far investigated,” he continued — an increase which could be explained by a change in the carbon-isotope ratio in atmospheric carbon dioxide “resulting from the burning of the C12-enriched coal and petroleum.” ...

Epstein’s research proposal for the Air Pollution Foundation left no doubt about the potential significance of this research. Approximately sixty years before the Paris Agreement, he described the “concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere” as a matter “of well recognized importance to our civilization” and explained that the possible consequences of “a changing concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate” may “ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization.” 

https://www.desmog.com/2024/01/30/fossil-fuel-industry-sponsored-climate...

Wildfires in what is now the Chilean summer have already killed "at least 64 people in 'unprecedented catastrophe' " due to the climate crisis. "The blaze is being driven by a summer heatwave and drought affecting the southern part of South America caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, as scientists warn that a warming planet has increased the risk of natural disasters such as intense heat and fires. President Gabriel Boric said: “We know that figure is going to grow, it’s going to grow significantly.” As Chile and Colombia battle rising temperatures, the heatwave is also threatening to sweep over Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil in the coming days. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/3/chile-declares-state-of-emergenc...) A record drought brought on by the global climate crisis has also helped facilitate the extraordinarily rapid spread of the wildfires. 
With 2024 expected to be even warmer than 2023 because this year will be building on the heat energy already stored up in the oceans, Canada may well have a worse wildfire season than in 2023, when we set numerous records and saw wildfires burn a land mass greater than the size of England. 

The fires have enveloped Valparaiso, Chile's second largest city with a metropolitan population of 804,000, in a thick mushroom cloud of smoke.

The death toll was expected to rise from the blazes that broke out two days ago. In a televised speech to the nation on Sunday, President Gabriel Boric said: “We know that figure is going to grow, it’s going to grow significantly.” Boric said the number of victims would increase, pledging government support to help people get back on their feet.

Authorities imposed a curfew beginning at 9:00 pm Saturday (0000 GMT Sunday), to allow emergency supplies—especially fuel—into the affected areas. New evacuation orders were issued, though it remained unclear exactly how many people had been told to leave.

Earlier Saturday, Interior Minister Carolina Toha said there had been 92 fires as of noon, with 43,000 hectares (106,000 acres) burned across the country. Firefighters were still battling 29 of the blazes by the afternoon, while 40 had been brought under control.

In the hillsides around the coastal city of Vina del Mar, entire blocks of houses were burned out overnight, AFP reporters saw Saturday morning, as thousands of people who had previously evacuated returned to find their homes destroyed. Some of the dead were seen lying on the road, covered by sheets. The area, about 1.5 hours northwest of the capital Santiago, is a popular tourist destination during the summer months. The coastal region is also important for the country's wine, agricultural and logging industries. In the towns of Estrella and Navidad, southwest of the capital, the fires burned nearly 30 homes, and forced evacuations near the surfing resort of Pichilemu.

"It's very distressing, because we've evacuated the house but we can't move forward," said 63-year-old Yvonne Guzman, who fled her home in Quilpue with her elderly mother, only to be trapped in traffic for hours. "There are all these people trying to get out and who can't move," she told AFP.

Vina del Mar Mayor Macarena Ripamonti said, "We're facing an unprecedented catastrophe, a situation of this magnitude has never happened in the Valparaiso region."

Several thousand hectares have burned in Valparaiso alone, according to CONAF, the Chilean national forest authority. Images from trapped motorists have gone viral online, showing mountains in flames at the end of the famous "Route 68," a road traveled by thousands of tourists to reach the Pacific coast.

In addition to Valparaiso, firefighters and emergency services personnel were battling blazes in the center and south of Chile, including O'Higgins, Maule, Biobio, La Araucania and Los Lagos.

"This was an inferno," Rodrigo Pulgar, who lost his home in the inland town of El Olivar, told AFP. "I tried to help my neighbor... my house was starting to burn behind us. It was raining ash."

On Friday, authorities closed the road linking Valparaiso to the capital Santiago, as a huge mushroom cloud of smoke "reduced visibility."

The fires are being driven by a summer heat wave and drought affecting the southern part of South America caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon, as scientists warn that a warming planet has increased the risk of natural disasters such as intense heat and fires.

As Chile and Colombia battle rising temperatures, the heat wave is also threatening to sweep over Paraguay and Brazil. In Argentina, brigades from several provinces have been fighting a fire that has consumed more than 3,000 hectares in Los Alerces National Park, famed for its beauty and biodiversity, since January 25.

https://phys.org/news/2024-02-chile-wildfires-unprecedented-catastrophe.....

The combination of El Nino and the climate crisis are "supercharging incoming storms" in California this winter as atmospheric rivers create record rainfalls and damage there. "Millions of people faced dangerous flooding in California Monday after a storm brought record rains and gusting winds, leaving at least one person dead." (https://phys.org/news/2024-02-powerful-california-storm.html#:~:text=Pal....)

 

A flooded street in Merced County in California on Jan. 11, 2023. (Image credit: Andrew Innerarity / California Department of Water Resources)

The powerful atmospheric river — worrisome enough on its own — is being supercharged by climate change and El Niño, which together are warming ocean waters, upping the odds of significant downpours and offering a preview of the state’s future in a warming world, experts say.

The incoming storm is feeding off unusually warm waters between California and Hawaii where a significant marine heat wave has persisted for months, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA....

Last year — the planet’s hottest year on record — saw global ocean heat content soar to a record high. “As ocean temperatures warm, and as atmospheric temperatures warm, those rates of evaporation of water vapor into the lower atmosphere are going to increase quite quickly,” Swain said during a briefing Friday. “A few degrees of warming of nearshore and offshore water temperatures means that there’s more moisture in that lower atmosphere.” In other words, extra heat and moisture from the warm sea surface are moistening the atmospheric river storms as they approach California, making them more likely to deliver heavy rainfall.

The heated ocean waters are partly due to El Niño, a climate pattern in the tropical Pacific associated with warm, wet conditions in Southern California, Swain said. But climate change is also driving up marine temperatures. “It’s a combination of El Niño and global warming as to why the oceans are so warm over such a broad region,” Swain said. “It’s not 100% clear exactly the extent to which each is a relevant player, but they’re both significant. The long-term trend, of course, is mainly because of climate change and the warming of the oceans associated with that.”

The warm waters are partly why California has seen so many thunderstorms marked by intense downpours this season. In December, a storm that barreled through Oxnard delivered a month’s worth of rain in less than an hour. Last month, a similarly historic event drenched San Diego with more rain in a few hours than the area typically sees in all of January. 

In the wake of those storms, experts said warm ocean waters were likely a contributing factor. Both were called “thousand-year events” — or events with 0.1% likelihood in a given year. Yet the same pattern has already reappeared — though to a lesser degree — as another atmospheric river rolled in Thursday, Swain said. Parts of downtown San Francisco saw more than an inch of rain in an hour, while Long Beach also saw major flash flooding. “We’ve now seen this happen at least four times this year in California — in San Francisco, Ventura, Long Beach and San Diego,” Swain said, noting that in each incident, warm ocean temperatures were an important ingredient.

“I think it really tells us maybe something about what California’s future winters may look increasingly like in a warming climate,” he said.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-02-02/el-nino-and-climate...

A 2022 study titled "Human Influence on 2021 British Columbia Floods" concluded that "The record floods that washed out British Columbia’s highway system, killed five people in landslides and flooded several communities was made two to four times more likely because of human-caused climate change" (https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/highlights/climate-change-made-bcs-no...) Once again in 2024, we saw the devastating effects of climate crisis induced atmospheric rivers on British Columbia this winter, thereby creating official states of emergency in communities such as Pemberton. This is along with record warm temperatures that will leave BC with little snowpack to help fire this summer's highly expected hot record-setting fire season as El Nino and global warming combine to heat up the atmosphere further. 

Flooding at a property on Government Road north of downtown Squamish, B.C., close to the Squamish River, pictured on Tuesday. (Benoit Ferradini/Radio-Canada) Unseasonable warmth brought by an atmospheric river has shattered records — some almost a century old — at more than 30 B.C. locations, with temperatures passing 18 C in the Lower Mainland. Environment Canada says the daily high temperature at Vancouver's airport hit 14.3 C on Monday, breaking the previous record of 13.3 C set in 1940. Records were also broken at multiple weather stations in Greater Victoria, where temperatures reached 15.3 C, surpassing a 1931 mark by 2 C. Temperatures hit a national high of 18.2 C in Abbotsford and 17.3 C in West Vancouver, both about 3 C beyond previous daily records.

State of local emergency in Pemberton

Meanwhile, flood and avalanche risks remain elevated across southwestern B.C., where Avalanche Canada says heavy rains have weakened the snowpack. B.C.'s River Forecast Centre has expanded a flood warning to include the Lillooet River, saying flows at a gauge near Pemberton, B.C., were at levels seen once in five to 10 years. By Tuesday afternoon, the Village of Pemberton had declared a local state of emergency and issued an evacuation order for six properties along Airport Road. A flood warning remains in effect for the Squamish River, where an updated bulletin says flows had exceeded once-in-five-year levels at a gauge near Brackendale, north of downtown Squamish. ...

The forecast centre says a series of "potent" storms had delivered between 80 and 300 millimetres of rain throughout the region since Friday, with the next round expected to start Tuesday night and stretch into Wednesday. The risk of flooding is expected to persist into Thursday as another atmospheric river brings further rain and snowmelt, it says. ...

Avalanche risk high

The latest Avalanche Canada forecast shows the danger rating remains "high" throughout the south Chilcotin and Pacific mountain ranges, including alpine areas around Squamish, Whistler, Pemberton and Garibaldi Provincial Park. The avalanche risk is also ranked as high in northwestern B.C., including mountains surrounding the communities of Prince Rupert, Terrace and Kitimat.

Wind knocks out power in northern B.C.

Meanwhile, in the north, more than 6,000 customers were left without power in Prince George early Tuesday, with several smaller outages in Dawson Creek, Chetwynd and Mackenzie.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-weather-atmospheric-r...

According to the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, the Royal Bank of Canada put $42 billion US toward fossil fuel projects in 2022 making it the #1 fossil fuel investor in the world. A new report by RBC notes that Canada is only investing $22 billion of the $60 billion  needed annually to reach net zero while leaving out the fact its the world's #1 fossil fuel investor. Talk about hypocrisy and a failure to get the message.

The RBC bank has released a report on climate change entitled The RBC Climate Action Institute report which "said that while money coming from public and private sources has grown by almost 50 per cent since 2021 to $22 billion, funding needs to reach $60 billion a year for the rest of the decade to hit emission reduction targets." (https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business-funding-on-climate-action-needs-to-...)

So it sounds like RBC in the report is pushing for many more billions to be spent on a shift to renewables.  However, "According to the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, the Royal Bank of Canada put $42 billion US toward fossil fuel projects in 2022. That makes it the world's largest investor in fossil fuels and four other Canadian banks made the list as well ". (https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/1973031/banks-investments-in-fos....)

In fact the International Energy Agency (IEA) is warning "it is clear Canada faces increased risk through the energy transition because the country is highly exposed to the fossil fuel sector. Specifically, the IEA’s findings imply many Canadian financial institutions are over-invested in fossil fuels because the assets they’re investing in (new pipelines, export terminals and power plants) are at increased risk of becoming worth less, if not worthless, as the energy transition significantly eats into fossil fuel demand." (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/10/26/news/canada-out-step-unstopp...)

And as a relatively small bank on the global stage, RBC's #1 ranking in fossil fuel financing, as well as the fact that four other major Canadian banks are on the list of top fossil fuel financing leaves them at extreme risk because these projects take 20-25 years typically to be paid back at a time when the world is shifting away from fossil fuels. In other words, RBC's report on the lack of sufficient funding is greenwashing. "Several climate advocacy groups said the report represented "greenwashing," and a distraction from RBC's roughly US$250 billion in fossil fuel funding since 2016 and its relatively minor funding of clean energy. “RBC is asking consumers to spend their thousands of dollars differently while it won’t change how it puts hundreds of billions into fossil fuels,” said Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, in a statement." (https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business-funding-on-climate-action-needs-to-...)

RBC may well be trying to correct its image because "RBC is currently under investigation by Competition Bureau Canada over allegedly misleading Canadians about its climate performance following a complaint from Indigenous leaders and climate organizers." (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/04/13/news/rbc-takes-fossil-fuel-f...)

The Canada Energy Regulator (CER) has called out Trans Mountain for "its 'environmental non-compliance' in B.C.". Surprise NOT given Trans Mountain environmental history. Given Canadian regulators failure to deal with environmental issues anywhere in the country, of which the Alberta Energy Regulator's admitting (initially only to fossil fuel companies) that the "estimated the potential total liability for orphan wells, un-remediated mining sites and tailings ponds, and intra-provincial pipelines to be a whopping $260 billion" (https://energi.media/markham-on-energy/are-there-260-billion-in-tailings....), it raises the question of why this only is admitted, if at all, after the damage is done. I suspect strongly that Trans Canada's environmental violations are even worse than described. Why can't regulators regulate before the damage is done? Why can't they warn us when the costs go through the stratosphere? Is it because there is a revolving door between the industry and the regulator? There is also the issue of Trans Mountain being a white elephant that Kinder Morgan gladly dumped on the Trudeau Liberals and thus taxpayers because it saw no way of making a profit from it. The original overpriced $4.7 Trans Mountain purchase price has mushroomed to"$30.9 billion, according to the corporation's website, up from a 2017 estimate of $7.4 billion"  and it isn't finished yet. The Liberals were so embarrassed by the ever growing costs that in 2022 it secretly loaned $10 billion to Trans Mountain to coverup its exorbitant costs and then lied about it. "An environmental group has accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland of lying to Canadians about a high-profile pipeline project. On February 18, Freeland declared that the federal government would not spend any additional money on the $21.4-billion Trans Mountain expansion. However on May 10, Politico reported that the cabinet has approved a $10-billion loan guarantee on April 29."(https://www.straight.com/finance/trudeau-government-provides-10-billion-...) Under Harper and Trudeau Canada spends more per capita on fossil fuel government subsidies than any other member of the G20. "In 2020, a blistering analysis showed Canada leading the G20 countries in per capita public financing to oil and gas.(https://www.corporateknights.com/energy/at-long-last-canada-restricts-oi....) Think of where we would be in the transition to green renewable energy if we had spent all of that money on the transition to renewables, making us a world leader in this area, instead of a laggard. Yesterday on CBC's Power and Politics a RBC bank vice president said some companies thinking of investing in Canada are not investing here because in their preferred site they cannot find a renewable source energy. These companies know are afraid that if a long-term investment does not have a renewable source of energy they fear they will not be able to sell into some markets in the future, such as the European Union.

Trans Mountain expansion project under construction in Abbotsford, B.C. Can you say environmental violations? (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

 

The company building the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion has been cited for environmental non-compliance related to its management of recent flooding in British Columbia. The Canada Energy Regulator (CER) said Thursday its inspection officers found issues near Abbotsford, B.C., where Trans Mountain Corp. has been working on the final stretch of the multi-year oil pipeline project. The regulator said the Crown corporation was not properly maintaining a watercourse isolation, wildlife fencing, soil coverings and dewatering pump and sump locations following recent heavy rain. The CER has ordered Trans Mountain to address the environmental deficiencies, develop a water management plan and investigate and report on its environmental failings in the area.

The Trans Mountain pipeline is Canada's only oil pipeline to the West Coast and its expansion will increase the pipeline's capacity to 890,000 barrels per day from 300,000 barrels per day currently.

Construction is more than 98 per cent complete, but Trans Mountain has been racing against the clock as it deals with a variety of difficulties related to hard rock and challenging terrain.

The latest estimated cost of the project is $30.9 billion, according to the corporation's website, up from a 2017 estimate of $7.4 billion.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/trans-mountain-non-compl....

Bypassing Indigenous rights is making the green transition more expensive in Canada and the United States and around the world.

Quote:

In December, a federal judge found that Enel Green Power, an Italian energy corporation operating an 84-turbine wind farm on the Osage Reservation for nearly a decade, had trespassed on Native land. The ruling was a clear victory for the Osage Nation and the company estimated that complying with the order to tear down the turbines would cost nearly $260 million.

Attorneys familiar with federal Indian law say it’s uncommon for U.S. courts to side so clearly with tribal nations and actually expel developers trespassing on their land. But observers also see the ruling as part of a broader trend: Gone are the days when developers could ignore Indigenous rights with impunity. Now, even if projects that threaten Native land and cultural resources ultimately proceed, they may come with years-long delays that tack on millions of dollars. As more companies look to build wind and solar farms or mine minerals for renewable energy, failing to recognize Indigenous sovereignty could make the clean energy transition a lot more expensive and much further away.

“I think tribes are starting to see that they have more leverage than they thought and that they’ve previously exercised over all this infrastructure that’s on their land,” said Pilar Thomas, an attorney, member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona and former deputy director of the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs at the U.S. Department of Energy. “They want to make sure that they’re getting their fair share.”

Rick Tallman, a program manager at Colorado School of Mines’ Center for Native American Mining and Energy Sovereignty who has spent more than two decades working on financing and consulting for clean energy projects, calls the Osage Nation ruling a wake-up call.
“If you’re going to develop energy in the U.S., you’ve got to do it with the support of tribal communities,” he said.

According to Tallman, investors don’t like uncertainty. He said a lot of infrastructure funders are very conservative and won’t back a project unless they are confident it will succeed, which includes getting the buy-in of affected Indigenous Nations. There’s no upper limit to how much the project could cost if investors don’t get it right.
One analysis from researchers at First Peoples Worldwide at the University of Colorado at Boulder estimated that resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline drove the project cost upwards of $7.5 billion. That includes more than $4.3 billion in divestment from banks backing the project and nearly $1.4 billion in additional operating costs, not to mention millions spent to hire law enforcement.
Marion Werkheiser, founding partner of Cultural Heritage Partners, said the costs are so high that some renewable energy projects never even get off the ground, citing the Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound that was opposed by members of the Wampanoag Tribe.
And it’s not just a U.S. trend; Indigenous peoples around the world are fighting to enforce their rights, especially the right to free, prior and informed consent to projects on their land — a concept enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However, the U.S. hasn’t codified that into law, and compliance globally is spotty.

“Renewable energies are actually not that good in respecting Indigenous rights,” said Genevieve Rose from the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs. “They have this feeling that because they bring up something good, something green, that they are automatically a good thing.”

But her colleague David Berger said there’s more awareness and resistance from Indigenous peoples, and companies are being forced to factor in those costs. He pointed to Norway, where the state-owned company that developed an illegal wind farm has agreed to pay Indigenous Sámi people about $675,000 every year for the next 25 years for violating their rights. “What’s good is you have that legal structure so communities can push back,” Berger said.

Wesley Furlong, an Anchorage-based senior staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, said more tribes are filing lawsuits in the U.S., partly because the legal landscape is changing. For example, the National Historic Preservation Act, a federal law managing the preservation of historic resources, has been around since 1966, but it was only in 1999 that the federal government codified regulations related to communicating with tribes about projects that affect them, and the rules weren’t fully in effect until 2004. Some tribes are just now learning about their rights.
Another reason for the increase in lawsuits is that some tribal nations have more resources to fund litigation. “Indian gaming has been a game-changer for tribes to be able to raise revenue and hire attorneys,” Furlong said.

That combination of more legal tools, more financial resources and more education about Native rights, Furlong said, has led to more tribes getting involved in energy developments on their traditional and ancestral territories, including lands with historic connections not owned by a tribe. And he only expects that to continue: Most of the U.S. reserves of lithium, copper, cobalt and nickel — metals key to the clean energy transition — are within 35 miles of federal Indian reservations, according to a study by the investment firm MSCI.

That’s something renewable energy developers need to be aware of, said Thomas. “I am a staunch believer that if you are within spitting distance of a tribe, you should be engaged in outreach to the tribe,” she said.
Not every project is going to get buy-in, she adds, but she encourages companies to have patience and continue to reach out to tribes even if they don’t respond. Furlong from the Native American Rights Fund said project proponents may erroneously assume that tribes will always be opposed, forgetting that tribal governments want what’s in the best interest of their citizens.

Bottom line, it’s much less costly for companies to invest in tribal consultations and get them right from the get-go, says Daniel Cardenas, the head of the National Tribal Energy Association and a member of the Pit River Tribe who has consulted with tribes and companies regarding fossil fuel projects. “The cost of engagement is almost nothing compared to the cost of what they’re going to have to pay [if they don’t do it right],” he said of developers.

Werkheiser has seen some progress, with some banks, insurance companies and energy developers adopting Indigenous people's policies to guide their investments and some companies undergoing voluntary certifications to show their projects are ethical and respectful of Indigenous rights. “Financial institutions are recognizing that this is a real business risk and they’re building it into the cost of capital for these companies,” she said.

But overall, change is slow, she said.

“For the most part, the renewable energy developers are repeating the mistakes that fossil fuel developers have made over the years,” she said. “They’re not engaging with tribes early as potential partners and information sources during their planning process, and they are basically deferring their own relationship with tribes to the federal government.”

That’s a mistake, said David Kane, a consultant who leads WindHorse Strategic Initiatives. Energy companies often mistakenly perceive tribal chairs as though they are the equivalent of small-town mayors, rather than recognizing them as heads of state.

Because of that, he says, companies often disrespect tribes from the beginning by sending lower-level representatives to liaise with them, and many companies may never even step foot on a reservation or go before tribal councils. Developers often complain that it takes a long time to build relationships with tribal members but Kane says it’s better to do so before projects get underway.

“There’s still a lot of mistrust of white men and with good reason,” he said. And the energy industry, including renewables, he said, is still predominantly white and male.

Another challenge is that sometimes companies assume what will work with one tribe will work with another, said Cardenas from the National Tribal Energy Association.

“There are 574 tribes, and each one operates differently and independently,” he said. “So if you know one tribe, you just know one tribe.”

He thinks tribal nations should be seen as partners, even sponsoring partners, with shared equity in the developments. There’s growing interest: Over the past two decades, tribal nations have pursued hundreds of clean energy projects, with the Inflation Reduction Act recently increasing funding for such projects.

But in the meantime, costly litigation continues. Recently in the U.S., four tribal nations sued a developer to prevent a $10-billion wind energy transmission line from going into operation. And in Oklahoma, the Osage Nation is now seeking damages from Enel. A judge still needs to decide how much that will cost the company.

As glaciers melt due to the climate crisis, potential salmon habitat collides with outdated mining laws in western Canada and the United States. "One ray of hope may be indigenous protected areas, such as that established by the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs in northwest BC, but the BC government has not yet recognized this area. However, "A broader solution could emerge: A court ruled last September that British Columbia must reform its Mineral Tenure Act to include First Nations consultations".

“Are we going to protect (ecosystems) for salmon? Or are we going to dig them up for gold?” Image credit: Xulin/High Country News

As human-caused climate change points a giant hair dryer at Western North America’s glaciers, melting them ever more rapidly, potential Pacific salmon habitat is opening up. New river systems are starting to flow, and rain and snowmelt will keep many running even after the ice disappears. In some, salmon are appearing for the first time.

But mining companies are homing in, too. According to peer-reviewed research published in Science last November, there’s substantial overlap between potential future salmon habitat and new mining claims in Southeast Alaska and in western British Columbia, where many Pacific salmon spawn. But there is hope: The establishment of Indigenous protected areas in British Columbia could protect at least some of these new waterways, and their fish, for future generations.

“The science is very clear,” said Naxginkw Tara Marsden (Gitanyow Huwilp), who co-authored the study. Marsden is the Wilp Sustainability director for the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs, whose unceded traditional territory lies in what today is British Columbia. “There are both risks and potential short-term benefits with salmon finding new habitats and adapting, and we need to do what we can to ensure that those areas are protected.” 

In North America, Pacific salmon include five species that migrate to the ocean, then return to their natal rivers to spawn. But a small percentage of “stray” salmon visit different rivers. Because Pacific salmon have evolved in incredibly dynamic river systems, straying may be an adaptation that keeps populations resilient, explained Jonathan Moore, the article’s lead author and head of the Salmon Watersheds Lab at Simon Fraser University.

Without human-caused climate change, the region’s glaciers would still be shrinking. They have been since the last ice age, but now they’re melting much more quickly because of human activity. By the end of the century, 80% of the region’s glaciers may be gone. And mining laws in Alaska and British Columbia do not adequately protect future habitats.

“As these newborn ecosystems are encountering the Earth, society is faced with this decision,” Moore said. “Are we going to protect them for salmon? Or are we going to dig them up for gold?”

Gold companies in particular are staking claims in a gold rush. It’s relatively easy and inexpensive to stake claims, even underneath glaciers that haven’t melted yet. Mine tailings could pollute potential salmon habitat hundreds of miles downstream, possibly for thousands of years.

Researchers don’t know how quickly new salmon habitat will emerge on landscapes exposed by thawing, and mining may not immediately threaten salmon in some locations, cautioned Daniel Schindler, a watershed ecologist at the University of Washington who researches salmon ecosystems in western Alaska. Schindler, who was Moore’s doctoral research advisor, said that salmon have appeared already in emerging rivers close to the coast, where riverbeds are less steep and more stable. But farther inland, steeper, more turbulent rivers with tumbling gravel beds may not develop into suitable spawning habitat for thousands of years.

Still, the overarching idea that conservation and management strategies need to keep up with climate change and protect future Pacific salmon habitat is “bang on,” Schindler said. “Conservation tends to grasp desperately at what we have now. And that may be a losing cause.” 

For now, a ray of hope may be Indigenous protected areas. The Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs established the Wilp Wii Litsxw Meziadin Indigenous Protected Area in 2021, just a short drive from the Alaska border, after noticing more salmon in the area associated with glacial retreat. Meziadin will protect emerging salmon habitat from mining, while allowing other uses. The British Columbia government has not yet recognized the protected area, however, and is still selling mineral tenures in the watershed. “Where colonial governments are failing, and where they are not acting quickly to ensure that those areas are protected in the face of mining, Indigenous people (in British Columbia) are picking up the slack and trying to use their own laws to protect those important areas,” Marsden said. 

A broader solution could emerge: A court ruled last September that British Columbia must reform its Mineral Tenure Act to include First Nations consultations, which could help protect future salmon habitat. As of publication, the province has yet to act. “If we allow nature to take its course, the salmon will continue to thrive,” Marsden said.

https://www.hcn.org/issues/56-2/climate-change-as-glaciers-melt-potentia...