Canada and the climate crisis: a state of denial 3

A new report, entitled Catching the Wind: How Atlantic Canada Can Become an Energy Superpower, says Atlantic Canada could be a world leader in offshore wind energy. The tragedy is that the Trudeau Liberal and previous federal governments, as well as provincial governments have done nothing to develop this renewable energy source that the report says could provide energy for six million homes, a source of energy that other countries that other countries have  developed for decades while Canada does not have a single offshore wind turbine. Instead, Trudeau has provided the fossil fuel industry with $18 billion in subsidies, the highest per capita fossil fuel subsidies in the world. However, "some environmentalists have questions about the scale of potential offshore projects".

Some of the 116 giant turbines are seen off the coast of Sussex near Brighton, England, in this 2017 file photo. The United Kingdom, China and the United States are well ahead of Canada in building wind farms away from coastlines. (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

Atlantic Canada is poised to harness the area's offshore wind to become a global leader in renewable energy, according to a new report, generating more renewable electricity than the region consumes annually. Catching the Wind: How Atlantic Canada Can Become an Energy Superpower is a report from Ottawa-based think-tank Public Policy Forum. It highlights the relatively shallow waters off the coast of Nova Scotia's Sable Island as a prime location for offshore wind development.

The Sable Island Bank alone could accommodate at least 1,000 offshore turbines, each with a capacity of 15 megawatts. That adds up to around 70,000 gigawatt hours, "enough to supply 6.5 million average Canadian homes, or almost twice the total electricity currently consumed in Atlantic Canada annually." "We are talking here not of something incremental, but monumental," the report adds.

The report also says Canada is behind on utilizing the power of one of the world's "longest and windiest coastlines," and there are no turbines, either under construction or operating, in its offshore waters. Other jurisdictions, including China, the United Kingdom and the United States, have all installed offshore wind turbines, with plans to make further investments into offshore wind capacity.

Peter Nicholson, author of the report and chair of the Canadian Climate Institute's board of directors, said in an interview with CBC News there's "a tremendous economic opportunity" in investing in offshore wind power for the region, there's also a national opportunity in "decarbonizing" the country's energy system to combat climate change. ..."The wind blows strong, consistently and there are areas offshore where it is very feasible to install very large numbers of wind turbines," Nicholson said of Atlantic Canada, "and there really aren't many other places in Canada where that opportunity exists."

Nicholson said while the country has a "clean" energy grid, by international standards, more work will need to be done to meet greenhouse gas targets, following Canada's commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. And offshore wind development is a key part of reaching that goal. While the report paints an exciting picture of what wind power in Canada could look like, some environmentalists have questions about the scale of potential offshore projects. 

Brenna Walsh, senior energy co-ordinator with the Halifax-based Ecology Action Centre, said the group is excited to hear the potential of offshore wind projects and it's important to consider the total impacts of such a huge project and planning offshore wind farms in places where environmental impacts are reduced. Walsh said forging ahead with this kind of project means "thinking about kind of what the scale of that industry may look like, what can be accommodated and how it can benefit the electricity system, but also that strikes that balance." Walsh said the effort could use help from the federal government in mapping the best areas for offshore projects in Atlantic Canada. The report also notes that wind energy projects are costly. That could be offset by a government-backed, guaranteed-fixed price for energy generated over a number of years, something that was used in Europe when the offshore wind industry was in its infancy. "I think there's been a little bit of hesitancy to jump into those projects, from the Canadian perspective, with larger costs. But I think it's becoming a lot more evident, the advantages and the ways the offshore wind could be used," Walsh said. 

Last week's announcement from Nova Scotia officials about abandoning the Atlantic Loop hydroelectric transmission project means Atlantic Canada will not be able to fully tap into the resource, Nicholson said. "Atlantic Canada's ability to supply large amounts of offshore wind-generated electricity to the rest of Canada will require, as an essential first step, completion of the Atlantic Loop," the report reads. "That critically important project needs to be seen as providing complementary two-way transmission — hydro power into the region and wind power out to Quebec and beyond." When asked if the region and the country could achieve its greenhouse gas reduction goals without investment in offshore wind in Atlantic Canada, Nicholson said, "No, essentially not."

Others in the offshore wind industry say losing the Atlantic Loop might not be as damaging to Atlantic Canada's wind-power potential. "To bring offshore wind to market [using] a land based loop like that of course is one pathway, but there's also been proponents saying to do direct offshore connection, which go over land," said Scott Urquhart, CEO and founder of Aegir Insights, a Danish software company that serves the offshore wind sector. Some of the firm's findings were cited in Nicholson's report. "To find a route to market for offshore wind, it would be valid to actually study both pathways. A land-based loop would maybe serve other interests we're balancing with Quebec Hydro, but I wouldn't say that we've looked at the comparative economics of one route versus the other," Urquhart said. 

The report also tackles what Urquhart calls "the biggest challenge" for getting the offshore wind industry off the ground in Atlantic Canada: finding a market. "The issue that we have is that Nova Scotia doesn't have demand, locally, for many gigawatts of offshore wind [power], so everyone is looking to either hydrogen pathways or else trying to get [electricity] to the U.S." He said the issue highlights the need for the federal government to take a role in the project, easing the pressure on any single jurisdiction. "Really, to actually have a long-term viable industry, we actually need to first figure out this transmission or hydrogen game," he said.  "I do think that we're going at a right pace, but ... this whole route-to-market transmission angle is a top, top priority if we want to make this go faster."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/offshore-wind-industry-atlant...

In yet another sign of the exponential growth rate of climate crisis impacts, a new report in Nature Climate Change concludes that it is too late to save the West Antarctic ice sheet, which will raise sea levels globally, including in the country with the largest coastline in the world, Canada. 

 

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is considered highly vulnerable to rising temperatures, especially Thwaites Glacier

Quote:

The rate of West Antarctic Ice Sheet melt now appears unstoppable regardless of how much fossil fuel consumption is curtailed, said a study published Monday. 

“We find that rapid ocean warming, at approximately triple the historical rate, is likely committed over the twenty-first century, with widespread increases in ice-shelf melting, including in regions crucial for ice-sheet stability,” the authors say in the study. “When internal climate variability is considered, there is no significant difference between mid-range emissions scenarios and the most ambitious targets of the Paris Agreement. These results suggest that mitigation of greenhouse gases now has limited power to prevent ocean warming that could lead to the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.”

The research was published in the journal Nature Climate Change on October 23. To do the study, researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and Northumbria University in England ran different simulations through a supercomputer. 

The situations included medium and high carbon emissions scenarios as well as what would happen if global temperature rise stabilized at 1.5 C or 2.0 C.

‘We’ve lost control of melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet’

Their results showed that for this century, all scenarios—from mid-range emission outlooks to what would happen if Paris Climate Agreement targets were all met—showed “…significant and widespread future warming of the Amundsen Sea and increased melting of its ice shelves.”

The researchers said that even under an optimistic 1.5°C global temperature rise scenario, the rate of melting will triple its 20th-century pace. “It looks like we’ve lost control of melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,” lead author Kaitlin Naughten said in a statement.  “If we wanted to preserve it in its historical state, we would have needed action on climate change decades ago.”

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet glaciers have enough ice to increase global mean sea level by 5.3 metres and is Antarctica’s main contributor to sea-level rise. Prior modeling suggests that the warming of the Southern Ocean, notably in the Amundsen Sea area, is driving ice loss of the sheet. ...

The researchers say they hope their findings will help underscore the urgency for policy makers to implement climate adaptation measures. “The bright side is that by recognising this situation in advance, the world will have more time to adapt to the sea level rise that’s coming,” Naughten said. “If you need to abandon or substantially re-engineer a coastal region, having 50 years lead time is going to make all the difference. “We must not stop working to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. What we do now will help to slow the rate of sea level rise in the long term. The slower the sea level changes, the easier it will be for governments and society to adapt to, even if it can’t be stopped.”

https://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/2023/10/23/west-antarctic-ice-sh...

In an unprecedented joint statement, more than 200 medical journals are warning  that the rapidly warming climate is the "greatest threat" to global public health, calling on leaders to take emergency action on climate change and to protect health.

Quote:

• More than 200 medical journals warn global warming and the effects of climate change are the biggest threat to public health. 
• In an unprecedented joint editorial, the world’s top medical scientists are calling for urgent action to protect health ahead of the UN general assembly and climate change change conference, COP 26. 
• Clinical practices need to fundamentally change and the world needs to achieve a sustainable health system before 2040.

Global warming is the “greatest threat to global public health”, scientists warn in an unprecedented joint statement between 203 medical journals, and are calling for urgent action to keep average global temperature increases below 1.5° C and to protect health.

The editorial was published in leading medical journals such as The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine and the British Medical Journal, and ahead of the upcoming UN general assembly and UN climate change conference COP26 in Glasgow in November, to urge world leaders to address the climate crisis. 

“The science is unequivocal: a global increase of 1.5° C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse,” the editorial says.

The effects of global warming on public health have exponentially grown over the last 20 years. Heat-related mortality among people over 65 years of age has increased by more than 50%, while higher temperatures have brought increased rates of health issues including dehydration, cardiovascular and pulmonary morbidity and mortality. It’s also undeniable that climate change is harder on people of colour, lower-income communities who lack access to health services, as well as children. 

In the wake of the UN-backed IPCC report that warns 1.5°C temperature rise could happen as early as 2030-2035, and that fact that every single global target to restore biodiversity loss by 2020 was missed, the destruction of nature is well underway. The editorial is united with “environmental scientists, businesses, and many others in rejecting that this outcome is inevitable…we join health professionals worldwide who have already supported calls for rapid action.”

While it’s encouraging that many major carbon emitting countries have set for net-zero goals for 2030, these targets are not nearly enough to reach the targets set out in the Paris Agreement. The world cannot wait for the COVID-19 pandemic to pass to start reducing emissions. 

Governments around the world must work together to achieve environmentally sustainable health systems before 2040. The editorial adds: “Health institutions have already divested more than $42 billion of assets from fossil fuels; others should join them.”

Wealthy nations should also do more and lead the way in slashing emissions as developed countries have disproportionately created the environmental crisis. ”High-income countries must meet and go beyond their outstanding commitment to provide $100 billion a year and increasing contributions to and beyond 2025,” the editorial urges. “Funding must be equally split between mitigation and adaptation, including improving the resilience of health systems.”

https://earth.org/climate-change-is-the-biggest-threat-to-public-health/

In July the Trudeau Liberals announced they were phasing out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies "over the medium term". The trouble is we don't have a medium term to wait, we need the elimination of all subsidies and the rapid reduction of fossil fuel production now to deal with the climate crisis.  The trouble is Canada is already the largest per capita fossil fuel subsidizer in the world, with "the advocacy group Environmental Defence estimates about $19 billion in financing for fossil fuels came from Export Development Canada (EDC) in 2022"  and still more subsidies being provided by "Crown corporations like Trans Mountain, the Canada Development Investment Corporation (CDEV)". Getting rid of the "inefficient" subsidies means, in the government's words, de-carbonizing fossil fuel production, something that in terms of Carbon Capture and Storage has been a failure around the world. In fact "the government's investment tax credit for carbon capture continues to bankroll oil and gas directly". Furthermore, the Trudeau Liberals have provided a list of exemptions to this you could drive a pipeline through. And the fossil fuel industry spokesperson argues that "doesn't believe Canada has any inefficient oil and gas subsidies to eliminate".

The Export Development Canada offices in downtown Ottawa, which alone provided $19 billions in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, with more coming from other government agencies. (David Thurton/ CBC News)

In 2009, the countries that make up the G20 publicly promised to "phase out and rationalize ... inefficient fossil fuel subsidies" over the "medium term." Such subsidies "encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change," said the G20 communique.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault announced the plan in Montreal Monday as Canada continues to grapple with one of the worst wildfire seasons ever recorded and devastating flooding in Nova Scotia. "We're eliminating subsidies to produce fossil fuels in Canada, unless those subsidies are aimed at de-carbonizing the emissions of the sector," Guilbeault said. ...

Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Department of Finance developed the guidelines.

Guilbeault said there are exceptions to the government's new directive. Federal dollars can still flow to fossil fuel projects if they: 

• Enable significant greenhouse gas emissions reductions

• Support clean energy, clean technology and renewable energy

• Support Indigenous economic participation in fossil fuel activities

• Offer essential energy services to remote communities

• Provide short-term support for an emergency

• Support abated fossil fuels — oil and gas projects which capture production emissions through carbon capture.  ...

Much of the federal government's support for the fossil fuel sector comes from Crown corporations like Trans Mountain, the Canada Development Investment Corporation (CDEV) and Export Development Canada (EDC). The advocacy group Environmental Defence estimates about $19 billion in financing for fossil fuels came from EDC in 2022. Much of that support comes in the form of commercially viable loans. The current policy doesn't consider those loans a subsidy. ...

A plan to phase out public financing of the fossil fuel sector, including Crown corporations, was a key requirement of the confidence and supply agreement the Liberals arranged with the NDP to support their minority government. MP Laurel Collins, NDP critic for climate change and the environment, said in a media statement she is "frustrated" with a Liberal plan she described as a "half-measure." "The NDP will keep pushing for the immediate elimination of specific fossil fuel subsidies that Liberals left out — like the exploration and development expense deductions for oil and gas — and for a plan to end public financing of the fossil fuel sector," Collins said. ...

Julia Levin, associate director of Environmental Defence, said more work must be done to close loopholes in the guidelines. She said the government's investment tax credit for carbon capture continues to bankroll oil and gas directly. "There are exemptions that continue to show the influence of big oil on climate policy decisions," Levin said. ...

Energy for a Secure Future, which promotes the natural gas sector, said it doesn't believe Canada has any inefficient oil and gas subsidies to eliminate. "These projects are economically viable, and that's why people are investing their private capital in them," said Shannon Joseph, a member of the organization's advisory council.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fossil-fuel-subsidies-guilbeault-1.6915838

The latest UN report on the climate crisis concludes that "Governments, in aggregate, still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than what would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C". Of course the Trudeau Liberals are one of the big emitters planning to increase its fossil fuel emissions despite all its environmental rhetoric.

This comes despite 151 national governments having pledged to achieve net-zero emissions and the latest forecasts suggesting that global coal, oil, and gas demand will peak this decade, even without new policies. Meanwhile, the impacts of climate change, long predicted by scientists, are now manifesting and wreaking havoc in every corner of the planet, and fossil-fuel-derived CO2 emissions reached a record high in 2022.

This year’s report features two major updates to the production gap analysis, drawing on the new mitigation scenarios database compiled for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report and changes in government plans and projections since August 2021. The report also provides individual country profiles for 20 major fossil-fuel-producing countries, evaluating governments’ latest climate ambitions and their plans, policies, and strategies that support fossil fuel production or the transition away from it. ...

“Governments are literally doubling down on fossil fuel production; that spells double trouble for people and planet. We cannot address climate catastrophe without tackling its root cause: fossil fuel dependence. COP28 must send a clear signal that the fossil fuel age is out of gas — that its end is inevitable. We need credible commitments to ramp up renewables, phase out fossil fuels, and boost energy efficiency, while ensuring a just, equitable transition.”

 

Taken together, government plans and projections would lead to an increase in global coal production until 2030, and in global oil and gas production until at least 2050. This conflicts with government commitments under the Paris Agreement, and clashes with expectations that global demand for coal, oil, and gas will peak within this decade even without new policies.

Global levels of coal, oil , and gas estimated under the government plans and projections pathways would be 460%, 29%, and 82% higher than tjpse under the respective 1.5°C-consistent pathways. The global levels of fossil fuel production implied by governments’ plans and projections, taken together, also exceed those implied by their stated climate mitigation policies and implied by their announced climate pledges as of September 2022, as modelled by the International Energy Agency.  ...

Given risks and uncertainties of CCS and CDR, countries should aim for a near total phase-out of coal production and use by 2040 and a combined reduction in oil and gas production and use by three-quarters by 2050 from 2020 levels, at a minimum. The potential failure of these measures to become sufficiently viable at scale, the non-climatic near-term harms of fossil fuels, and other lines of evidence, call for an even more rapid global phase-out of all fossil fuels....

There are additional compelling reasons to strive for an even faster global phase-out of all fossil fuels. Research has found that the committed emissions of CO2expected to occur over the lifetime of existing fossil-fuel-producing infrastructure already exceed the remaining carbon budget for a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C by 2100. ...

Countries with greater transition capacity should aim for faster reductions than the global average.

https://productiongap.org

A new study in Nature Communications concludes that the climate crisis is costing $16 million an hour or $ US 140 billion a year in damage between 2009 and 2019. It is the result of a sevenfold increase in extreme weather losses since the 1970s.  This does not include the even higher levels of damage caused by the climate crisis this year, such as Canada's unprecedented wildfire season that burned an area larger than England's landmass.

Dozers help with fire suppression operations on the night shift on the Grandview Fire in Oregon. Photo by Central Oregon District - Oregon Department of Forestry (National Interagency Fire Center)/Flickr

The researchers said their methods could be used to calculate how much funding was needed for a loss and damage fund established at the UN’s climate summit in 2022, which is intended to pay for the recovery from extreme weather disasters in poorer countries. It could also rapidly determine the specific climate cost of individual disasters, enabling faster delivery of funds.

“The headline number is $140 billion a year and, first of all, that’s already a big number,” said Prof. Ilan Noy at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, who carried out the study with colleague Rebecca Newman. “Second, when you compare it to the standard quantification of the cost of climate change [using computer models], it seems those quantifications are underestimating the impact of climate change.”

Noy said there were a lot of extreme weather events for which there was no data on the number of people killed or economic damage: “That indicates our headline number of $140 billion is a significant understatement.” For example, he said, heat wave death data was only available in Europe. “We have no idea how many people died from heat waves in all of sub-Saharan Africa.”

The damage caused by the climate crisis through extreme weather has cost $16 million (£13 million) an hour for the past 20 years, according to a new estimate.

Storms, floods, heat waves and droughts have taken many lives and destroyed swathes of property in recent decades, with global heating making the events more frequent and intense. The study is the first to calculate a global figure for the increased costs directly attributable to human-caused global heating.

It found average costs of $140 billion (£115 billion) a year from 2000 to 2019, although the figure varies significantly from year to year. The latest data shows $280 billion in costs in 2022. The researchers said lack of data, particularly in low-income countries, meant the figures were likely to be seriously underestimated. Additional climate costs, such as from crop yield declines and sea level rise, were also not included.

The researchers produced the estimates by combining data on how much global heating worsened extreme weather events with economic data on losses. The study also found that the number of people affected by extreme weather because of the climate crisis was 1.2 billion over two decades.

Two-thirds of the damage costs were due to the lives lost, while a third was due to property and other assets being destroyed. Storms, such as hurricane Harvey and cyclone Nargis, were responsible for two-thirds of the climate costs, with 16 per cent from heat waves and 10 per cent from floods and droughts.

There has been a sevenfold increase in reported losses from extreme weather disasters since the 1970s, according to the World Meteorological Organization. However, separating the effect of global heating from population growth, urban migration and better reporting of disasters is difficult.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, took a different approach based on how climate change had exacerbated extreme weather events. Hundreds of “attribution” studies have been done, calculating how much more frequent global heating made extreme weather events. This allows the fraction of the damages resulting from human-caused heating to be estimated.

The researchers applied these fractions to the damages recorded in the International Disaster Database, which compiles available data on all disasters in which 10 people died, or 100 were affected, or the country declared a state of emergency or requested international assistance.

The central estimate was an average climate cost of $140 billion a year, with a range from $60 billion to $230 billion. These estimates are much higher than those from computer models, which are based on changes in average global temperature rather than on the extreme temperatures increasingly being seen in the world.

The years with the highest overall climate costs were 2003 when a heat wave struck Europe; 2008, when cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar; and 2010, when drought hit Somalia and a heat wave hit Russia. Property damages were higher in 2005 and 2017 when hurricanes hit the U.S., where property values are high.

The analysis used a statistical value of a life lost of $7 million, an average of the figures used by the U.S. and U.K. governments. “A lot of people are very uncomfortable with the idea that we put a price tag on a life,” said Noy. “But this is very standard economic practice and comes about because, ultimately, we need to make decisions about [the value of] investments in various things.”...

Noy said that only considering the economic damage caused to infrastructure would heavily skew the cost estimates to rich countries, despite much of the damage from extreme weather hitting poorer ones. He contrasted the $140 billion damage estimate with the $100 billion promised by rich countries to poorer ones, but yet to be delivered in full, and noted that 90 per cent of that money was for cutting emissions. The figures also contrast with the subsidies of $7 trillion a year enjoyed by the fossil fuel industry.

At the UN Climate Summit, COP27, in 2022, countries agreed to set up a loss and damage fund to help poorer ones rebuild after climate-related disasters. “You can use our methodology to start putting numbers on how much money we need in the fund,” Noy said.

Ideally, he said, a quick attribution study on an extreme weather event would estimate the climate-related damage and lead to a rapid delivery of funds: “It would be a kind of insurance scheme for countries.” The methodology might also be useful for determining damages in climate lawsuits, he said.

Dr. Stéphane Hallegatte, at the World Bank and not part of the study team, said: “The key message is that climate change is visibly increasing global economic losses from disasters. This has been a topic of controversy, with some claiming that climate change effects are negligible compared with other factors like economic growth and urbanization.

“This study looks at the attribution for the physical event — it’s much simpler, robust, and it provides a convincing case. It is an emerging field and uncertainties are really large. One lesson of the study is that global research centres — mostly located in rich countries — need to work more on what is happening in poorer countries.”

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/10/26/news/climate-crisis-costing-...

The Trudeau Liberals are heavily subsidizing Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), claiming it will greatly reduce greenhouse emissions despite evidence to the contrary and the significant safety risks, including death, associated with CCS pipelines and the growth in carbon dioxide pipelines associated with CCS. Indigenous Canadians near such potential pipelines are deeply concerned about this threat. "Even small fissures or cracks can result in catastrophic consequences because people in the area could be rapidly inundated with CO2". (https://www.climatedesk.org/page/3/)

The largest CCS project in the world, like so many other CCS, Chevron CCS project, " failed to capture and store the carbon emissions it promised to at its Gorgon liquefied gas facility in Western Australia" (https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/carbon-capture-and-storage-f...’s%20Senior%20Researcher%2C%20Tim%20Baxter.), but allowed Chevron to expand fossil fuel production, which seems to be Trudeau's main goal according to his own government documents that show Canada's fossil fuel production greatly expanding up to 2040.

The official launch of the Boundary Dam carbon capture and storage facility in Estevan in 2014. Photo via SaskPower / Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

A little over three years ago, a menacing fog crept into the valley surrounding the small village of Satartia, Miss., causing a mass poisoning. Within minutes of breathing the air, residents choked and dropped to the ground. Nearly 50 people were hospitalized. ...

MacLean considers carbon management “a great euphemism” designed to shift the focus off carbon capture and sequestration, which “has been so thoroughly criticized in the academic, scientific and independent literature … to justify the continued use [of fossil fuels].”

In fact, last year, over 400 academics wrote to the federal government warning that supporting the oil and gas sector’s carbon capture plans with public money would lock in fossil fuel use for decades to come, thereby undermining the country’s international commitments to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

A recent study from Oil Change International found Canada is on track to be the second-largest fossil fuel expander, behind the United States, by 2050. On its own, Canada’s planned fossil fuel expansion represents 10 per cent of the world’s expansion plans, creating the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of 117 coal plantsrunning for decades.

In light of the country’s planned fossil fuel expansion, highlighting Canada’s carbon capture strategy that’s being used to justify further planet-scorching fossil fuel production at COP28 is unlikely to go over well.

The havoc that day was caused by a rupture in a carbon dioxide pipeline that shot a massive white cloud of concentrated CO2 into the air in a dangerous rolling fog. Because CO2 displaces oxygen and oxygen is needed for gas-powered cars to work, vehicles wouldn’t run. Because CO2 is heavier than air, the thick fog didn’t dissipate but settled on the ground where its lethal potential was narrowly avoided.

Carbon dioxide pipelines are a key part of the federal government and fossil fuel industry’s emerging carbon capture plans, designed to stop the greenhouse gas from reaching the atmosphere by capturing it and transporting it to underground storage. In Canada, there are a handful of carbon capture projects in operation or being planned, but the largest by far is the proposed plan of the Pathways Alliance. It is seeking to build a massive carbon pipeline stretching 400 kilometres from the oilsands in northern Alberta to a storage hub in the Cold Lake region (about 300 kilometres east of Edmonton) at a price tag of at least $16.5 billion.

The Pathways Alliance is composed of Suncor Energy, Imperial Oil, Cenovus Energy, ConocoPhillips, Canadian Natural Resources and MEG Energy, who say their carbon capture plans can help Canada meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. However, industry watchers say the plan is really about finding a way to stay in business as a global effort to phase out fossil fuels ratchets up. ...

As countries like Canada plot a dramatic expansion to CO2 pipelines to help deal with rising emissions from the oil and gas sector, experts say more attention must be paid to the safety risks that come with carbon dioxide management. Crises like what happened in Mississippi, and other incidents like a CO2 leak at a Wyoming schoolthat forced students to evacuate or the Lake Nyos disaster in Cameroon that saw more than 1,700 people killed by a massive carbon dioxide cloud, may be rare, but they point to the safety risks related to concentrated CO2.

In Canada, there are no dedicated regulations guiding CO2 pipelines at either the federal or provincial levels, according to the University College London. However, Natural Resources Canada told Canada’s National Observer that while there are no specific CO2 rules, the Canada Energy Regulator does regulate CO2 pipelines that cross provincial or international borders, using oil and gas pipeline safety standards called CSA Z662. The department also said CO2 pipelines within provinces are similarly regulated in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. ...

Even small fissures or cracks can result in catastrophic consequences because people in the area could be rapidly inundated with CO2, she added. “They are suddenly deprived of oxygen, which causes severe respiratory distress. It can cause things like foaming at the mouth, it can cause [seizure-like symptoms], it can cause fear and trauma and have long-lasting physical effects. 

“And if people are able to call for help, first responders can't get there ... because their engines literally don't work,” she said. “And the worst part of all this is people have no idea why … they just suddenly can't breathe.”

Countries like Canada are “trying to carve out an exception to what climate science is unequivocally saying: We have to phase out and eliminate all fossil fuel use. There can be no more natural gas, coal, or oil production,” he said.

Despite carbon capture technology being branded by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the most expensive and least promising avenue to reduce emissions, it’s a clear priority for Ottawa. The federal government has unveiled a series of financial incentives for companies looking to build CO2 pipelines. Two years ago, Ottawa pledged $319 million over seven years for research and development to improve the commercial viability of carbon management technologies (including capture and transportation) and this year, announced a carbon capture, utilization and storage tax credit expected to be worth $2.6 billion over the next five years.

In late September, Natural Resources Canada also published its carbon management strategy, which spells out how the federal government intends to build a multibillion-dollar carbon management sector.

“Carbon management technologies are an important part of how Canada can decarbonize its heavy industries and ensure they can compete and succeed in the global race to net zero by 2050,” said Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson in a statement. ...

“The idea of Canada as a leader in this area is laughable,” MacLean said. “Its record since 1990 speaks for itself. “Nobody outside of Canada who knows anything about climate policy sees Canada as anything other than a laggard.”

https://www.climatedesk.org/page/3/

Paladin, the fact that a plurality of Candians see the Conservatives as the best choice for dealing with the climate crisis (but at 28% is still less than the 30% than the Liberals and NDP combined and, furthermore leaves out those believe the Greens and Bloc party supporters which all support climate change programs far greater than the nada program of the Conservatives on climate change) may be great news for Pierre's electoral prospects, but does not change the grim, even terrifying, prospects that the climate crisis is just starting to bring us. Witness this years wildfires in just Canada that burned an area of land greater than England, and wildfires is only one problem of many, many more that have hit and will continue to hit us in ever greater fashion. The Conservatives always scream about the damage done by a growing national debt. Yet, countries like Ireland and Iceland, climbed out of deep economic holes during the 2008 financial crisis created by national debt in about a decade. On the other hand, the Conservatives are silent on the guaranteed centuries and possibly thousands of years that the climate crisis will impact national and global economies. The megadrought that has hit the American Southwest from Texas to California and as far north as Colorado has not created enormous water rationing, it is destroying this global agrcultural food basket that feeds a large part of the world thereby playing a major role in food price increases, as well as reducing hydroelctrical production and therefore manufacturing and other business production, and the drought even totally dried up water for human and other consumption in the Mexican region of the Colorado River until the US agreed to release more water to Mexico, even though this further hurt the Southwest American economy (https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2022/02/14/megadrought-in-southwest-is...). Much of the rapid growth in global migration is already due to the impact of the climate crisis on agriculture and other parts of the economies of Third World countries. Furthermore, further temperature rises due to climate change are predicted to make parts of the Middle East and India uninhabitable, further devastating economies and exponentially growing migration, according to a UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (https://whyy.org/articles/un-ipcc-climate-change-report-uninhabitable-pl...). These are just a couple of the numerous problems the climate crisis is and will continue to bring us. The Liberals have failed to deal effectively with climate change. The Trudeau government's own documents show "Canada is on track to be the second-largest fossil fuel expander, behind the United States, by 2050. On its own, Canada’s planned fossil fuel expansion represents 10 per cent of the world’s expansion plans, creating the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of 117 coal plants run for decades." (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/09/21/news/trudeau-grilled-climate...). The trouble with the Conservatives is they complain that the Liberals have not allowed enough fossil fuel production and plan to allow even more than the Liberals. There are also great economic and financial risks in subsidizing fossil fuel growth for the Canadian economy and its banking sector. Canada already has the highest per capita fossil fuel subsidies in the world and Royal Bank of Canada increased fossil fuel financing by 45% in 2022, making it #1 in the world in fossil fuel financing, despite being nowhere near the largest bank in the world, making it extremely dependent on fossil fuel production and sales for decades into the future since these projects take decades to pay off, something that is far from assured. As much of the world moves towards green renewable energy, Canada, its fossil fuel industry and its banking sector therefore face an outsized risk if fossil fuels growth does not continue globally.  So, if your Conservatives win the next election, enjoy it for a moment, but understand what that is coming because of climate change, an issue they pretend is not serious. As my youngest 22 year old son said, concerning their parents approach to dealing with climate change: "My generation will curse yours". 

The just released Emissions Gap Report 2023: Broken Record – Temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions report concludes that: 

 

Bruce McDougal watches embers fly over his property as the Bond Fire burns through the Silverado community in Orange County, Calif., on Dec. 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

As global temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions break records, the latest Emissions Gap Report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) finds that current pledges under the Paris Agreement put the world on track for a 2.5-2.9°C temperature rise above pre-industrial levels this century, pointing to the urgent need for increased climate action.  

Released ahead of the 2023 climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the Emissions Gap Report 2023: Broken Record – Temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again), finds that global low-carbon transformations are needed to deliver cuts to predicted 2030 greenhouse gas emissions of 28 per cent for a 2°C pathway and 42 per cent for a 1.5°C pathway. 

“We know it is still possible to make the 1.5 degree limit a reality. It requires tearing out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. And it demands a just, equitable renewables transition,” said Antònio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations.  

Maintaining the possibility of achieving the Paris Agreement temperature goals hinges on significantly strengthening mitigation this decade to narrow the emissions gap. This will facilitate more ambitious targets for 2035 in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and increase the chances of meeting net-zero pledges, which now cover around 80 per cent of global emissions.

“There is no person or economy left on the planet untouched by climate change, so we need to stop setting unwanted records on greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature highs and extreme weather,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “We must instead lift the needle out of the same old groove of insufficient ambition and not enough action, and start setting other records: on cutting emissions, on green and just transitions and on climate finance.” 

Until the beginning of October this year, 86 days were recorded with temperatures over 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. September was the hottest recorded month ever, with global average temperatures 1.8°C above pre-industrial levels.  

The report finds that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions increased by 1.2 per cent from 2021 to 2022 to reach a new record of 57.4 Gigatonnes of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (GtCO2e). GHG emissions across the G20 increased by 1.2 per cent in 2022. Emissions trends reflect global patterns of inequality. Because of these worrying trends and insufficient mitigation efforts, the world is on track for a temperature rise far beyond the agreed climate goals during this century. 

If mitigation efforts implied by current policies are continued at today’s levels, global warming will only be limited to 3°C above pre-industrial levels in this century. Fully implementing efforts implied by unconditional Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) would put the world on track for limiting temperature rise to 2.9°C. Conditional NDCs fully implemented would lead to temperatures not exceeding 2.5°C above pre-industrial levels. All of these are with a 66 per cent chance. 

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/nations-must-go-furt...

A new study by Unicef concludes that 43 million children have had to be evacuated due climate crisis induced extreme weather during the last six years. That is the equivalent of "20,000 children being forced to abandon their homes and school every single day. ... The figures are extremely worrying and demonstrate the urgent need for states to recognise and plan for the link between climate change and displacement, to minimize long term health, education and other developmental impacts on displaced children,” . These evacutaions are primarily occurring in developing countries with China, India and the Philippines accounting for more than half of these evacuations. 

Children at a camp for displaced people due to Cyclone Biparjoy in Badin, Pakistan's southern district in the Sindh province in June. Photograph: Fareed Khan/AP

Floods and storms accounted for 95% of recorded child displacement between 2016 and 2021, according to the first-of-its-kind analysis by Unicef and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). The rest – more than 2 million children – were displaced by wildfires and drought. … 

Displacement is traumatic and frightening regardless of age, but the consequences can be especially disruptive and damaging for children who may miss out on education, life-saving vaccines and social networks.

“It is terrifying for any child when a ferocious wildfire, storm or flood barrels into their community,” said Unicef executive director Catherine Russell. “For those forced to flee, the fear and impact can be especially devastating, with worry of whether they will return home, resume school or be forced to move again.”

In absolute terms, China, the Philippines and India dominate with 22.3 million child displacements – just over half the total number – which the report attributes to the countries’ geographical exposure to extreme weather such as monsoon rains and cyclones and large child populations, as well as increased pre-emptive evacuations.

But the greatest proportion of child displacements were in small island states – many of which are facing existential threats due to the climate emergency – and in the Horn of Africa where conflict, extreme weather, poor governance and resource exploitation overlap.

A staggering 76% of children were displaced in the small Caribbean island of Dominica, which was devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017, a category 4 Atlantic storm that damaged 90% of the island’s housing stock. Storms also led to more than a quarter of children being displaced in Cuba, Vanuatu, Saint Martin and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Somalia and South Sudan recorded the most child displacements due to floods, affecting 12% and 11% of the child population respectively.

 

Children Displaced in a Changing Climate is the first global analysis of the children driven from their homes due to floods, storms, droughts and wildfires, and comes as weather-related disasters are becoming more intense, destructive and unpredictable due to fossil-fuel driven global heating.

 

The report’s stark numbers are almost certainly an undercount due to major gaps in reporting drought and slow onset climate impacts such as rising sea level, desertification and rising temperatures.

“This is absolutely a conservative estimate, and possibly just the tip of the iceberg for some climate impacts,” said Verena Knaus, the Unicef lead on global migration and displacement. “Climate is the fastest-growing driver of child displacement yet most policies and discussions about climate finance fail to consider or prioritize children.”

In 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that there could be no further expansion of oil, gas and coal production if the world wanted to have any chance of avoiding catastrophic climate breakdown. The world failed to heed the warning, and emission cuts are wildly off track, according to the recent UN global stocktake, the most comprehensive analysis of global climate action produced to date.

In August 2022, unprecedented floods submerged a third of Pakistan underwater, causing billions of dollars in damage and displacing around 3.6 million children – many of whom went months without access to proper shelter, safe drinking water and sanitation. With every additional 1C of warming, the global risks of displacement from flooding are projected to rise by as much as 50%. …

 

The Unicef analysis detected 1.3 million child displacements due to drought with Somalia, Ethiopia and Afghanistan by far the worst affected countries. Water scarcity forces people to move due to failed crops and to find drinking water for themselves and livestock, but the true scale of drought-migration is unknown as it is difficult to measure and radically underreported.

Meanwhile, the US accounted for three quarters (610,000 out of 810,000) of child displacements linked to wildfires, with over half of the rest happening in Canada, Israel, Turkey and Australia. In the US, fires are increasingly linked to the expanding wildland urban interface (WUI), the zone between undeveloped wildland and human development, where more than 3,000 homes and other buildings are lost annually.

Earlier this year, entire communities were displaced by wildfires in Canada and Greece.

Overall, children accounted for one in three of the 135 million global internal displacements that were linked to more than 8,000 weather-related disasters between 2016 and 2021 – and the toll is likely to get much worse, according to the report.

Riverine floods pose the biggest future risk and could displace almost 96 million children over the next 30 years, according to the IDMC disaster displacement model. Based on current climate data, winds and storm surge could displace 10.3 million and 7.2 million children respectively over the same period, though this could be much worse if fossil fuels are not phased out urgently.

Given their large populations, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, the Philippines and China will likely have the most child displacements. In relative terms, children in the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, and Antigua and Barbuda are forecast to suffer most weather-disaster displacements over coming years.

“The figures are extremely worrying and demonstrate the urgent need for states to recognise and plan for the link between climate change and displacement, to minimize long term health, education and other developmental impacts on displaced children,” said Adeline Neau, an Amnesty International researcher for Central America and Mexico.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/oct/05/extreme-weath...

I looked up Michael Schellenberger's record. I was not impressed. He is a former public relations professional, not a scientist. In PBS's review of thirty years of the fossil fuel industry's climate change denials, they have hired public relations people trained in techiques of persuasion and using the soft modulated tones to present their arguments presented by Schellenberger in the video you included. "Michael Shellenberger claims “up to 30” UFOs have been recovered by the United States government since World War II". If you believe that, I have 30 Brooklyn Bridges I will sell you (https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebrity/investigative-journalist-claims-u...).  He also argues in favour of the "Covid lab leak hypothesis" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger). "This claim is highly controversial; most scientists believe the virus spilled into human populations through natural zoonosis (transfer directly from an infected non-human animal), similar to the SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV outbreaks, and consistent with other pandemics in human history." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory) He believes  that "GMO, industrial agriculture, fracking, and nuclear power are important tools in protecting the environment", which many scientists are highly skeptical but is very popular with these industries and the right wing. He is a leading attacker of the homeless. "Wes Enzinna, writing in The New York Times, charged that Shellenberger "does exactly what he accuses his left-wing enemies of doing: ignoring facts, best practices and complicated and heterodox approaches in favor of dogma."[24] Olga Khazan, writing in The Atlantic, said that "The problem—or opportunity—for Shellenberger is that virtually every homelessness expert disagrees with him." Quite the guy. Beat the homeless when they are down. Is there a far right idea that he isn't in support of and making money off?

Just another guy who pisses down on people and kisses up.

The fossil fuel industry hired many PR people for the cigarette industry to employ the same techniques used in their claims that smoking cigarettes was not linked to cancer. "As early as the 1950s, the groups shared scientists and publicists to downplay dangers of smoking and climate change", according to Scientific American. (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tobacco-and-oil-industries-us...) One PR person described who debated climate change scientists in the 1990s described how he would sound more convincing to many people than scientists, who are trained to qualify their arguments with statements like the evidence strongly suggests, and he now deeply regrets having done so as climate change gets worse and his children face the consequences of his denialism.

The also paid climate change denying scientists millions of dollars to support denial. For example "Wei-Hock Soon (known mainly as “Willie”), "climate deniers favourite scientist who quietly took money", One of the world’s most prominent climate researchers publishing scientific papers that doubt humanity’s role in climate change has received at least $1.2 million from the fossil fuel industry to fund his research and salary, according to documents revealed." (https://archive.thinkprogress.org/climate-deniers-favorite-scientist-qui...)

There is an entire industry in support of climate change denial described in the following 2019 CBC article: "I think it's important that the public understand that there are these powerful economic actors that have been working very hard to distort what the public thinks about this," said Canadian climate researcher Matto​ Mildenberger.  "This is a beast, or a demon, that's been unleashed by the fossil fuel industry that's taken on a bit of a life of its own. ... The climate communication researchers have identified media coverage as one factor that has amplified the climate denial movement. Specifically, the journalistic reflex to provide two opposing sides on any story. ... "You would have a climate scientist on a cable news show or a panel debating climate policy, and the media would find someone who disbelieved [it] or was from an industry group that was rejecting the climate consensus."

In the U.S., climate contrarians hold key political positions. "We have the president of the United States (Trump) basically enunciating climate denier talking points, so it's still alive and well," said Robert Brulle, a professor at Brown University in Providence, R.I., who has spent years researching climate contrarians.

John Cook at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University recently completed a study tracking climate misinformation in internet articles. He discovered an increase in rhetoric denying that warming is happening — but he also saw evidence of an uptick in misinformation about climate change solutions over the last few years.

Other climate communication researchers say they've noticed a similar trend.  "In some ways, the face of climate denial in political rhetoric has shifted," said Matto Mildenberger, a Canadian climate policy researcher currently working at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "It tends to be much more either, 'We can't do anything about it' or 'It's not important enough to do right away.'"

The researchers have also found evidence that climate misinformation is affecting public opinion about the nature of climate change and the efficacy of solutions. 

The phenomenon of climate misinformation has been the focus of a growing field of research, which began when social scientists noticed an emerging anti-climate change narrative in response to scientific evidence of global warming.

The first assessment of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was released in 1990, and concluded that human activities were increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations that would warm the earth's surface.

The evidence and scientific consensus for climate change caused by human activities has accumulated since then. This week, a new IPCC Special Report described widespread melting of ice sheets and ocean warming and stressed the need for "ambitious emissions reductions coupled with coordinated sustained and increasingly ambitious adaptation actions."

Environmental sociologist Riley Dunlap, one of the early climate communication researchers, was intrigued in the '90s when he recognized a "counter-movement" to climate activism.

"You get these almost always conservative counter-movements that emerge when the first movement is pushing society, with some success, in a progressive direction," said Dunlap. 

In one paper, Dunlap identified the members of the movement as "contrarian scientists, fossil fuels corporations, conservative think-tanks, and various front groups," along with "a bevy of amateur climate bloggers and self-designated experts, public relations firms, astroturf groups, conservative media and pundits, and conservative politicians."

Over the last three decades, a series of investigative news stories as well as academic researchrevealed additional evidence of what Dunlap called "organized climate change denial." 

In 1991, a New York Times story described how a campaign by coal-burning utility companies and coal producers aimed "to 'reposition global warming as theory' and not fact."

In 1998, leaked documents from the American Petroleum Institute, a trade organization for the oil and gas industry, described its plan to boost uncertainty about climate change. Those documents, now published online by the Union of Concerned Scientists, describe a global communications action plan where "victory will be achieved when … recognition of uncertainties [around climate science] becomes part of the 'conventional wisdom.'"

"The conservative movement/fossil fuel complex quickly adopted the strategy of 'manufacturing' uncertainty and doubt (perfected by the tobacco industry) as its preferred strategy for promoting skepticism," Dunlap wrote.

"I think it's important that the public understand that there are these powerful economic actors that have been working very hard to distort what the public thinks about this," said Mildenberger.  "This is a beast, or a demon, that's been unleashed by the fossil fuel industry that's taken on a bit of a life of its own."

Mildenberger worked with researchers at the University of Montreal to develop an interactive mapof Canadian attitudes toward climate change based on peer-reviewed modelling that estimates climate beliefs on a riding by riding basis, providing what Mildenberger described as a "granular understanding" of Canadian climate beliefs. "The places in Canada that have lower belief in climate change are primarily in rural Alberta and Saskatchewan," he said, adding that these are also regions heavily dominated by the oil and gas industry. "You get this real sense that the impacts of climate misinformation, and the way they're politically relevant, may matter more in a very small group of ridings."

The climate communication researchers have identified media coverage as one factor that has amplified the climate denial movement. Specifically, the journalistic reflex to provide two opposing sides on any story. "You would have a climate scientist on a cable news show or a panel debating climate policy, and the media would find someone who disbelieved [it] or was from an industry group that was rejecting the climate consensus," said Mildenberger. "It gives [the public] a false sense that there was real substantial scientific debate about this."

Cook said that this sort of coverage of climate change "really was the way in which most people were introduced to the climate issue over the last 15 years, and so the public is understandably very confused as a result." Cook has tested different ways to neutralize misinformation and discovered that people can be "inoculated" against it. In one study, he compared the effect of climate misinformation on two groups of people using a sample of what he called the "fake expert strategy."

One group was shown a petition signed by thousands of "scientists" — even though most of them were not climate experts — who said humans have not caused global warming.  A second group was also shown the petition, but the difference is that before seeing it, they were told about the misinformation tactic of using "spokespeople who convey the impression of expertise without possessing any relevant scientific expertise."  Cook said by boosting critical thinking, he was able to minimize the effect of the misinformation in the second group. And he said it worked regardless of political affiliation. "Whether the people were liberal or conservative, it neutralized the misinformation. What that tells me is that regardless of your political ideology, no one wants to be misled."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/climate-change-denial-fossil-fuel-think-...

The following article details how Liberal and Conservative federal governments failure to deal with ongoing climate emissions growth has left the country in a position where achieving its 2030 emissions reductions targets is all but impossible. Every one of the other G7 countries has done a significantly better job, although their emissions are still a major problem. Furthermore, "A recent study from Oil Change International found Canada is on track to be the second-largest fossil fuel expander, behind the United States, by 2050." (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/09/21/news/trudeau-grilled-climate....), thereby showing the Trudeau Liberals, and of course Pierre's Conservatives  who complain that the Liberals are not boosting the industry enough, have no plans to meet any emissions targets in 2050, let alone 2030. "The brutal math of Canada's foot-dragging on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that will fry our planet".

Canada still has seven years to achieve our 2030 climate target. But rising emissions over the last two years look like they've already pushed it out of reach. That’s because we are now at a point where each wasted year makes the remaining task overwhelmingly larger. 

Have we already run out the clock on climate hope in Canada? Take a look at these five charts and decide for yourself.

The rising cost of delay

My first chart shows the rapidly steepening path to Canada’s 2030 climate target.

The black line shows Canada’s past emissions. The green bull's-eye in the lower right is our target. And all those green arrows let you see the ever-steepening path to get there over the years.

Notice that 35 years ago, when Canada first promised to reduce planet-heating emissions, the path was a gentle ramp. That’s shown by the green arrow to the far left on the chart. If we had acted then, we would only have had to cut four million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) per year — less than one per cent per year. As we will see below, that’s essentially the path the Europeans took.

Instead, Canadians wasted decades while our emissions drifted higher. Along the way, our path slowly grew steeper.

Now fast-forward to the recent years on the chart (highlighted in yellow). In 2020, the global pandemic shrank Canada’s economy and knocked our emissions down by a record amount. At that point, Canadians needed to cut 22 MtCO2 per year to reach our target. But instead of cutting emissions in 2021, we increased them. This rocketed our needed cuts up to 26 MtCO2 per year. Then, last year, we increased emissions again, according to estimates by the Canadian Climate Institute. This shot our needed cuts up by even more — reaching 31 MtCO2 per year.

And if we increase emissions again this year — like we did after the last global economic downturn — then our needed cuts will leap by an even larger amount.

That’s the brutal math of foot-dragging. The penalty for failing to act is small early on, leading to complacency. But towards the end, small delays carry overwhelming penalties. That’s the position Canadians are in now.

The brutal math of Canada's foot-dragging on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that will fry our planet. @bsaxifrage writes for @NatObserver #cdnpoli #emissions #GlobalWarming #climate #GHGs ...

Cuts versus current emissions

My third chart provides another way to visualize how improbably huge our emissions reductions need to be.

On this chart, the black bars show Canada’s current emissions broken down by sector.

Emissions range from a low of 20 MtCO2 per year from our waste sector, up to nearly 200 MtCO2 per year from the oil and gas industry.

You can compare those to the reductions needed to meet our target — shown by the tall, dashed line on the right.

In total, Canadians need to reduce our climate pollution by nearly 250 MtCO2 by 2030. As you can see, that’s far more than any single sector emits. For example, if we could eliminate all tailpipe pollution from every car and truck — large and small — across Canada, it wouldn’t be nearly enough on its own. We no longer have the luxury of targeting our cuts in just one or two sectors.

Each year, we need to cut another 31 MtCO2. That amount is shown on the chart by the lowest green line. To appreciate what it would take to cut that much just once, consider that:

• Completely eliminating all emissions from our manufacturing and construction sector (24 MtCO2) wouldn’t be enough to cover even one year.
• Switching all of Alberta’s electricity generation (28 MtCO2) to renewables wouldn’t either.
• And neither would switching every home in Canada to electric heat pumps (~20 MtCO2).

The next few years will go by quickly. To appreciate what is needed over just three years, look at the chart’s upper green line. It marks 93 MtCO2 in emissions reductions. For scale, every three years we need to cut:

• More than the oilsands industry emits. 
• More than all Canadian buildings emit.
• More than all the cows in Canada emit.

The clear takeaway from this chart is that Canadians need to dramatically reduce our climate pollution across all sectors. Everything all at once. And because fossil fuel burning causes most of it, we need to rapidly ratchet down the amounts we burn in all parts of our economy and lives.

If we haven’t already started cutting fossil fuel emissions this year, then our task in future years will grow ever more extreme.

What can we learn from our peers?

My fourth chart shows the paths our peers in the Group of Seven (G7) have taken.

Collectively, these wealthy, industrialized nations emit one-third of global climate pollution and produce half the world's GDP. If we are going to have any shot at preventing a full-blown climate crisis, this group with much of the world's financial resources, capabilities and talent must lead the way.

On the chart, the line showing each nation's emissions is divided into three parts. The 1990s and 2000s decades are grey. The 2010s decade is coloured. And pandemic years since then are dotted. At the end is a yellow dot and flag showing the most recent emissions. As you can see, all G7 nations now emit less than they did in 1990 — except Canada. We still emit far more.

The path all our G7 peers took downward was to steadily reduce emissions over a decade or more. You can clearly see a long decline for each nation except Canada on the chart.

For example, look at the trends during the last decade, the 2010s. I’ve shown these years as colourful solid lines. Notice how all G7 nations — except Canada — reduced emissions during that critical decade.

We, alone, wasted that decade. Our foot-dragging left us ever further behind our peers. Just look at that gigantic 65 per cent action gap that has opened up between what our Commonwealth peers in the United Kingdom have done with their climate pollution versus what we’ve done in Canada. We've been choosing to fail.

My final chart adds each nation’s 2030 climate targets.

Canada’s 2030 climate target is shown by the green bull's-eye. It’s the weakest in the G7, at 25 per cent below our 1990 level.

It’s worth noting how other nations managed to reduce their emissions to the level we are aiming for.

For example, the U.K. has led the world in cutting climate pollution. It took them two decades of steadily reducing emissions to get to that level. And it took the European Union nearly three decades.

Canadians have just eight years left to get there, and we aren’t even back to the 1990 starting line yet. Not even close.

What these last charts show is that the nations that have made deep cuts to emissions have done it by consistently reducing emissions for decades.

To consistently cut emissions, it helps to have economy-wide policies that force reductions all along the way. A great example that we could adopt at any time is the U.K.’s Climate Change Act of 2007. It legally requires the government to meet sharply falling carbon budgets that cover all emissions in every year. And it set up an independent commission with broad powers to develop legislation and to keep the nation on track to meet current and future budgets.

I guess this is the point in a climate article when I’m supposed to offer some hopeful “we-can-still-avoid-saddling-all-future-humans-with-a-dystopian-climate” scenario. But after 35 years of broken promises and failed half-measures in Canada, it’s hard to see any hopeful scenario Canadians are willing to act on. We certainly know what we need to be doing. We just refuse to act — year after year, decade after decade. 

As we continue super-emitting — even as climate impacts grow ever more extreme — my thoughts keep returning to Elizabeth Kolbert's closing observation in her early climate book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing." Maybe we just aren’t going to save ourselves after all.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/11/15/analysis/brutal-math-climate...

In 2009, at the Copenhagen climate change conference, rich countries refused to make meaningful commitments to reduce emissions to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, instead proposing offering poorer nations receive $100 billion a year to combat climate change, a promise only kept in 2022 possibly, although that is still up for debate as the final data for 2022 is not yet available. With COP 28 starting today, the question remains how many more broken promises about dealing with climate change will be made only to be broken as the climate crisis exponentially accelerates towards global disaster. Furthermore, the vast majority of this money has come in the form of loans that the Global South must repay, thereby increasing the already heavy debt burden of these nations. In other words, there was never any intention of really significantly aiding the Global South deal with climate change. Nevertheless, Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s climate minister, meaninglessly boasted “Showing that we have met [the $100-billion] goal is an important milestone, but that’s what it is — it’s a milestone.” Some of the donated money has been used for exactly the opposite of its stated goal. For example, in Bangladesh, some of this money was used to open up a new coal mine. 

Negotiations on a new more ambitious funding climate crisis pledge for the Global South are underway at COP 28. Hopefully, any such pledge will be kept, although the track record says that is highly unlikely. 

New data suggest wealthy countries may belatedly be providing a promised $100 billion in climate-related aid. But they’ve eroded trust in the process. Photo by Getty Images/Grist

The collapse of negotiations at the 2009 United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, had repercussions that have shaped international climate finance to this day. Rich countries like the United States and much of Europe, which are responsible for the vast majority of historical carbon emissions, refused to back a strong commitment to limit global warming, despite the furious objections of poorer nations who were already suffering from the effects of climate change. 

Instead, as a kind of consolation prize, then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton made a vague promise to ramp up aid for decarbonization and disaster response in less fortunate countries around the world. She proposed that wealthy nations would send $100 billion in climate finance to poorer nations every year by 2020. The $100 billion number was far below the true need in those poorer nations, but it was adopted by negotiators and today is still the largest-ever financial commitment for climate change.

More than a decade later, developed countries only now seem to be fulfilling that promise. Preliminary data revealed in a new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, indicate that the $100 billion goal may have finally been met in 2022. However, this comes after the countries blew through their initial 2020 deadline; in 2021, wealthy nations only provided around $90 billion of climate finance to the developing world, even as climate-driven disasters wreak havoc on poorer nations in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The United States in particular is lagging behind. If it was to pay a share equivalent to its historical carbon emissions, the country would be responsible for nearly half of the $100 billion; it has contributed just a fraction of that.

The majority of the funding provided still comes in the form of loans that developing nations must repay. Wealthy nations have also spent far more money on climate mitigation projects like solar farms than they have on adaptation projects to protect against floods and famines, leaving poor countries vulnerable to climate disasters even as they take steps to emit less than countries that developed earlier. Adaptation funding decreased in 2021 by 14 per cent compared to 2020 and made up just a quarter of the $90 billion, according to the OECD report. Critics also say that some money tagged as climate aid has, in fact, funded projects that have nothing to do with climate change.

“We are very disappointed with the ambition from richer nations,” said Isatou Camara, a development planner for the finance ministry of the Gambia and a climate negotiator for a coalition of the least economically developed countries. “What we’ve been hearing from them was that they don’t have the resources to actually fulfil this commitment, but really there’s a lack of political will.” She pointed out that wealthy countries spent billions of dollars on domestic relief at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as they were lagging behind on their international commitments.

The shortcomings of the $100-billion pledge have eroded trust between the developed world and the developing world, altering the tenor of conversations about climate aid. Even with indications that the goal was likely met in 2022 — two years behind schedule — wealthy nations have a long way to go to rebuild trust with countries in the Global South.  “Showing that we have met [the $100-billion] goal is an important milestone, but that’s what it is — it’s a milestone,” said Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s climate minister, at a press conference discussing the report. “It doesn’t solve all of our problems. The conversation needs to shift. We’ve mobilized $100 billion. How do you mobilize a trillion dollars?” ...

Negotiators are now trying to work out a new and more ambitious funding pledge, one that would funnel much more money to developing countries and would guarantee grant support for climate adaptation projects, but mistrust is making it more difficult than ever to reach a consensus. The deadline for agreeing on a new goal is next year, and the progress of negotiations at COP28, the United Nations climate conference later this week in Dubai, will have huge implications for developing countries’ efforts to survive climate change.

Grants are still a small portion of the funding available to poorer nations, according to the OECD, which maintains the most comprehensive accounting of international climate finance. In 2021, wealthy nations provided about $20 billion in grants and nearly $50 billion in loans. The largest recipients of this funding are middle-income countries like India, Bangladesh, and Turkey, where fossil fuel consumption is rising — and where rich countries are investing in renewable energy projects. A much smaller share of the money went to countries in sub-Saharan Africa or island states in the Pacific, which emit less carbon but suffer billions of dollars in damages from climate disasters each year, thanks to extreme weather, drought, and sea-level rise.

This lopsided aid landscape is due to the vagueness of the original Copenhagen pledge from 2009. The language of the treaty called for funding to be “new and additional,” but there was no clarity on what that meant, raising the risk that countries would reclassify existing aid to meet their obligations. Nor was there any mechanism for keeping track of who had donated what, or confirming whether a given contribution was “new and additional.” 

Furthermore, there were few guidelines about how countries should send money or what kinds of projects they should fund. The pledge said that money should “come from a wide variety of sources” and “address the needs of developing countries,” but there was almost no detail beyond that. Many countries ended up tagging donations as climate-related when they had nothing to do with addressing global warming, and a good deal of obligated money never funded climate projects at all. A Reuters investigation earlier this year found that money tagged toward the $100-billion goal had helped open a new coal plant in Bangladesh; other funds had financed the expansion of an Italian gelato chain.

“There’s a lot of mistrust that they over-report,” said Pieter Pauw, a climate finance expert at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, a think tank focused on international development. “I’ve heard of a basketball field in the Philippines being accounted for as climate finance, and you really wonder: How?” 

The larger problem for developing countries is that rich countries have sent most of their aid through interest-bearing loans, albeit often at “concessional” interest rates that are lower than they would be on the private market. Japan, for instance, has been one of the largest contributors of climate finance to the developing world, far surpassing the United States, but almost all its donations have been loans rather than grants.

“It’s because they’re not really committed,” said Iolanda Fresnillo, a finance expert at the European Network on Debt and Development, an organization that advocates for debt relief. “If you’re not really committed, then you will choose loans because that will have a smaller impact on your fiscal indicators. It’s an asset, it’s not a loss.” 

Poorer countries have no choice but to take these loans if they want to invest in crucial projects to protect against disasters, but many of these countries are already overwhelmed by debt, and they often have to constrain domestic spending in order to service their loans, cutting funding for infrastructure or public services. Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados and a leading advocate for climate-vulnerable countries, has made the loans issue a centrepiece of her advocacy at recent United Nations talks, arguing that rich countries should provide climate money through no-strings-attached grants. 

Avinash Persaud, Mottley’s climate envoy, said that Barbados’ climate costs are roughly 100 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product. “We can’t increase our debt by 100 per cent,” he said. “We need every way of raising affordable finance.”

Developed countries’ reliance on loans has also resulted in a bias toward decarbonization projects rather than adaptation projects. When a rich country lends money to a poor country for a solar farm or a carbon sequestration project, it can expect that the project will generate financial returns and that those returns will help the poor country repay the loan with interest. Private companies and lenders are also more likely to support projects that offer an investment return, allowing rich countries to mobilize more funds by blending public and private money. Even though an adaptation project such as a seawall or a reservoir can help avoid economic damages from future disasters, the avoided damages don’t translate into a financial return for the borrowing country. 

“If you look at the number of climate-related disasters we’ve been experiencing in our countries, it’s basically due to the inadequate resources we have to respond to the effects of climate change,” said Camara. “We’ve over and over been saying that adaptation is a key priority, and what we’ve ended up believing is that adaptation is not profitable.”

Regardless of how close countries have come to meeting their commitments from 2009, the $100-billion pledge is nearing the end of its life. Back in 2018, before wealthy countries had even come close to meeting the Copenhagen promise, international negotiators agreed to start drafting a new goal that would funnel even more money into decarbonization and disaster response. 

This revised goal, which negotiators need to finalize by next year’s United Nations conference, will likely set a much higher target for annual funding. In the years since Copenhagen, scientists have gotten much better at estimating future costs of climate-related losses, and most experts now believe that annual financing needs should be measured in the trillions rather than the billions of dollars.

But just raising the target number on this “new collective quantified goal” (the United Nations’ terminology) may not be enough to ensure funding reaches those who need it. Developing countries and climate advocates are calling for a more structured commitment that would fix the vagueness of the Copenhagen pledge. This new goal would mandate that developed countries provide some portion of their funding through grants rather than loans, and would also set a minimum amount of funding for adaptation projects, which aren’t as attractive for lenders. 

“There’s a push to provide more money than was provided in the past,” said Jan Kowalzig, a researcher at Oxfam who follows climate finance. “The amount depends on how you design it. We are arguing that there should be a sub-goal on adaptation, that would be about grant money only, but developed countries are very unlikely to accept that.”

Developed countries have countered that they shouldn’t be the only ones sending money. The Copenhagen pledge applied only to the wealthiest and most developed countries, most notably the United States and the European Union, and it omitted fast-developing and high-emitting countries such as China and India, as well as petrostates like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. and other wealthy contributors are now pushing to include more countries in the donor pool, arguing that they have both the means and the moral responsibility to contribute, given the emissions increases that come as countries industrialize.

These same questions are also looming over parallel talks over a separate “loss and damage” fund to compensate countries for losses incurred due to climate change, which is the other main focus of COP28. This fund, which negotiators agreed to create at last year’s climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, would offer compensation and rebuilding aid for unavoidable climate damages, rather than aid to help prepare for future disasters or ditch fossil fuels. 

Here, too, developing countries are seeking strong financial guarantees from wealthy countries, and these states in turn are advocating for loans and other financial instruments rather than direct grants. The less money countries receive for adaptation funding to prevent future disasters, the more loss and damage fundingthey will need to recover from those disasters.  It remains to be seen how both sets of negotiations will shake out at COP28, but negotiators and outside observers say that developed countries are entering the conference with less leverage than ever. As Pauw sees it, wealthy nations’ failure to make good on their Copenhagen promise has all but ensured that they will end up paying enormous amounts of money in future years as climate impacts worsen. “I think failure backfires on developed countries,” said Pauw, of the German Development Institute. “It gives developing countries a lot of ammunition to demand more.”

https://grist.org/international/international-climate-finance-adaptation/

Since it has been a year and a half since I have summarized the dismal record of failure of the Trudeau and previous Liberal governments to deal with the climate crisis, I have decided to update this pathetic record, by first reminding everyone what they did between 1990 and June 2022. In the next post I will summarize their record from June 2022 to the present. In June of 2022, I noted  that the Trudeau government continues the Liberal thirty year record of saying they are going to tackle climate change while doing the opposite. Just between April and June 2022, the Trudeau Liberals (1)secretly guaranteed a $10 billion loan to save the Trans Mountain pipeline that has exploded from the original $4.5 billion purchase price to an estimated $21.4 billion total cost; (2) approved the Bay du Nord oil field off Newfoundland in April; (3) approved the West White Rose oil field which is also off Newfoundland's coast that will also further increase Canadian greenhouse gas emissions while saying they will reduce them; (4) proposed  the development of the Ring of Fire mining region with strong environmental objections from local First Nations; (5) have Canada be recognized as the only G7 country with 2020 (last year with available data) greenhouse gas emissions way above 1990 levels despite thirty years of Liberal promises to reduce emissions; (6) had Trudeau's carbon capture, utilization and storage proposal to reduce emissions that features heavily in the Trudeau government’s new climate plan, criticized as another gift to to the oil and gas industry; (7) in April Environmental Commissioner Jerry Demarco's report he concluded "the country may not be able to reach its 2030 emissions reductions targets because the federal government's current plan is based on "unrealistic" assumptions about the role hydrogen will play in the energy mix in years to come." (8)as oil prices skyrocket,the Trudeau Liberals, with former Environment Minister and current Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson now showing his true colours and in the lead in exploring developing two new LNG ports off the East Coast and another in Quebec's Saguenay, continue to push more fossil fuel development.

Below is the full pitiful thirty year Liberal record of failure on climate change:

(1) “Canada has missed two separate emission reduction targets (the 1992 Rio target and the 2005 Kyoto target) and is likely to miss the 2020 Copenhagen target as well. In fact, emissions in 2020 are expected to be nearly 20 per cent above the target.” (https://www.cpacanada.ca/en/news/canada/2018-09-18-canada-failing-to-red...)

The Chretien Liberals were deeply involved in negotiating the 1997 Kyoto Accord agreeing that "Canada's Kyoto target was a 6% total reduction by 2012 compared to 1990 levels of 461 Megatonnes (Mt)". Instead the 1997 emissions of 671 Mt during the year of the signing of the Kyoto Accord had risen to 747 Mt in 2005, the last full year of a Liberal government before the Conservatives took over. This was 33% above the 1997 Liberal Kyoto target. Martin did little in office to fulfill the Liberals Kyoto promises.  The Liberals have failed previously failed to meet their greenhouse gas reduction goals of 1992, 1997, and 2005. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Kyoto_Protocol)

(2) The Trudeau Liberals declared a climate emergency in June 2019 as he prepared for an election and then announced the next day the tripling of the Trans Mountain pipeline to carry bitumen to the coast bringing about a massive expansion of the fossil fuel production. Trudeau won the understatement of the year award today when he said "Not everyone will agree with this".  

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

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

(5) the Trans Mountain pipeline to the BC coast to triple tarsands oil transportation that Trudeau purchased and is building it with "the total cost of taxpayers' investment in the Trans Mountain expansion to more than $17 billion" (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/trans-mountain-pipeline-...) that will further increase emissions, money that could have been used to shift to green renewable energy;

(6) Trudeau looked at approving the Frontier Mine in Alberta, which "would  cover 24,000-hectares (roughly double the size of the City of Vancouver) and would produce 260,000 barrels of bitumen each day at its peak (https://thenarwhal.ca/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-massive-new-o...) making it one of the largest oilsands mines until the company pulled out of the plan;

 (7) Trudeau pushed the completion of Enbridge's Line 3 to Manitoba in December 2019 that " will have oil export capacity of 760,000 barrels per day (bpd)" when the US portion is finished this year (https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/enbridge-line-three-shipping-oil-1.5377031) The final approval and start of construction of the American portion began at the beginning of December 2020 over the legal objections and ongoing protests of two American First Nations and environmentalists, thereby contributing to more Canadian greenhouse gas emssions in the future.

(8) Trudeau supported a $14 billion LNG pipeline from Ontario to Saguenay Quebec for export to Europe, Asia and Brazil that only failed to come to fruition when Warren Buffet concluded it was not going to work financially (https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/may-2019/quebecs-natural-gas-ex...)

(9) Trudeau also supported Energy East to build a pipeline to the Maritimes until he realized its lack of support in Quebec threatened his 40 Quebec Liberal MPs. "The reason Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent billions of taxpayer dollars to keep the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion alive while letting the Energy East pipeline proposal die is simple.“Just do the seat count,” Black, an elected member of the Canadian Senate representing Alberta, told BNN Bloomberg in a telephone interview from Calgary. “Quebec was opposed to Energy East and at that point in time it just became insurmountable.” (https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/do-the-seat-count-why-trudeau-chose-trans-mo...)

(10) The Trudeau government "treated Donald Trump’s election as “positive news” for Canada’s energy industry and welcomed the help of Canada’s main corporate oil group in lobbying the US administration, documents show." (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2018/feb/09/trudeau-g...) Therefore, there is no doubt the Trudeau Liberals are celebrated the announcement that work on the US portion of the XL pipeline would resume in February. Again this fell through, this time because of US court action, not because of the Trudeau government. 

(11) Once again the Trudeau government is speaking out of both sides of its mouth as it changes offshore drilling rules in Newfoundland in order to make it easier for the fossil fuel industry to meet them and then proclaiming that the industry must live up to those standards while environmental organizations complain about the changes.  The Liberal government has also excluded new drilling from environmental assessment there. This has become even more important with the announcement of the discovery of oil in two new places in the Newfoundland offshore. 

(12) The Trudeau Liberals are redefining emissions to make them look lower. 

Canada's vast managed forest lands used to be critical allies in our climate fight and efforts to build a sustainable, carbon neutral forestry economy. That's because these forests used to be healthy enough to absorb the huge amounts of CO2 created by the logging industry's harvests — plus lots more. ...

Unfortunately for all of us, our forests' deep and valuable carbon sink has nearly dried up. Decades of human abuses — from climate disruption to clearcutting — have left them too battered and weakened to even keep up with business-as-usual logging. Put simply: Our continent-spanning managed forests are now being cut down faster than they are growing back. The result has been a rising flood of CO2 pouring out of our managed forests and accumulating in our atmosphere — worsening both the climate and ocean acidification crises. (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/11/02/opinion/co2-forestry-Canada-...)

(13) In December 2020 , the Trudeau Liberals gave $41.5 to Husky Oil in Newfoundland to keep the "idled West White Rose offshore oil project going, particularly to "protect the option of restarting" in the next year — although there is no guarantee that will happen." Meanwhile Trudeau continues to proclaim his devotion to stopping greenhouse gas emissions. I guess he is just following his strategy before the last election of proclaiming a climate change emergency one day and literally the next day buying the Trans Mountain pipeline.  The $41.5 million, which is half the project cost, is in addition to the $325 million the Trudeau government handed the Liberal Newfoundland government to support the Newfoundland oil industry, after Husky stopped construction on the project in April due to the low price of oil. More subsidies poured into a sunsetting industry. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/west-white-rose-1.5...)

(14) The Trudeau Liberals are following the same delay, delay, delay climate plan they have since Chretien in 1993 by refusing to have a target for greenhouse emissions reduction target for 2025 and instead setting the target date as 2030, when they would have been in power for 15 years, which given history is unlikely to happen. In other words, they don't want any target that could hold them accountability for failure in the forseeable future, depsite demands from environmentalists that early target dates are critical to dealing with global warming. 

     A prominent French-Canadian scientist who chairs France’s High Council on Climatesays Canada needs to commit to a 2025 carbon pollution reduction target and strengthen its net-zero advisory body. Le Quéré has led a new scientific analysis of global emissions, published March 3 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change, that found global pollution cuts need to increase tenfold to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. ... The analysis, “Fossil CO​2​ emissions in the post-COVID era,” points out that Canada is one of 150 countries where emissions increased between 2016, after the Paris Agreement was adopted, and 2019, the year before the pandemic.(https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/03/05/news/wilkinson-not-keen-plan...)

(15)Even the Trump administration, which is as pro fossil fuel as it gets, had only a 0.6% increase in fossil fuel emissions thanks to some state and local efforts, while Canada under Trudeau had 3.3% growth in fossil fuels and every other G7 country cut emissions during this period (see below). " Among the top 10 total greenhouse gas emitters, Canada and the United States have the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions at 22 tCO2e per person and 18 tCO2e per person." (https://www.wri.org/insights/4-charts-explain-greenhouse-gas-emissions-c...)

(16) The Tyee points out that according to Canada’s Trudeau government's own documents, the country is the world’s third largest oil exporter, sixth largest natural gas exporter and seventh largest coal exporter, making it a major part of the global warming problem." Whether producing fossil fuels for the domestic or international market makes no difference to their impact on the global climate.  (https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/08/19/Dire-Climate-News-Canada-Front-Pa...)

(17) Under Trudeau we are now 29.4% above its 2030 target, leaving "Canada not on track to hit its 2030 target" according to formerEnvironment Commissioner Julie Gelfand, so the Liberals are still selling hot air during this election. In the future, Canada faces the possibility of carbon tariffs from the US for its high emissions levels. 

Between Mr. Trudeau’s election in 2015 and 2019, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1 percent, despite decreases in other rich nations during the same period, according to government data released last week. In fact, Canada is the only Group of 7 country whose emissions have risen since the Paris climate agreement was signed six years ago. ...As one of the world’s largest oil reserves, the oil sands are also among the most polluting, given the amount of energy required to extract it. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/world/canada/trudeau-climate-oil-sand...)

(18) Under Trudeau, Canada is supporting fossil fuels at 10 times the G20 average during the Covid pandemic, adding $12 billion in new fossil fuel support in 2020.

As you can see in this first G20 chart, Canadians are at the top of the fossil support charts. Canada has committed nearly ten times the G20 average per capita — for a total of $12 billion so far this year in new fossil fuel support. (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/08/12/analysis/canada-supporting-f...)

(19) Climate Action Tracker in 2021 rated Canada’s climate target, policies and finance as ‘Highly Insufficient’, and in line with 4°C global warming

The “Highly insufficient” rating indicates that Canada’s climate policies and commitments are not consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C temperature limit. Canada’s 2030 emissions reduction target is consistent with 2°C of warming when compared to modelled domestic emissions pathways. If fully implemented, Canada’s current policies are not enough to achieve this target and are only in line with 4°C warming. For every step forward, Canada also seems to take two steps back. ... It continues to expand its pipeline capacity for fossil fuels, even though modelling by its own energy regulator shows that the additional capacity exceeds available supply under even relatively unambitious climate policy. ... Canada’s latest emissions projections for 2030 transport emissions have also increased by 16% compared to last year’s figure, due, in part, to the rollbacks for passenger car and truck standards that occurred under the Trump Administration. (https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/canada/)

(20) As the following chart shows, Canada's failure to cut its vehicle greenhouse gas emissions is a major cause of its greenhouse gas emissions policies under the Harper and Trudeau governments. This is closely tied to the relatively low gasoline taxes compared to other countries despite Trudeau's ballyhooed carbon tax. 

Canadians filling up at the pump have been a primary driver behind our nation's 30 years of climate failure. As my first chart below shows, Canadian tailpipe emissions have been surging relentlessly upwards since 1990.

The dashed line shows the climate pollution from gasoline and diesel purchased at the pump, for both passenger and freight vehicles. This makes up the lion's share of Canada's transport sector emissions (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/10/01/analysis/pricing-carbon-cana...)

(21) Despite the Trudeau Liberals election promises to make Canada a renewable energy country, the evidence that they are doing the opposite is staggering.

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

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

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

"The government is even doubling down, claiming we have to expand fossil carbon extraction because we need the extra fossil fuel cash to pay for emissions cutting. ...I went digging through the data for Canada and several of its peer nations. What I found is the opposite. Nations that ramped down their fossil fuel extraction were the ones that cut their emissions, while nations that increased extraction failed." (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/09/15/analysis/canadas-climate-sol...)

(22) A October 2021 report shows once again that Trudeau's actions are the opposite of his words. A Oil Change International report shows that Canada leads the G20 in fossil fuel subsidies while it lags far behind in renewable energy support. Julia Levin of Environmental Defence calls the Trudeau government plans to reduce fossil fuel subsidies inadequate in view of the fact that it still spends six times as much on fossil fuel subsidies to one of the world's wealthiest industries than on renewables, the growth sector of the future that needs funding for fast growth if the world is deal with global warming. "The report found that Canada provides only $ 1 billion a year in renewable energy subsidies. The G20 average is around 2.5 times higher."

And compared to subsidies for oil, gas and coal, renewable energy gets less government help in Canada than in any other G20 country, say the latest figures from Oil Change International. ...But it found Canada topped the fossil fuel subsidies list, providing an average of almost $14 billion a year between 2018 and 2020. On average, the report finds G20 countries provided about 2.5 times more support for fossil fuels than renewables. In Canada, the ratio is 14.5. (http://priceofoil.org/2021/10/28/past-last-call-g20-public-finance-insti...)

 

(23) In its latest Climate Action Tracker summarized Trudeau's failure to deal effectively with climate change: 

For every step forward, Canada also seems to take two steps back. It continues to expand its pipeline capacity for fossil fuels, even though modelling by its own energy regulator shows that the additional capacity exceeds available supply under even relatively unambitious climate policy. ... Canada’s latest emissions projections for 2030 transport emissions have also increased by 16% compared to last year’s figure, due, in part, to the rollbacks for passenger car and truck standards that occurred under the Trump Administration. (https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/canada/)

(23) Carbon offsets, which are part of the Trudeau Liberal government's plan to deal with greenhouse gas emissions instead of eliminating fossil fuels, unfortunately don't work. 

Carbon offsets don’t work because if every company chose that method, there wouldn’t be enough credits to go around and hit 2030 goals. Even if there were enough credits, researchers suggest that offset markets are not sufficient to decarbonize the global economy anyway....  There is a surplus of carbon credits that keep corporations complacent about their emissions… but that will soon fade. In the long run, it will be cheaper to remove emissions than to rely on offsets. And industry disruptors are coming in to manifest that reality. ...Carbon offsets don’t work on their own. And they delay the impact of legacy companies with deep pockets that can afford credits but are hesitant to update operations. (https://sustainablereview.com/carbon-offsets-should-be-more-expensive/)

(24) In November 2021 Environment and Sustainable Development Commissioner Jerry V. DeMarco concluded in a new report that "Despite three decades of effort, Canada's carbon emissions have risen 20 per cent since 1990, the country remains unprepared for climate disasters and subsidies for the oil and gas sector have not delivered promised emission reductions ... That damning verdict applies not only to past Liberal and Conservative governments but to the current government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau". Furthermore, we are now "the worst performer of all G7 nations since the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change was adopted in 2015. ... "We can't continue to go from failure to failure".

"Canada was once a leader in the fight against climate change. However, after a series of missed opportunities, it has become the worst performer of all G7 nations since the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change was adopted in 2015," said Environment and Sustainable Development Commissioner Jerry V. DeMarco in a media statement.

The commissioner's office said that while Canada's oil and gas sector is responsible for eight per cent of GDP, it's also to blame for 25 per cent of emissions. To turn that around, the commissioner said Canada needs to fund efforts to transition workers away from emissions-intensive industries and increase the country's reliance on lower-emission energy sources. ...

The commissioner said that dealing with weather-related disasters, such as the catastrophic flooding in B.C.'s interior, costs the country up to six per cent of GDP annually. Better preparation for such events is critical, DeMarco said.​ (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-commissioner-report-failure...)

(25) the Trans Mountain pipeline costs have now risen exponentially to $21.4 billion in 2022 (https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/trans-mountain-says-pipeline-ex...)

(26) a new oilfield, Bay du Nord in the Newfoundland offshore, is before the Trudeau cabinet in March 2022 for approval (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/bay-du-nord-environ...)

(27) First Nations in northern Ontario's Ring of Fire region strongly oppose the Trudeau government's proposed environmental review of the mining projects for the region for climatic and other environmental reasons, as well as for the last of sufficient consultation (https://www.tvo.org/article/who-gets-to-decide-the-future-of-the-ring-of...)

(28)  in April 2022 the Trudeau Liberals secretly guaranteed a $10 billion loan to save the Trans Mountain pipeline that has exploded from the original $4.5 billion purchase price to an estimated $21.4 billion total cost that was only reavealed by Politico, not the government (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/10/trudeau-cabinet-approves-c-10b-...)

(29) Carbon capture, utilization and storage features heavily in the Trudeau government’s new climate plan, but critics question whether it represents another gift to to the oil and gas industry. (https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/trudeaus-2030-climate-plan-l...)

(30)the Trudeau federal Liberal and Furey Liberal Newfoundland governments approved Cenovus Energy and its partners' West White Rose oil project, a $3.2-billion expansion of the White Rose oilfield in offshore Newfoundland, and the deal includes reductions to how much royalty money the companies will have to pay to the provincial government despite record high oil prices (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/cenovus-west-white-...)
(31) in April current Environmental Commissioner Jerry Demarco's report he concludes that with regards to Trudeau's climate change plan "the country may not be able to reach its 2030 emissions reductions targets because the federal government's current plan is based on "unrealistic" assumptions about the role hydrogen will play in the energy mix in years to come." (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/environment-commissioner-emissions-redu...) In a separate report Demarco concluded ""the country’s carbon pricing system is disproportionately hard on Indigenous communities and small businesses and not hard enough on the biggest emitters." (https://www.vicnews.com/news/carbon-pricing-too-hard-on-indigenous-group...)
(32) a May 2022 report foundCanada is the only G7 country with 2020 (last year with available data) greenhouse gas emissions way above 1990 levels despite thirty years of Liberal promises to reduce emissions (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/05/24/analysis/copenhagen-accords-...)
(33)In June the Trudeau Liberals, with former Environment Minister and current Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson now showing his true colours and in the lead in exploring developing two new LNG ports off the East Coast and another in Quebec's Saguenay, continue to push more fossil fuel development, in addition to the already approved Bay du Nord and West White Rose oilfield development projects off the Newfoundland coast during the last two months. Furthermore, by rushing to take advantage of the sudden great rise in demand for fossil fuels because of Covid becoming endemic and the war in Ukraine reducing Russian exports, the Trudeau government is risking discovering that Europe has shifted to renewable energy by the time these projects are finished in several year. (https://mailchi.mp/nationalobserver.com/go-easy-on-the-gas?e=608d2c52ee)

Since the thread to cover the Trudeau Liberals failures to deal with the climate crisis from just April to December 2022, was so long I decided to start a new thread for their ongoing failures in 2023.

(61) A new report in January 2023 showed that despite all the emphasis in the news and by politicians like Trudeau and Doug Ford on the future of electric cars, fossil fueled vehicles and their emissions are surging in Canada. Other countries have done a much better job of reducing fossil fuel burning cars and their emissions, as the following graphs show, in part because these countries offer substantial subsidies for the purchase of EVs, not just for the manufacturers building plants. 

 

CO2 Emissions from vehicles by country

 

(https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/12/20/analysis/overheated-canada-g...)
(62) Unlike Canada's Trudeau Liberal government which recently approved more oil search drill wells off Newfoundland in the fall of 2022 plus gave billions in subsidies to Carbon Capture and Storage (a technology that has never been successful to a significant extent in reducing emissions -(https://e360.yale.edu/features/solution-or-band-aid-carbon-capture-proje...) fossil fuel projects in Alberta and Saskatchewan , the left-wing government of Columbia's President Gustavo Petro has ended new government contracts for fossil fuels. (https://www.democracynow.org/2023/1/20/headlines/colombia_to_end_new_gov...)
(63) This 2021 Jacobin article at the url below argues that capitalism is the principal driving force in creating the climate crisis still holds valid. The only difference is that situation is getting exponentially worse with each passing year, including the fact that Canada leads the developed world in per capita emissions. Trudeau recently stated to the oil industry, the capitalist engine of economic growth, that Canada will be producing lots of oil after it supposedly reaches net zero emissions in 2050 as the following Trudeau government graph shows. The Trudeau Liberals are part of the 'those' in the capitalist system mentioned in the Jacobin's conclusion that "those who are to blame don’t plan to do anything meaningful about it." (https://jacobin.com/2021/08/ipcc-sixth-assessment-report-climate-change-...) So far the evidence from 2023, shows that this still holds when it comes to Trudeau's fossil fuel subsidies and approval of new fossil fuel projects.
(64) When it comes to fossil fuel subsidies, despite the exponential growth in damage from the climate crisis, there is no such thing as too much for the Trudeau Liberals. In 2022 Trans Mountain Pipeline costs soared "An eye-popping 70 per cent ... at $21.4 billion, up from an earlier estimate of $12.6 billion." However, that earlier price tag has increased multiple times from the original $7.4 billion that including the Trudeau government pipeline price of of $4.5 billion for a pipeline that Kinder Morgan was eager to dump on taxpayers because it saw no way of making a profit from it (https://globalnews.ca/news/8631044/trans-mountain-pipeline-cost-climbs/). In 2023, "The cost of the Trans Mountain expansion project has grown to $30.9 billion, according to the Crown corporation behind the pipeline project." (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/trans-mountain-pipeline-costs-1.6...)
(65) By March 2023, another ramification of the war in Ukraine occurred in Canada. Just over a year ago Canada's east coast LNG industry seemed dead; not anymore thanks to the war in Ukraine. The Trudeau Liberals, with former Environment Minister and current Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson now showing his true colours and in the lead in exploring developing two new LNG ports off the East Coast and another in Quebec's Saguenay, continue to push more fossil fuel development, in addition to the already approved Bay du Nord and West White Rose oilfield development projects off the Newfoundland coast during the last two months. Furthermore, by rushing to take advantage of the sudden great rise in demand for fossil fuels because of Covid becoming endemic and the war in Ukraine reducing Russian exports, the Trudeau government is risking discovering that Europe has shifted to renewable energy by the time these projects are finished in several years, leaving Canadian taxpayers holding extremely expensive white elephants whose fossil fuel projects cannot be sold. (https://mailchi.mp/nationalobserver.com/go-easy-on-the-gas?e=608d2c52ee)
(66) In March 2023, a new report concluded that "The overwhelming climate damage from Canadian cars comes from burning the gasoline to move them around." Furthermore, he uses charts to illustrate that we have now have 41% more gas fueled vehicles on the road than in 2000 and "For every new electric car added to our roads over the last five years, we've added 10 more gasoline cars." Canada's conversion to EVs has been a failure as we continue to lead the world with the largest fossil fuel subsidies per capita, no additional taxes on high emitting vehicles at time of purchase, and paltry subsidies for EVs by the Trudeau Liberal and most provincial governments compared to most other developed countries. In other words, "Having that emissions curve surging upwards obviously isn't climate progress.It's Category 5 climate failure."
Chart comparing life-cycle emissions of gasoline cars vs electric cars in Canada (see chart in url below) That towering bar on the left is the life cycle emissions for the average new gasoline car in Canada. It totals around 80 tonnes of climate pollution (tCO2) per car.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/02/24/analysis/gasoline-versus-ele...
(67) New data on annual Canadian greenhouse gas emissions released at the end of February 2023, show Canada's emissions rising once again in 2021 by 2.8% with 58% coming from oil and gas extraction, after falling in 2020 because of the economic downturn caused by Covid. Besides fossil fuels, transport and iron and steel sectors also led the way. Emissions from fossil gas production and processing rose 9.6%, Oil sands emissions increased 6.3% in 2021, Iron and steel 18.3%, and passenger transport increased emissions by 8.7%. This happened even though 2021 was another Covid year. The Trudeau Liberal government continues to fail to seriously tackle reducing Canada's emissions. Instead it offers more fossil fuel subsidies and is, right now, in court defending the proposed Bay du Nord one billion barrel Newfoundland development that has been heavily criticized by more than 200 environmental groups around the world and by indigenous First Nations in Atlantic Canada.
(https://www.theenergymix.com/2023/02/23/canadas-emissions-up-2-8-in-2021...) Mi'gmawe'l Tplu'tagnn Inc., which represents eight Mi'kmaq groups in New Brunswick, is challenging the Newfoundland offshore $16 billion Trudeau approved Bay du Nord oil project in court. (https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/new-brunswick-mi-kmaq-chiefs-join-court-chal...)
(68) A March 2023 report shows Canada in comparison to the global EV market described in the last post is a laggard with only 6.7% of vehicles being electric vehicles. Global electric vehicle sales reached 12.5% of all new cars sold in 2022. Norway led the way with 54.3% of all car sales being EVs, thanks to large subsidies and laws requiring all new vehicle sales to be EV by 2025. (https://electrek.co/2021/01/07/all-electric-cars-market-share-norway-202....) In China, "22% of New Car Sales in China Were 100% Electric in 2022", driven by both policy incentives and growing consumer demand. (https://cleantechnica.com/2023/02/01/plugin-electric-vehicles-get-30-sha...é%20Pontes%20Published%20February%201%2C%202023%2037%20Comments) In Canada, the average new EV costs $82,000 while the Trudeau Liberal government has kept EV subsidies small in comparison to many other countries, while having the largest per capita subsidies for fossil fuels in the world. The two Canadian provinces with the largest percentage EV sales of the total vehicle market were BC with 17% and Quebec with 13% which also had much higher EV purchase subsidies. Declaring a climate change emergency in 2019 is one thing. Doing something about it is a non-thing for Trudeau. (https://insideevs.com/news/623692/canada-ev-sales-lagging-golbally/)
(69) In April 2023, The Liberal Trudeau and Furey governments development of Newfoundland offshore oil continues with the signing of a contract for front-end engineering and design for the estimated $9.4-billion oil drilling project despite the risks involved both financially and environmentally, including a warning from the International Energy Agency in 2021 that there should be no new fossil fuel projects if the world is to meet its net-zero emissions by 2050. Of the Trudeau government assures us that the "Bay du Nord [oil project] raised no significant environmental issues." (https://www.enr.com/articles/56245-kbr-hatch-set-for-9b-east-canada-offs...) Besides the financial risks described in the last post, offshore oil projects, such as Bay du Nord create enormous environmental risks, including the phony claim that it is "clean" oil giving off little in the way of emissions. Many of the arguments put forward by governments and fossil fuels involving greenwashing come straight from the fringe in the form of ultra-right-winger Ezra Levant's book, Ethical Oil. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/can-nl-have-clean-o...)
(70) In his April 2023 report, Environment Commissioner Jerry DeMarco says Canada is the only G7 country that has higher greenhouse-gas emissions now than it did when it first started trying to reduce them, thereby illustrating how weak seven years of Trudeau Liberal government rule have been when it comes to dealing with the climate crisis. His report goes on to describe many other problems with the Trudeau government approach. The Environment Commissioner noted on the CBC News Network "With this report, the list of failures grows longer again". (https://davidsuzuki.org/press/environment-commissioner-reports-show-need...) On the same day at an environmental conference in Ottawa the government used updated scientific knowledge and economic models to revise the way it evaluates how much climate change is costing Canadians. The social cost of carbon estimates the financial impact that every tonne of emissions has on everything from food production and human health to disaster repair bills and even property values. At the conferenceEnvironment Minister Steven Guilbeaut noted the social cost estimate "would be about $54 a tonne in 2020. Guilbeault said the updated model suggests that figure was actually closer to $247. He said this year it's even higher, at $261 per tonne of emissions, and by 2030 it will rise to $294." as the climate crisis grows exponentially (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/04/20/news/cost-carbon-emissions-n...) However, the Trudeau Liberals continue to offer the highest per capita fossil fuel subsidies in the world, showing that is more important to it with its money.
(71) In 2021, the Trudeau Liberals announced "that it will cut oil and gas company subsidies by the end of the year. A total of $15 billion US ($18.6 billion Cdn) a year could be transferred from fossil fuels to clean energy if every country implements the policy, officials say. “We are in a climate crisis. We need to urgently reduce emissions in every sector of the economy, everywhere in the world. This, of course, applies to the energy sector as to all sectors of the economy,” said Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson." (https://energysector.ca/news/canadian-news/canada-will-stop-funding-foss...) Instead, literally yesterday they announced even more subsidies for Carbon Capture and Storage fossil fuel projects in what has been a endless series of such subsidy announcements in 2023.
(71) After rushing the completion of the $30.9 billion over-budget Trans Mountain pipeline (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/trans-mountain-pipeline-costs-1.6...), speeding up approval of and construction of the $9 billion Newfoundland offshore Bay du Nord oilfield, and providing $18 billion in annual subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, including new subsidies for decommissioning the $260 billion in abandoned corporate oil wells in Alberta, the Trudeau Liberal government has gone so slow on approving a tidal energy Bay of Fundy project in Nova Scotia, that the company finally gave up after five years in April 2023 of government delay and $60 million in company money (https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/tidal-energy-company-blames-dfo-as-it-pulls-...). Once again the Trudeau Liberal government shows how little it is dedicated to a conversion to renewable green energy except for words. (https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/tidal-energy-company-blames-dfo-as-it-pulls-...)
(72) In May 2023, while the Trudeau Liberal government says that greenhouse gas emissions are falling, the just released 2021 data says the opposite. Sadly, the mainstream media simply copies the Trudeau government press releases and prints it as gospel. If Canada started when it said we would in 1990 we would only needed to have cut emission by 4 MtC02 per year to reach our emissions cuts target following the 1988 climate change conference. At the 1997 Kyoto Accord, we'd need to cut seven MtCO2 per year now. Every year since then, we have failed to miss emissions. The 2021 data shows we now need to cut emissions by 26 MtC02 per year and when the 2022 data comes out showing Canada again failed to meet emissions targets we will then need to cut emissions by 30 MtCO2 or more per year. (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/05/12/analysis/are-canada-emission...)
(73) Illustrating the risk that Canadian banking sector is placing itself and the Canadian economy by so heavily investing in the fossil fuel sector as the world starts to move away from fossil fuels is the cancellation in May 2023 of Newfoundland's $16 billion offshore Bay du Nord oil project by Norway's Equinor for three years, following the cancellation of Terra Nova oil field by Suncor because of falling oil prices, after having been approved by the Trudeau and Furey Liberal governments. Once again Trudeau is doing nothing to reduce the risk of being trapped in a fossil fuel economy as the world starts to move away from fossil fuels to renewables. He also has done nothing through regulation to reduce the risk to Canada's financial sector from Canadian's banks over-investing in fossil fuels. A 2022 report found that RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) ) jumped to #1 in the world in fossil fuel financing from #5 in 2021 despite being ranked only #26 in financial asset (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_banks). The ever growing concentration of the Canadian banking sector and its overconcentration on the fossil fuel sector puts both this sector and the Canadian economy at risk. "As more and more international banks, insurers and other institutions like pension funds restrict investments in the tar sands or coal, Canadian banks, known as the banks of miners and energy companies, are increasingly overexposed to these extreme energy subsectors.(https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/03/29/opinion/canadas-five-largest....)
(74) According to a June 2023 Canadian Climate Institute study, "Costs from extreme weather are rising, and that’s making life more expensive—even in places where disaster rarely strikes." thereby "Climate damages are inflating the costs of living for every Canadian", as exemplefied in the nationwide wildfires this spring. Billion dollar climate change disasters used to something that occurred once every ten years, now several occur every year. Under the Trudeau Liberals "Canada is well behind our peer nations in identifying and acting on adaptation as a national priority. Even though every dollar invested in adaptation generates $13-$15 in economic returns, funding for climate change adaptation has consistently lagged behind other climate funding from both federal and provincial and territorial governments". (https://climateinstitute.ca/climate-damages-inflating-costs-of-living-fo...)
(75) As the widfires burned out of control in the summer, every province and territory in Canada, the Trudeau Liberal government faces major problems and pressure about what to do, especially when it subsidizes the fossil fuel industry at a higher per capita rate than any other country in the G20 (https://www.theenergymix.com/2020/05/26/breaking-canada-leads-g20-in-per....) while pretending it is effectively dealing with the climate emergency that it declared in 2019 before buying the Trans Mountain pipeline the next day, a pipeline that now costs $30.9 billion and there are many, many more subsidies on the books (https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/oil-gas/tmx-costs-skyrocket...) and an up to $260 billion cleanup bill for abandoned oil wells (https://www.theenergymix.com/2021/10/13/higher-oil-prices-neednt-push-fo....) that work out to $18 billion a year (https://environmentaldefence.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Federal-Fossi....).
"That could leave one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers without a credible pathway to reduce carbon emissions at the same time that the impacts of climate change send its forests up in smoke. The Canadian Climate Institute ... found that GDP could fall by 12% and incomes could drop 18% by century’s end if emissions continue to rapidly rise, among a slew of other dire economic impacts. …“I think voters have to have an honest conversation that there is no magic here.” (https://nationalpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/canada-wildfires-heat-up-clima...)
(76) By the end of June 2023, Equinor’s ‘Delay’ of three years in starting the Bay du Nord Newfoundland offshore oil project looks increasingly like a cancellation in delivered in slow motion. The announcement came just days after the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported a dramatic drop-off in investment in new project development by many of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies and two years after the IEA’s landmark Net Zero by 2050 analysis called for no new oil and gas fields in a decarbonized future. Unfortunately, neither Liberal Prime Minister Trudeau and Liberal Premier Furey, who were providing massive subsidies for the project, seem to have gotten the message about the future of fossil fuels, just like Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and Conservative Premiers Smith and Moe. (https://www.theenergymix.com/is-equinors-bay-du-nord-delay-a-cancellatio...)
(77) In July 2023, President Lula of Brazil and President Petro have just met to discuss how to deal with deforestation in the Amazon and climate crisis effects this will not only have on their countries but on the entire world. This meeting comes after environmental ministers from all eight Amazonian countries met to discuss the issue. (
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/7/brazils-amazon-deforestation-dro...) Meanwhile, in Canada, we do very little to stop deforestation whether through logging or the record 2023 wildfire season while the Amazonian countries are tackling this head on. Now between the emissions from logging fossil fuels, transportation etc. are being exponentially increased emissions this year from the record "8.8 million hectares (27.7 million acres) an area about the size of the state of Virginia" (https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/wildfires-canada-broken-r...) that have already burned even though we are not even half way through the wildfire season. "In 2018, for example, net emissions into the atmosphere totalled 240 MtCO2. That was more climate pollution than even our oil and gas or transportation sectors emitted that year." (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/11/02/opinion/co2-forestry-Canada-...)
(78) In August 2023, a new report from Europe’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service today leaves scientists deeply pessimistic about the entire global community being able to prevent the acceleration of the climate crisis as new data shows Canadian wildfires have more than doubled the previous record for greenhouse gas emissions and now "account for over 25% of the global total year to date" this year, thereby creating a positive feedback loop that exponentially accelerates greenhouse gas emissions ever more (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/03/canada-wildfires-emissions-more-than-dou...). However, the Trudeau Liberals have no plan to deal with the increased devastation caused by the wildfires, which was reflected in the need to import far more firefighters from other countries than anyone else to deal with the crisis and no mention of major new funding in this area for future years. There is also no plan to decrease Canada's fossil fuel emissions and exports, a major contributor to climate change itself.
(79) Indigenous Canadians, despite having warned other Canadians about the risks of climate change and having been least involved in producing greenhouse gases, have been the hardest hit group across Canada as many live near the boreal forests that have been burning like matchsticks across the country and is reflected in the fact that half of the population forced out of their communities in the Northwest Territories are indigenous. Despite being only 5% of the Canadian population indigenous people have suffered 42% of wildfire evacuations in 2023. "Parks Canada researcher Amy Cardinal Christianson found multiple communities are often evacuated multiple times over multiple years. Between 1980-2021, 16 communities were evacuated more than five times, 14 fourteen of them being First Nations reserves." (https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/2023/08/23/climate-change-wildfi...) Yet indigenous communities, and sometimes other rural communities, have often been left with only one road out as wildfires grow exponentially in strength and number because of Trudeau Liberal and provincial government lack of adequate funding, in some cases forcing air rescues and leading to the question when will the failure to build alternate escape routes lead to a massive calamity.
(80) The failure of the Trudeau Liberal government to deal with greenhouse gas emissions and managing its forests during a climate crisis has led to wildfires turning Canada's forests from a carbon sink to an enormous carbon bomb that has exploded releasing an estimated one and a half billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere so far this year, emitting triple our fossil fuel emissions. That's "more than the combined emissions from 100 nations", thereby further greatly accelerating the climate crisis in a positive feedback loop that increases the amount of greenhouse gases released with each cycle. The Trudeau government has been trying to hide the problem by mixing forest emissions data with other data to hide logging emissions and by claiming that planting two billion trees will solve the problem. It won't. Barry Saxifrage's chart at the url below illustrate with charts how Canadian forests have gone from being a carbon sink up to 2001 to being a carbon bomb emitting around 3,700 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) by 2021. (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/08/21/analysis/our-forests-have-re...)
(81) Sold by the Trudeau Liberals and Pierre's Conservatives as the solution that allows Canada and the rest of the world to keep producing more fossil fuel, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been a dismal failure at reducing emissions around the world, including its three installations in each of Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC, as well as elsewhere. The article below notes that the Saskatchewan’s Boundary Dam 3 carbon capture and storage facility "has consistently failed to meet its targets" and now there is a new proposed for BC that threatens nearby First Nations with the fossil fuel companies and the federal and provincial governments each providing one third of the costs to set up BC Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy using CCS as the excuse to keep producing more fossil fuels and their greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, two thirds of the funding is coming from taxpayers. The three already existing CCS facilities in Alberta and Saskatchewan have cost $4 billion with half the money coming federal and provincial governments. At $140 a ton of emissions, these CCS projects are not only expensive, they only capture a small share of emissions. Meanwhile the taxpayer is left holding much of the cost. (https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/10/26/Industry-Carbon-Capture-Steamroll...)
(82) In September 2023 there was good news. Despite Trudeau's expensive subsidies, Newfoundland's oil boom may be over before it begins as "Project cancellations and delays are hampering plans to massively expand Canada's offshore oil industry." (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/07/05/news/newfoundland-labrador-o...)
(83) Trudeau and some other leaders has promised to plant two billion trees as a way to capture carbon and offset carbon emissions from fossil fuels, but Trudeau's planting plans are well behind schedule. By October 2023 there were also growing questions abut this approach. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/3/can-planting-trees-really-help-...) This brings into question carbon credit schemes Trudeau has backed. The Trudeau Liberals have also failed to protect Canada forests from rampant logging that have devastated much of the country's forests, and have done a poor job of reducing wildfire damage that "have released more planet-warming carbon dioxide in the first six months of 2023 than in any full year on record, EU scientists said". (https://phys.org/news/2023-06-canada-co2-emissions-year.html) In fact. "Emissions from Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season are probably triple the country’s annual carbon footprint, experts warn, as climate systems reach a 'tipping point' ". (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/22/canada-wildfires-forests-c...)
(84) By October 2023, methane was becoming a serious threat to humanity, and Canada’s oil and gas industry is emitting a huge amount of it as Trudeau continues to subsidize fossil fuel companies and approve their projects while doing almost nothing to reduce methane emissions. Furthermore, Canada is a world leader in methane emissions per capita. (
https://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/2023/10/23/west-antarctic-ice-sh...)
(85) In July 2023 the Trudeau Liberals announced they were phasing out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies "over the medium term". The trouble is we don't have a medium term to wait and they just announced more fossil fuel Carbon Capture and Storage yesterday alongside supposed archenemy Danielle Smith. Instead we need the elimination of all subsidies and the rapid reduction of fossil fuel production now to deal with the climate crisis. The trouble is Canada is already the largest per capita fossil fuel subsidizer in the world, with "the advocacy group Environmental Defence estimates about $19 billion in financing for fossil fuels came from Export Development Canada (EDC) in 2022" and still more subsidies being provided by "Crown corporations like Trans Mountain, the Canada Development Investment Corporation (CDEV)". Getting rid of the "inefficient" subsidies means, in the government's words, de-carbonizing fossil fuel production, something that in terms of Carbon Capture and Storage has been a failure around the world. In fact "the government's investment tax credit for carbon capture continues to bankroll oil and gas directly". Furthermore, the Trudeau Liberals have provided a list of exemptions to this you could drive a pipeline through. And the fossil fuel industry spokesperson argues that "doesn't believe Canada has any inefficient oil and gas subsidies to eliminate". (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fossil-fuel-subsidies-guilbeault-1.6915838)
(86) In a report released on November 7th, 2023 Environment and Sustainable Development Commissioner Jerry DeMarco concluded that the Trudeau Liberal "is not on track to meet the 2030 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% below the 2005 level by 2030." Furthermore, some of "important mitigation measures to reduce emissions, such as the Oil and Gas Emissions Cap and the Clean Fuel Regulations, have been delayed" and that "the measures most critical for reducing emissions had not been identified or prioritized". Indeed, Canada has missed all emissions targets under Liberal and Conservative governments since 1990 and greenhouse gas emissions are significantly higher than in 1990. (ps://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_cesd_202311_06_e_44369.html)
(87) The November 2023 UN report on the climate crisis concludes that "Governments, in aggregate, still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than what would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C". Of course the Trudeau Liberals are one of the big emitters planning to increase its fossil fuel emissions despite all its environmental rhetoric. (https://productiongap.org) The UN report calls "petrostates planning huge expansion of fossil fuels insanity" as the climate crisis worsens every year. While identifying the US and Canada as part of these petrostates, the report also notes that "the largest carbon emissions from planned fossil fuel production are India (coal), Saudi Arabia (oil) and Russia (coal, oil and gas)" with the UAE, which is hosting COP 28 starting on November 30th, being another major producer. "Our recent analysis shows that just five rich global north countries are responsible for the majority (51%) of planned new oil and gas extraction to 2050: the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK." Unfortunately, “[The problem is] the desire for each country to maximise their own production,” he said. There needed to be an internationally coordinated and equitable global phase-out of fossil fuels." (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/08/insanity-petrostates...)
(88) A November 2023 study in Nature Communications concludes that the climate crisis is costing $16 million an hour or $ US 140 billion a year in damage between 2009 and 2019. It is the result of a sevenfold increase in extreme weather losses since the 1970s. This does not include the even higher levels of damage caused by the climate crisis this year, such as Canada's unprecedented wildfire season that burned an area larger than England's landmass while Trudeau continues to provide more fossil fuel subsidies and little in the way of preparation for further wildfire disastrous years, as well as for other climate crisis calamities. (https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/10/26/news/climate-crisis-costing-...)
(89) Also this month yet another report concludes "Even small fissures or cracks can result in catastrophic consequences because people in the area could be rapidly inundated with CO2". (https://www.climatedesk.org/page/3/). Yet, the Trudeau Liberals are heavily subsidizing Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), claiming it will greatly reduce greenhouse emissions despite evidence to the contrary and the significant safety risks, including death, associated with CCS pipelines and the growth in carbon dioxide pipelines associated with CCS. Indigenous Canadians near such potential pipelines are deeply concerned about this threat.
(90) Yesterday the Trudeau Liberals showed they are not deviating from their fossil fuel expansion and subsidization plans by jointly announcing with Danielle Smith mores subsidies Dow Chemical's announced plans to invest nearly $9 billion in a net-zero petrochemical project northeast of Edmonton. (https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/dow-to-begin-construction-of-11-5-billion-ca...) In fact, "More than twenty new CCUS projects have been proposed in Alberta, including a C$16.5 billion project put forward by the Pathways Alliance, a consortium of Canada's six biggest oil sands producers." Smith said that Alberta "would provide a 12% grant on eligible capital costs associated with building new carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) projects". This "comes on top of a federal government CCUS tax credit announced last year and is designed to spur investment in the costly technology" (https://www.reuters.com/markets/carbon/alberta-government-announces-carb...) And both Smith and Trudeau are both going to COP 28, to tell the world how Canada is solving the climate crisis by subsidizing more fossil fuel production that will of course be net zero emissions. However, "Many environmental campaigners argue CCUS is an expensive and inefficient way to cut emissions, however, and risks prolonging the life of fossil fuel projects when the world should be focusing on renewable energy. A report released on Tuesday from clean energy think-tank the Pembina Institute said Canadian oil sands crude ranks among the highest-cost and most carbon-intensive in the world, and could become uncompetitive as global oil demand falls. Pembina said governments should take care not to "over-incentivise" CCUS projects, given the risk of some oil sands projects becoming stranded assets as the world transitions to cleaner energy (https://www.reuters.com/markets/carbon/alberta-government-announces-carb...) ".

Alberta and Premier Danielle Smith were shamed at COP 28 with enironmentalists' Fossil for a Day award. 

Alberta oilsands jasonwoodhead23/flickr

Today, the international community shamed Alberta for its oil and gas expansion plans, blatant trampling of Indigenous rights, and attempts to drag Canada backward on climate action despite a summer of devastating wildfires.

International civil society awarded Alberta the Fossil of the Day – presented every day throughout COP to the party “doing the most to do the least” on climate action. The Fossil is normally awarded to countries, not subnational governments, and this rare exception shows the particularly egregious nature of Premier Danielle Smith’s actions, including:

• Coming to COP28 with an entourage of oil and gas executives to promote the continued expansion of her province’s fossil fuel industry and dangerous distractions, while denying the need for fossil fuel phase-out;

• Failing to inform downstream Indigenous communities of toxic tailings from Imperial Oil’s Kearl Oil Sands leaking into their waters for over nine months;

• Placing a seven-month moratorium on Alberta’s burgeoning renewable energy sector, taking industry and investors by surprise, despite her pro-business claims;

• Launching an $8-million advertising blitz to spread misinformation about upcoming federal regulations that would let Canada reach 100% clean electricity by 2030;

• Fighting tooth and nail against regulations to reduce methane and a forthcoming cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector, Canada’s highest-polluting industry; and

• Ignoring the wishes of Albertans who want to reduce dependency on the bust-and-boom fossil fuel industry, a plan for workers, and an emissions cap.

Accepting the satirical award on behalf of Alberta, Dr. Angele Alook of York University, Nehiyaw Iskwew and member of Bigstone Cree Nation in Treaty 8 territory, said: “I don’t think we could have won this award without being the deadliest death economy in all of the world, in all of Canada. We like to poison the water, kill the forests, and violate Indigenous Peoples’ rights.”

“Alberta, we don’t want you to end up like your namesake, the long-extinct Albertosaurus,” Climate Action Network International said in its press release. “Listen to what people in your own province want – a plan to transition from dependency on volatile fossil fuels to the opportunities of clean energy, in a way that protects workers – or you’ll get left behind.”

Here’s what other Albertans at COP28 have to say about what their provincial government is doing:

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, Executive Director, Indigenous Climate Action:

“At a time when there is an overwhelming call to phase out fossil fuels, Alberta continues to approve projects with fifty to sixty-year life cycles, many of which will not even go online until 2026. Smith’s government continues to hedge bets on techno-fixes that are unproven, untested, and do nothing to reduce emissions at source. Smith is here at COP, greenwashing her government’s actions within Alberta and pushing false solutions set to continue business as usual in the tar sands while lining the pockets of corporations. In this so-called era of truth and reconciliation, Smith’s actions within my province can only be described as cultural genocide to Indigenous communities like my own.”

Kg Banjoko, Government relations and consultation coordinator, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation:

“Alberta won this award for a reason, one of them being the willful neglect of the growing liability of the tailings ponds in our territory. It not only demonstrates their inability to responsibly regulate industry, it’s an example of the Province’s failure to uphold its fiduciary responsibility to Indigenous communities like ACFN who are gravely impacted by their lack of action. For over 6 decades, we have watched our lands being trampled on and we are tired of dealing with broken promise after broken promise. Our lands, water and people deserve better than what Alberta has to offer.”

Bronwen Tucker, Public Finance Lead, Oil Change International:

“As a community organizer in Edmonton, I have spoken to thousands of people in our province who know oil and gas companies do not care about us, only their bottom line. People in Alberta want a renewable future free of wildfires & a boom and bust economy, but our political leaders tell us our only choice is more oil and gas.”

Dr. Joe Vipond, Past-President, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment:

“I think Alberta, if it were here, would of course thank its fellow nominees, for trying to be the worst of the climate destroyers. But a combination of renewables moratorium, mistruthful advertising on clean electricity, fighting methane reductions and the emissions cap, and pure persistence at trying to prolong fossil fuels effect on the planet, pushed us to the front today. I sincerely hope, as someone who loves my province, and my planet, that we start to engage on sensible climate policy, as the world could use our intellect and solar and wind resources to make the world a better, not worse, place.”

https://climateactionnetwork.ca/alberta-shamed-on-the-international-stag...

epaulo13 wrote:

..not sure how factual this is or how it compares with what china needs to do but it looks impressive.  

Quote:

Below is a chart of the top greenhouse gas emitters in terms of total emitted and per capita emissions.

Country emissions (Mt) CO2 2019

China 9,877 CO2 per capita 2019 7.1
United States 4,745 CO2 per capita 2019 14.4
India 2,310 CO2 per capita 2019 1.7
Russia 1,640 CO2 per capita 2019 11.4
Japan 1,056 CO2 per capita 2019 8.4
Germany 644 CO2 per capita 2019 7.8
South Korea 586 CO2 per capita 2019 11.3
Iran 584 CO2 per capita 2019 7
Indonesia 583 CO2 per capita 2019 2.2
Canada 571 CO2 per capita 2019 15.2
Saudi Arabia 495 CO2 per capita 2019 14.5

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/greenhouse-gas-emissi...

Canada can’t hit its net-zero goals without phasing out gas-guzzling vehicles. 

Photo: Pembina Institute

 

At this urgent juncture in climate talks, we need to spend more time talking about cars, trucks and buses. Fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, to be specific, which are the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in Canada, and the largest in the United States.

Between 1990 and 2021, GHGs from the transport sector in Canada soared 27%. And yet, Canadian delegates at COP28 in Dubai this week have arrived without final regulations for transitioning cars and other light-duty vehicles from fossil fuel power to clean energy. Draft regulations applicable to heavy-duty trucks and buses – where emission levels have climbed rapidly, threatening to surpass those of cars – have not been released.

Should Canada fall short of transitioning to zero-emission vehicles at the pace needed, we will fail to reduce national emissions by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. Worse, it will be impossible to accomplish Canada’s global commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050. It cannot be overstated how much is at stake.

Last December, the federal government issued draft regulations intended to increase sales of EVs across the country. The regulations follow the pledge in the government’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan that by 2035 all sales of new light-duty vehicles in Canada should be electric models that do not emit carbon pollution.

The draft regulations stipulate that increases in sales of emission-free cars be phased in. By 2026, for instance, 20% of total vehicle sales by a manufacturer or importer should be electric. By 2030, zero-emission vehicles must make up 60% of total sales. Five years later, the consumer will be able to choose from a range of model options, all of which will be fuelled by clean energy. Air pollution levels will plummet.

 

As demonstrated in both British Columbia and Quebec, sales mandates – which both provinces have implemented – are an effective means of switching from gas to electric cars.

A province-wide sales requirement for EVs was introduced in B.C. in 2019; the goal was that, by 2040, 100% of vehicles sold would be zero-emission. In 2022, EVs accounted for 18.1% of all new light-duty vehicle sales in B.C. Just prior to the legislation, EVs made up 4.1% of all new passenger car sales. Because the original sales targets will likely be exceeded, the provincial government has moved the goal posts: with the new target, 100% of cars sold will be electric models by 2035, five years ahead of schedule.

Like B.C., Quebec also passed regulated targets for the number of new-car sales that are zero emission. From 8.9% of new cars sold in 2021, EVs now constitute 13.9% of the light-duty vehicle market in Quebec.

We’ve seen a significant rise in EV sales across the country despite insufficient inventory on most dealer lots. According to data released by S&P Global Mobility, registrations for zero-emission vehicles reached 13.3% in Canada in the third quarter of 2023 – one in eight new vehicles registered were electric, an increase of 2.7% from the second quarter of 2023, with a market share of 10.5%.

A new report from RBC Capital Markets predicts that the EV market is on the verge of substantial growth, as prices stabilize and charging infrastructure expands. These numbers tell us that the growth in the EV market, which has surpassed expectations again and again, is not an instance of early adopters testing a new gadget. It’s a smart consumer choice when you consider that in almost every instance an EV is cheaper than a gas car over the lifetime of the vehicle.

But the transition to clean transportation must move much more quickly if there’s any hope of meeting, or coming close to meeting, Canada’s climate commitments. To suggest, as some stakeholders have, that Canada not stick with a sales mandate, so clearly a winning formula, makes no sense.

Undoubtedly, there is much else that the federal and provincial governments need to do, starting with more rapid deployment of adequate and reliable charging infrastructure, more provincial consumer incentives, and an upskilled labour force. Still, if Canada succeeds in replacing gas-fuelled cars with electric ones at the scale called for in the government’s Emissions Reduction Plan, GHGs from transportation would drop by 42% to 46% below 2005 levels, in line with Canada’s climate commitment. While this may be a hopeful outcome, it certainly isn’t an empty one.

https://www.pembina.org/blog/canada-cant-hit-its-net-zero-goals-without-...

A group of countries including Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and Japan are saying they won't sign the COP 28 agreement because as it now stands it would "create 'death certificates' for small island states, and have demanded a stronger agreement at the Cop28 summit. Is this a real defence of small islands or a PR campaign for the home audience, because the US and Canada have plans to be the top two fossil fuel expanders in the future. The " effort to supply the world with fossil fuels, which the IEA projects will peak this decade, means Canada is on track to be the second-largest fossil fuel expander, behind the United States, by 2050."  [see next post for more details on this](https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/10/26/news/canada-out-step-unstopp....)

Meanwhile COP President and president of the host country UAE state company says “The Cop28 presidency has been clear from the beginning about our ambitions. This text reflects those ambitions and is a huge step forward." That's is so reassuring. 

We can also be reassured by the fact that next year's COP 29 meeting will be held in another oil producing nation, Azerbijan in yet another authoritarian dictatorship where anti-fossil fuel protests are not allowed, unlike the messy democracies. It almost looks like all the oil producers, including Canada, are working together to control the COPs. 

Australia’s climate change minister Chris Bowen speaks at Cop28 in Dubai. In a statement on behalf of the umbrella group of countries that includes the US and the UK, he said the goal of keeping global temperature rises to 1.5C was ‘not up for compromise’. Photograph: Kamran Jebreili/AP

A group of countries including Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and Japan have said they will “not be a co-signatory” to “death certificates” for small island states, and have demanded a stronger agreement at the Cop28 summit to deal with fossil fuels and address the climate crisis.

A statement delivered by the Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, on behalf of what’s known as the umbrella group of countries, came as tensions flared at the United Arab Emirates over the text of a draft deal proposed by the summit presidency.

Released early on Monday evening local time, the draft avoided highly contentious calls for a “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels in an attempt to find consensus from nearly 200 countries that have been meeting in Dubai for nearly a fortnight.

Some observers welcomed elements of the draft, including the first mention in a Cop text of reducing fossil fuel production, but others were scathing, describing it as “grossly insufficient” and “incoherent”.

Cedric Schuster of Samoa, the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said: “We will not sign our death certificate. We cannot sign on to text that does not have strong commitments on phasing out fossil fuels.”

Bowen referred to Schuster’s statement in his intervention in a later meeting between government representatives and the UAE summit president, Sultan Al Jaber. He was speaking on behalf of the umbrella group of countries, which also includes New Zealand, Norway, Israel, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

“My friend Cedric Schuster, the Samoan minister, said tonight of this draft that we will not sign our death certificates,” Bowen said. “That’s what’s at stake for many countries who are represented here tonight and many people who do not have a voice. We will not be a co-signatory to those death certificates.”

Bowen said there were some positive elements in the draft, but the group was united in believing it was too weak. It needed to send a much clearer signal on the future of fossil fuels, better address climate adaptation and deliver “an outcome which we can be proud of and explain to people is not a step forward, but a step change”, he said.

He said the group, which includes several of the world’s biggest fossil fuel users and producers, believed in a phase-out of “unabated” fossil fuels – a controversial position that suggests coal, oil and gas could still be used if carbon capture and storage technology proved viable. But he said it could support different wording in the deal, suggesting “a transition away from fossil fuels in keeping with the science”.

He said it could not be flexible on having an agreement that kept the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C within reach. “That’s not up for compromise,” Bowen said.

The talks were expected to continue through the night on Monday before a Tuesday morning deadline for agreement that few, if any, people thought would be met.

Instead of requiring producers to cut their fossil fuel output, the draft framed such reductions as optional by calling on countries to “take actions that could include” reducing fossil fuels. Some country groups, including the EU, indicated it could lead them to walk out of the talks if not addressed.

While many countries wanted the text strengthened, it was feared that others such as Saudi Arabia and its oil producing allies in Opec might use the final hours to try to further weaken the draft. The Saudis have spent the meeting insisting the document should refer to dealing with emissions, not fossil fuels.

The text includes a reference to scientific advice that many countries are likely to interpret as a reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which concluded fossil fuels could only have a small role in 2050 if the world was to reach net zero emissions and limit average global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

The climate scientist and chief executive of Climate Analytics, Dr Bill Hare, said the text was an “epic mess” and there was “no way if it was operationalised that it would keep 1.5C in reach”. He said it did not adequately reference phasing out fossil fuels or the need to act rapidly this decade to address the problem. “I would say it’s giving every fossil fuel exporter on the planet everything they need to expand fossil fuel production,” Hare said.

A spokesperson for Al Jaber, who has described keeping 1.5C within reach as his “north star”, said: “The Cop28 presidency has been clear from the beginning about our ambitions. This text reflects those ambitions and is a huge step forward. Now it is in the hands of the parties, who we trust to do what is best for humanity and the planet.”

It was confirmed on Monday that next year’s Cop would be held in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, and in 2025 it would go to Belém, in Brazil’s Amazon region. Australia’s bid to co-host Cop31 with Pacific nations in 2026 is yet to be resolved.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/12/cop-28-australia-us-...

On the CBC News Network at noon today, Jean Su, Justice Director for the Centre for Biological Diversity, pointed out that fossil fuels were never mentioned in the official document of the first 24 COPs. She noted that host country UAE and the OPEC countries do not want it in the official COP 28 document either. On the other hand, Canada and other western countries are willing to put the need to move away from fossil fuels but are "sabotaging so far any attempts to give money to poor countries" to deal with the climate crisis or phasing out fossil fuels. The presence of 2,500 fossil fuel lobbyists which is four times last year's total, including 35 in the Canadian delegation, are making achieving anything extremely difficult. With fossil fuel producers being repeatedly the host countries, including the UAE this year, Azerbijan in 2024, Brazil in 2025, and Australia bidding for it in 2026, rather than the countries already most directly affected by the climate crisis such as the South Pacific islands that are facing extinction because of sea level rise, the fossil fuel producers are being repeatedly the conference host, president and primary organizer. I see ongoing problems with dealing effectively in any meaningful manner in the next several years. If it took 24 COPs to admit that fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis, I don't see much hope beyond diplomatic BS coming out of COP 28. Here is an example of the diplomatic BS that went on at COP 27, last year's conference. No doubt with four times the fossil fuel lobbyists present, things will end up better this year. Rigth?

Fossil fuels have not been included in a first, bare-bones document listing all possible elements of the Cop 27 UN climate summit cover decision to be adopted at the end of the conference. 

The document, described as a 'non-paper' by the UNFCCC, is just a bullet-point list of potential topics that could be included in the final Cop 27 decision. It was released late on 14 November, for ministers to start negotiations on the final text.

Coal particularly and fossil fuels more generally are notably absent, although the EU said it expects the mitigation section of the text to build on what was agreed at Cop 26 in Glasgow. Mitigation refers to efforts to reduce emissions.

The Glasgow Climate Pact signed at Cop 26 last year called on countries to accelerate efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power and the phase out of inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies. At this Cop, India last week pushed for a phase down of all fossil fuels to be included in the cover text, rather than just coal. Asked if Europe would support India's call, European Commission executive vice-president Frans Timmermans said that "we are all in support of any call to support a phase down of fossil fuels, but we have to make sure that this call does not diminish the early agreement we had on phasing down coal". 

"If it comes on top of what was agreed in Glasgow, then the EU will support India's proposal", he said, adding it should not divert "attention and efforts to phase down coal as we have agreed last year in Glasgow". 

India, with China, last year secured a last-minute watering down of the language on coal in the Cop 26 cover text.

https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2391189-cop-27-fossil-fuels-absent-in...

What did anyone expect when COP 28 was held in the UAE, a major oil producer interested in selling more oil? Why are climate activists legitimizing the COP28 fiasco by showing up at all?

Why are climate activists legitimizing the COP28 fiasco by showing up at all? Photo CNO file photo from Scotland UN climate summit

It is bizarre to hear the horrified reactions of climate activists to the fact that COP host the United Arab Emirates (UAE), chaired by the state oil company CEO, is not “all-in” on climate action.

Rather than supporting a phaseout of oil, shock of all shocks, the UAE might even be using COP28 to look for opportunities to develop and sell more oil. As the world’s seventh-largest oil producer, with 300 years of supply, and two-thirds of their oil exported — making them one of the richest petrostates on the planet — why would anyone expect anything different? 

It is hard to know if the reaction from climate activists is feigned disbelief or genuine naivete. Either way, it makes me wonder why climate activists are legitimizing the COP28 fiasco by showing up at all. Surely a more effective tactic would be to boycott COP28 altogether and shed some light on the hypocrisy of the moment. How on Earth do climate campaigners and youth activists justify travelling to the UAE other than responding to FOMO or FOMAP (Fear of Missing a Party). ...

I support the idea of countries getting together to hammer out the details of how to address climate change and the global inequity it has exacerbated. There are probably a few hundred people critical to that task. Maybe a thousand, to be generous. 

What I question is the now bloated entourage of 97,000 government reps, politicians (past and present), oil companies and NGOs that descend on any spot in the world, whether in air-conditioned tents in the desert or “oil central” in the Middle East. ...

It is frankly an embarrassing spectacle. The vast majority of attendees are not part of the negotiations or even allowed near the negotiation space. They are no more than climate groupies hoping for a glimpse of the action. Furthermore, the heavy lifting for COP meetings happens well before the main event in the hundreds of preparatory meetings. ...

It's time for the COP process to get real. And time for Canada to focus on emission reductions, not the ridiculous and overstated refrain of Canadians telling the world we need more ambition.

We have one of the worst greenhouse gas emission profiles of any country in the world. Moreover, we are not on track to meet our 2030 emission targets and the world is unlikely to meet the 2 C climate threshold needed to prevent the very worst of climate catastrophes. 

How about people stay home and work on real climate solutions versus flying around the globe making sure they are seen.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/12/05/opinion/97000-cop-questionab...

Why are the polar regions, including Canada's warming so fast?

Quote:

If you had lived some 50 million years ago and taken a trip to the Poles, you would have found lush forests and creatures like crocodiles instead of miles-thick ice sheets. That’s because during the Eocene, greenhouse gas concentrations were much higher than they are today, leading to a natural period of global warming. Levels of methane, which is 80 times as potent a planet-warmer as carbon dioxide, were especially high, ratcheting up temperatures and allowing plants and animals to migrate toward the Poles — just as they’re slowly doing once again.

Methane may have been heating the Eocene poles in another more subtle, fascinating way: by creating a blanket of invisible clouds that trapped warmth against the surface. That alone could have boosted warming at the Poles by 7 C during the coldest winter months, according to a paper recently published in Nature Geoscience. “We know that when methane is in the atmosphere, it gets oxidized, and then it produces water vapour,” says climate scientist and lead author Deepashree Dutta, who’s now at the University of Cambridge but did the research at the University of New South Wales. “This water vapour then travels upward into the stratosphere and helps to form polar stratospheric clouds,” or PSCs for short.

The Arctic is today warming up to four times faster than the rest of the planet due in part to gnarly feedback loops: Ice melts, which exposes darker water or land underneath, which heats up faster, which leads to more warming and more melting. Scientists call this polar amplification.

Predictive climate models consistently underestimate polar warming; scientists’ actual observations tend to be more grim than what models expect. And this disagreement is even larger for past climates like the Eocene. PSCs may be a missing piece that explains why. They're currently less common in the Arctic compared to Antarctica, but with greenhouse gas emissions rising, scientists are wondering whether these clouds could become more prevalent over both Poles in the future.
“If we don't have projections — that are realistic — of the warming that's coming, then we're probably going to get our understanding of how the system is going to shift quite wrong,” says ecologist Isla Myers-Smith of the University of British Columbia and the University of Edinburgh, who studies the Arctic but wasn’t involved in the new research. “With the recent warming that's been going on in the Arctic, the observed temperatures are now much higher than the models have predicted.”

Clouds are a major source of uncertainty in climate science: In September, a revelation about how trees seed clouds in more temperate regions also suggested that climate models — of the pre-industrial world and of the future — might need retooling. But clouds aren’t always included in simulations. Models can only handle so much detail, given the limits of computing power. ...
In the Arctic and Antarctica, PSCs appear anywhere between 15 and 25 kilometres in the sky during cold winter conditions. They’re most often invisible, but they can be sighted when the sun is angled just right. In these cases, they’re known as mother-of-pearl clouds on account of their wild colouration: swirls of purple, teal, and yellow. Just like high clouds do elsewhere, they form an insulating layer over the Poles, which prevents rapid temperature drops.
In the Eocene, the formation of these clouds was enhanced by the positions of the Earth’s continents and mountains. For instance, the Himalayas hadn’t fully formed yet, and the lack of miles-thick ice in Greenland meant lower land elevations. That led to the proliferation of waves of pressure in the atmosphere, which deflected more energy toward the tropics. Less energy reached the Arctic stratosphere, so it cooled, forming a blanket of PSCs. Things on land got … balmy.
Luckily, continental shift in the past 50 million years has changed the topography and atmospheric circulation in a way that thins this blanket. While PSCs still form and trap heat, they aren’t as abundant as they were before. But things can heat back up. If humanity continues to spew methane into the atmosphere, that could provide the stratospheric water vapour needed to form more of these invisible clouds. “I need to be very clear: The magnitude of PSCs won't be as high as the Eocene,” says Dutta. “And that's probably the good news for us.”
Learning how the Eocene stratosphere influenced the climate will help scientists get a better handle on what to expect next. “Basically, these past climates provide us a testbed to check our models,” says Dutta. Polar scientists can then tease apart the potential warming from natural fluctuations in Earth’s climate versus the contribution of our civilization’s gas emissions.

Improved models can also help predict how the Arctic’s ecosystems will continue to transform. The region is greening, for instance, as higher temperatures allow plant species to spread north. That, in turn, changes how the landscape absorbs or reflects the sun’s energy: If more shrubs grow, they trap a layer of snow, preventing chilly wintertime air from penetrating the ground. That could accelerate the thawing of Arctic permafrost, releasing both carbon dioxide and methane — yet another climate-warming feedback loop.
Like the rest of the world this summer, the Arctic was extremely hot. At her research site, Myers-Smith recalls temperatures reaching 77 F. “I hadn’t ever experienced that at the site,” she says. It’s yet more evidence that the region is undergoing monumental change and that scientists need models that can precisely track it. “Even when you work in these systems, and think you have a pretty good understanding of how things go,” she says, “you can still get surprised.”