Climate Change

This past Friday, the Federal Government released its 87 page long-term climate strategy with a caution that “Most Canadians recognize the need to mitigate climate change and limit the increase in the global average temperature, but the magnitude of the challenge is less well understood, with a requirement for very deep emissions cuts from every sector by mid-century”. The strategy says that global emissions reductions of between 70 and 95 percent are required in order to have a better than 50-50 chance of hitting the 1.5 degree temperature target.

Environmental advocates attending this year's COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco, issued a release Wednesday calling out Canada's competing policy priorities.

"It is a serious concern when we see the international community not honouring their commitments and we are concerned Canada is still pursuing their fossil fuel projects," Benson Ireri of Christian Aid Africa said in the release. "Developed countries have a moral obligation to honour the Paris Agreement."

Two disturbing trends—this year will likely be the hottest year on record and “We have lost one half of the animal population and knowing this is driven by human consumption, this is clearly a call to arms and we must act now,” said Mike Barratt, directory of science and policy at WWF.

What if you could learn about climate change through taste? And better yet, while eating ice cream? Jonathan Keats, a conceptual artist and experimental philosopher, calls this new process data gastronification. He literally wants to activate the emotional cognition of people’s stomachs so they have a “gut feeling” about the urgency of climate change.

Several interesting articles reveal how climate change adaptation and mitigation is really a super wicked problem in terms of the scale of the challenges and the nature of some of the innovations. This article by the Guardian argues that the logic of economic growth at all costs must be addressed with an interesting analysis of the main driver of growth is debt.

A new research project led by Carleton University will allow scientists to measure the emissions from flare stacks, which are used by production sites to burn off unusable natural gas. Flaring releases black carbon and is a major contributor to pollution, but since there was no way of measuring the emissions – until now – we could neither regulate nor work to reduce their impact.

Last year, for the first time, renewable energy accounted for more than half of new power generation worldwide.

A fossil fuel-free Scotland is not only technically achievable but could prove a cheaper and safer option than pursuing fossil fuel-based development, according to a new WWF-backed report. The target is separate to the goal of providing 100% of electricity demand from renewables by 2020, which still allows for coal and gas to remain on the grid. While electricity production accounts for around a third of Scotland’s emissions, renewables are already the country’s biggest

The European Union hits energy reduction targets six years early. Several EU directives maligned by critics and industry groups played a key role in reaching the non-binding efficiency target of reducing final energy use 20% by 2020 compared with projected use that year, according to the report published by the EU’s Joint Research Centre. These included laws on energy efficiency, eco-design, buildings performance and fuel economy.

Barren trunks and dying yellow cedar trees are transforming the rainforest landscape along the Alaskan coast caused by the warming northern climate. To track the effects that climate change is having on this species, Stanford PhD student, Lauren Oakes, collected raw data from forty-eight tree plots. After years of interpretation, music helped Oakes see her research in a whole new light.