This article was written by Danny Halpin and was published in the Independent on May 23, 2023.
This article was written by Damian Carrington and was published in The Guardian on May 22, 2023.
This article was written by Katharine Hayhoe and was published in the Scientific American on May 22, 2023.
This article was written by Reuters and was published in the Globe & Mail on May 25, 2023.
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The world must rapidly ditch fossil fuels and end “the senseless war against creation”, Pope Francis said on Thursday, in a fresh plea over climate change that called on people to repent for their “ecological sins”.
Francis has made the protection of the environment a cornerstone of his pontificate, noting in his landmark 2015 “Laudato Si” (Praised Be) encyclical that the planet was “beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth”.
In a message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, he said a UN climate summit meeting in Dubai on Nov. 30-Dec.12 “must listen to science and institute a rapid and equitable transition to end the era of fossil fuel”. “According to the commitments undertaken in the Paris Agreement to restrain global warming, it is absurd to permit the continued exploration and expansion of fossil fuel infrastructures,” he added.
“The unrestrained burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests are pushing temperatures higher and leading to massive droughts,” Francis said, also criticizing oil and gas fracking and “unchecked mega-mining projects”.
Francis, an Argentine who is the first pope to hail from the so-called Global South, denounced global inequalities and said that “consumerist greed, fuelled by selfish hearts, is disrupting the planet’s water cycle”.
Through the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Catholics are urged to offer special prayers for the planet. It is observed on Sept. 1, but it is customary for the papal message linked to it to be released months in advance.
As well as quoting from “Laudato Si”, the document cites previous popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, indicating that Francis’ pro-environment focus stands in continuity with his more conservative predecessors.
This opinion was written by Grant Linney and was published in the Hamilton Spectator on May 28, 2023.
Last November, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres made the following observations about our global climate emergency:
We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing.
We are on the highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.
We have a choice: cooperate or perish. It is either a collective solidarity pact or a collective suicide pact.
These warnings are stark and uncompromising. They are repeated by the IPCC, the World Meteorological Association and other science-based and well-credentialed organizations. The frequency, intensity and duration of global extreme weather events continues to increase. Time is running out for us to keep global warming within the critical 1.5 C limit.
So, why do we continue to accept token gestures, broken promises and vacuous rhetoric?
Why are we seemingly reliant on the silent hope that “someone else” and/or some new wonder technology will save the day? Why are we allowing ourselves to get closer and closer to a climate Armageddon?
Several players are complicit in this dangerous path we are taking:
So, with all of this going on, we feel overwhelmed. Fear and uncertainty over what individuals can do mean that we largely tend to ignore this enormous elephant in the room. Many of us also mindlessly enjoy a highly destructive consumer lifestyle. The stakes are now life or death. It is time for us to stop, speak up and protest … vigorously and massively.
Grant Linney lives in Dundas. climategrant@gmail.com.
This article was written by James Griffiths and was published in the Globe & Mail on June 1, 2023.
Greenpeace says country has approved more coal projects this year than it did in all of 2021
Cities across southern and eastern China are experiencing record-breaking heat that could be just a preview of the summer ahead.
Hundreds of weather stations have recorded all-time highs in May, with parts of southwestern Yunnan province topping 43 C. Even the region’s capital, Kunming, which at an elevation of 1,900 metres is known as the “City of Eternal Spring” for its year-round balmy climate, has sweltered in temperatures close to 30 C for much of May.
“It’s unimaginable,” said Zhang Chen, a primary school headteacher, adding that at least she can shelter inside, where it’s air-conditioned. Growing up in Kunming, she said, days in the high 20s were considered extremely hot.
Both Shanghai and Guangzhou, two of China’s largest and most important cities, have seen record highs this week, and dozens of smaller municipalities have issued extreme heat warnings, restricting the amount of work that can be done outdoors.
Some of this can be put down to weather conditions, with Typhoon Mawar driving a wave of heat in front of it as it barrels west across the Pacific. But the length and severity of heat waves have increased in China and other parts of Asia in recent years as global temperatures rise.
Last month, the World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations body, warned that the world will most likely breach a limit of 1.5 C of warming above preindustrial levels – a limit climate scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change – in the next four years. This is due to El Niño, a naturally occurring weather phenomenon, further driving up temperatures that have already been increased as a result of carbon emissions. The effects will be particularly powerful in parts of Asia, including China.
“China is very vulnerable to the consequences of climate change,” said Chen Gang, a senior research fellow and expert on environmental governance at the National University of Singapore.
A recent study published in Nature warned that Beijing, with 22 million people the most populous national capital in the world, is particularly at risk of a “high-impact heat wave” that could lead to thousands of excess deaths. Last summer, China suffered its most severe heat wave on record, with drought and blackouts across large swaths of the country. Dr. Chen said similar conditions this year could have “huge consequences.”
The China Electricity Council, a government-backed think tank, has predicted that this summer’s electricity load will hit 1.37 billion kilowatts, up 80 million over 2022. According to state media, power plants across the country are already ramping up to deal with the expected surge in demand. But more often than not, despite China’s massive investment in green energy, this involves relying on fossil fuels – particularly coal.
According to Greenpeace, China has already approved more coal projects this year than it did in all of 2021, when pandemic restrictions were still having an effect on the economy. More often than not, this is done in the name of improving energy security and avoiding blackouts, the NGO said in a recent report.
“Summer is around the corner, and there’s a long list of energy infrastructure fixes needed all around China, but throwing more coal at the wall isn’t one of them,” said Greenpeace East Asia climate and energy campaigner Xie Wenwen. “China’s electric grid doesn’t lack generation capacity. The grid lacks adequate flexibility and responsiveness. These problems will continue to inhibit electricity transfer and storage until we face them head on.”
Carbon Brief, a U.K.-based research publication, said China’s emissions hit a record high in the first quarter of this year, partly owing to an economic rebound after the lifting of pandemic restrictions. However, while coal projects are on the rise, the country also saw record expansion of wind and solar capacity and increased investments in nuclear energy.
For some, the increasing heat and frequency of disasters such as droughts and flooding have underlined the growing effects of climate change on the world’s worst polluter.
Ms. Zhang said climate change “used to be more of a vague concept” for her, but now seems increasingly urgent. She said she has taught her students about environmental issues and hopes the next generation will be more mindful of them.
But Dr. Chen said there is still limited awareness of climate change in China, as the country lacks the independent environmental NGOs that drive the conversation elsewhere in the world. “I do not see any huge pressure from the public when it comes to cutting carbon emissions,” he said. “Although China is threatened by the consequences of climate change, most people don’t realize how vulnerable they are.”
This article was written by Steve McKinley and was published in the Toronto Star on May 31, 2023.
In the midst of her vows on Sunday, Ellen MacPhee looked up to a hot pink sun and an unearthly and smoky sky, and to the black ash falling onto her white wedding dress.
“It was just a surreal feeling — I kept on saying that,” she said Tuesday. “It’s like you’re seeing this different world. I just kept thinking it’s like I’m in a dream and I’m going to wake up and tell my husband, ‘I just had the craziest dream about our wedding.’ ”
The smoke, the ash and the psychedelic sun were all courtesy of the wildfire that, at that moment, was rapidly scorching the area around Tantallon, 23 kilometres northwest of Halifax. Flames that spread to encompass 788 hectares would eventually cause some 16,000 residents of subdivisions in the area to flee their homes amid three separate evacuation orders.
As of Tuesday, at least 200 homes and structures had been damaged by the fire. That number was expected to grow pending surveys of the burned areas.
An emergency alert sounded in the midst of the ceremony.
The reception was cancelled and MacPhee, her two-month-old son and her guests became evacuees.
“I’m just so thankful that nothing happened,” MacPhee said. “So thankful that the fire didn’t reach the farm when we had all those guests there … I couldn’t even imagine that.
“I just feel so bad for the people who have lost their homes. We lost a wedding. That’s fine. We can always do that again.”
For some evacuees — like the Brousseau family — the homes they hurriedly left behind now exist in a kind of Schrödinger’s cat box, hypothetically in two states simultaneously — untouched and razed to the ground — while they await a phone call from authorities with news good or bad.
The Brousseaus’ Sunday began with church and then a trip to the park on with their 10-month-old bull mastiff puppy, Mya. “We had a beautiful day. Mya went in the water. We enjoyed the sun,” Michelle Brousseau said.
In the early afternoon, they headed home. Sean, her husband, noticed some smoke as they approached their subdivision in Hammonds Plains and at one point they had to pull over for a speeding fire truck, but they didn’t think too much about it.
After some time though, she said, she noticed the sky looked strange outside her window.
“I looked outside and the sun was blood red,” Michelle said. “And then my son called me … he’d heard about the fire in Tantallon and wanted to make sure we were OK.”
As she spoke to her son, an emergency alert came across her phone.
“It was getting dark and smoky and ashes were flying, coming down and everybody was leaving their homes and the panic was just incredible,” Michelle said.
“You don’t think that you’re not going to come back to your home, right? You think that you’re going to come back. You don’t realize that (you might not come back) at all. And my heart goes out to the people who don’t have a home to go to.”
They know, from conversations with their neighbours, of streets around their house that are completely gone.
But the fate of their own home remained in the balance, waiting for the call to tell them.
Grace Smith has gotten that call. When the number came up private on her caller ID, her heart sank. She was sure it meant that her home had been destroyed and her two parrots, Captain Marty III Esq. and Major Theodore Spaghetti along with it.
On police advice, Smith called 911 and told them she had pets in the evacuation zone. But as they waited on the side of the road, as the hours wore on and as they watched the sky go dark with smoke and the sun turn red, hope turned to a feeling of loss.
“I really broke down at that point. I didn’t think I was ever going to see them again. And they’re my whole life,” Smith said.
When the call came for Smith, however, it was police asking how they could get in to rescue her parrots.
“When they called back that second time, I heard Theo screaming his head off in the background,” said Smith. “And I’ve never been so happy to hear him scream like that in my entire life because I knew he was alive.”
A few hours after speaking with the Star, Michelle and Sean Brousseau got their call, too.
“Just found out nothing damaged on Northwood Road!” Michelle texted.
‘‘ You think that you’re going to come back. You don’t realize that (you might not come back) at all. And my heart goes out to the people who don’t have a home to go to.
MICHELLE BROUSSEAU WHO WAS EVACUATED
This article was written by Frederik-Xavier Duhamel and was published in the Globe & Mail on May 29, 2023.
Wildfires continued to rage on both ends of the country Sunday, burning homes in Nova Scotia and keeping thousands of Albertans under evacuation orders.
Hundreds of people were evacuated from Upper Tantallon, a Halifax suburb, because of an out-of-control fire Sunday afternoon.
“The entire area of Westwood Hill subdivision is being evacuated. The fire is out of control at this time and it’s wind-driven,” said Halifax fire district chief Robert Hebb.
“We’ve got multiple resources, a couple of dozen crews up there now working on it, trying to get some means of containment, but it’s going to be a long event,” he said, adding that two helicopters were brought in to fight the fire.
A second emergency alert was sent out shortly after 6 p.m. local time. The alert said the fire had spread farther, and the evacuation order had been expanded to include several other subdivisions in the area.
A third emergency alert, issued just before 8 p.m. local time, called for evacuations in Haliburton Hills, Glen Arbour, Pockwood Road, Lucasville Road and the White Hills subdivision.
Corporal Chris Marshall of the RCMP said at least 10 homes had burned in the fire, but that the evacuation was proceeding smoothly. He said he could not provide an exact number of evacuees but that it was at least a few hundred.
Both he and Mr. Hebb said they were not aware of any injuries related to the fire.
In the province’s southwest, another out-of-control fire nearly doubled in size in a matter of hours Sunday.
Officials with the province’s Department of Natural Resources said the Shelburne County fire is now burning across more than 1,350 hectares, and dry, hot and windy weather is hampering the effort to contain it. They said the fire “escaped containment” on Saturday night around Barrington Lake, about an hour southeast of Yarmouth.
Officials said there are now 35 provincial firefighters and 50 volunteer firefighters on the ground. They are being supported by two helicopters, six air tankers from New Brunswick, heavy equipment and an incident management team. Officials said nearby homes have been evacuated and local police, Red Cross, and ground search and rescue officials are helping evacuees.
In British Columbia, the Peace River Regional District issued a new evacuation order and an alert on Sunday in response to two wildfires burning in the province’s northeast.
The district warned that the Donnie Creek and Tommy Lakes wildfires pose an immediate risk and urged everyone to leave the area that is primarily used by industry.
The evacuation order spans a remote area east of Highway 97, with the lower-level alert covering an area to the south.
In Alberta, meanwhile, where wildfires have been burning for weeks after an unseasonably warm and dry spring, people continued to be allowed back into their homes this past weekend, but officials warned that fireprone conditions in the coming days could trigger even more wildfires.
Bre Hutchinson, the executive director of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, said 5,257 people were still under evacuation order.
Melissa Story, a spokesperson for Alberta Wildfire, said 57 wildfires were still burning, 17 of them out of control.
“So far this year we’ve responded to 532 wildfires burning more than 1,063,000 hectares. This is almost twice the size of Prince Edward Island,” she said.
Alberta is well on its way to having the worst fire season on record and exceeding 1981, when about 1.36 million hectares were burned.
Climate hazards, including heat waves and wildfire activity, have already intensified across North America and are projected to continue, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international body of hundreds of climate scientists.
Ms. Story said hot and dry weather increased fire activity over the weekend, and that windier conditions in the northern parts of the province are expected into Monday, potentially fuelling more fires.
Federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said in a tweet Saturday that an extension for the deployment of Canadian Armed Forces personnel to assist in firefighting efforts has been approved.
Ms. Story said firefighters from New Zealand were welcomed to the province Friday and that nearly 200 firefighters and support staff from Australia were also arriving this past weekend.
Alberta remains under a provincewide state of emergency, although some bans on fires, ATVs and off-highway vehicles have been relaxed in recent days.
She said close to 2,700 wildfire personnel were responding to the fires this past weekend.
This article was written by Marco Chown Oved and was published by the Toronto Star on May 28, 2023.
The twin smokestacks at the Portlands will be belching out more smoke more often in the coming years, increasing air pollution in downtown Toronto and ramping up carbon emissions, as the gas plant has been given the go-ahead to boost its electricity generation.
And it’s happening in the face of city council’s opposition, despite a provincial pledge to obtain local permission before proceeding. Council passed a motion opposing any new natural-gas generation in the city only days before last week’s provincial announcement.
“It’s really unfortunate that they’re just proceeding anyway,” said Coun. Paula Fletcher, who co-wrote the motion. “This is a very large plant and it will be running far more frequently. It’s not really the direction we should be going in the climate crisis.”
When the call went out for new power generation last fall, Energy Minister Todd Smith put an explicit requirement on all proposals, saying they could not proceed without permission from local municipal councils. “This municipality did not agree,” Fletcher said.
The province had put out an RFP (request for proposal) for more generation, and some existing plants were granted expanded generation under the RFP. But the resulting increased emissions at the Portlands plant — Toronto’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions — will make it harder for the city to meet its TransformTO pledge to reach net zero by 2040.
Fletcher said it fits into a wider pattern of the province overruling Toronto, from Ontario Place to Ministerial Zoning Orders.
“By now we’ve learned that Premier Ford and his government treats Toronto as an extension of Queen’s Park, where they feel they can do whatever they want,” she said. “Everything that they do flies in the face of the direction that our city has taken.”
The Portlands is one of six gas plants with planned expansions and upgrades that will provide additional peaking power during the hottest summer days to help curb the province’s anticipated electricity shortfall. The plant has also extended its contract by five years, ensuring gas will remain on the Toronto waterfront until April 2034.
(In addition to the Portlands, two other GTA gas plants — in Brampton and Halton Hills — will also see capacity upgrades.)
In an email to the Star, Energy Minister spokesperson Michael Dodsworth said the plant expansions in Windsor and Sarnia received support from local councils as promised. But because the upgrades at the GTA plants, characterized as “tune ups,” do not require “new construction,” they’re “consistent with the Minister’s direction.”
The additional gas-fuelled power generation undermines efforts to reduce emissions across the province, said Sarah Buchanan, campaigns director for the Toronto Environmental Alliance.
“We are already facing an uphill battle to meet looming climate change targets,” she said. “One of the biggest hurdles really is just that the grid is getting dirtier when it’s supposed to be getting cleaner.
“It’s really frustrating to see Toronto’s climate plans completely undermined by these energy decisions.”
As demand for power rose and nuclear plants got taken offline, emissions from the Portlands plant rose from 188,000 tonnes in 2017 to 618,000 tonnes in 2021, according to the federal government’s national inventory of emissions.
The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) said it expects 200,000 to 400,000 additional tonnes of emissions per year from new gas generation provincewide.
It’s not just a matter of increased carbon emissions, but one of local air pollution, said Ontario Clean Air Alliance Chair Jack Gibbons.
“It’s a fossil fuel plant and it produces pollutants that are harmful to our health,” he said. “Because (the plant operates) to meet our peak demands, it will be ramped up on the hottest summer days, which are also the smoggiest days. It’s making air pollution worse on our worst air pollution days.”
Tom Patterson, director of energy management at Atura Power, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ontario Power Generation that runs the Portlands and Halton Hills gas plants, said the upgrades will make the plants more efficient.
“For substantially the same amount of fuel, we will be getting more power output from the facility,” he said.
Projections by IESO show an increased reliance on gas plants in the coming years, as nuclear plants are taken out of service for refurbishment or retirement.
Soon, they will run not just during peak demand, as they do currently. This year, gas plants are expected to operate 24 per cent of the time. By 2026, that is projected to be 81 per cent. In 2041, it’ll 100 per cent of the time, according to IESO.
Patterson acknowledged that gas plants create carbon emissions, but said they also let other sectors of the economy with bigger carbon footprints decarbonize by switching their operations to electricity.
Electrification of the steel smelters in Sault Ste. Marie, is a good example of this, because electric arc furnaces running on Ontario’s grid — 90 per cent of which comes from non-emitting sources — will replace coalburning coke ovens.
Patterson said gas peaker plants will likely continue to play a role, even in the federal government’s plan for a net-zero grid by 2035.
“Net zero is an ongoing conversation,” he said. “From our perspective, that doesn’t mean we go to absolute zero on the electricity grid.”
Bryan Purcell, vice-president of policy and programs at The Atmospheric Fund, says keeping gas on the grid as an emergency backup is reasonable, but that’s not what’s happening in Ontario.
“There’s a deepening commitment to ramping up natural gas generation, taking us in the wrong direction,” he said.
This article was written by Benjamin Shingler and was published by CBC News on May 24, 2023.
Mobilize, Canada! 