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Opinion/editorial
Did global warming cause Sidney Crosby's concussion?
Climate Central, January 30, 2012: Here's a Monday morning conversation starter for the casual sports fan: did global warming cause Sidney Crosby's concussion? No, the National Hockey League's biggest star did not sustain a head injury by slipping and falling on receding polar ice. But he is the victim of the same kind of resistance to science that has made climate change such an accelerating and intractable problem.
Covering the oilsands
Toronto Star, January 30, 2012: The Harper government has drawn a firm line in the sand when it comes to rapid development of the oilsands and pipelines to transport bitumen to faraway customers. On one side are the good guys – any person or organization that agrees with the government's plans. On the other side are all the bad guys – those who question them. And according to a government strategy paper uncovered by environmental groups last week, the bad guys include aboriginals, environmentalists and the media.
Climate change deniers: The science of intimidation
The Advertiser, January 28, 2012: According to an old legal adage, when the law is against you, argue the facts. When the facts are against you, argue the law. And when neither is on your side, pound the table. Today, conservative climate change deniers, faced with a growing and increasingly persuasive body of evidence supporting the theory of anthropogenic global warming have adopted a version of this approach. Except, lacking a table, they are pounding the scientists instead.
Tube the pipelines, all three
The Tyee, January 23, 2012: What will happen to the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta's tar sands to Houston, Texas? Will it finally be a go after the November presidential election, or will it be tubed?
An acid test for policy
BBC News, January 23, 2012: There's more this week on the critical but in some ways under-covered issue of ocean acidification. At root, it's simple chemistry. Carbon dioxide goes into the air from factory chimneys and hearths and car exhaust pipes, and some of it ends up dissolved in seawater, as carbonic acid.
The verdict is in on climate change
Los Angeles Times, January 22, 2012: Recently I had jury duty, and during jury selection something remarkable occurred. Early in the proceedings, the judge posed a hypothetical question to the 60 or so potential jurors in the room: "If I were to send you out now and ask you to render a verdict, what would it be? How many of you would vote not guilty?"
Bacteria helped Gulf oil spill, but it's not so easy in Arctic
Quirks & Quarks, January 20, 2012: Scientists at the University of California Santa Barbara have shown that favourable ocean currents in the Gulf of Mexico made it easier for bacteria to break down oil spilled from the Deepwater Horizon drill rig disaster in 2010.
Pipeline politics in Canada and US a peril for Stephen Harper
Toronto Star, January 19, 2012: Pipeline politics appears to be settling in at the top of the North American agenda for the next two years, perhaps more. There could be a day when both the Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway pipelines are built, but not before some political careers are badly bruised, if not killed.
What the Keystone rejection really reveals
The Tyee, January 19, 2012: Few debates illustrate the messy nature of North America's energy politics better than the postponement of the Keystone XL pipeline. Now that the US Department of State has officially declared that the megaproject is not in the national interest (for now), the media exploded with the usual lamentations, incriminations and sophistry.
Is Keystone a touchstone?
BBC News, January 19, 2012: On the face of things, Barack Obama's decision to reject the planned Keystone XL oil pipeline is quite a significant shift for a president who for the last year at least has seemed reluctant to endorse any policy with a green tinge.
The pleasures and pitfalls of off-the-grid solar
New York Times, January 18, 2012: For our year living in the woods of Maine, I wanted a place where I could see and hear wildlife. Someplace both quiet and remote. In our part of Maine, quiet and remote means off the electrical grid.
Climate change needs an intergenerational solution
Vancouver Sun, January 17, 2012: The vast majority of Canadians feel a reverence for the natural surroundings that make up our home and native land. We celebrate our environment in song, stories – even beer commercials. I'll 'fess up. I ordered a Molson Canadian after its "Made from Canada" commercials aired during the 2010 Olympics, because they reminded us that we have "more square feet of awesomeness per person than any other nation on earth."
Are the Conservatives making Northern Gateway pipeline hearings irrelevant?
Toronto Star, January 17, 2012: Provincial premier or pipeline protester, you had a common plight Tuesday. You both found yourself in British Columbia, pushing back against that immovable object, Stephen Harper.
Stephen Harper and the Big Oil Party of Canada
The Tyee, January 16, 2012: Where will you be and what will you be doing when the first giant oil tanker (there will be two every three days), carrying over 200,000 gallons of tar sands goop diluted with solvent, spills its load into the pristine waters of the northern BC coast?
Finding a seat at the top of the world
Globe and Mail, January 16, 2012: Thinking about the Arctic as a whole conjures images of snow, extreme weather, vast ice-covered landscapes and seascapes, polar bears. The bustling markets of New Delhi or the Great Wall of China do not frequently come to mind, but these are places that might be closely associated with the future Arctic. As the world eyes the potential for resources and development in the Far North, countries as diverse as China, India, Japan, Spain and Italy are seeking a role for themselves.
UK must rethink its unfailing support for Canada's fossil fuels
The Guardian, January 16, 2012: If it's true that desperate times call for desperate measures, the Canadian government is acting like a junkie in need of a fix. As public hearings on the proposed Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline proposal got underway in British Columbia last week, natural resources minister, Joe Oliver, lashed out at "environmental and other radical groups" and "jet-setting celebrities."
Climate change, disbelief, and the collision between human and geologic time
Forbes, January 16, 2012: Geologic time scales are long – too long for the human mind to really comprehend. Over millions, and tens of millions, and hundreds of millions of years, the Earth has changed from something unrecognizable to the planet we see on maps, plastic globes, and photos from space. The Atlantic Ocean didn't exist eons ago and it will literally disappear in the future as the continental plates continue to move inch by inch.
Climate and the culture war
Washington Post, January 16, 2012: The attempt by Newt Gingrich to cover his tracks on climate change has been one of the shabbier little episodes of the 2012 presidential campaign. His forthcoming sequel to "A Contract with the Earth" was to feature a chapter by Katharine Hayhoe, a young professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas Tech University. Hayhoe is a scientist, an evangelical Christian and a moderate voice warning of climate disruption.
Doomsday clock ticks louder, but who's listening?
Climate Central, January 12, 2012: This just in! The Doomsday Clock has just moved one tick closer to midnight. It now stands at a mere five minutes before the hour, and we all know what that means. OK, maybe we don't. I took an informal poll of friends and family, and their response, more or less, was: "The what?"
Pipeline rhetoric is a radical attack on due process
Globe and Mail, January 11, 2012: The proposed Northern Gateway pipeline is a good idea, to judge from the information available thus far. But the regulatory process should go ahead and hear all concerns in an evenhanded way, as that process was designed to do. The federal government's warnings about foreign influences and "environmental and other radical groups" are exaggerated.
An open reply to Joe Oliver's propaganda for the petro state
The Tyee, January 11, 2012: Canada's Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver has just pulled a Hugo Chavez: he's penned a formal and desperate attack on democracy and interfered in the nation's allegedly impartial regulatory regime. And all for bitumen exports to China. In the process the Tory panjandrum has unwittingly highlighted the nation's dangerous descent from messy democracy to full blown petro state.
Our ecological treasure is the issue with Northern Gateway
Globe and Mail, January 11, 2012: The hearings to decide the future of the Great Bear Sea and Rainforest got off to quite a start this week. Big oil, foreign intrigue, a grassroots uprising, duelling polls, angry ministers – this one has all the makings of a blockbuster. But the fervour obscures the heart of the matter: whether and under what conditions we should permit supertankers and a bitumen pipeline in one of the last intact temperate coastal rain forests on Earth.
Elizabeth May takes on Joe Oliver
Elizabeth May, January 10, 2012: Dear Joe, your letter caught my attention. I respect you and like you a lot as a colleague in the House. Unfortunately, I think your role as Minister of Natural Resources has been hijacked by the PMO spin machine. The PMO is, in turn, hijacked by the foreign oil lobby. You are, as Minister of Natural Resources, in a decision-making, judge-like role. You should not have signed such a hyperbolic rant.
Stephen Harper's Northern Gateway pipeline parody
Toronto Star, January 10, 2012: The federal government's claim that big-money foreign interests are trying to hijack hearings into a proposed west coast oil pipeline is, at one level, high parody. It is also deeply disturbing.
Ecologists should learn to look on the bright side
New Scientist, January 10, 2012: It's hard to spend your working life charting the demise of the things you love. Ask an ecologist why they chose that career, and you will often hear a tale about being mad about animals as a kid. These days, they are more likely to spend their days modelling how quickly their favourite species will disappear.
Crude start to oil debate
Toronto Star, January 9, 2012: Canadians are deeply split on the merits of megaprojects such as the Northern Gateway proposal to carry crude from the Alberta oilsands to the Pacific coast. Even so, many are waiting to be convinced. They would be better served by a reasoned debate on the costs and benefits than the crudely overheated slugfest that appears to be shaping up.
Much ado about methane
Daily Climate, January 9, 2012: It's the unknown that grabs attention. We don't know the total amount of methane frozen deep beneath the ocean, but we suspect it could rival the rest of fossil fuels combined. And we don't know how much is frozen in the Arctic's thawing permafrost and lake sediments. We do know those methane deposits are seeping into the atmosphere, however. And the possibility of a catastrophic release is of, course, what gives methane its power over the imagination. Journalists in particular seem susceptible to doomsday predictions from such a scenario.
Why libertarians must deny climate change, in one short take
The Guardian, January 6, 2012: Over the Christmas break I read what I believe is the most important environmental essay of the past 12 months. Though it begins with a mildly unfair criticism of a column of mine, I won't hold it against the author. In a simple and very short tract, Matt Bruenig presents a devastating challenge to those who call themselves libertarians, and explains why they have no choice but to deny climate change and other environmental problems.
What climate campaigners can learn from hockey
The Tyee, January 4, 2012: News that hockey enforcer Derek Boogaard's brain showed signs of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a degenerative brain condition related to Alzheimer's, has been met mostly with a collective shrug from members of that sport's fraternity.
Time running out on Canada's green reputation
Victoria Times Colonist, December 20, 2011: Remember those little Canadian flags that we used to so proudly sport on our bags as we travelled abroad to tell the world we weren't Americans? Forget that strategy. Canada's display at the Durban climate change talks has ensured that Canadians will no longer revel in being The Good Guy.
Even Canada doesn't believe its own spin on tar sands
The Guardian, December 20, 2011: It's time to pitch back into the controversy over Canada's lobbying offensive against proposed European penalties on fuels from tar sands. But this time we're going through the looking glass, with Canada secretly admitting it has no "credible scientific information on [the tar sands industry's] environmental performance" and the British government, which has bent over backwards to help Canada protect its highly polluting fuels, giving funding to anti-tar sands campaigners.
Franken, Whitehouse expose climate deniers on Senate floor
Huffington Post, December 19, 2011: The United States was founded by scientists, based in large part on the principles of science, and science is why we have become the world's leading economy. So it is shocking to see mainstream politicians denying the validity of science for political reasons – a practice long associated with authoritarian regimes, not the United States.
We can act without Kyoto
Lloyd Axworthy, December 19, 2011: I have just returned from a brief visit to Churchill, Man. It is the home of Canada's strategic northern inland port and I have been fortunate enough to visit it many times. Located on the coast of the Hudson Bay, it sits just south of Nunavut, and like its Arctic neighbours, it too is experiencing first-hand the dramatic and visible changes associated with a changing climate.
Vaclav Havel and a climate of 'freedom'
BBC News, December 19, 2011: They shared a first name, a leadership post and an upbringing forged in Communist fires. But on many aspects of life, including climate change, the newly deceased ex-Czech President Vaclav Havel and his successor Vaclav Klaus take very different tacks.
Canada's message: The world and its climate be damned
Globe and Mail, December 17, 2011: So what that Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto died long ago. Most of the countries that ratified Kyoto, starting with Canada, failed to meet their greenhouse-gas reduction targets. Big polluters – the US, China and India – didn't accept targets. At the Durban climate-change conference, Canada got paddled by other countries. But Canada's reputation has been trashed so often, and with such evident good reason, what's one more blow?
Canada hits bottom with withdrawal from Kyoto
Toronto Star, December 15, 2011: This week's announcement by federal Environment Minister Peter Kent of Canada's intention to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol marks the country's lowest point in the 40-year history of modern global environmental diplomacy. The protocol, which Canada signed in 1997 and ratified in 2002, committed Canada to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 6 per cent relative to their 1990 levels by the 2008-2012 period.
Durban climate-change conference was an almost total failure
Georgia Straight, December 14, 2011: The Durban climate summit that ended on Sunday has been proclaimed a great success. The chair, South Africa's international relations minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, told the delegates: "We have concluded this meeting with [a plan] to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren to come. We have made history." Don't be fooled. It was an almost total failure.
Life after Kyoto: Half a loaf can still be wholesome
Globe and Mail, December 14, 2011: Canada was right to leave the Kyoto Protocol, rather than continue to take part in the false pretense that there is an international consensus. But the federal government should not just wait passively for a serious multilateral treaty to emerge, some year, some decade hence. Rather, it should consider adopting limited, moderate measures to reduce carbon emissions.
Canada's Kyoto withdrawal shameful
Windsor Star, December 14, 2011: I'm ashamed to be Canadian right now. Hours after returning from the climate change conference in Durban, South Africa, where Canada's behaviour can only be described as, yet again, disgraceful, Environment Minister Peter Kent announced we are withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol.
Canada's short-sighted move should be denounced, not followed
Xinhua, December 14, 2011: The Canadian government's decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding global agreement on fighting climate change, has sent shivers across the world. The move came as a particularly bitter blow for global efforts to fight climate change, as negotiators from 195 countries had just ended two weeks of hard bargaining seeking to extend the Kyoto Protocol, of which the first commitment period will expire at the end of next year, and to build consensus for greater global action on climate change.
We can still avoid a 'lost decade' on climate change
New Scientist, December 14, 2011: Last week, one set of European leaders was in Brussels trying to sort out the continent's financial woes. Another set was in Durban, South Africa, leading the fight to control the world's climate. The timescales were very different: the former addressing the crisis of the moment, the latter the crisis of the century. But their outcomes paralleled each other: some hesitant progress to celebrate, offset by fears that what will follow will be a "lost decade" in which few further steps forward will be made.
Kyoto withdrawal shames us all
Globe and Mail, December 13, 2011: The Harper government's decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol tarnishes Canada before the world. Liberal and Conservative incompetence and mendacity are to blame. You and I are to blame. And Lehman Brothers had something to do with it as well. It isn't easy for a country to descend, in the space of a single decade, from crusader to pariah, as Canada has done on the environment. But our political leaders were up to the task.
Canada goes tabloid
The Guardian, December 13, 2011: Imagine being Canada. Imagine doing the international walk of shame from the Durban conference and later announcing, hungover with chunks in your hair, wearing whatever you picked off a stranger's floor, and a shoe missing, that you don't care, you are walking out of the Kyoto protocol and the rest of the world can go fry itself.
Climate summit was a pathetic exercise in deceit
Globe and Mail, December 12, 2011: It was an "emperor-has-no-clothes" moment. The 17-year-old youth delegate rose before the assembled participants at the Durban climate conference and looked them straight in the eye. "I speak for more than half the world's population," declared Anjali Appadurai of Maine's College of the Atlantic. "We are the silent majority. You've given us a seat in this hall, but our interests are not at the table. What does it take to get a stake in this game? Lobbyists? Corporate influence? Money?"
Ambition gap
The Guardian, December 12, 2011: There are times when inching forward can look like progress. The slender eight-clause protocol finally agreed at the climate change talks in Durban early on Sunday morning after two weeks and a final 60-hour head-banging haggle is probably one of those occasions, a moment when it is cheerier to think of how bad things might have been than to rate the success of the final outcome.
Understanding the failure of the UN's climate talks
Huffington Post, December 12, 2011: It is getting to be a pretty familiar routine by now. Thousands of people from around the world gather to negotiate and influence global climate policy. Rhetoric flies for a week or two, negotiators bargain long into the night, and a modest, unenforceable agreement is finally brought up for a vote. At this point, it is pretty obvious that the United Nations climate negotiation process may serve as a useful agenda-setting mechanism, but it is no way to make global public policy.
How good was this deal really?
The Independent, December 12, 2011: The current estimate for global temperature rise by 2100 is 3.5°C. This is a devastating conclusion that underlines why many people, including myself, believe global warming represents the biggest threat to mankind.
Farewell Kyoto Protocol, you did your job
CBC News, December 11, 2011: It would be easy to look at the greenhouse gas-constraining Kyoto Protocol as a failure, particularly after all the desultory wrangling that oversaw its demise in all but name in Durban on the weekend. But that might be to see Kyoto through too much of a Canadian-orchestrated prism.
Durban: Winners and losers
BBC News, December 11, 2011: For some reason that I've not quite figured out, lots of people in the dying embers of this UN climate meeting were asking "who's a winner, and who's a loser?" There are loads of perhaps more rational questions you could ask, the most pertinent being: "What has this done to curb climate change?"
Hope at last at the Durban conference on climate change
The Guardian, December 11, 2011: UN climate change conferences don't of themselves cut greenhouse gas emissions. Negotiations about targets and texts cannot do that; only government policies that incentivise and require business investment in low carbon technologies and other emission-reducing activities can.
Will Canada be left behind on climate change?
Globe and Mail, December 9, 2011: Kumi Naidoo, a veteran of the apartheid struggles in South Africa, is now executive director of Greenpeace International. Walking along the beach with him the other day in Durban, where we are attending the United Nations climate-change negotiations, I asked him whether he'd played there as a child. He gave me an odd look and replied slowly, carefully choosing his words: "Oh no," he said. "Though we would stand over there sometimes and watch the white children play. We weren't allowed to play on the beach."
Greening Canada's electricity grid from the ground up
Quirks & Quarks, December 9, 2011: While Canada was being panned at the UN Climate talks in Durban, South Africa, this week for our lack of action towards reducing carbon emissions, events in Toronto provided hope that a low-carbon future is possible – thanks to efforts from one of the fastest growing industries in the country.