All posts by Rochelle Baker

Rochelle Baker is a staff reporter with Canada’s National Observer, thanks thanks to a grant from the Local Journalism Initiative of the Government of Canada. She previously worked as a newspaper reporter and photographer in BC’s Lower Mainland for over 7 years.
Energy

The silent strength of Indigenous renewable energy micro-grids

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

For the first time since the 1970s, silence descended on the tiny, isolated village of Old Crow in Canada’s Arctic in August. For the first time since the 1970s, silence descended on the tiny, isolated village of Old Crow in Canada’s Arctic in August.

For generations, the community of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation in the Yukon, about 100 kilometres east of the Alaskan border, had suffered the incessant drone of diesel-powered generators to meet its electricity needs.

But the fly-in community, 120 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, was quiet for the first time in decades as the nation brought its solar energy micro-grid online, said Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm at an official COP26 side event Thursday.

Continue reading The silent strength of Indigenous renewable energy micro-grids →
Rivers & Oceans

Canada’s marine protected areas aren’t as safe as you think

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

As the globe’s “do or die” UN climate conference gets underway next week, Canada must scale up efforts to meet its ambitious ocean conservation targets to simultaneously prevent the wholesale collapse of marine biodiversity and tackle climate change, experts say.

As the largest ecosystem on Earth, the ocean is critical to regulating the climate and helping produce oxygen, rain, drinking water, and food, as well as sustaining livelihoods for three billion people.

An invaluable asset for mitigating the climate crisis, the ocean absorbs about 30 per cent of the carbon dioxide produced by humans while weathering an increasing number of marine heat waves, ocean acidification, oxygen and biodiversity loss, and pollution and plastics.

Continue reading Canada’s marine protected areas aren’t as safe as you think →
Energy

Is tidal energy the surge remote coastal communities need?

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Many remote West Coast communities rely on diesel for electricity generation, which poses a range of negative economic, social, and environmental effects.

But some sites along B.C.’s extensive coastline are ideal for tidal energy micro-grids that may well be the answer for off-grid communities to generate clean power, suggested experts at a COAST (Centre for Ocean Applied Sustainable Technologies) virtual event Wednesday.

Continue reading Is tidal energy the surge remote coastal communities need? →
Arts

Ruth Ozeki explores loss, love and our insatiable relationship with things

 National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Benny hears things and Annabelle hoards them. 

In her latest novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, award-winning novelist Ruth Ozeki bears witness as a teenage boy and his mother, Benny and Annabel Oh, process their grief after Kenji — a kind, jazz-loving, pot-smoking clarinetist father and husband — suffers the ignoble death of being run over by a chicken truck in a grungy back alley.

Continue reading Ruth Ozeki explores loss, love and our insatiable relationship with things →
Cost of Climate Change

Preventing biodiversity collapse critical to COP26 climate goals, say world leaders

 National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

In the run-up to the UN’s crucial climate conference at month’s end, global leaders have laid the foundation for an international framework to protect nature and halt the collapse of biodiversity worldwide while also curbing global warming and protecting human health.

More than 100 nations committed to the Kunming Declaration on Wednesday, a promise to put the natural world on a path to recovery by 2030.

Continue reading Preventing biodiversity collapse critical to COP26 climate goals, say world leaders →