Tag Archives: COP 21 (Paris)

Cost of Climate Change

Campaign ramps up to pressure one of Canada’s largest pension firms to divest from fossil fuels

By Cloe Logan, National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

People are pushing the investment firm that manages retirement savings for B.C.’s public sector workers to move roughly $2 billion out of fossil fuels by the end of the year.

The British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) holds a total of $199.6 billion in managed assets and oversees retirement savings for the province’s teachers, nurses, municipal workers and other government workers, according to its site.

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Waste

Recycling isn’t the ‘panacea’ that will save oceans from plastic at UN Ocean summit

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Canada has the opportunity to position itself as a leader in tackling the world’s marine plastics problem at this week’s UN Ocean Conference, experts say. 

However, to effect real change, Canada and its international partners will have to aggressively wean themselves off unnecessary plastics and accelerate the development of a global circular economy to make sure plastic pollution doesn’t end up in oceans. 

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Cost of Climate Change

The Quadra Project: The War Years

The 20th century did not begin well. After the warm-ups of the Crimean and Boer Wars, Europe stumbled into World War I in 1914, a fatal combination of hubris and stupidity that killed about 17 million people. The trauma inspired an unflinching examination of the dark recesses of the human psyche in an effort to understand what happened. Dada, the mindless artistic expression of absurdity, was not a satisfactory answer. The philosophical loneliness of existentialism was arguably a nihilistic consequence of the monumental blunder of the First World War—a loss of any remnant of idealism and collective human wisdom.

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Environment

Environment minister says Canada must prepare for “unavoidable” climate risks detailed in new IPCC report

By Natasha Bulowski, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Canada must do its part to bring down planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, but the country also needs to prepare for harsher consequences from climate change, the federal environment minister said Monday in the wake of a new United Nations report.

“We need to reduce our emissions [but] we’ve entered the era of climate change. We know there will be more catastrophes, we know they will be more severe. So, we need to better prepare,” Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault told Canada’s National Observer in an interview.

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Environment

Coastal carbon capture project aims to sink emissions in ocean floor and turn them to stone

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A team of scientists believes it has a “rock-solid” way to combat the climate crisis by sucking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it deep below the ocean floor. 

The proposed Solid Carbon project aims to scrub vast amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and inject it nearly three kilometres beneath the ocean’s surface into basalt aquifers where it will eventually transform into rock. 

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