Tag Archives: Heat waves

Cost of Climate Change, Housing, Politics

New Westminster aims to protect tenants from extreme heat

Editor’s note: Will any other municipalities or regions follow this example?

By Theresa McManus, Freshet News, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

New Westminster tenants aren’t allowed to freeze to death in their apartments — nor should they be allowed to succumb to heat in their homes.

That’s the motivation behind bylaws that will require New Westminster landlords to maintain safe temperatures in at least one living space in rental units occupied by a tenant. City council unanimously supported three readings to business bylaws at its March 30 meeting. 

“This is a very exciting piece of work that the city is taking on,” said Coun. Nadine Nakagawa. “To the best of my knowledge, we are the first municipality in Canada to take this move to protect renters against extreme heat.”

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Cost of Climate Change

Billions in federal buildings, roads and other assets at risk from climate change

By Natasha Bulowski – with files from Rochelle Baker, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter 

Canada’s auditor general wants to know whether the federal government is doing a good job protecting its assets — including dams, buildings, vehicles and more — from the increasingly severe impacts of climate change.

The Department of National Defence received a notification letter — obtained by Canada’s National Observer through an access to information request — that the auditor general is launching a performance audit of “Protecting Federal Assets From Climate Change.”

The audit is for the government-wide Greening Government Strategy but pays special attention to three key departments — Fisheries and Oceans Canada, National Defence and Public Services and Procurement Canada — to assess their progress on protecting their assets, services and activities from climate change.

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Cost of Climate Change, Tourism

Should We Still Travel? Reflections from a Warming Canada

In response to people who do not believe climate change is a real issue—and to those who think we should eliminate all long-distance tourism. 

A Personal Journey Amid Crisis

I am in the midst of my third trip across Canada.

We are living in a society that appears to be critically damaging the lives of future generations through a combination of overconsumption and the overproduction of greenhouse gases. This is not just a policy issue—it’s a moral one. I see the signs of global warming all around me—and they are getting worse.

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Cost of Climate Change

The Quadra Project – Warming Oceans

The close connection that exists between the atmosphere and the ocean is not surprising considering that 70% of the planet is covered by water—about 360 million km2—and the few dozen km of air is extremely thin compared to the 12,750 km diameter of Earth. This means that about 90% of the atmospheric heating caused by rising concentrations of CO2 is transferred to the oceans.

In approximate terms, about one-third of the carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels stays there for centuries, about one-third is captured and sequestered in various land forms such as forests, soils and vegetation, although one recent United Nations study suggests the terrestrial sequestration may only be about 25%, possibly because forest and plant cover is being diminished by agriculture and fires, and because a higher global temperature is reducing the photosynthesis process by which plants process carbon dioxide into carbon, sugars and oxygen. Much of the remaining one-third of our CO2 emissions that is not absorbed by marine algae dissolves in the oceans to form carbonic acid.

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Cost of Climate Change

On the Threshold of a 1.5°C World

While there is some disagreement as to whether we have crossed the 1.5°C threshhold set at COP 21 in Paris, scientists agree that we are on the brink and 2024 was the hottest year on record.

At COP 29 last November, Jim Skea, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explained, “Children born today will not know a world without climate change. The IPCC has shown that we, and furthermore they, will live in a world marked by more intense storms, exceptional heatwaves, devastating floods and droughts, a world where food chains are disrupted, and where diseases reach new countries.”

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