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All vehicles create carbon emissions and cause congestion. The coronavirus crisis should help us break our dependence on them.

The evidence is now clear enough that it can be stated unequivocally: It would be worth freeing ourselves from fossil fuels even if global warming didn’t exist. Especially now that clean energy has gotten so cheap, the air quality benefits alone are enough to pay for the energy transition.

The air quality benefits arrive much sooner than the climate benefits. They are, at least for the next several decades, much larger. They can be secured without the cooperation of other countries. And, by generating an average of $700 billion a year (in the USA) in avoided health and labor costs, they will more than pay for the energy transition on their own. Climate change or no climate change, it’s worth ditching fossil fuels.

Build back better?  It’s a catchy slogan, but it’s an empty one unless we are much more specific about what it means.

We live in an unsafe world.  The Covid pandemic is bad enough, but a far greater escalating danger comes from the overheated planet and intensifying climate change impacts that threaten to disrupt the economies,  livelihoods, and communities of all nations. How about we try and build back safer?

Canada’s pandemic response to date has sent just C$300 million to clean energy, compared to more than $16 billion to fossil fuels, according to new data released this week by Energy Policy Tracker, a joint effort by multiple civil society organizations including the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

A simulator from Climate Interactive, out of M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management allows you to change many variables to see what it would take to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions enough to get us off our current impossible track and onto the merely miserable heading of 1.5 to two degrees Celsius envisioned in the Paris climate accords.

It will appeal to the geek in you and will show you that there is no magic bullet, no one thing that we can do that will achieve the desired result. It will show that we have to start using every tool in the toolbox and we need to start right now.

The filmmaker’s latest venture is an excruciating mishmash of environment falsehoods and plays into the hands of those he once opposed.

What could the government of Canada do if its Ministers, MPs and civil servants really understood the severity of the climate emergency, and the urgency of the need? This paper shows how we could target a 65% reduction in emissions by 2030 and 100% by 2040. It proposes 164 new policies and programs, financed by $59 billion a year in new investments, without raising taxes or increasing public sector borrowing. The new programs and policies are announced every Monday morning between January 6^th and the end of June. To learn what they are, read on.

An Earth Day release by filmmaker Michael Moore and director Jeff Gibbs, purporting to show that a clean energy transition won’t help address the climate crisis and that climate campaigners have sold out to “wealthy interests and corporate America”, has spurred an avalanche of critical analysis, prompting one of its distributors to take the online video out of circulation before putting it back up a half-day later.

As people ponder our current situation, and question how we got here, we increasingly get asked the question “is this nature fighting back at us?” It is a good question. There is not, of course, any sentient being called “nature,” but there is a biosphere upon which we depend for our very existence that has been abused to a staggering degree as human “development” has “progressed,” fixated on relentless growth. Maybe COVID-19 is just the latest in a series of metaphorical warning shots that things are running out of control.

In April 2017, Project Drawdown released its inaugural body of work on climate solutions with the publication of the best-selling book Drawdown and a suite of open-source resources on Drawdown.org.

This Review represents the organization’s second seminal publication and the first major update to our assessment of solutions to move the world toward “Drawdown”—the future point in time when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline.

When fossil fuels are burned, they release carbon dioxide, an invisible and odorless gas, into the atmosphere. What would happen if carbon emerged from our car tailpipes as a solid? This short video shows what it would look like.

Imagine It’s 2050. Trudeau is looking back on his legacy. “In February 2020, I approved the Teck Frontier Mine in the middle of a climate emergency. I Regret Choosing Big Oil Over our climate and our communities. I'm Sorry”

A territory that has 0.5% of the Earth’s population plans to use up nearly a third of the planet’s remaining carbon budget

Liberal Members of Parliament are taking a loud stand against Teck Resources’ C$20.6-billion Frontier tar sands/oil sands mine proposal, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau receiving an “earful” at a caucus meeting Wednesday, Huffington Post Canada reports.

Abstract.  Global surface temperature in 2019 was the 2nd highest in the period of instrumental measurements in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis.  The rate of global warming has accelerated in the past decade.  The 2019 global temperature was +1.2°C (~2.2°F) warmer than in the 1880-1920 base period; global temperature in that base period is a reasonable estimate of ‘pre-industrial’ temperature.  The five warmest years in the GISS record all occur in the past five years, and the 10 warmest years are all in the 21st century.  Growth rates of the greenhouse gases driving global warming are increasing, not declining.

Annual growth of atmospheric CO2 has increased from less than 1 ppm (parts per million) per year when Keeling began his measurement in the late 1950s to about 2.5 ppm per year averaged over the past several years (Fig. 6).  The CO2 growth rate has a strong correlation with the global temperature anomaly with CO2 lagging the temperature by 10 months.  This suggests that the CO2 growth rate may increase in 2020, but this is uncertain because the recent tropical and global warming was weak (Fig. 4).

Maneuvering around Teck Resources’ controversial Frontier tar sands/oil sands proposal is heating up, with Environment and Climate Minister Jonathan Wilkinson saying Cabinet review of the project may be delayed, while Teck CEO Don Lindsay says it’s “anyone’s guess” whether his company will build the C$20.6-billion project if it’s approved.

This article says that the “worst case scenario” (up to 6 C temperature rise by 2100) is now quite unlikely. The global decrease in coal use has reduced a 10% probability to much less than that.

The article still says that a 3 C temperature rise by 2100 is likely with current actions, which is catastrophic, and unexpected feedback loops could make this worse.

Given the urgency of the climate crisis, however, many of us feel that silence is no longer an option. And Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, is the person to talk to about how to talk about climate change.

Global warming will strike hardest against the very people we’re told to love: the poor and vulnerable.

Even if the direct results of your personal actions may be smal they can serve as an example and inspire others to take action as well.

In this Ted Talk Katherine Hayhoe recommends that the most important thing that we can do as individuals is to talk to others about climate change through values that you share with the people you are talking to.

Graphic representation of declining snow cover in Canada through analysis of historical weather records.

As solar and heat pump prices fall, these highly energy- efficient homes are paying for themselves faster. Here’s how they work and why they’re spreading northward.

The peak in fossil fuel demand will have a dramatic impact on financial markets in the 2020s.

Detailed analysis of the tipping points that will lead to runaway climate change and HotHouse Earth if humanity exceed the limits.

The aim of this initiative is to demonstrate that agriculture, and in particular agricultural soils can play a crucial role where food security and climate change are concerned.

Holding warming under two degrees Celsius is the goal. But is it still attainable?

SolarShare reports on The Power of Community: Renewable Energy & Citizen Participation in Ontario

Al Slavin explains that you don't need to be an expert to have an informed opinion.

Write a message to the future

James Hansen discusses the urgency of aggressive action on climate change.

This shows 361 months in a row where the temperature has been above average.

Why one scientist's decided to stop flying and stay closer to home where he can go by bicycle.

Check this out to see what Toronto residents can do to prepare for the health impacts of Climate Change

David Suzuki's documentary goes to the heart of the conflict surrounding Alberta's Tar Sands

Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein explain why the Paris agreement is inadequate.

Below is a complete listing of the articles in “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic,” a series by Coby Beck containing responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming.