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Here’s all the latest news concerning the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and the steps leaders are taking to address these issues.
In climate news this week:
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• April snowpack lowest on record in B.C.
• B.C. doesn’t know where all its groundwater is going. Experts worry as drought looms
• There is another hot wildfire season forecast in B.C. Are we prepared?
• March was 10th straight hottest month on record
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Human activities like burning fossil fuels are the main driver of climate change, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This causes heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere, increasing the planet’s surface temperature. The panel, which is made up of scientists from around the world, has warned for decades that wildfires and severe weather, such as B.C.’s deadly heat dome and catastrophic flooding in 2021, would become more frequent and more intense because of the climate emergency. It has issued a “code red” for humanity and warns the window to limit warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial times is closing.
But it’s not too late to avoid the worst-case scenarios.According to NASA climate scientists,if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the rise in global temperatures would begin to flatten within a few years. Temperatures would then plateau but remain well-elevated for many centuries. However, according to the Check back here each Saturday for more climate and environmental news or sign up for our new Climate Connected newsletter HERE. (Source: United Nations IPCC, World Meteorological Organization, UNEP, Nasa, climatedata.ca)
Climate change quick facts:
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Latest News
B.C.’s April snowpack is lowest on record
B.C. snowpack is at a five-decade low, easing fears about spring flooding but heightening concerns about an increased risk of drought in the spring and summer.
According to the latest monthly snow survey, the snowpack average for B.C. was at only 63 per cent of the historical average in April.
It’s the lowest snowpack level since record-keeping for the province began in 1970, said Jonathan Boyd, a hydrologist with the River Forecast Centre, which analyzes snowpack conditions, water supply and flood risk across the province.
In 2015, the figure for April was 66 per cent of the normal snowpack. Another low year was 1981 at 68 per cent of normal snowpack.
Last year’s April snowpack average was also low, but not as low, at 88 per cent of normal. That was followed by a drought that forced water-use restrictions for residences and farmers across much of the province, and a record year for wildfires.
Snowpack levels varied among measuring stations, but 28 stations — about 18 per cent of all sites — reported record lows.
The snowpack is extremely low in the Quesnel and Williams Lake areas in the Cariboo and in the Terrace and Smithers areas in the Skeena-Nass region.
Read the full story here.
—Cheryl Chan
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Broken record: March was 10th straight month to be hottest on record, scientists say
For the 10th consecutive month, Earth in March set a new monthly record for global heat — with both air temperatures and the world’s oceans hitting an all-time high for the month, the European Union climate agency Copernicus said.
March 2024 averaged 14.14 C, exceeding the previous record from 2016 by a tenth of a degree, according to Copernicus data. And it was 1.68 C warmer than in the late 1800s, the base used for temperatures before the burning of fossil fuels began growing rapidly.
Since last June, the globe has broken heat records each month, with marine heat waves across large areas of the globe’s oceans contributing.
Scientists say the record-breaking heat during this time wasn’t entirely surprising due to a strong El Nino, a climatic condition that warms the central Pacific and changes global weather patterns.
“But its combination with the non-natural marine heat waves made these records so breathtaking,” said Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist Jennifer Francis.
With El Nino waning, the margins by which global average temperatures are surpassed each month should go down, Francis said.
Climate scientists attribute most of the record heat to human-caused climate change from carbon dioxide and methane emissions produced by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
Read the full story here.
—The Associated Press
B.C. doesn’t know where all its groundwater is going. Experts worry as drought looms
Growing up on a ranch in the Columbia River Valley, water has always been part of Kat Hartwig’s life, and over the years, she’s noticed changes.
Marshy areas her family used for irrigation or watering cattle are dry, wetlands are becoming “crunchy” rather than spongy underfoot, and snowmelt is disappearing more quickly each spring, ushering in the dry summer months, Hartwig says.
Climate science supports her observations, showing that global heating is causing warmer temperatures and increasingly severe droughts in British Columbia.
Hartwig, who advocates for better water policy, and others say drought is exposing cracks in how the province manages water.
The province doesn’t keep track of exact usage by most groundwater licence holders, the Ministry of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship confirmed. Rather, the licence sets the maximum amount of water each user can extract.
That’s the case for both domestic and some commercial users, including companies in the forestry, mining, and agricultural sectors, the ministry says.
Officials don’t always know who is using groundwater it, how much they’re using, or where they’re drawing it from, experts say. There are gaps in mapping and other data that officials need to effectively manage water during times of scarcity.
Read the full story here.
—The Canadian Press
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Dozens of climate groups call on B.C. government to halt LNG expansion
Dozens of climate-action groups are calling on the B.C. government to halt plans to expand liquefied natural gas production because of the climate crisis.
In an open letter Wednesday to Premier David Eby and the energy and environment ministers, 88 groups argue that plans for five new LNG plants in B.C. do not align with global efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 C or to transition away from fossil fuels as agreed upon in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Some of the Canadian groups include the B.C. Wilderness Committee, Stand Earth, Greenpeace Canada, Council of Canadians, and Environmental Defence Canada. Several environmental groups from Washington state, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia have also signed the letter.
The letter contends that while U.S. President Joe Biden has paused approvals of LNG terminals, B.C. is allowing environmental reviews for the Ksi Lisims and Tilbury LNG projects to proceed without full consideration of the climate impacts. The province also recently approved Cedar LNG, while Woodfibre LNG and LNG Canada are under construction.
“Together these projects amount to nearly 50 million tonnes of proposed LNG exports and 30 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in B.C. every year until long after the world needs to stop burning fossil fuels,” the letter states.
According to a B.C. government spokesperson, the province is focused on controlling emissions.
“By putting in place a cap on emissions – not production – we can provide certainty to industry on the investments needed to ensure it becomes more sustainable and efficient, while also creating new opportunities for people in clean energy and technology,” the spokesperson said.
Read the full story here.
—Tiffany Crawford
There is another hot wildfire season forecast in B.C. Are we prepared?
The smoke awoke Mathew Bond shortly after he went to bed. It was drifting into his neighbourhood in lower Lynn Valley on the North Shore.
Bond, a former District of North Vancouver councillor, got on his electric bike to investigate. He followed the smoke to a gravel trail into Lynn Valley canyon and when he could go no farther on his bike, he went on foot.
He had to turn off his head lamp because the light reflected strongly from the smoke, making it more difficult to see.
The Lynn Valley canyon fire was one of about a dozen wildfires in the Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley regions in 2023.
While the area burned in those fires made up a tiny part of last year’s record-breaking season, the fire activity in B.C.’s most populous region, with 2.4 million people, underscores the increasing wildfire risk that encompasses all of B.C., not just the historical hot zones in the B.C. Interior.
With last year’s fire season fresh in mind and a forecast that points to the potential for another hot summer, communities in B.C. are heightening their readiness, including the District of North Vancouver.
“We are aware of the risk and because of that we’re really doing our best to better equip ourselves and to educate the public on how they can be fire smart,” says Michael Danks, the District of North Vancouver’s acting fire chief.
Measures can be put in place ahead of time that will significantly reduce risk, said Danks.
That includes reducing the risk to homes in the wildfire zone through the province’s so-called FireSmart program. The program promotes removing flammable material, including shrubs, away from your home and using fire resistant roofing, siding and decking on houses. Studies have shown that homes that implement the FireSmart principle are more likely to survive a wildfire.
Read Gordon Hoekstra’s feature article here.
At least a dozen killed and an estimated 15,000 displaced by flooding in Kenya
Heavy rains pounding different parts of Kenya have led to the deaths of at least 13 people and displaced some 15,000 people, the United Nations said, as forecasters warn that more rains can be expected until June.
The U.N Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, citing the Kenya Red Cross Society, said Thursday that nearly 20,000 people were affected, including an estimated 15,000 people displaced by heavy rains and flash floods across the country since the start of the wet season in mid-March.
The East African country has seen thousands of people killed by flooding in previous rainy seasons, mostly in the lake regions and downstream of major rivers.
The Kenya Red Cross Society told The Associated Press that five major roads were cut off by floods, including Garissa Road in northern Kenya where a bus carrying 51 passengers was swept away on Tuesday. All passengers were rescued.
Kenya’s disaster management agency issued a flood warning to residents of Lamu, Tana River and Garissa counties that are downstream of Tana River after flooding breached dams upstream. Residents have been urged to move to higher grounds.
Read the full story here.
—The Associated Press
Trudeau says he doesn’t understand why NDP is ‘pulling back’ support for carbon tax
The New Democrats are facing political headwinds when it comes to a carbon tax, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged Friday, although he doesn’t get why they seem to be having second thoughts.
The NDP has long championed the idea of putting a tax on pollution, even campaigning on it in the 2019 election.
But this week, the party shifted its tone, saying a carbon tax is not the “be-all, end-all” and encouraging premiers to come up with new ideas to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
New Democrat MPs also backed a non-binding Conservative motion in the House of Commons demanding that Trudeau sit down with provincial and territorial leaders within five weeks to discuss the policy.
“It’s not a handful of conservative politicians and premiers that are going to turn me away from continuing the fight against climate change,” Trudeau said Friday during a news conference in Vaughan, Ont., outside Toronto.
“So I don’t entirely understand the position of the NDP and pulling back from affordability measures and from the fight against climate change.”
Read the full story here.
—The Canadian Press
Verdict saying Switzerland violated rights by failing on climate action could ripple across Europe
Europe’s highest human rights court ruled Tuesday that countries must better protect their people from the consequences of climate change, siding with a group of older Swiss women against their government in a landmark ruling that could have implications across the continent.
The European Court of Human Rights rejected two other, similar cases on procedural grounds — a high-profile one brought by Portuguese young people and another by a French mayor that sought to force governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But the Swiss case, nonetheless, sets a legal precedent in the Council of Europe’s 46 member states against which future lawsuits will be judged.
“This is a turning point,” said Corina Heri, an expert in climate change litigation at the University of Zurich.
Although activists have had success with lawsuits in domestic proceedings, this was the first time an international court ruled on climate change — and the first decision confirming that countries have an obligation to protect people from its effects, according to Heri.
She said it would open the door to more legal challenges in the countries that are members of the Council of Europe, which includes the 27 EU nations as well as many others from Britain to Turkey.
Read the full story here.
—The Associated Press
Couples asked to shower together or not at all as drought hits Colombia
The mayor of Bogota is asking couples in the Colombian capital to shower together — or perhaps not at all — in an effort to save water amid an ongoing shortage that has reached crisis levels.
According to The Guardian, Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán told residents who are in a relationship to get in the shower at the same time to save water. He added: “If you are not going to leave your house on Sunday or any other day of the week, take advantage of it and do not take a bath.”
His advice comes as several Bogota neighbourhoods were cut off from the water grid on Thursday to protect already low water levels at reservoirs. They have been drying up due to lack of rain caused in part by this year’s El Nino, a climatic phenomenon that warms the Pacific Ocean and affects weather patterns around the world.
The Chuza and San Rafael reservoirs, part of the Chingaza System that provides 70 per cent of the city’s drinking water, are at their lowest levels since at least the 1980s. City officials have responded by dividing Bogota into nine zones, each of which will be cut off from the water grid for 24 hours in rotation.
Read the full story here.
—The Associated Press
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Government orders investigation into CleanBC grant program after kickback allegations
B.C. Energy Minister Josie Osborne has asked the auditor general and comptroller general to launch an investigation after allegations of a “kickback scheme” involving the accounting firm hired to administer millions of dollars in energy grants.
Osborne last week dismissed calls by the three opposition parties for an investigation into the practices of the firm, MNP. It was paid by the B.C. government to administer two CleanBC grant programs — the advanced research and commercialization program and the commercial vehicle innovation challenge.
That was after B.C. United brought up allegations by a Merritt-based trucking company, Edison Motors, which said it was pressured to contract with MNP in order to be successful in winning certain CleanBC government grants. The company alleged that’s a conflict of interest since MNP also decides which companies will be awarded some CleanBC grants.
Edison had applied for a number of different CleanBC grants — some administered by MNP, some not — the Ministry of Energy and Mines said.
The company said MNP requested a 20 per cent “success fee” to help them apply for a multi-million dollar grant.
Read the full story here.
—Katie DeRosa
Greta Thunberg detained by police at climate demonstration in The Hague
Climate activist Greta Thunberg was among dozens of people detained Saturday by police in The Hague as they removed protesters who were partially blocking a road in the Dutch city.
Thunberg was seen flashing a victory sign as she sat in a bus used by police to take detained demonstrators from the scene of a protest against Dutch subsidies and tax breaks to companies linked to fossil fuel industries.
The Extinction Rebellion campaign group said before the demonstration that the activists would block a main highway into The Hague, but a heavy police presence, including officers on horseback, initially prevented the activists from getting onto the road.
A small group of people managed to sit down on another road and were detained after ignoring police orders to leave.
Extinction Rebellion activists have blocked the highway that runs past the temporary home of the Dutch parliament more than 30 times to protest the subsidies.
Read the full story here.
—The Associated Press
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