Tag Archives: environment

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Ontario suspends requirement for public consultation on environmental policies due to COVID-19 – Environmental Defence

A pandemic is a license to pollute or an excuse to? The three stooges are at it again ‘cept this time it isn’t funny.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted some North American governments to change their approach to protecting the environment. In the last month, there have been moves to modify, exempt, or make exceptions to a wide range of environmental rules. Ontario, Alberta and the United States have issued orders or passed regulations that change or get rid of environmental compliance and/or consulting requirements during the state of emergency we find ourselves in.

April 25, 2020

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Flooding will affect double the number of people worldwide by 2030

Floods are getting worse because of the climate crisis, decisions to populate high-risk areas and land sinkage from the overuse of groundwater.

The effects will be less dire but still increasingly serious in the US, where the risk is highest for coastal flooding. The US ranks third among countries with the most to lose from urban coastal flooding in the next 10 years, after China and Indonesia.

Coastal flood damage in the US will soar from $1.8bn in 2010 to $38bn in 2050, with half the country’s exposed population in just three states – Louisiana, Massachusetts and Florida.

April 23, 2020

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Pandemic side-effects offer glimpse of alternative future on Earth Day 2020

Wednesday’s annual Earth Day event, this year largely taking place
online, comes as public health restrictions to prevent the spread of
Covid-19 have resulted in a sharp dip in air pollution across China,
Europe and the US, with carbon emissions from the burning of fossil
fuels heading for a record 5% annual drop.

The waters of Venice are now clear, lions lounge on roads normally
frequented by safari-goers in South Africa and bears and coyotes wander
around empty accommodation in Yosemite national park in California.

April 22, 2020

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Western US may be headed for a once-in-500-years “megadrought”

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the study is the role that climate change is playing. The current drought seems to be affecting a wider area more consistently than the earlier events, which is a hallmark of climate change. In fact, the researchers calculate that this drought would have been pretty moderate otherwise, ranking 11th in severity in the 1,200-year period. Instead, climate change has created higher underlying temperatures which boosted it to the top of the charts.

While there’s always an element of natural variation, the team says that climate change is shifting events like droughts towards the more extreme end of the scale more regularly.

April 22, 2020

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We have the oil lobby’s secret list of COVID demands – if approved, they would set environmental protection back decades – Environmental Defence

As Canada faces an unprecedented health crisis, a leaked secret memo from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) to the federal government reveals the oil industry’s demands for exemptions from environmental laws, regulatory rollbacks, and increased secrecy. The 13-page memo asks for a massive rollback in regulatory oversight, a full stop to the development of any new climate policy, and for the industry to be exempted from the requirement to report on lobbying activity.

All this is quite appalling. And it has nothing to do with COVID or the desperate global economics of oil and gas. This is a crass attempt by oil companies to exploit a global health crisis to ram through every demand they’ve ever made, and many they never would have tried if there wasn’t a global emergency.

Here are the highlights.

April 17, 2020

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Steve MacLellan

Ramble On

Tag Archives: environment