Climate Disinformation Campaign was Birthed in Canada, Journalist Finds:

The investigative reporter recently explained his rationale for the
book at a talk held by the University of British Columbia’s
Sustainability Hub: “I hate being lied to and bullsh**ed—I’m sure most
of us do—especially by people in power who know what they’re doing,” he
said.

Dembicki said he was inspired by an Los Angeles Times
investigation that uncovered similar tactics used by ExxonMobil to
control the narrative around climate change—but he also recognized that
most of the investigative work has been focused on the United States. As
an Albertan living and working in the U.S. he was uniquely positioned
to write from a Canadian perspective, so he began digging into publicly
available documents uncovered and catalogued by disinformation
experts—including buried research, private letters to heads of state,
and the personal emails of public figures.

He discovered that the
lie at the heart of disinformation about climate change—that fixing the
climate crisis would mean certain economic destruction—originated
largely in Canada. This revelation came from a 1993 report commissioned
by Imperial Oil, the Canadian arm of Exxon, which was “probably the most
shocking and infuriating thing” he came across while poring over
hundreds of pages of early research on the climate crisis produced by
Big Oil.

The report showed that Imperial knew the causes of
climate change and took its research one step further, developing
sophisticated economic analyses on climate solutions at a time when
global heating was barely a blip on the public radar. Imperial
determined that a national price on carbon emissions in Canada would
result in “approximate stabilization of emissions” without major impact
to the economy.

But such a climate solution would be bad for
Imperial’s own tar sands/oil sands profits, likely costing the company
upwards of C$900 million. So the company opted to bury the research and
create a list of talking points aimed at understating the severity of
the crisis and making climate solutions look economically reckless in
the media.

Mining industry digs into alternative methods as climate risks rise | CBC News:

In the North, some mines risk leaking acid if the permafrost melts,
while across Canada heavier rainfall will add strain to tailings dams
and a lack of it could throw operations.

While no strangers to
extreme weather, the growing risks from climate change are forcing the
mining industry to take a hard look at their methods and how to prepare
for the worst. Many of the most prudent actions to minimize risk are,
however, also more costly, meaning that while some have taken them on,
not everyone has followed suit.

“This is a serious and emerging problem,” said Jamie Kneen, Canada program co-lead at advocacy group MiningWatch Canada.

Kneen
said his biggest area of concern is around how mining companies manage
the waste they generate and the dams they use to contain it. Companies
are increasingly digging up lower concentrations of metals, meaning
there is more waste to deal with after. And while many mines last less
than a decade, the tailings they generate are a much longer-term
problem.

“We’ve got, you know, tailings dams that are getting
bigger and bigger at the same time as the climate risk is getting
bigger,” said Kneen.

Studies Reject ‘Opportunistic Arguments’ for More Canadian Oil:

And the argument that the world needs more Canadian oil and gas, is torpedoed by the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 2022 World Energy Outlook.

The
IEA’s latest findings are particularly bad news for those claiming that
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which led to a sharp reduction of gas
exports to Europe, calls for more freshly dug up Canadian fossil fuels.

Examining
energy disruptions rippling around the world, the fallout from Russia’s
war included, the IEA does “anticipate a global reshuffling of
production from existing oil and gas fields over the next few years to
meet urgent energy needs,” Donner and Harrison say.

What it does not anticipate is the need for any new oil and gas fields. The war in Ukraine, “coupled with the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, and the falling costs of renewables, will hasten the transition away from oil and gas,” the two authors write.

“It is telling that when the Chancellor of Germany, the country most dependent on Russian gas, visited Canada this year, he sought green hydrogen exports, not LNG.”

ANALYSIS | The Bank of Canada is warning Canadians to brace for a rough winter | CBC News: Canadian consumers aren’t the only ones who are frustrated. Economist Jim Stanford from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says the central bank has pushed rates too high, too quickly. Central banks around the world are looking at the current state of inflation, he said, and assuming both the cause and the solution are the same as the last inflation crisis in the 1970s and 80s.

“Policymakers at the Bank of Canada and the government and academia, I
think, are unduly obsessed with what happened in the 1970s. It’s like a
nightmare,” Stanford said in an interview with CBC News.

In the
1970s, real wages were rising along with prices. This time, real wages
have fallen. In the 1970s, corporate profits were falling. Right now,
corporate profits have surged to record levels.

“So this is the
exact opposite of what we experienced in the 1970s. And pulling out a
50-year-old recipe and applying it again to today’s situation is
absolutely inappropriate,” Stanford said.

• Economy added 108,000 new jobs last month — but cost of living still leaving many workers behind

• Bank of Canada raises interest rate again — but the pace of hikes may be slowing

He says the central bank should pause its relentless rate hikes and see if inflation really does need more of a push.

Watching the world burn:

As the planet reels from unprecedented
heatwaves, floods, wildfires and droughts, you may be feeling a rising
sense of unease or even panic.

My own “Oh Shit!” moment
came in early 2009, two years after I began writing on the science and
geopolitics of climate change for Agence France-Presse.  I had reported
on scores of peer-reviewed studies, talked to scientists, attended UN
climate summits, and interviewed Pacific islanders whose tiny nations
were sinking beneath the waves.  But the knee-buckling realisation that
unchecked global warming would upend civilisation had not yet hit me in
the gut and left me gasping for air.

That sucker-punch came at a conference in
Oxford where a wide range of experts were asked to imagine a planet that
had warmed four degrees Celsius. The tableau that emerged was a waking
nightmare. It left me feeling as if I were in possession of terrifying
knowledge that others somehow failed to see.