‘Dash for Gas’ Takes Off at COP 27:

“As the cleanest hydrocarbon [fossil] fuel,
natural gas is seen as the perfect solution that strikes the right
balance and will continue to play a key role in the future energy mix,”
said Egypt’s petroleum minister, Tarek el-Molla, speaking in Cairo at a
Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) meeting, weeks before climate talks
began in Sharm el-Sheikh.

With COP 27 negotiations in full swing, we want to make sure you–and all those around you–have all the climate news you need.

GECF
members agreed that COP 27 and next year’s COP 28 in United Arab
Emirates present “a great opportunity to make a case for gas in the
energy transition,” reports Climate Home News, citing an official summary of the meeting.

Natural
gas is widely claimed to have lower emissions than other fossil fuel
sources like coal, but the International Energy Agency (IEA) says the
world cannot afford to increase the use of any fossils—including gas—if
there is to be any hope of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above
pre-industrial levels, as outlined in the Paris Agreement.

The Red Wave That Never Materialized:

As of Wednesday evening, it’s still unclear which party will control the
US Congress after Americans voted in their mid-term elections. But, the
results so far point to two key takeaways in my opinion:

1. The
   Republican “Red Wave” never materialized and despite a very, very
   challenging environment for Democrats, it’s likely they will hold onto
   the Senate and only lose the House of Representatives by a few seats.
2. Young
   voters (especially those under 30) saved the Democrats. Motivated by
   issues related to abortion, climate change, and firearms, it looks like
   young voters came out in record numbers for a mid-term election and
   helped prevent that “Red Wave” from materializing.

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop: In two of the world’s warmest years, fires in the northernmost
regions incinerated an area of forest and peatland bigger than Denmark,
and almost as big as Slovakia, to release 150 million tons of carbon
into the atmosphere, concludes a peer-reviewed study released last week by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

And
the scientists warn there could be an exponential relationship between
even tiny advances in temperature and the area at risk from fire. In
2019 and 2020, fires in the Siberian Arctic scorched 47 million
hectares, or 47 thousand square kilometres of land. This adds up to 44%
of all the area burned in the region in the last 40 years.

The
Arctic soils are a natural reservoir of vast amounts of stored carbon.
But as the global thermometer rises, once-waterlogged and frozen
peatland dries and becomes potentially flammable. A few lightning
strikes, a blaze in the boreal forest, and what had once been a carbon
sink becomes a carbon source, as centuries of stored soil carbon goes up
in smoke, methane, and carbon dioxide.

In the course of what used
to be a normal year, Arctic permafrost and tundra soils are calculated
to absorb 100 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, the study
says. In just two very recent years, wildfire actually liberated half as
much again.

Inevitably, a greater burden of atmospheric carbon
means a warmer world, which in turn means an ever greater danger of peat
and timber fires in the Siberian and Canadian Arctic, to drive global
heating to ever more dangerous levels.

New Conservative Communications Director Railed Against ‘Globalists’ and ‘New World Order’ on Blog: The Conservative Party of Canada’s newly appointed director of
communications has strong opinions about “globalists” and “the inception
of a new world order.”

Sarah Fischer, a long-time party staffer and 2019 Conservative candidate under Andrew Scheer, announced her new job on Twitter Monday, pledging to work to “make Canada the freest country on earth.”

Within hours, numerous tweets from earlier this year showing the Conservative staffer expressing support for the convoy occupation of Ottawa, including one video of Fischer blowing a truck horn in front of the Rideau Centre.

Fischer echoed this support in numerous posts on an opinion blog she launched in December 2021 called “Uncancelled.”

Movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground gaining momentum in Canada and abroad | CBC News:

The movement to keep oil and gas in the ground has reached Canada, as Quebec joined the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance
this week — becoming the first North American member of a new group
being launched at the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow that
wants to phase out the production of oil and gas.

Cutting fossil fuel production also means targeting the emissions
when oil and gas are burned. Canada, like other countries in the Paris
Agreement, is only required to report emissions that come from its
territory.

The emissions numbers for the oil and gas sector only
account for emissions from producing, transporting and processing those
fuels in Canada. The emissions from those fuels when they are actually
burned in cars or power plants abroad don’t count toward Canada’s
totals.

“So
most of the fossil fuels that Canada produces, we export and go
somewhere else, and then they’re consumed and they’re burned. And the
emissions associated with that shows up on another country’s tab,” said
Angela Carter, an associate political science professor at the
University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ont., who researches the fossil fuel
industry.

This has led to a growing call to target the production
and supply of oil and gas, rather than just the emissions. Canada’s
current plan to cut emissions from the oil and gas industry relies on
making companies extract the oil more efficiently.