Where’s the money?: Questions loom over need for better foreign policy funding
Following Canada’s failure to win a seat on the UN Security Council, foreign affairs experts and former diplomats are raising the concern that funding for Global Affairs is insufficient despite budget increases over the last four years. Former Chrétien-era cabinet ministers and past diplomats Allan Rock and Sergio Marchi penned an op-ed this week in […]
Climate is still changing while Canada courts the UN
CHEALSEA, QUE.—The headline was so shocking, it looked at first like fake news. Temperatures reached 30 C inside the Arctic Circle last week, in a place called Nizhnyaya Pesha in Siberia. Sadly, the story is too true, a dramatic marker in an abnormally warm winter in northern Russia and the continuation of a long-standing trend […]
Parallel lessons from COVID-19 and climate change
A common thread that runs through the many opinion and editorial articles that emerged following the onset of COVID around the world is the insight that the pandemic has exposed the extent of social vulnerabilities and inequalities that surround us. As it turns out, the slogan that “we are all in this together” has not […]
Think system change for Canada’s low-carbon reboot
VANCOUVER—There is growing momentum for a low-carbon reboot of our high-carbon economy as we emerge from a pandemic-induced shutdown. Our COVID-19 experience invites us to reimagine an alternative future with vastly different rules and social norms that place public health and collective well-being above all. Unlike the economic response to COVID-19, climate action over the […]
A smarter say to healing the environment
This much we know well: Canada, like most countries, is dependent on fossil fuels for most of its energy. Fossil fuels in turn are the largest source of greenhouse gases from human activity and these emissions are causing pervasive changes in the Earth’s climate, posing large risks to a fragile ecosystem that needs much healing. […]
Canada’s at a crossroads, we should choose right path
Canadians have been shaken by this pandemic. It has exposed the gaps in our health-care system and our social safety net, and it has intensified the growing inequalities in our society. It has brought into sharp focus how vulnerable we all are when disaster hits. Most of all, it has showed us that we need […]
Wind and solar groups unite in new national renewable energy association ‘during this period of historical global transformation’
As the coronavirus restrictions continue to ease across the country, a new national renewable energy association is getting ready to push to ensure “renewable energy and energy storage play a central role in transforming Canada’s energy mix during this period of historical global transformation,” reads a press release from the Canadian Renewable Energy Association. On […]
We may be in uncharted waters, but we aren’t lost at sea
As Canada navigates the COVID-19 pandemic from immediate response, to short-term relief, and, finally, long-term recovery, its leaders will face increasing scrutiny as to how much money is going where, and to what extent it will help us build back better. If this all feels vaguely familiar, it’s because we’ve seen it before. When the […]
Environment is not an externality; it’s the core of human economy
Relegated to a mere “externality” of our globalized economy for decades, nature has made a stark eruption to remind us of its importance on this yearly World Environment Day. The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented abrupt interruption of globalized human activity directly linked to our ill-treatment of nature. Greater human encroachment on natural habitats increases […]
Cutting our emissions isn’t enough, we’ll need geoengineering
LONDON, U.K.—Human beings respond well to a crisis that is familiar, especially if it is also imminent. They don’t do nearly as well when the threat is unfamiliar and still apparently quite distant. Consider our response to the current coronavirus threat. Countries in East Asia with recent experience of similar viruses (SARS, etc.) immediately responded […]
