Latest posts in Climate & Clean Energy

Spreading climate messages in the Year of the Water Dragon

By Winnie Hwo, Climate Change Campaigner

More than a decade ago, Chinese New Year was mostly an immigrant affair in Canada. New Canadian families from Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and other parts of Asia would typically celebrate at home or in Chinese restaurants in Vancouver's Chinatown and Richmond, or in Markham, Richmond Hill and Scarborough in the Greater Toronto Region.

Today, Chinese Canadians no longer hold the monopoly on Chinese New Year celebrations. It has now become an intercultural festival for all Canadians to share and enjoy. At the David Suzuki Foundation, the Year of the Water Dragon, which only comes once every 60 years, is shaping up to be a busy year of public engagement, especially with Canada's Chinese language media like Sing Tao Daily and Fairchild Media Group.

Our response to the Obama administration's rejection today of the Keystone XL Pipeline

If the federal government truly wants to strengthen Canada’s economy, we should be diversifying our energy production and pursuing safer, cleaner energy sources (Credit Susan Heller via Flickr).

By Ian Bruce, Team Lead, Climate Change and Clean Energy program

This is a pragmatic decision by the Obama administration and should be a wakeup call to our federal government.

The message is clear: from the outcome of the UN Climate Change Summit in Durban to today's decision, climate change is real and major economies worldwide are moving quickly to address this reality.

They are doing this by investing in training and technology to harness renewable energy sources and gain a larger share of the burgeoning market for cleaner technologies and energy.

Canada needs to recognize this profound shift and broaden its singular focus beyond the tar sands, one of the most polluting sources of fossil fuels in the world.

Better Future Fund — A solution to climate change within reach in B.C.

(Credit: Michael Yat Kit Chung via Flickr)

By Ian Bruce, Meghan O’Connell, Climate Change & Clean Energy Team

Imagine a B.C. with reduced traffic gridlock because public transit service gets better and faster every day. Imagine a B.C. with incentives for new heating and cooling technologies to cut your hydro bills in half. Imagine a B.C. with hybrid or electric cars that are cheaper and more common than gas-guzzlers. Imagine a B.C. where environmental innovation, training and knowledge are at the core of our economy, and the status quo is no longer acceptable. Imagine a B.C. where communities are designed around people and not cars. Imagine a B.C. where green spaces are more common than parking lots.

The good news is that we can build a better B.C., and the way to make this a reality is within reach.

Kyoto and Canada — we are better than this

The Kyoto Protocol was not perfect, but it was leading to progressive action on climate change (Credit: D Sharon Pruitt via Flickr).

Dear friends of the David Suzuki Foundation,

Like all of us at the Foundation, you are likely heartbroken by our government's reckless decision to break its international commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. Coming on the heels of Canada's attempts to scuttle the climate talks in Durban, South Africa, earlier this month, this decision may also leave you feeling angry and ashamed of our leaders. We feel that way, too.

We all understand that our future and that of our children and grandchildren hangs in the balance now and that the scales could be tipped by the resolve—or indifference—of the world leaders who recently came together, for the most part, to figure out ways to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and slow climate change. The world's scientists have been telling us this for decades, and the growing evidence of our warming biosphere, and its increasingly catastrophic impacts, are now the daily fodder of newscasts and weather reports.

The Kyoto Protocol was not perfect, but it was leading to progressive action on climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions have been going down in Europe, and many countries are shifting from polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources. Awareness has grown worldwide about the threat of climate change. Successive Canadian governments, with their focus on a tar sands economy, ensured that we did not meet even the weak targets that they set. In fact, Canada's emissions have risen by 30 per cent over 1990 levels, leaving us way above our target of reducing levels by six per cent by 2012.

And, make no mistake, the world has been watching.

Canada's poor performance at the climate talks in Durban and its decision to become the first country to pull out of the international legal agreement have drawn criticism from people worldwide—and rightly so. That our government would be willing to sacrifice human lives and our future for the sake of short-term profits from a polluting and non-renewable resource is a slap in the face not only to Canadians but to people everywhere.

This is not hyperbole. Climate change and its disastrous effects—droughts, heat waves, flooding, spread of disease—are already killing 300,000 people a year and driving many more into poverty. Hundreds of thousands are becoming refugees as such impacts make their homelands uninhabitable. Experts believe that up to a billion people could become refugees in coming years if the trend continues. Many plants and animals—crucial to our own health and well-being—are going extinct as climate change wreaks havoc on their habitat.

But Canada is much more than its federal government. And our economy is much more than just the oil industry. Canada is you and me and provincial and municipal government leaders. It is businesspeople and union members and retired people and children. It is all of us. And we are making a difference. Some provincial governments have implemented plans to reduce emissions, spur economic activity in the green energy sector and slow climate change. B.C. and Quebec have implemented carbon taxes, Quebec is planning to cap and reduce industrial emissions, and Ontario has its Green Energy Act, a game-changing piece of legislation. Some municipal governments are taking climate change seriously, too. Vancouver's Greenest City Action Plan includes policies to increase the number of people who cycle or use transit rather than cars and to make homes and buildings more energy efficient.