Scientists sound the alarm as the world briefly smashes through 2-degree warming limit for the first time
Angela Dewan and Laura Paddison, CNN
Mon, November 20, 2023
Tercio Teixera/AFP/Getty Images
The Earth’s temperature briefly rose above a crucial threshold that scientists have been warning for decades could have catastrophic and irreversible impacts on the planet and its ecosystems, data shared by a prominent climate scientist shows.
For the first time, the global average temperature on Friday last week was more than 2 degrees Celsius hotter than levels before industrialization, according to preliminary data shared on X by Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, based in Europe.
The threshold was crossed just temporarily and does not mean that the world is at a permanent state of warming above 2 degrees, but it is a symptom of a planet getting steadily hotter and hotter, and moving towards a longer-term situation where climate crisis impacts will be difficult — in some cases impossible — to reverse.
“Our best estimate is that this was the first day when global temperature was more than 2°C above 1850-1900 (or pre-industrial) levels, at 2.06°C,” she wrote.
Burgess said in her post that global temperatures on Friday averaged 1.17 degrees above 1991-2020 levels, making it the warmest November 17 on record. But compared to pre-industrial times, before humans began burning fossil fuels on a large scale and altering the Earth’s natural climate, the temperature was 2.06 degrees warmer.
The breach of 2 degrees on Friday came two weeks before the start of the UN COP28 climate conference in Dubai, where countries will take stock of their progress towards the Paris Climate Agreement pledge to limit global warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, with an ambition of limiting it to 1.5 degrees.
One day above 2 degrees of warming “does not mean that the Paris Agreement has been breached,” Burgess told CNN, “but highlights how we are approaching those internationally agreed limits. We can expect to see increasing frequency of 1.5 degree and 2 degree days over the coming months and years.”
Copernicus’ data is preliminary and will require weeks to be confirmed with real-life observations.
The world already looks on track to breach 1.5 degrees of warming on a longer-term basis in the next few years, a threshold beyond which scientists say humans and ecosystems will struggle to adapt.
A UN report published Monday showed that even if countries carried out their current emissions-reduction pledges, the world would reach between 2.5 and 2.9 degrees of warming sometime this century.
But 1.5 is not a cliff edge for the Earth — every fraction of a degree it warms above that, the worse the impacts will be. Warming to 2 degrees puts far more of the population at risk of deadly extreme weather and increases the likelihood of the planet reaching irreversible tipping points, such as the collapse of the polar ice sheets and the mass death of coral reefs.
Richard Allan, professor of climate science at the University of Reading in the UK, called the breach a “canary in the coalmine” which “underscores the urgency of tackling greenhouse gas emissions.”
But he added that it was “entirely expected that single days will surpass 2 degrees above pre-industrial well before the actual 2 degrees Celsius target is breached over many years.”
The data comes on heels of the hottest 12 months on record, and after a year of extreme weather events, supercharged by the climate crisis, including fires in Hawaii, floods in northern Africa and storms in the Mediterranean, all of which have claimed lives.
Scientists are increasingly expressing alarm that data on temperatures are exceeding their predictions.
A string of reports checking the health of the Earth’s climate and humans’ actions to combat it in recent weeks show that the planet is careening toward a dangerous level of warming, and not doing enough to mitigate or adapt to its impacts.
A UN report last week found that according to countries’ climate plans, planet-heating pollution in 2030 will still be 9% higher than it was in 2010. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world needs to decrease emissions by 45% by the end of this decade compared to 2010 to have any hope of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. An increase of 9% means that target is way off.
Another UN report also found that the world is planning to blow the fossil fuels production limit that would keep a lid on global heating. By 2030, countries plan to produce more than twice the limit of fossil fuels that would cap warming at 1.5 degrees.
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PUBLIC OWNERSHIP SAVES THE DAY
SHA to buy Regina Lutheran Home to prevent its closure
CBCFri, November 17, 2023
Residents and staff at Regina Lutheran Home will get to stay after the Saskatchewan Health Authority and provincial government stepped in to buy the home. (CBC News - image credit)The Saskatchewan Health Authority is purchasing the Regina Lutheran Home from its operator, Eden Care Communities, allowing the care home to remain open.Eden Care informed residents in September that it intended to shut the care home down as of April 2024. The SHA said last month it was not going to step in and buy the home, but would assist in relocating the 62 residents.The impending closure and moving of residents prompted family members, the union representing staff and the Opposition NDP to hold a news conference in early October. Residents' families came to the legislature a few weeks later to tell their stories and lobby the government to intervene.The SHA said it had decided not to purchase the Lutheran Home property because the building is at the end of its lifespan and would require "potentially significant repair work."On Friday, the SHA announced that it would takeover the home with government support. Eden Care will continue to operate it until the transition is complete."After hearing from residents and families, I asked the Ministry of Health to work with the SHA to reconsider the viability of purchasing Regina Lutheran Home," said Seniors Minister Tim McLeod in a news release."After positive discussions with Eden Care, an agreement has been reached that will keep Regina Lutheran Home open."The SHA told families in a letter it would contact those who have already moved out of the home and will offer them the chance to return if they wish.Families told the media over the last month that the impending closure was stressful and would negatively impact the residents forced to leave.Val Schalme's father and brother are residents at Regina Lutheran Home."We're very concerned that they won't end up together. They're very emotionally dependent upon each other. They need to be together, they need each other," Schalme said last month.
Val Schalme's elderly father and 60-year-old brother who has mental and physical disabilities, are currently residents at Regina Lutheran Home. She fears that they will be separated because of the move.Val Schalme's elderly father and 60-year-old brother, who has mental and physical disabilities, are residents at Regina Lutheran Home. She spoke to the media in October about concerns that her family members could be separated. (CBC News)"We recognize the stress the last few months may have put on you and you may still have many questions. As more details become known through this process, we are committed to keeping you updated," the SHA said in a letter to families.McLeod, the seniors minister, said it was important to keep the home open while the government has committed to adding 600 long-term care beds in Regina."Keeping Regina Lutheran Home open will support the health-care system's ability to meet the need for long-term care in Regina while work to add more beds continues."
PEI
Islander encouraging his neighbours to get their homes tested for radon
CBC
Mon, November 20, 2023
Wade Norquay has personally seen the impact of radon on patients that he works with as a respiratory therapist. (Shane Hennessey/CBC - image credit)
Wade Norquay has personally seen how radon endangers people's lives.
Norquay is a respiratory therapist, and has worked with patients who have been diagnosed with lung cancer linked to exposure to the radioactive gas.
Radon is colourless, odourless and has no taste. The gas is found in the environment, created by the natural breakdown of uranium in soil, rock and water.
Health Canada estimates that about 16 per cent of lung cancer deaths are related to radon exposure in homes.
"A lot of people are really surprised that they got cancer, lung cancer specifically, because they've never smoked, and they haven't lived with someone who smoked, and they don't understand what's going on," Norquay said.
"In a number of these cases, it's because radon has been detected in their house."
One of the radon detectors about to be used in the 100 Test Kit Challenge on P.E.I. (Shane Hennessey/CBC )
Norquay is now co-ordinating a radon testing program in Mermaid, P.E.I. — where his family lives — as part of the "100 Test Kit Challenge" offered by Take Action on Radon.
"It was created to try to get communities engaged in radon, as well as getting a snapshot nationally about what's happening in individual communities," he said.
"Radon can be very specific and localized, as opposed to generalized in provinces."
Norquay said people use a device that looks like a small, black puck to detect the gas. He said it should be placed somewhere in the lowest part of the house for 100 days if residents spend at least four hours a day there.
Radon can enter a home through cracks in the foundation. (Axel Tardieu/CBC)
Norquay will collect the detectors and send them to be tested. Then, he will share the results with his neighbours.
He said if a test came back positive for radon, the resident would be given information about abatement — usually some form of venting system.
National challenge
The Canadian Lung Association has a new program offering financial assistance for financial mitigation to people who are in low to moderate income levels or that have been diagnosed with lung cancer. (Take Action on Radon )
Take Action on Radon is funded by Health Canada to raise awareness of radon's health impacts across the country.
Program manager Pam Warkentin said this year marks the first time the 100 Test Kit Challenge is coming to P.E.I.
"This is our sixth year of the program, so we've been able to distribute kits in over 150 communities across Canada from coast to coast," said Warkentin, who is also executive director of the Canadian Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists.
"We're super excited to be able to include Prince Edward Island on our list of provinces."
Warkentin said the challenge provides important information about radon levels across the country.
"We know that the province has been testing their schools. But we really have very little data about residential testing in homes," she said.
"That's why it's really great to be able to partner and provide more tests and create a project like this where we can create a summary result as well."
Getting rid of radon
Warkentin said her group can provide information to homeowners on how to rid their homes of radon if their report comes back above the recommended levels.
A radon testing kit from the Saskatchewan Lung Association. (Mike Zartler/CBC News )
In some specific circumstances, it can even provide them with up to $1,500 in funding to do that.
"The Canadian Lung Association has a national grant, so it's available for everyone across the country," Warkentin said.
"It is specifically available for people who are in low to moderate income levels or that have been diagnosed with lung cancer."
Warkentin said the test kit challenge is full for the fall of 2023, but taking applications for 2024.
Testing workplaces?
In a statement to CBC News, a spokesperson for the Chief Public Health Office said the CPHO and an Atlantic Radon Working Group member from Health P.E.I., will be meeting with Health Canada later this year to discuss an Island-specific radon action plan.
Warkentin said an awareness campaign is a first step, but that more is needed.
"Workplaces to be tested.... People can test their home, but they really rely on someone else to test their workplace, and they often don't have control over that," she said.
"A province can start by testing their own workplaces and then by providing some guidance for other workplaces."
Robert MacDonald, president and CEO of Lung NSPEI, said his organization has also been working to raise awareness of radon in the province.
He said they have provided some MLAs with battery-operated monitors to share with constituents, as well as 40 units that can be borrowed through the public library.
He said his association is also looking at a testing program in daycares, similar to one offered in Nova Scotia.
If we can do anything to prevent it, I think that's super important.
- Wade Norquay
Norquay said lung cancer is a "devastating" disease that's typically diagnosed too late.
He said all he wants is to prevent it.
"Lung cancer is the leading cause of death when it comes to all cancers, both male and female," Norquay said.
"If we can do anything to prevent it, I think that's super important."
Tidal power turbine owned by bankrupt company washes ashore on Brier Island
CBC
Fri, November 17, 2023
A tidal power turbine owned by Sustainable Marine Energy broke loose from the Westport Harbour on Brier Island, N.S., and washed ashore roughly a kilometre away. (Brier Island Seasalt Company/Facebook - image credit)
A tidal turbine owned by a company already financially on the rocks washed ashore on Brier Island, N.S., Friday morning.
Residents and fishermen came across the machinery that ran aground near Sweetcake Cove after breaking loose from the Westport Harbour.
"I was like, 'Oh no,'" said Jess Tudor, who was walking his dogs when he noticed the turbine on the shore. "This is not good."
Tudor said the turbine floated about a kilometre from where it was docked but didn't appear to cause any significant damage.
"It was quite close to a lot of our infrastructure," he said. "It was lucky that it didn't take out the wharf or anything."
Failed Bay of Fundy project
The turbine had been sitting idle for a long stretch without being checked on, said the Westport Harbour master.
"I'm not so sure that the powers that be realized how strong the tides are and what the strain is on that platform," said Penny Graham.
The turbine is owned by Sustainable Marine Energy, which announced earlier this year it filed for bankruptcy.
The company hoped to create power from the Bay of Fundy's massive tides but its chief executive said there were too many regulatory hurdles from the federal government.
Fishing boats were able to pull the turbine platform off the rocks and tow it back to Westport Harbour.
Fishing boats were able to pull the turbine platform off the rocks and tow it back to Westport Harbour. (Brier Island Seasalt Company/Facebook)
Sustainability Marine Energy lost between $30 million and $40 million on the project, according to the chief executive. He said the losses would likely discourage other tidal power investments.
There are three other potential developers still involved in the test facility operated by the non-profit Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy, near Parrsboro, N.S.
A federal task force that was created earlier this year to explore challenges to developing tidal power is scheduled to meet on Monday.
Next steps
Graham said the turbine was towed off the rocks Friday afternoon and is back in the harbour and divers are going to inspect the moorings to see how it may have broken loose.
Since the company that owns the turbine has gone bankrupt, she said she's not sure if it or the federal government is responsible for removing the machine.
"Who's checking the moorings to make sure it doesn't go ashore and clean out somebody's shop or something? You know, we were lucky this time," Graham said. "May not be so lucky the next time."
Federal government loans EverWind Fuels $125M for proposed green hydrogen plant
CBC
Fri, November 17, 2023
EverWind Fuels in Point Tupper, N.S., is getting a $125-milion loan from the federal government to help the company build a proposed green hydrogen production plant. (Tom Ayers/CBC - image credit)
The federal Liberal government is making a $125-million loan to a proposed green hydrogen facility in Nova Scotia's Strait of Canso area.
The proponent, EverWind Fuels, says the funding makes the project closer to reality than any other of its kind in the Western hemisphere.
More than 50 municipal and business officials from around Cape Breton and the mainland near the Strait crowded into the Port Hawkesbury civic centre late Friday afternoon.
There were cheers as Sean Fraser, Liberal MP for Central Nova, announced the funding.
He and EverWind CEO Trent Vichie said the project is expected to bring thousands of jobs to Cape Breton and Nova Scotia.
"Hopefully, it can mean that the region is a leader in the world and hopefully it brings some folks who've been working out west back home," Vichie said.
EverWind CEO Trent Vichie says the company plans to use solar power at its proposed plant and wind power from Colchester County to extract hydrogen from water. (Tom Ayers/CBC)
Vichie said the company has invested $200 million already and the federal loan will help further the design of a hydrogen production facility in Richmond County's Point Tupper Industrial Park.
That's where the company bought a petrochemical storage plant with access to rail and pipelines to a ship-loading facility in the Strait.
Vichie said some site preparation work has already begun at the facility in Point Tupper.
The plan is to use wind and solar energy sources to extract hydrogen from the water in nearby Landrie Lake and to convert the hydrogen to energy for export.
EverWind's large wind turbine projects in Colchester County are going through the regulatory process and, along with solar panels at the planned production facility, the $3-billion project will produce cheap green hydrogen fuel, Vichie said.
Fraser said clean energy will then be available for export to other countries, including Germany, which has already signed agreements with Canada.
He said talks are also underway for the development of storage and distribution systems for green energy use in Nova Scotia, but Vichie said that would constitute a second phase of the development.
Liberal Housing Minister Sean Fraser says there is another green hydrogen project nearby at Bear Head, but EverWind's project is farther along in planning and development. (Tom Ayers/CBC)
Another green hydrogen project is being proposed not far away in Point Tupper at the Bear Head site.
Fraser said the federal government would consider investing in that project as well, but EverWind is leading the pack in terms of readiness.
"This is actually the most advanced green hydrogen project in the Western hemisphere," the MP and federal housing minister said.
"There is not another one on this side of the planet, let alone this side of the Strait of Canso, that compares."
Power grid investment
Vichie said EverWind plans to use solar panels at its production plant and is working with governments and Nova Scotia Power to bring electricity from its proposed wind farms in Colchester County, about 200 kilometres away, to the Point Tupper site.
He said that will require the company to invest in the province's power grid, but it will also add more renewable sources to the system as it transitions away from fossil fuels.
"It's part of the cost of doing business, but I think it works as a win-win for both," Vichie said.
Fraser said it will make the green energy more costly, but it would still make economic sense.
Cape Breton-Canso Liberal MP Mike Kelloway says the federal loan for EverWind is a vote of confidence in Cape Breton and in Nova Scotia. (Tom Ayers/CBC)
"When you're dealing with a multi-billion-dollar private sector investment, the cost of transmission is going to be a small component compared to the extraordinary magnitude of an investment of this nature," he said.
"In Nova Scotia, it's going to put thousands of people to work."
Vichie said there's plenty of investment capital available for green energy production, but there aren't enough plants in operation.
The real problem is that green hydrogen is an emerging technology and government regulations have not yet caught up to the demand, he said.
"We have three investment banks working with us," Vichie said. "That is the least of my worries. It's more just getting through the development permits ready to build."
EverWind expects to make a final investment decision early in the new year, but is already spending money on the assumption the project will go ahead, he said.
SaskPower, Ontario Power Generation sign deal to co-ordinate on small modular nuclear reactorsEXPERIMENTAL NOT COMMERCIAL YETCBCMon, November 20, 2023
Ontario Minister of Energy Todd Smith and Saskatchewan Minister in charge of SaskPower Dustin Duncan helped announce an agreement between the province's Crown corporations to push forward the development of small modular reactor technology. (Alexander Quon/CBC - image credit)Saskatchewan and Ontario say they've taken another step toward implementing small modular reactor (SMR) technology in both provinces.Dustin Duncan, Saskatchewan's minister responsible for SaskPower, was joined by Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith Monday morning as SaskPower announced it had signed a master services agreement with Ontario Power Generation and its subsidiary Laurentis Energy Partners.The five-year deal between the two Crown corporations will allow them to co-ordinate the development of a Canadian fleet of small modular nuclear reactors, Duncan said."To have an agreement that allows us to tap into that expertise and knowledge from a jurisdiction and organizations that have a great deal of expertise and history in the nuclear sector is critically important for Saskatchewan to carry forward with," he said.Ontario is currently building the first of four SMRs at its nuclear facility in Darlington.SaskPower has identified Estevan, located in the province's southeast, and Elbow, located about midway between Saskatoon and Regina, as two sites that could potentially host SMRs.A final decision on the location to build one SMR is not expected until late 2024, SaskPower CEO Rupen Pandya told media."We've had ongoing consultations with communities and members in those communities regarding those sites," Pandya said.
An artist's rendering of the SMR technology proposed for Ontario's Darlington location. Saskatchewan plans on exploring the same type of reactor.An artist's rendering of the SMR technology proposed for Ontario's Darlington location. Saskatchewan plans on exploring the same type of reactor. (Ontario Power Generation)What is an SMR?SMRs generate nuclear power. The idea is to help fuel the transition to net-zero emissions and meet the federal government's climate goals.Saskatchewan and three other provinces — Ontario, New Brunswick and Alberta — have led the charge on developing SMR technology to help supply power in their respective provinces.Like their name implies, SMRs are much smaller than traditional nuclear reactors.While a conventional nuclear reactor generates about 1,000 megawatts of energy, SMRs generate between 200 and 300 megawatts — enough to power about 300,000 homes.A final decision on whether to build a SMR in Saskatchewan is not expected until 2029.The GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 is the type of reactor identified for development in Saskatchewan. It's the same model chosen by Ontario Power Generation.If approved, construction could begin as early as 2030, with the first SMR coming on line sometime in 2034. Additional facilities could follow.
Suing the world to save it. Children pioneer a right to a secure future.
Stephanie HanesThe Christian Science Monitor
Mon, November 20, 2023
Ann Hermes/File
LONG READ
In June 2023, the hottest June ever recorded in a summer that would break global heat records, 16 young people walked into a courthouse in Helena, Montana, and insisted that they had the right to a stable climate.
The moment was, in the United States, unprecedented.
For years, youth around the world had been suing governments – state, regional, federal – and demanding more action by policymakers to address what scientists worldwide agree is an environmental crisis directly caused by human behavior. By 2022 there had been 34 global climate cases brought on behalf of plaintiffs ages 25 and younger – part of a global climate litigation explosion, according to Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
And in some places, young people had begun to make headway. A German court in 2021, for instance, agreed with youth that the government needed to do more to reduce emissions. Colombia’s Supreme Court agreed with young plaintiffs in 2018 that officials needed to better protect the Amazon rainforest, in part because of climate concerns.
But in the U.S., the country that has sent more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere than any other nation, young people had failed to get courts to rule in their favor.
That was about to change.
In the courtroom that day, the young people were asking not for any financial reward, but for the government of Montana to uphold its Constitution, one of a handful in the U.S. that explicitly protects both current and future citizens’ right to a healthful environment. There was Rikki Held, the oldest of the Montana youth plaintiffs at 22, whose name was on the lawsuit and whose family’s ranch was increasingly threatened by fires and floods. There were Lander and Badge Busse, teenage brothers whose schoolmates taunted them about this case, but who’d decided they needed to be part of this lawsuit to protect the wilderness where they loved to fish and hunt. And there was Grace Gibson-Snyder, a Missoula 19-year-old. Her ancestors had come to this big-sky state in a covered wagon. But Ms. Gibson-Snyder worried about whether this land would be habitable for her own children – if she felt it were morally appropriate to have any. She wore her favorite boots to trial, for good luck.
They and their fellow plaintiffs were represented by an Oregon-based law firm called Our Children’s Trust, which has helped young people across the country bring constitutional climate cases.
Opposing them was the state of Montana, represented by an attorney general whose spokesperson had called the lawsuit “outrageous” and “political theater” – a case of well-intentioned children exploited by an outside interest group.
For the better part of the next two weeks, the two sides presented their cases.
Then youth and legal experts waited anxiously for the judge’s decision. Held v. Montana, many said, was a crucial moment in what they saw as a legal transformation building around the world. Members of the Climate Generation – as we’re calling the cohort born since 1989, when the world became both climatically unstable and increasingly focused on children’s rights – were working to define what it meant to have rights as a young person. And in particular, they were working to define what it meant to have rights while looking at a future that scientists agree will be shaped by what older people have done to the atmosphere. A ruling in Montana could dramatically impact this global effort.
“The Montana case is incredibly important,” says Shaina Sadai, the Hitz fellow for litigation-relevant science at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Young people involved with climate action, she adds, “are very internationally connected. They are very much in touch with each other. ... A win anywhere for any of them is a win for all of them. It’s that global youth solidarity.”
Which is why Dallin Rima, a 19-year-old plaintiff in a different climate lawsuit, turned up the radio when he heard that Montana District Judge Kathy Seeley had released her verdict.
Mr. Rima is part of a group of Utah youth who have sued their state, arguing that its promotion of fossil fuels violates their constitutional rights to life, health, and safety. He’d been following what was going on in Montana, the same way young climate plaintiffs from Oregon to the South Pacific to Portugal had been keeping track. While he knew firsthand about the challenges of the legal system, about the delays and disappointments, he had allowed himself to hope.
He was driving to his grandmother’s house outside Salt Lake City, listening to NPR, when the news came on. It was a good thing nobody else was in the car, Mr. Rima says. Because as he listened to the newscast, he began to “express himself,” as he puts it. Loudly.
The judge had ruled in the young plaintiffs’ favor. Specifically, this meant that Montana policymakers had violated the young people’s constitutional rights by ignoring the climate impacts of their energy decisions. But Mr. Rima understood that there were far broader implications.
By siding with the young Montanans, Judge Seeley explicitly connected the right to a clean environment with the right to a stable climate. She gave a judicial stamp of approval to climate science. And she proved that, in the face of what many young people see as politicians’ ineptitude in addressing climate change, the judiciary is a branch of government that might still be able to protect their futures.
“I’ve learned not to get my hopes up. But I was just shocked, ecstatic to hear that they had won,” Mr. Rima says. “It was a really powerful moment. ... It feels like our work isn’t in vain.”
Children’s rights and climate science
By the time the young people in Montana first filed their complaint against the state in 2020, the number of climate cases worldwide was already starting to increase dramatically. This was in part an offshoot of the growing youth activism around global warming during the late 2010s, with groups such as Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future beginning to stage school climate strikes and other protests around the world.
But the increase in these cases was also a reflection of two big developments: the evolution of children’s rights and of the science of climate change.
In 1989 – the beginning of the Climate Generation – world leaders agreed to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), an effort that both defined “children” as those under the age of 18 and called on nations to protect children’s access to things like safety, education, and freedom of movement. (Every country in the world except the U.S. has ratified this convention.)
Meanwhile, during those same years, there was a growing understanding of – and attention to – the problem of climate change.
In many ways, the youth effort to bring climate concerns into the judicial system was a merging of these two understandings – that they had rights, and that climate change was threatening those rights.
At the heart of this argument was a cruel scientific fact: The situation was only going to get worse, and young people were going to disproportionately face the consequences.
Global warming is cumulative. In other words, heat-trapping gases don’t just go away; they hang out in the atmosphere for centuries. So today’s emissions are joining those of the 1900s, trapping even more solar heat inside the Earth’s atmosphere. This means that some amount of global heating is inevitable, scientists say. Regardless of how the world adjusts today, those people born at the turn of the century will live in a world fundamentally environmentally different from what those born in 1960, or even 1980, experienced.
But how different is still very much a question. Scientists have modeled different scenarios of warming, based on whether or not the world quickly ramps down greenhouse gas emissions. And the difference in what it will mean to live on Earth is profound.
This is not only because the average temperature will get higher the more greenhouse gases go into the air. For such a life-giving planet, Earth’s environmental systems, which include everything from ocean currents and storms to heat waves and ice flows, are delicately balanced. With every added fraction of a degree comes the potential for a cascade of climatic impacts, from the sort of heat waves that cooked the Northern Hemisphere this summer to the supercharged storms that have battered everywhere from Florida to Mexico to Mozambique. A rapid decrease in greenhouse gas emissions today would make a tremendous difference in the severity and frequency of climate catastrophes in the future – and, by extension, the quality of life for young people as they reach adulthood.
And yet, the world has not lowered its greenhouse gas emissions. It has done the opposite.
“Half of all emissions have happened since 1990,” says Dr. Sadai of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s not only getting worse, but it’s getting worse at a faster and faster rate.”
This is not, young people know, because policymakers have been unaware of the consequences. For the past 20 years, politicians around the world have been making – and then breaking – promises about addressing what they have all agreed is a dire global situation.
In 1992, the United Nations created what was called the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. It was basically a statement that recognized both the reality as well as the danger of climate change, and a commitment to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, with developed countries leading the way. Over the next years there were more gatherings and pledges, such as the Kyoto Protocol in 1995, which legally bound developed countries to reduce their emissions, and the Paris Agreement in 2015, when countries again pledged to really get serious about the problem.
To Alex Loznak, who was growing up during those years on a southern Oregon farm that’s been in his family for generations, all of this was a sign that when it came to his future, he could not trust policymakers.
The legal victory “lights a path forward”
Mr. Loznak, now 26, had become interested in environmental issues and climate change early, first as a home-taught elementary schooler, and then as an older child who noticed what the rising temperatures and unpredictable weather were doing to his family’s hazelnut and plum trees. By the time he went to high school in Roseburg, Oregon, he was leading environmental and climate awareness clubs, and was monitoring what elected officials and diplomats were saying and doing – or not doing – about climate change.
“I remember watching a few really big policy failures to put together a coherent response to climate change,” he says. “One of those was [the U.N.] Copenhagen climate change summit, which people had expected to be this huge global turning point. There was going to be a treaty to deal with climate change, and every nation was going to step up to the plate. And that for the most part fell apart. This was in 2009.”
He also remembers watching as Congress tried – and failed – to pass a federal law to deal with climate change.
“It started to get me thinking about what would be some other pathways to deal with this climate change problem,” he says.
A few years later, he came across the writings of a legal scholar named Mary Christina Wood. She had written a book called “Nature’s Trust,” which argued that traditional environmental law – typically focused on regulations and piecemeal enforcement – failed to live up to modern-day ecological problems. She proposed using the public trust doctrine, a legal principle establishing that certain natural and cultural resources belong to the public under government stewardship, as a way to tackle big environmental issues like climate change.
It was a novel approach, and one that had a lot of legal pushback. But Mr. Loznak was fascinated. Not long after learning about Dr. Wood’s work, he heard about Our Children’s Trust, which was looking for plaintiffs in Oregon to join a climate change case against the federal government – and was using theories similar to the ones he had read about.
Maybe, he thought, a court case would be the way to get real action on climate change.
He wrote to the lawyers and eventually became a plaintiff in Juliana v. U.S., the first youth climate case to move forward against the U.S. government. Mr. Loznak and other plaintiffs filed their first complaint in 2015.
They are still involved in legal proceedings and have mostly faced setbacks. Climate, the courts kept saying, was not a judicial matter.
So Mr. Loznak, too, was interested in what would happen in Montana. He followed the news reports and press releases about the trial. When he heard about the judgment, he felt “gratified,” he says, but as much for what he saw as judicial functionality as for the win itself.
“It was pretty clear that the plaintiffs put on a much stronger case than the government did,” he says. “I see [the judgment] as something that lights a path forward, on the state level and on the federal level. I hope it will put to bed this notion that cases like this are not serious, or are just publicity stunts or political statements. A lot of people have treated them that way. What we see now is that these are serious legal cases and they can result in judgments against government actors.”
Rule of law, not a debate
David Schwartz always thought it was a serious legal case. An environmental lawyer born in 1990 and “into an unstable climate,” as he puts it, he joined Our Children’s Trust as a staff attorney in 2021 and soon began working on the Montana case.
He noticed that his clients, younger members of the Climate Generation, were far more aware of the heating world than he had been as a child growing up in Southern California.
“I wasn’t going to climate marches. I wasn’t signing on to petitions to stop this or that pipeline or something. It just wasn’t on my radar,” he says. And that’s how it should be, he says. “It shouldn’t have to fall on [children]. There are adults in the room, and key decision-makers who should be charting a sustainable path for humanity.”
But as a lawyer, he also recognized that young people, with arguably the most to lose from the business-as-usual approach to climate change, might be in the best legal position to do something about it. It seemed to him to be an obvious case of inequity and equal protection rights. Science increasingly showed that one group – adults – were making decisions that clearly harmed another group: young people. For him, it was an obvious matter for the judiciary.
“Courts are the bodies that have the ability to shift the meaning of the law as social norms and scientific understanding advance,” he says. “In legislative or executive politics, bluster and compromise and not sticking with the cold hard facts can carry the day. But ... in the court of law, facts matter.”
Indeed, in the Helena courtroom, the facts of climate science came across as rock-solid: The world is getting hotter, humans are largely responsible, and the heating is causing a slew of climatic disruptions, from the wildfires that choked Grace’s soccer practices to the droughts that starved Rikki’s cattle.
For many years in the U.S., the science of global warming has been debated in the public sphere – in speeches, on social media, and so on – where critics and skeptics can present their own theories and argue with scientists. But in a trial, speculation and hearsay are against the rules. Statements are subject to cross-examination. And political or economic pressure is not supposed to sway a judge’s opinions.
In some ways, says Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director at Columbia’s Sabin Center, which keeps a database of climate litigation, this was one of the most important aspects of Held v. Montana.
“Science deniers have long had a political platform,” he said in an interview on the eve of the trial. “But they’ve mostly tried to stay out of court because they realized they were vulnerable.”
The state ended up not calling to the stand a scientist skeptical of mainstream climate research. Instead, it focused on the argument that Montana shouldn’t be held responsible for a global problem, and that climate issues were legislative matters, not legal ones.
“What we heard in plaintiffs’ case was not justiciable controversy, but rather a weeklong hearing of political grievances that properly belongs to the Legislature, not a court of law,” said Assistant Attorney General Michael Russell during his closing statements.
Later, the attorney general’s spokesperson, Emily Flower, put out another statement.
“Montanans can’t be blamed for changing the climate,” she said. The case, she added, was a “taxpayer-funded publicity stunt.” The government has said it will appeal.
Collective responsibility
Climate change has been called a classic “tragedy of the commons” – a situation in which individuals act in their own logical self-interest and nobody is doing anything against the law. But taken together, the individual behaviors are catastrophic to the community.
Young people pushing for the courts to weigh in on climate change say that the legal system has the ability to reverse that tragedy, and make explicit a collective responsibility. A group of law students from the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, for instance, is spearheading an effort to have the International Court of Justice connect climate action to human rights. A case brought by six young Portuguese plaintiffs, which had a hearing in the European Court of Human Rights earlier this year, says 32 countries, including their own, are responsible for the extreme weather they’ve experienced in Portugal.
And in the Montana courthouse, when a state attorney asked one expert, Nobel Peace Prize-winning climate scientist Steven Running, whether young people around the world could also blame Montana for impacting their climate, the witness shrugged. Sure, he said. That’s how the atmosphere works. It doesn’t take away from the case.
“There’s a question of, how do we recalibrate our rules, our set of laws, our constitutions to the physical realities of our planet?” says David Orr, emeritus distinguished professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College in Ohio. “It’s time to rethink what law is on a planet with a biosphere.”
That’s true even beyond the youth constitutional cases. In the U.S., the number of climate cases has increased dramatically, with some 2,180 underway in 2022, compared with 884 in 2017, according to the Sabin Center. Most of those cases don’t involve children’s rights; they are nonprofits suing corporations for alleged “greenwashing,” municipalities suing oil and gas companies, and individuals demanding regulation enforcement, among other matters.
Still, Robert Cox, an environmental lawyer who heads Suffolk University Law School’s Environmental Law & Policy Clinic in Boston, says that this doesn’t mean the cases don’t involve the Climate Generation. His students, and other young lawyers he sees, are particularly attuned to climate change, and are working within what he calls the “nitty-gritty” of the legal system to shape existing rules and legislation to apply to a new, heated reality.
“What I see in the younger attorneys that I practice with ... is this embedded view that climate change is an issue and we have to deal with it in one way or another,” he says. “And it dovetails with what is happening with clients, where everything they do or touch connects to climate.”
Not politics or activism, just the law
Ms. Gibson-Snyder watched the whole Montana trial from her seat in the courthouse.
She had joined the lawsuit when she was 16 and was now in the summer between her freshman and sophomore years in college. But that week in June was the first time that she had spent much time with her co-plaintiffs. While they had met each other over screens, they lived across Montana and ranged in ages. Now they were staying at the same hotel, where they ate together and watched movies like “Legally Blonde” – “in keeping with the theme of the week,” she says with a laugh. As they went to the courthouse together, they walked by supporters waving signs encouraging their work.
When the trial started, she was riveted, even as she sketched in her notebook, she recalls. She had learned by then to keep her face impassive when she heard the state’s arguments: that it wasn’t Montana’s job to fix climate change for the world, that the youth plaintiffs were misguided, that the whole case was a political sham. But that didn’t mean those words didn’t bother her.
“It’s hard,” she says. “It’s really, really frustrating. ... I have a whole lot of emotions about climate change. And you spend all this time and energy trying to get other people, especially our government, to work with us, and finding such resistance really exacerbates the emotional intensity of everything we feel about climate change, like that anxiety, that fear, the loss of freedom. It’s so frustrating to have the government actively working against your best interests.”
It is also frustrating to have her own state government label her as part of some sort of outside activist group.
Ms. Gibson-Snyder has deep Montana roots. A great-great-great-grandmother came here on the Bozeman Trail; her family worked with gold miners. Although she grew up in liberal Missoula, she knows this city is an outlier in her red state.
But she also believes that deep care for the environment goes across party lines here. The history of Montana is complicated, she says – one of extraction and environmental degradation, but also of stewardship and connection to the outdoors. Because the state Constitution explicitly protects citizens’ right to a healthful environment, Ms. Gibson-Snyder doesn’t see her lawsuit as political, or really even as activism. It is simply challenging governments to do what they are supposed to do: protect their people.
“That’s what a democracy is, right?” she says.
The verdict came shortly before she returned to the East Coast, where she attends Yale University.
“Reading this landmark decision, my overwhelming emotion is relief,” she wrote in a statement she emailed to the Monitor that night. “There is still hope. Hope for me and the other youths’ futures, hope for Montana and the places we love. Hope for the rest of the world to follow suit. ... Let’s keep moving forward to ensure Montana’s policies – and policies around the country and world – are supportive of a healthy and prosperous future and consistent with protecting our constitutional rights.”
Special Global Report
ONTARIO
Safepoint to 'pause' operations due to lack of funding from province
Though it's only been open for several months, SafePoint — Windsor's first and only supervised drug consumption and treatment site — will be closing its doors
CBC
Mon, November 20, 2023
SafePoint, Windsor's CTS site, opened in April. (Jennifer La Grassa/CBC - image credit)
Though it's only been open for several months, SafePoint — Windsor's first and only supervised drug consumption and treatment site — will be closing its doors until the provincial government agrees to fund it, the board of health decided Monday.
At a budget meeting, the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) board of health unanimously agreed to pause operations as of Dec. 31.That decision was made as the number of people who have died from an opioid overdose continues to increase in Windsor-Essex.
"I think that not having the site open is a loss for our community," said WECHU board of health chair Fabio Costante.
"I'm concerned in the midst of a crisis that we're under, that we would be closing it."
In an email to CBC News, Minister of Health spokesperson Hannah Jensen said that these sites are "expected to build trust in the communities where they are located through consultation and ongoing engagement, and we understand the importance of community feedback in this matter."
WECHU board of health chair Fabio Costante speaks to reporters on Nov. 20, 2023. (Jennifer La Grassa/CBC)
Input from the community following a shooting that killed a woman near Toronto's Riverdale CTS site in July, prompted the ministry to do a review, Jensen said.
The province announced its review in August and said that would put the applications for all new CTS sites on pause.
"These reviews will inform the next steps taken by the Ministry of Health," Jensen said.
WECHU CEO Ken Blanchette says there is concern that SafePoint won't reopen at all.
"We are following their pause and we are hopeful that the province investigation is quicker, rather than a lengthy process," he said.
"Our hope is really to have fully approved reopening to the site."
WECHU couldn't say how much the health unit has spent on operating SafePoint until now. But it has previously said that it costs about $700,000 to operate per year.
When asked why the health unit isn't going to ask the city and county for more money, or other community partners, Blanchette said that is hard to do as everyone is "under financial pressures" right now.
"We've had conversations about how to be able to do that, but there's also limitations as to how to operate the site as well, part of our application there is strict guidelines on how to operate," he said.
To keep funding the site, Costante says, would mean the health unit would have to use its base budget and reduce some of the services it currently offers. Alternatively, if WECHU were to ask for more from the municipalities, that would mean taxpayers would be covering something that is "squarely and within the purview of the province."
WECHU says that since opening, each month SafePoint has seen an increasing number of visits. In May, SafePoint reported 64 visits and now, in October, it had 258.
In total, 182 people have used the site to date.
Opioid deaths continue to increase
The latest data from Public Health Ontario shows that in Windsor-Essex, the number of people dying from opioid use continues to rise.
In 2022, there were 112 people that died from opioids — that's an increase of 27 deaths from 2021.
Angus, 48, lives in Kingsville and he had used substances, particularly cocaine and opioids, for more than 20 years. Just last week, he celebrated one year of being sober.
CBC News has agreed to not use his last name or face as he worries about getting a job or home in the future.
Though Angus had never used SafePoint, he has gone to see the site and asked questions about it.
"I'm disappointed. I think it's a big mistake," Angus said in reaction to the news that SafePoint's operations would be paused.
"If you want to put it simply, they are basically putting a price on people's lives."
He says that without the space, people will be forced to use unsafely in the city and likely be using alone, without supervision.
"The thing about the safe injection site was there was resources there for treatment, so these people could maybe work on their addiction someday," he said. "Unfortunately, these people are the bottom of society and [if] we continue to treat them like that, nothing's going to change."
Site took 7 years to open
It took seven years for the site to become a reality in downtown Windsor, at the corner of Wyandotte Street East and Goyeau Street, due to hurdles fuelled by political red tape and community pushback.
SafePoint opened in April under Health Canada approval as an urgent public health needs site. It was funded primarily through the health unit's budget while awaiting provincial approval.
The board submitted an application for provincial funding for the site prior to opening, in July 2022.
Mi'kmaw artist Alan Syliboy explores death, afterlife in new children's book
CBC
Sat, November 18, 2023
Alan Syliboy says there is a stigma attached to death, and he hopes his children's book will help people understand it from the perspective of another culture. (Alan Syliboy - image credit)
An author and artist from the Millbrook First Nation in central Nova Scotia has published a new book that aims to teach children about how the Mi'kmaq understand and come to grips with death.
Alan Syliboy said death is a part of life and he believes it should be addressed at an early age.
"I always thought of death as natural," Syliboy said. "It's just reality and we have to have ideas about when it happens and how to handle it."
When The Owl Calls Your Name follows a spirit as it prepares for the journey to the next life. The children's book conveys the message that people should live their lives to the fullest until the owl is ready for them.
Adapting a decades-old story
Syliboy came up with the owl concept after reading the book I Heard The Owl Call My Name, a 1967 novel about an Anglican priest who learns about ancient beliefs of death and mortality while at a First Nations community in British Columbia.
The book was released by Nimbus Publishing earlier this month, with Syliboy hosting a book launch at his art studio in Millbrook.
Throughout the years, he adapted the story to his traditional teachings and performed it as a spoken word song with his band Alan Syliboy & the Thundermakers.
"Owls are a messenger from the Creator and when they call your name the Creator wants you to come home," he said. "Owls fly on silent wings and you may never know when he'll be coming."
When The Owl Calls Your Name is Syliboy's fourth children's book. He said he enjoys writing for children because it starts teaching them about Mi'kmaw culture.
Important conversations
"I've heard it said that you die twice. First you die, and then you die again when no one says your name," he said.
Syliboy said creating this book is another way to remind youth that the Mi'kmaq are still here, he said, anticipating the next generation will "keep your memory alive too."
Clinical therapist Michelle Peters, who has worked in her community of Pictou Landing First Nation for years, said it's important to have conversations with young children about death and grief.
"I think it's important for Canadians to be open to other world views," she said. "There's many forms of knowledge and the Indigenous world view is one that embodies a holistic perspective on life."
Sylliboy's other titles include Wolverine and Little Thunder, The Thundermaker and Mi'kmaw Animals, with versions available in English and in Mi'kmaw.
'It is part of nature'
He dedicates When The Owl Calls Your Name to Robert Denton, a close friend and animator who died in 2022. They wanted to explore the connection between Mi'kmaw cosmology and death.
"The Milky Way is a spiritual path and that's where your spirit journeys from here to back to the Creator," Syliboy said. "If you imagine travelling along that road, there are signposts to tell you the way to get here."
Communities on reserves are close-knit and deaths reverberate, be they from natural causes or others such as car accidents. That means young people living in these communities often must learn about death at a young age.
Syliboy said there is a stigma attached to death, and he hopes the book will help people understand it from the perspective of another culture.
"People have a lot of fear of it," he said. "I think if they come to see that it is part of nature, then they would be less afraid of it."
Faulty ice-cleaning machine blamed for carbon monoxide poisoning at Sask. hockey tournamentREPLACE IT WITH AN ELECTRIC ZAMBONI
CBCFri, November 17, 2023 
Carbon monoxide emissions emitted by a faulty ice-cleaning machine are likely to blame for reported illness in a Saskatchewan hockey arena, health officials say. (Avantagesport.com - image credit)Carbon monoxide emitted by a faulty ice-cleaning machine is the likely cause of illness reported at a recent Saskatchewan hockey tournament, health officials say.No one was seriously injured in the Wakaw, Sask. arena on Sunday, but an unspecified number of people reported symptoms consistent with carbon monoxide poisoning.The furnace was initially suspected to be the problem, but the Saskatchewan Health Authority said it was likely caused by a faulty ice-cleaning machine. It's unclear whether the rink had a functioning carbon monoxide detector."Carbon monoxide, it can have quite an impact … as we saw when it does get elevated. Of course, it's an odourless gas, you can't smell it," said Ryan Philipation, senior SHA public health inspector for the region that includes Wakaw.
Saskatoon Fire Marshall Brian Conway says it's important to install and maintain a functioning carbon monoxide detector.Saskatoon Fire Marshall Brian Conway says it's important to install and maintain a carbon monoxide detector. (Jason Warick/CBC)He said the SHA is investigating and conducting tests. They've also provided air quality fact sheets and other educational materials.Philipation said it's helpful for rink officials across the province to test CO levels periodically. He said Wakaw officials have been very co-operative.The rink remains closed, but they hope to reopen in the coming days, he said.Saskatoon Fire Marshall Brian Conway said that with winter coming, it's vital to have a functioning CO detector and to immediately vacate any building suspected of high levels of the gas."I think people are becoming more aware, but things like this always brings it back to the forefront," Conway said."CO gas or carbon monoxide gas is a colourless, odourless gas. Realistically, you don't know you're in amongst it until things start to happen."
