David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.
With easily accessible gas and oil deposits becoming depleted, companies have turned to fracking to extract it from shale formations. This involves drilling deep, often horizontal wells and pumping large amounts of pressurized water, sand and chemicals into them to fracture rock and release gas or oil.
And when bees decline, so do the plants that depend on them for reproduction.
Too many adults become complacent, unwilling to even imagine making sacrifices for their children and grandchildren — even though many changes required to bring emissions and warming under control would confer numerous benefits, from healthier diets to reduced pollution to greater employment and economic opportunities in clean energy.
Most of us rarely think about concrete, but it’s the foundation of modern society — from roads, buildings and bridges to the economy, political power and crime. We use more of it than anything except water. Concrete has been a great driver of human progress. It’s allowed us to build up instead of out, made transportation and trade easier, protected us from the elements and even disease, and spurred economic growth and job creation — as well as population growth. But it’s one of many innovations we adopted wholesale without fully understanding the consequences. Producing and transporting it emits enormous…
Energy is inextricably linked to a range of community issues, from health to housing. That was one message that emerged from a four-day gathering in Calgary of more than 200 young Indigenous leaders from every province and territory, organized by Disa Crow Chief of the Siksika Nation and Cory Beaver of the Stoney Nakoda Nation. Participants came to the SevenGen gathering in January to learn about opportunities in Canada’s energy transition from an Indigenous youth perspective. Beaver and Crow Chief are keen to engage young people in Indigenous-led energy solutions and find them ongoing mentorship opportunities. SevenGen’s website explains, “As…
In a 1965 speech to members, American Petroleum Institute president Frank Ikard outlined the findings of a report by then-president Lyndon Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee, based in part on research the institute conducted in the 1950s. “The substance of the report is that there is still time to save the world’s peoples from the catastrophic consequence of pollution, but time is running out,” Ikard said, adding, “One of the most important predictions of the report is that carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas at such a rate that…
An Angus Reid poll found 58 per cent of Canadians think lack of pipeline capacity is a national crisis. They can be forgiven for this. The company that owns a near monopoly on newspapers in Canada, aided by politicians and fossil fuel interests, has put significant effort into convincing them. That the number rises to 87 per cent in Alberta, with 96 per cent believing that not building new pipelines would have a major impact on the Canadian economy, isn’t surprising. All mainstream newspapers there are owned by the same company, political parties across the spectrum prioritize oil and gas…
Global warming isn’t a partisan issue — or it shouldn’t be. The many experts issuing dire warnings about the implications of climate disruption work under political systems ranging from liberal democracies to autocratic dictatorships, for institutions including the U.S. Department of Defense, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and numerous business organizations and universities. In 1988, when NASA scientist James Hansen reported to Congress that evidence for human-caused global warming was near undeniable, conservative politicians including the U.K.’s Margaret Thatcher, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Canada’s Brian Mulroney agreed that action was needed. In my home province of B.C., a…
When faced with conclusive evidence of a major threat to citizens, a true leader would do everything possible to confront it. So, what was the U.S. president’s reaction to a U.S. scientific report compiled by more than 300 scientists and endorsed by a dozen different agencies, including NASA, NOAA and the defence department, that warned climate change poses a dire threat to the American economy, way of life and human health? “I don’t believe it,” Trump told reporters. Should we believe a president who displays profound ignorance about climate science and claims he has “a natural instinct for science”? Or…
Errors in a recent ocean warming study illustrate global warming’s complexity. They also show the depths to which climate science deniers will stoop to dismiss or downplay evidence for human-caused climate change. The study by researchers from the U.S., China, France and Germany concluded, “ocean warming is at the high end of previous estimates” and global warming might be advancing faster than scientists thought. British researcher Nic Lewis, who has a math and physics background, found discrepancies, which he noted on a skeptic’s blog. The scientists acknowledged the errors and offered a correction to the study, published in Nature. The controversy…