Weekly update of climate change news to Dec. 22, 2024

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Here’s the latest news concerning climate change and biodiversity loss, from the steps leaders are taking to address the problems to all the most up to date science.

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In climate news this week:

• Canadian youth climate case will go to trial in Vancouver in 2026• Lions Bay was warned in 2022 climate change would bring more landslides, debris flows• Vancouver among Canadian cities losing weeks of wintry days• Global warming can’t be ignored, Montana’s top court says, upholding landmark climate case

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Human activities like burning fossil fuels and farming livestock are the main drivers of climate change, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This causes heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere, increasing the planet’s surface temperature.

The panel, which is made up of scientists from around the world, has warned for decades that wildfires and severe weather, such as B.C.’s deadly heat dome and catastrophic flooding in 2021, would become more frequent and more intense because of the climate emergency. It has issued a code red for humanity and warns the window to limit warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial times is closing.

According to NASA climate scientists, human activities have raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 per cent in less than 200 years, and “there is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.”

As of Dec. 21, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen to 424 parts per million (ppm) from under 320 ppm in 1960, according to NOAA data measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory, a global atmosphere monitoring lab in Hawaii.

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Scientists at Mauna Loa collect data on greenhouse gas and carbon cycle feedbacks, changes in clouds, aerosols, and surface radiation, and recovery of stratospheric ozone.

Check back every Saturday for more climate and environmental news or sign up for our Climate Connected newsletter HERE.

Climate change quick facts:

• The Earth is now about 1.3 C warmer than it was in the 1800s.• 2023 was hottest on record globally, beating the last record in 2016. However scientists say 2024 will likely beat the 2023 record.• Human activities have raised atmospheric concentrations of CO2 by nearly 49 per cent above pre-industrial levels starting in 1850.• The world is not on track to meet the Paris Agreement target to keep global temperature from exceeding 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, the upper limit to avoid the worst fallout from climate change including sea level rise, and more intense drought, heat waves and wildfires.• On the current path of carbon dioxide emissions, the temperature could increase by as much 3.6 C this century, according to the IPCC.• In April, 2022 greenhouse gas concentrations reached record new highs and show no sign of slowing.• Emissions must drop 7.6 per cent per year from 2020 to 2030 to keep temperatures from exceeding 1.5 C and 2.7 per cent per year to stay below 2 C.• 97 per cent of climate scientists agree that the climate is warming and that human beings are the cause.

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Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion.

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(Source: United Nations IPCC, World Meteorological Organization, UNEP, NASA, climatedata.ca)

Latest News

Canadian youth climate case will go to trial in Vancouver in 2026

The Federal Court of Canada has confirmed that a youth-led climate lawsuit launched five years ago will proceed to trial in 2026 in Vancouver.

The 15 youth, who were between 10 and 19 years old when the suit was filed in 2019, argue that inaction on climate change is threatening their future.

The case — La Rose v. His Majesty the King — argues that the youth are already being harmed by climate change and the federal government is violating their rights to life, liberty and security of the person under section 7 of Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms for failing to protect essential public trust resources.

In 2020, Federal Court Judge Michael Manson dismissed the lawsuit for failing to state a reasonable cause of action, stating that the case did not have a “prospect of success.” He said government actions that contribute to climate change are too broad for the courts.

The youth then appealed, with lawyer Chris Tollefson arguing they should be entitled to hold Canada to account for its overall approach to climate change. Lawyers for the Canadian government argued that this is not an issue that will be resolved in court, and that instead the government would work with young people to tackle climate action.

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Last December, the Federal Court of Appeal judges agreed the case should be heard. Now, the Federal Court has set aside eight weeks for trial, starting on Oct. 26, 2026.

Read the full story here.

—Tiffany Crawford

Lions Bay was warned in 2022 climate change would bring more landslides, debris flows

In April 2022, a geoscience consultant warned Lions Bay council that climate change could bring more landslides and debris flows of varying sizes, and laid out steps that could reduce risks.

It was the second time since 2018 that the council had examined the risk of landslides, debris flows and rockfalls — and what might be done to mitigate them.

But the councils during the past six years have not acted on concerns raised by the 2022 warning or the earlier report from consulting firm Cordilleran Geoscience.

Brent Ward, a Simon Fraser University earth sciences professor, says every community that has a risk of landslides and other geo-hazards should be taking these risks seriously.

“You have to actually look at what the problem is and act on it,” said Ward, co-director of the centre for natural hazards research at SFU.

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Concerns about landslide and debris flow risks reignited this week after a mudslide swept through a home in Lions Bay along the Sea to Sky Highway corridor, killing at least one person. A search continues for a second missing person.

Read the full story here.

—Gordon Hoekstra

Global warming can’t be ignored, Montana’s top court says, upholding landmark climate case

Montana’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a landmark climate ruling that said the state was violating residents’ constitutional right to a clean environment by permitting oil, gas and coal projects without regard for global warming.

The justices, in a 6-1 ruling, rejected the state’s argument that greenhouse gases released from Montana fossil fuel projects are minuscule on a global scale and reducing them would have no effect on climate change, likening it to asking: “If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?”

The plaintiffs can enforce their environmental rights “without requiring everyone else to stop jumping off bridges or adding fuel to the fire,” Chief Justice Mike McGrath wrote for the majority. “Otherwise the right to a clean and healthful environment is meaningless.”

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Only a few other states, including Hawaii, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York, have similar environmental protections enshrined in their constitutions.

The lawsuit filed in 2020 by 16 Montanans — who are now ages 7 to 23 — was considered a breakthrough in attempts by young environmentalists and their attorneys to use the courts to leverage action on climate change.

Read the full story here.

—The Associated Press

Vancouver among Canadian cities losing weeks of wintry days, report says

Vancouver is among several Canadian cities that have lost more than two weeks of wintry weather because of human-caused climate change, according to a report by Climate Central, a global climate research centre.

The report says the number of days below freezing has been shrinking over the past decade across Canada. In B.C., between 2014 and 2023, Vancouver lost an average of 19 days a year where temperatures were above freezing compared with what the region would have had without climate change.

Nanaimo lost 18 days, the Cowichan Valley 17, while the Alberni-Clayoquot region and the Sunshine Coast each lost 15 days.

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The report was published this week as Metro Vancouver’s North Shore ski resorts were dealing with some winter woes of their own following an atmospheric river.

Across Canada, climate change — due primarily to burning oil, coal and methane gas — is causing a significant increase in winter days above freezing, also called lost winter days, the report said. And researchers say it’s not just winter activities like skiing and skating that the country is losing but a healthy snowpack that delivers fresh water in the spring.

Read the full story here.

—Tiffany Crawford

AI-driven data centre boom derailed Liberals’ 2035 ‘net-zero’ electricity target, official says

The AI-driven data centre boom was a factor in the Liberal government’s decision to scrap its target of a net-zero electricity grid by 2035, a senior government official said.

“We ran a few different forecasts of how much electricity these centres will use,” said the official, speaking on background because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “Any way you slice it, it’s a substantial amount.”

The official said the federal government projects internally that demand for electricity could double by 2050, driven by the proliferation of electricity-gobbling data centres, the shift to electric vehicles, hotter summers and population growth.

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Data centres, cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence ate up two per cent of the world’s electricity in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency, and this footprint is expected to double by 2026.

Canada, already one of the world’s top five destinations for data centres, has several geographical advantages that position it to be a major player in the space, notably a cool climate suited to heat-sensitive data servers, plenty of unused land and plentiful cheap electricity.

Read the full story here.

—Rahim Mohamed

Abbotsford composting company fined nearly $120,000 for polluting waterways

An Abbotsford composting company has been fined nearly $120,000 for allowing effluent with unsafe levels of contaminants drain into water that eventually leads into the Fraser River.

Pacific Coast Renewables Corp., formerly Net Zero Waste Abbotsford Inc., received four penalties between January 2021 and January 2022 totalling $119,695 for non-compliance with pollution laws, according to a penalty assessment posted this month by B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy.

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The company, which turns food, unprocessed wood, yard waste and meat carcasses into compost, failed to clean up effluent, which included unsafe levels of contaminants such as biochemical oxygen, chloride, E. coli, fecal coliforms and phosphorus.

The effluent was found in supplemental pond discharge in ditches that drained into the Matsqui Slough and the Fraser River, during nine different inspections, the ministry said.

The company failed to stay under allowable limits for effluent, stop the discharge once staff knew the limits where being exceeded, sample the effluent, and have the pollution control equipment fully operational when discharging, according to the assessment.

Read the full story here.

—Tiffany Crawford

In Florida, a race is on to save the Everglades and protect a key source of drinking water

In a region of Florida known as the River of Grass, John Kominoski plops into hip-deep waters. Blobs of brown periphyton — a mishmash of algae, bacteria and other organisms — carpet the surface.

The air is thick and sticky as Kominoski, a Florida International University professor, pushes a rod to secure a tube that collects timed and continuous water samples that will help his team investigate the impacts of climate change and freshwater flows in this unique, sensitive ecosystem.

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The Everglades ecosystem was degraded and transformed when a highway connecting Tampa and Miami was built in 1928, cutting through a mosaic of prairies, sawgrass marshes, freshwater ponds and forested uplands. Sections of the road are now being elevated to restore water flows into the Shark River Slough — a vital restoration area deep in the Everglades National Park.

The highway elevation is part of a massive state-federal project, approved by Congress in 2000 with bipartisan support, that aims to undo damages wreaked upon these wetlands.

“This is the biggest, most complicated and most expensive ecosystem restoration project in the world,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades. “It’s really important that we get it right.”

Read the full story here.

—The Associated Press

From destruction to deadly heat, Associated Press photographers capture climate change in 2024

After heat records were smashed and a torrent of extreme weather events rocked countless countries in 2023, some climate scientists believed that the waning of the El Niño weather pattern could mean 2024 would be slightly cooler.

It didn’t happen that way.

This year is expected to break 2023’s global average temperature record and the effects of the warming — more powerful hurricanes, floods, wildfires and suffocating heat — have upended lives and livelihoods.

All year, Associated Press photographers around the globe have captured moments, from the brutality unleashed during extreme weather events to human resilience in the face of hardship, that tell the story of a changing Earth.

Check out the AP’s gallery of climate photos here.

—The Associated Press

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