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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
Hey, it’s Sierra again, returning to the land of newsletters after a summer break where I focused on print production. I think Kate and Pippa did a great job while I was away! Have any feedback for us? You can always email globeclimate@globeandmail.com.
We’ve been collecting your questions as part of our Climate Exchange, but starting next week, we’ll start to share answers. That means a new tool available to you for learning more about climate topics. Do you still have a question? Pop by the submission form to add them in, or read more below to catch up on what we’re doing.
Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Sustainable finance: Lack of commitment on sustainable finance rules means Canada risks losing out on green capital, institutional investors say.
- Trade: China launches anti-dumping investigation into Canada’s canola imports in retaliation for electric-vehicle tariffs
- Oil and gas: B.C. First Nation seeks judicial review to overturn pipeline permit on nearby territory
- Pollution: As Quebec promises action, residents demand an end to illegal dumping in Kanesatake
- From The Narwhal: Alberta quietly plans to subsidize natural gas plants to keep them afloat
A deeper dive
Fishing in Norway
Kate Helmore reports for The Globe’s business section. For this week’s deeper dive, she talks about what she learned during her trip to Norway.
As I stood on the bridge of an ocean-faring vessel that farmed 10,000 tonnes of Atlantic Salmon, I was amazed, but also uneasy.
Norway’s Jostein Albert is a $190-million experiment into open ocean fish farming – the future of the salmon farming industry, say proponents.
Innovation on this scale is required for three reasons: The world wants more salmon; the demand must and will be met by farmed salmon (wild fisheries are plummeting, and 70 per cent of what is currently consumed globally is farmed); and the old ways of fish farming spread disease that destroy wild salmon populations.
The Jostein Albert is only one such venture into the future of fish farming. Owned by Norway’s largest private salmon farming company, it takes the ocean-tanker-turned-factory-farm approach, others opt for autonomous cages submerged tens of feet underneath the waves.
And such innovation is possible because salmon is big business. Salmon farming is a $323-billion global industry, and shows no signs of stopping. Nations in every corner of the world are clambering for a piece of the salmon pie: from the masterminds behind the industry, The Norwegians, to the soon-to-be heavyweights, The Chinese.
Everyone except Canada, that is.
In June, Fisheries and Oceans Canada announced the closure of open-net-pen salmon farming in British Columbia. The industry on the West Coast has five years to transition to closed systems, which will likely be land-based.
It was a surprising move to many. Canada was a top five producer. With a strike of a pen, a major competitor was bowing out of a fierce international race.
And it begged questions of why. Those who oppose fish farms say sea lice – which breed like rabbits abroad farms – are too much of a threat to wild salmon, a vital keystone species. Others say that this is short sighted. There is a future where wild salmon and domestic salmon co-exist. We just need to get radically innovative.
In this way, the story of the fish farms goes beyond the scope of the salmon. It is a question of humanity’s ingenuity, and the limits thereof.
These violent delights have violent ends, or so the theory goes. Malthus predicted a catastrophe whereby population growth would outpace agricultural production and cause famine and war. Readers of this climate newsletter might point to wildfires and floods as consequences of our consumption. Others might reach for biodiversity loss – a result, partly, of the domestication and prioritization of some species to the expense of others.
However, there will always be human ingenuity, a tool that has not yet been blunted and has allowed us to wiggle free of countless consequences. It is unmatched and, as I stood on the bridge of the Jostein Albert, continues to amaze.
But is this technological innovation a solution? Or does it merely postpone the inevitable? Will the violent end still come – and will it arrive in the decimation of one of the Northern Hemisphere’s most iconic wild species?
-Kate
Silje Fløtnes Hansen is a veterinarian for Nordlaks. Every week she visits fish farms and counts sea lice to ensure numbers stay below government-set limits. Sept 3, 2024Philip Halvorsen/The Globe and Mail
What else you missed
- The world creates 57 million tons of plastic pollution a year, study finds
- Feeling the heat as Earth breaks yet another record for hottest summer
- B.C. Conservative Leader outlines views on energy, education in appearance on Jordan Peterson’s podcast
- Greece to tax cruise ship arrivals to protect popular islands from overtourism
Opinion and analysis
Rob Csernyik: Starbucks chief executive’s corporate jet commute spits in the face of sustainability efforts
Wayne Grady: Bird feeder angst. By giving songbirds food, am I domesticating them?
Green Investing
CAPP says environmental groups should be held to same anti-greenwashing standards
An oil and gas industry group is calling on the federal Competition Bureau to ensure environmental groups are held to the same truth-in-advertising standards as other sectors under new federal greenwashing rules. The federal government passed a law in June that contained an amendment to the Competition Act requiring corporations to be able to provide evidence to support their environmental claims.
The Climate Exchange
Check out our new digital hub where you can ask your most pressing questions about climate change. It’s a place where we hope to help by answering your questions, big and small, about the continuing changes and challenges around climate change. Along the way, we’ll aim to highlight the people, communities and companies working toward climate solutions and innovations.
For the record: While RBC supports the initiative financially, the company has no say in what questions get asked or how The Globe answers them.
Photo of the week
Andre Summermatter, head shepherd and an agricultural engineer, leads sheep up a steep climb during the annual “Schäful” sheep drive on September 7, 2024 near Belalp, Switzerland. Climate change, while it has led to increased amounts of grass for grazing, is also creating complications for the shepherds. The Oberaletsch glacier that once provided an easy means of crossing a gorge along the route has shrunk and receded, leading local authorities to blast a path into the rockface and build a suspension bridge already in the 1970s. Snow is now falling later in the year and melting later in the spring, shifting the summer grazing season. And due to the warming climate, vegetation unsuitable for the sheep is taking root at higher altitudes, pushing into the sheep’s meadows. The Swiss government, which sees alpine landscapes and traditions as intrinsic to the country’s national and cultural identity, subsidizes alpine farming heavily.Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Guides and Explainers
- Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that: Green Investing 101 newsletter course for the climate-conscious investor. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
- We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP28, and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
- We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills – Little Steps to Big Change.
Catch up on Globe Climate
- Green Steel? Algoma wants to go electric
- As backyards disappear, urban planners still want to bring nature to our doorstep
- Tracing the burn scars
- Water scarcity in Western Canada
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