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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
Marrakesh, one of Africa’s most fabled tourist draws, is the closest large city to the epicentre of the 6.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Morocco Friday night, killing more than 2,100 people. Rescuers on Sunday were still scrambling to find survivors under the rubble.
It was the strongest earthquake to hit the North African country in over 120 years, but it was not the deadliest. In 1960, a magnitude 5.8 temblor struck near the city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000. That quake prompted Morocco to change construction rules, but many buildings, especially rural homes where many are built with bricks of mud, are not built to withstand such tremors.
Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
Volunteers watch as a digger moves rubble of collapsed houses in Tafeghaghte, 60 kilometres southwest of Marrakesh, on September 10, 2023, two days after a devastating 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country.AFP Contributor#AFP/AFP/Getty Images
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Prevention: How cities across Canada are protecting their parks from brush fires
- Wildfires: Some Canadian students going back to school face heat wave, post-wildfire landscape
- Policy: Wildfire protection plans should be mandatory to build in B.C.’s fire-hazard zones, experts say
- Wildlife: Invasive species driving ‘homogenization’ of life on Earth, UN report warns
- Greenbelt: Ford government’s appointee to Greenbelt Foundation had family ties to developer
- Renewable energy: Alberta renewable energy pause leaves companies bewildered, angry, according to hundreds of letters sent to utility agency
- On the ground with The Narwhal: Many Manitoba parks are open to mining. Now an industry group wants to ‘suspend all protected areas’
A deeper dive
Canada’s new farm team
Making a living from the land has never been easy, but a new generation of farmers in Canada must contend with challenges their predecessors didn’t face, from rising costs and the dwindling availability of farmland to climate change, which can have a devastating impact on soil quality and overall food production.
Agricultural activities make up 12 per cent of Canada’s total greenhouse-gas emissions. This means the challenge to young and emerging farm operators is twofold: They must think about reducing their own GHG emissions while adapting their farming methods to withstand extreme temperature fluctuations. All while making enough money to pay their staff and feed their families.
Plus, by 2033, 40 per cent of Canadian farm operators will retire, according to a report released by RBC last April. So Canada’s newest generation of farmers is leading the way in this new era. Some are changing the way they manage soil health, till and plough, or use on-farm energy, while others are lobbying for better agricultural policy and increased support for the training of other young farmers.
The growth in peer-support organizations, some farmers say, is driven by a demand for knowledge-sharing, especially about regenerative farming, which aims to replenish soil quality and help withstand the effects of climate change.
But Jacob Beaton, a member of the Tsimshian First Nations, who operates Tea Creek Farm in Kitwanga in Northern B.C., says there are still elders today who remember when the Kitwanga River Valley was filled with Indigenous food producers. “So me buying this land and starting to farm it again was a really big deal,” he adds. Provisions in the Indian Act limited the amount of land they could own, and to this day make it challenging to obtain financing for land purchase.
“Indigenous peoples by nature are going to want to do things in a regenerative manner, so you don’t have to spend extra money convincing us,” he says. “You just have to make it possible. Those are the two top barriers: land and money.”
This is an trimmed excerpt from The Globe’s story on Canada’s new farm team, read the full article today.
Jacob Beaton by the corn field at Tea Creek in Summer 2023Ravyn Good/The Globe and Mail
What else you missed
- B.C.’s wildfire crisis was forecast, but it arrived decades sooner than expected. Ecologists say life will return to B.C. wildfire zone, but trees may never grow back
- World is losing race to meet climate goals, president of COP28 summit says
- This summer was a global record breaker for the highest heat ever measured, meteorologists say
- UN report says the world is way off track to curb global warming, but offers ways to fix that
- In ‘brutal’ US Open heat, Daniil Medvedev warns during his win that a player is ‘gonna die’
- Climate protester glues feet to floor, interrupting U.S. Open semifinal between Gauff and Muchova
- Greek rescue teams move into worst-hit flood villages
- BP’s Bernard Looney says he won’t further scale back energy transition strategy
- U.S. solar power capacity to expand by record 32 gigawatts in 2023: report
- German parliament passes law to phase out gas and oil heating
Opinion and analysis
Editorial board: Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives still don’t have a viable climate plan
Nik Nanos: For Canadians, it starts and ends with the economy and the environment
Glen Hodgson: As costs of fires and floods mount, Canadians need better climate risk management
Green Investing
Carbon capture projects are too costly, have ‘questionable’ benefits, report finds
Technology the oil industry is counting on to reduce emissions – carbon capture and storage – is too expensive and difficult to deploy quickly enough to help Canada meet its climate commitments, a global environmental think tank says.
The technology is a cornerstone of the industry’s decarbonization plans, and touted as a way to promote Canadian fossil fuels as preferable to supplies from other countries while the world transitions to cleaner energy. Alberta is particularly enthusiastic, offering grants for projects integrating carbon capture and hydrogen production.
- How investors can help drive protection for biodiversity
- Travel insurance concerns loom large as hurricane season descends
Making waves
Each week The Globe will profile a Canadian making a difference. This week we’re highlighting the work of Tom Du helping banks get on climate commitments.
Tom DuSupplied
I’m Tom Du, from Toronto. When I’m not at my day job helping a Canadian bank embed climate factors into their operations, you can find me volunteering with cleantech ventures as they advance the technology needed to decarbonise the economy.
But I believe “hard” tech is not enough. We need talent and we need imagination - which is why I’ve volunteered with the University of Toronto and York for almost 10 years. I mentor students as they reflect on how to use their new skills to build a more inclusive and sustainable world.
In a world fraught with climate doomerism, that means choosing to care, even when the journey seems daunting. That means exploring non-traditional career paths, and not defaulting to what’s been done in the past. That means embracing the transdisciplinary thinking needed to address the complexity presented by climate change.
And that work is what I find the most meaningful, the most energizing, and – frankly - the most important for climate action.
- Tom
Do you know an engaged individual? Someone who represents the real engines pursuing change in the country? Email us at GlobeClimate@globeandmail.com to tell us about them.
Photo of the week
Chris West (R), a Project Officer with the West Cumbria Rivers Trust, and Simon Johnson (L), the Executive Director of the Freshwater Biological Association, work to release juvenile freshwater mussels that have been reared in captivity for around six years into the River Irt in the Lake District as part of a programme to restore the severely depleted native freshwater mussel population on September 6, 2023. The River Irt in West Cumbria is home to a very small population of freshwater mussels, which can on average live to 130 years. The mussels are at risk of extinction if nothing is done to arrest their population decline. Mussel populations have been affected by multiple issues; including wildlife crime, habitat degradation and declining water quality. The West Cumbria Rivers Trust work to improve the habitat for mussels on the River Irt by releasing and monitoring juveniles from England's 'National Mussel Captive breeding Programme' run by the Freshwater Biological Association.OLI SCARFF/AFP/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 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
- Going to court to combat climate change
- Even deep-sea species are feeling the heat of climate change
- Western Canada’s unrelenting wildfires showing signs of reprieve but tough days remain ahead
- Noise pollution drowns out voices under the sea, threatening marine life
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