Energy

A U.S. effort to stoke the fires of coal-powered electricity didn't escape the attention of Canada's environment minister on Monday, Nov. 13, 2017, as Catherine McKenna used her Twitter account to troll the carbon-based fuel just as American officials were extolling its virtues.

Catherine McKenna said that Canada is leading efforts to introduce new provisions in the Paris Agreement that force countries to address the impacts that climate change has on women. She said the goal is also to ensure that there are more women at the negotiating table.

One governor invited President Trump to take a 'slog through the mud' in the Arctic. Meantime, a former governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, ridiculed the White House for promoting a revival of coal, comparing it to someone trying to invest in Blockbuster.

Fully 79 per cent of Canadians believe we “face a catastrophe if we fail to do more.”

Climate change talks in Germany are headed for a collision course on coal this week — and Canada is right in the middle of it. This year, the parties to Paris are hammering out rules for how that accord will be implemented, how carbon will be counted and how countries will be held accountable for their emissions cuts.

Justin Trudeau said he didn't snub TPP leaders by skipping Friday's meeting — he missed it because his bilateral discussion beforehand with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "went long." The cancellation set off a confusing day of talks. Media reports directly blamed Canada and Trudeau for helping to scuttle the scheduled meeting.

The cost of looking after hundreds of wells, pipelines and other oilfield gear left behind by bankrupt Lexin Resources Ltd. has exceeded $2 million and the bills continue to roll in, says Alberta's Orphan Well Association.

In 1976, I participated in my first environmental assessment. It was a review of a proposed hydroelectric dam carved out of land that had been in Cape Breton Highlands National Park. What I didn’t know when I showed up in the high school gym in Baddeck, Nova Scotia for the hearings was that the Wreck Cove Hydro Project was the subject of the first federal review ever in Canada.

The forestry industry is in denial about Canada's disappearing caribou, says scientist Mark Hebblewhite. After a recent federal report was released, the Forest Products Association of Canada argued it showed many caribou ranges “do not have sufficient data.”

Nova Chemicals in Corunna, south of Sarnia, evacuated staff to a “safe location” Wednesday after a potential leak triggered plant alarms, the company said. Hydrogen sulphide, which has a rotten egg odour, can paralyze the human sense of smell and cause death at high enough concentrations. The ministry spokesperson said staff are investigating why Nova didn’t immediately report the spill.

The Supreme Court of Canada will hear an appeal from Alberta's energy regulator that seeks to overturn a ruling that could allow bankrupt energy companies to walk away from cleaning up abandoned oil wells.

Now, I know the advice that many of us abide by. Don’t feed the trolls and by in large, I don’t. I’m breaking this rule because I think the misogynistic and violent nature of certain comments and potential links to pro-oil platforms needs to be called out.

It’s not clear when the leak began — a source said staff were warned that “the leak happened last night and (was) still not contained” — but the chemical involved Wednesday afternoon was hydrogen sulphide, said an alert issued by the nearby First Nations community of Aamjiwnaang.

Attorneys general from B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan have all given notice that they intend to intervene in the upcoming hearing, but the federal government's attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, has opted to sit this one out, leaving the matter in the hands of the NEB.

It seems odd that a major U.S. government climate report released November 3 didn’t receive more media attention. But then, the main thing newsworthy about the Climate Science Special Report is that it was released at all, apparently without political interference.