Barry Saxifrage
Climate Analyst | Vancouver
About Barry Saxifrage
Barry Saxifrage is Canada's National Observer's resident chart geek and climate analyst. In his visual carbon columns, Saxifrage deconstructs the data behind global warming and Canada's climate targets, as he charts international progress and graphically documents failures by industry and governments. His work is cited frequently by academics and climate publications internationally, including by George Monbiot in The Guardian, Yale Climate Connections, Bill McKibben's New Yorker newsletter, The Times Colonist, and many others. When he's not analyzing the corporate reports of major oil companies or comparing Canada's government's promises against Canada's actual emissions, Saxifrage is an avid soccer player.
Weighing the harm of gasoline against lithium
More than a billion tonnes of climate pollution pours out of American tailpipes every year. Ending this climate pollution disaster requires a lot more lithium. Barry Saxifrage breaks it down for us.
The carbon bomb makers — Canada versus our peers
It turns out Canada really is a climate leader — but sadly, in the wrong direction. Barry Saxifrage shows us how.
Overheated — Canada’s gasoline emissions are surging out of control
Canadian drivers have been sharply "bending the curve" on our automobile emissions — but in the wrong direction. Here are some charts showing our surging vehicle emissions and how some nations are getting theirs under control.
Coal is extremely CO2-intensive. Gasoline is far worse
As Canada pushes the world to eliminate coal first, we should take an honest look at our own gasoline emissions, which are even more CO2-intensive than coal, and surging out of control.
How much of Canada’s ongoing climate failure is caused by oil and gas industry pollution?
Here are three charts showing Canada’s emissions problems — both with and without its oil and gas industry.
Climate progress? Someone forgot to tell the atmosphere
Reality check — as the world embarks on a fourth decade of climate meetings and promises, all three major greenhouse gases are accelerating upwards, unchecked. And Canada …
Canada’s disappearing forests are a devastating hidden carbon bomb
Canada’s forests are being logged faster than they can regrow and that's adding billions of tonnes of CO2 into atmosphere.
Canada’s fossil-fuelled sprint away from climate safety
The relentless rise of fossil fuel burning in Canada is leaving climate-safe energy alternatives — and climate hope — far behind. And columnist Barry Saxifrage has the charts to prove it.
Remember the Copenhagen Accord's 2020 targets? Here's how Canada and many of its peers did
The 2020 emissions data is finally out. Here's how Canada and many of its peers did on their Copenhagen Accord targets. (Spoiler alert: Europeans and Americans, yes. Canadians, not so much.)
Canada's accelerating forest carbon crisis
Canada's forests are being logged faster than they are growing back, writes columnist Barry Saxifrage. That's pouring billions of tonnes of CO2 into our rapidly destabilizing climate.