[Image-1] Shit has officially gotten real at the Paris climate talks. Canada’s new Environment and Climate Change minister, Catherine McKenna, left the negotiating table at 7am this morning and returned five hours later for another round of overlapping meetings. Every room in the sprawling airplane-hanger compound that hosts the conference has at least three napping […]
Paris Talks
Posted inNews + Opinion
Talking Paris: Life isn’t fair, and neither are climate negotiations
[Image-1] The agreement that comes out of the Paris climate negotiations will include commitments to cut carbon pollution from both developed and developing countries. In the world of United Nations climate change talks, this is a real big deal. The Kyoto Protocol was the first international agreement that required countries to commit to reducing carbon pollution. […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Talking Paris: We’re in serious need of some cultural evolution
[Image-1] Welcome to The Coast’s United Nations Climate Change Conference coverage. Over the next week, several Nova Scotians visiting Paris for the annual summit will be blogging for us on the ground. Our first entry is from the Ecology Action Centre’s Catherine Abreu (a version of this blog ran on the EAC’s website yesterday). Forty-thousand […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax to Paris, by way of Syria
[Image-1] “When you have drought, when people can’t grow their crops, they’re going to migrate into cities, and when people migrate into cities and they don’t have jobs, there’s going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment and people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al-Qaeda and ISIS are […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
What we’re doing right in Halifax
[Image-1] With the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference happening next week on the other side of the pond, we’re highlighting a few of the exceptional (and Halifax-based) initiatives that are tackling climate change and fighting the good fight here at home against environmental degradation. Solar City Solar City is a nationally lauded program created […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The French connection
[Image-1] Once again, the eyes of the world will be watching Paris. From November 30 to December 11, 147 world leaders will join together in the French capital along with tens of thousands of journalists, activists and observers for the 21st annual Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Letters to the future
Dear leaders of the 2015 Paris climate change conference, Our planet is suffering due to the devastating effects of climate change. Oceans are dying, forests are disappearing and our air is becoming unbreathable. I am writing you today in hopes that you will do everything in your power to end this issue. Instead of letting […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
This Changes Everything says change or be changed
[Image-1] Avi Lewis was filming This Changes Everything in nine different counties as his partner Naomi Klein wrote the book of the same name. The duo’s third film collaboration argues that climate change is fundamentally an existential crisis that can be seized upon to create a more just and sustainable economic system. Lewis spoke with […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
An open letter to Andy Fillmore
[Image-1] Dear Andy, While the dust settles after the longest election in recent Canadian history, there’s been a palpable collective sigh of relief. We’ve finally kicked Harper to the curb. Under Harper’s “leadership,” we had a government that thwarted climate action, science-based decision-making and reconciliation with the people who are indigenous to this land. The […]