It sounds like spinning straw into gold: suck carbon dioxide from the air where it's contributing to climate change and turn it into fuel for cars, trucks and jets.
A three-day International Refugee Rights Conference opening in Toronto Thursday provides an opportunity to highlight the urgent need to devise solutions for people driven from their communities by climate change.
This story starts more than 18 years ago, in March 2000, when a piece of the Ross Ice Shelf broke off and floated free on Antarctic waters. The crack of that iceberg forming filled the ocean with noise. Since scientists started documenting the size of icebergs, they had never seen one larger.
Dozens of environmental groups say if Canada wants to be a leader in getting the rest of the world to kick its plastics habit, it has to start by setting the bar for recycling plastics far higher at home.
For more than 25 years, Ram Nath has lived on the banks of the Yamuna River under a 19th-century iron bridge. Each morning, the wiry man walks a few steps from his makeshift hut and enters the black, sludgy waters of one of India's most polluted rivers. He is fishing for trash.
On land, heatwaves can be deadly for humans and wildlife and can devastate crops and forests. Unusually warm periods can also occur in the ocean. These can last for weeks or months, killing off kelp forests and corals, and producing other significant impacts on marine ecosystems, fishing and aquaculture industries.
The European Union has proposed banning plastic products like cotton buds, straws, stirs and balloon sticks when alternatives are easily available to reduce litter spoiling beaches and ocean beds.
The eruption of Kilauea volcano in Hawaii sparked new safety warnings about toxic gas on the Big Island's southern coastline after lava began flowing into the ocean and setting off a chemical reaction.
Andreas Löschel, chair of the independent Expert Commission monitoring the German government’s low-carbon energy transition policy, said Germany is in a similar position as Canada — trying to decarbonize, while also looking out for workers and communities in fossil fuel industries.
Shannon Phillips made the comments at a summit near Ottawa last week on women climate leaders, in response to questions over how her government plans to deal with recent surveys showing some public skepticism over the threat of climate change and the benefits of putting a price on carbon pollution.
