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.
This is the second article in three-part series on "Electrify Everything" in Canada. It covers our least electrified sector: transportation. (Spoiler alert: Fossil burning is rising hundreds of times faster than electricity use).
The climate crisis requires we "electrify everything." But in Canada, we're cranking up fossil fuel burning instead. Barry Saxifrage takes us on a chart-filled tour of where we are in our climate-required energy transition.
Despite decades of climate conferences, promises, and deals, methane and carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise at faster than ever rates. Barry Saxifrage has the receipts.
Gasoline cars are even more CO2-intensive than coal power plants. And in Canada, it is gasoline, not coal, that is driving climate failure, says columnist Barry Saxifrage.
Many nations, like Britain, Norway, and Germany, tax gasoline at $550 per tonne of CO2 — $400 more than we do. Unsurprisingly, our surging tailpipe emissions are driving Canada's climate failure, writes Barry Saxifrage.
Despite decades of failing, Canada is once again promising big emissions cuts even as it expands fossil fuel production. Has any nation pulled it off? Here's what I found when I went looking.
Fossil fuel pollution has been searing the Golden State into a hot, dry tinderbox. The megafires have followed in accelerating fury and frequency, and carbon columnist Barry Saxifrage has the charts to prove it.
Canada's continent-spanning forest used to remove massive amounts of CO2 from the air each year. It was a hugely valuable "carbon sink", slowing the pace of climate change and benefiting our logging industry.
