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.
Canada axed the tax and made pollution cheap again
Chopping $20 billion off the price of climate-polluting fuels means more pollution and fewer reasons to buy climate solutions. Here's a deep, chart-packed, dive into what just happened.
Meanwhile, atmospheric CO2 keeps accelerating upwards
NOAA just published last year’s CO2 increase, and it was huge.
Canada is opening the floodgates on one of Earth’s greatest living reservoirs of CO2
Canada’s forest is in trouble – and so are we. Chainsaws and fossil fuel burning are draining billions of tonnes of CO2 out of our managed forest and pouring it back into the atmosphere. And the outflow is accelerating.
We are releasing the monsters
California’s well-documented climate and fire history lets us see how global warming is cooking up ever more extreme fire conditions — and how the megafires are responding with accelerating frequency and fury — charts.
The BC NDP is not the climate leader it is cracked up to be
Reality check: BC emissions have soared since 1990 – and all the increase has happened while the BC NDP ran the government.
U.K. puts Canada to shame with bold 2035 climate target
The British just set their 2035 target at an eye-opening 81 per cent below their 1990 emissions. Canada will set a 2035 target in a few days. Here’s where both nations are today.
Canada is out of excuses. Europe slashes climate pollution while we flounder
Canadians are running out of excuses for our sky-high emissions. Not only is the EU cutting emissions as a group, but every one of its 27 member nations (except the tiny island nation of Cyprus) has as well.
What this year's California megafire tells us about the future
Fossil fuel pollution has been searing the golden state into a hot, dry tinderbox. The megafires have followed in accelerating frequency and fury -- charts.
Canada's climate pollution rises for third straight year in 2023
The path to Canada's 2030 climate target has become dizzyingly steep. Here’s a series of charts showing how adrift Canadians are now