Food & Energy
Arnold Schwarzenegger calls for rebranding climate change: ‘No one gives a sh– about that’
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Read MoreLiberal and New Democrat MPs have opposed a budget amendment to cut the Governor General’s funding. Conservative MP Kelly Block (Carleton Trail-Eagle Creek, Sask.) sponsored the motion after accusing Rideau Hall of high living while Canadians turn to food banks.
“One in five Canadians are skipping meals because food is too expensive,” MP Block told the Commons government operations committee. “Just this week the food bank in Saskatoon held a food drive as usage is higher than it’s ever been.”
“Irresponsible spending by the Office of the Governor General has caused outrage,” said Block. “That’s our job, to hold department’s accountable, and this is one way we can do it,” she added.
“The Governor General has shown a lack of respect for taxpayers, the Canadians she is meant to represent,” said Block. “The job for which she has been tasked has become a means to expense an extravagant lifestyle.”
MP Block’s remarks came during committee debate on Main Estimates, a budget document that proposed to spend $24.3 million at Rideau Hall this year. Block sponsored a motion that the appropriation “be reduced by $136,986 a 31 cents.”
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Read Moreabinet’s budget bill last night cleared the Commons finance committee after 29 days and 667 roll call votes in a month-long Conservative filibuster. MPs protested the omnibus bill introduced or amended 51 different Acts of Parliament.
The finance committee in a final clause-by-clause review of Bill C-47 the Budget Implementation Act voted until midnight Monday, then resumed at 9:04 am Eastern yesterday and remained in continuous session with brief breaks to attend the washroom and Question Period. The committee finished its work on the bill at 7:31 pm.
“It’s been a long couple of days,” said Conservative MP Philip Lawrence (Northumberland-Peterborough South, Ont.). “We’re in a bit of a low trust environment,” he added.
“I think we’re good but I do like my coffee,” said Liberal MP Peter Fonseca (Mississauga East-Cooksville, Ont.), chair of the finance committee.
Clerks attended the committee in shifts to conduct roll call votes on 681 clauses. Conservative MPs asked that several clauses be slowly read into the record:
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Read MoreDocuments reveal Ireland has budgeted €600m to slaughter 200,000 cows to achieve climate-related emissions reduction goals.
Irish government budgeted €600m to cull cows for climate
A freedom of information request stated that, to meet 2030 emissions reduction targets, as many as 65,000 cows per year might need to be slaughtered between 2023 and 2025.
“Approximately 60,000-65,000 dairy cows per annum would need to be displaced in 2023, 2024 and 2025,” the documents stated.
“This would allow for some modest growth for new entrants and young farmers (10,000 per year).”
The documents further stated that the government would budget €200 per year for the three years ($875m CAD total) to pull off the scheme, as reported by the Irish Independent.
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Read MoreMore than 1,600 companies identified by non-profit platform CDP as having the biggest impact on the environment are not disclosing environmental data, it said as it launched its latest campaign to get firms to provide the information.
CDP, which has standardised data to allow investors and others to compare corporate performance in areas like climate change, water and deforestation, said 288 financial institutions with around $29 trillion in assets will write to the companies to urge them to disclose the data.
The companies targeted in the 2023 campaign include repeat non-disclosers such as Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), Glencore (GLEN.L) and Caterpillar (CAT.N), CDP said in a statement.
Exxon said it had a plan “to reduce emissions to support a net-zero future while growing value for our shareholders and stakeholders.”
In an emailed statement, the oil giant said between 2016 and end-2021 it had cut the emissions from its own operations and reduced methane emissions intensity from operated assets, and it had hiked the amount it plans to invest on lower-emission initiatives.
Glencore declined to comment.
Caterpillar did not respond to a request for comment.
Collectively, the non-disclosers emit an estimated +4,200 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually – which CDP said was almost equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions of the United Kingdom, the European Union and Canada combined.
CDP works to help small groups of lead shareholders target companies and ratchet up pressure on boards to listen, said Claire Elsdon, CDP’s joint global director of capital markets.
Financial institutions need the data “to support risk management practices, tracking portfolio alignment to net zero goals and unlocking sustainability-linked opportunities,” she said. “These uses can serve to not only safeguard but also boost long-term profitability,” Elsdon said.
Since it launched in 2017, CDP has expanded the universe of companies it targets for data disclosure. That has meant the number of non-disclosing companies targeted this year is higher than in its 2022 campaign.
Despite the progress, disclosure remains a problem in high-emitting sectors and getting laggards to submit data will prove tricky, she acknowledged.
Overall, about 50% of companies across sectors disclose environmental data, Elsdon told Reuters.
The 2022 campaign delivered responses from 388 high-impact companies out of nearly 1,500 targeted, and CDP said firms were 2.3 times more likely to disclose if they were directly engaged by financial institutions.
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Read MoreGlobal airlines are setting up a task force to deal with non-carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, stepping up efforts to tackle cloudy streaks formed by aircraft known as contrails, an environmental threat that until now has taken a backseat to carbon pollution in the response to global warming.
The move comes as the International Air Transport Association (IATA), representing some 300 major airlines, is preparing to discuss the warming effect of contrails for the first time at its annual meeting in Istanbul next week.
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Read MoreA “farmland buying spree” by Wall Street hedge funds and China is turning American farms into “corporate fiefdoms,” Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says.
In 2021, as Breitbart News reported, Chinese investors bought up $6.1 billion worth of United States housing, real estate, and land. Kennedy, in a Twitter post, criticized the federal government’s allowing hedge funds and foreign countries like China to buy up American land.
“Farmland buying spree by Wall Street’s mammoth hedge funds and China are turning America’s and the globe’s agricultural landscapes into corporate fiefdoms and farmers into serfs,” Kennedy wrote. “Many people do not understand that small farms actually outproduce large industrial farms.”
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Read MorePeople experiencing homelessness in Kelowna were thrust into the spotlight of Canadian politics after the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre tweeted a video of a designated city-maintained encampment.
In Kelowna, all people experiencing un-sheltered homelessness are required to spend their nights at an encampment located along a popular bike path. Each morning, residents are expected to pack up their belongings and vacate the site, but as the population of people living without a home in Kelowna grows, it has been increasingly difficult for bylaw officers to enforce the requirement to decamp each day.
READ MORE: Homelessness in Kelowna tripled in size in the last year: Bylaw
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Read MoreCompanies listed on US stock exchanges — including Canadian ones — are pushing back on new Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) rules for disclosing carbon emissions in a move backed by the Biden Administration as it poises to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure spending.
The new rules, which were first proposed last summer but delayed, would force companies to disclose more information on so-called ‘Scope 3’ emissions, which are defined as indirect emissions that stem from everything from employee commuting, waste disposal, business travel and even purchased goods and services.
According to the Washington Post, the new rules affect everything from pizza deliveries to financial services in addition to the typical huff and puff smokestack industries.
It’s being pushed by the US government, which according to the Brookings Institute, spends about $655 billion a year in goods and services making it by far the largest outside contractor in the country. It’s also being advocated by climate activists who are threatening legal action to force the issue.
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Read MoreIn a legal twist, Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia are using the Impact Assessment Act — or the dreaded Bill C-69 — to make amendments to the Atlantic Accords that gave them control over offshore oil resources to include offshore renewable energy.
The proposed amendments to the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act will change the respective names of the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board and the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board to the ’Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Energy Regulator’ (CNSOER) and ‘Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Energy Regulator’ (C-NLOER).
In addition to establishing new authorities to support Ottawa’s marine conservation agenda, each will be granted new powers to regulate offshore renewable energy projects such as floating windmills and subsea tide turbines.
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