Environment

Exposing the Political Manipulation by Oil & Gas Companies in Canada

- Adam Clare

The Canadian tar sands contribute little to Canada’s economy yet it’s environmental destruction is known internationally. Despite this, the Canadian commitment to killing the planet by exploiting the tar sands is offensive and has held back green policies. Why does this happen?

SHARE has looked into how oil and gas companies lobby Canadian governments to permit their profiteering from planetary destruction. The greenwashing by tar sands companies is used to make it look like they are respecting the environment, this work by SHARE shows that we can’t trust them. This is good news because now we know how oil and gas advocate behind the scenes and we can prevent it.

While at first these commitments seem promising, a second look reveals a less-than-rosy picture of the role of Canadian oil and gas companies in relation to Canada’s climate targets, regulations and the road map to net zero. The most important work any company could do right now is commit to — then get to work on — reducing emissions in absolute terms. However, there are other important ways the oilpatch impacts climate action on a national and global scale. One of these is the extent to which its government relations, or “lobbying” activities, do or do not align with the climate actions Canada must undertake to prevent the worst impacts of climate change from wreaking havoc on our planet. 

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Patagonia Billionaire Donates Company to Fighting Climate Change

- Adam Clare
tree with climate knowledge

The family who owned the Patagonia clothing company recently gave the company to a new trust which will take all the profits and dedicate it to fighting climate change. Meaning that the $3 billion company will now spend the $100 million in profits it generates annually on good things. The billionaire family hopes that their action will inspire other insanely wealthy people to do the same with their companies.

“Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” Mr. Chouinard, 83, said in an exclusive interview. “We are going to give away the maximum amount of money to people who are actively working on saving this planet.”

Patagonia will continue to operate as a private, for-profit corporation based in Ventura, Calif., selling more than $1 billion worth of jackets, hats and ski pants each year. But the Chouinards, who controlled Patagonia until last month, no longer own the company.

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To Avoid Pests in the Summer Stop Mowing Your Lawn

- Adam Clare

Lawns are great for pests and horrible for the environment. Yards with clover and less need for mowing favour friendly insect species and help the environment. The situation is clear and the solution is obvious: stop mowing your lawn.

You don’t need to take my word for it, you can take multiple researcher studies concluding that less mowing is good for good insects. Teenagers forced to mow their parent’s suburban lawns should start using this evidence to get out of chores.

The present study examines the effects of different mowing regimes on arthropod abundance and diversity by conducting meta-analyses of studies assessing the effect of mowing on arthropod abundance (46 datasets) and taxa richness (23 datasets) in urban environments. Due to a geographical bias in the literature, only data from the temperate, northern hemisphere are analyzed.

…

Overall, the findings of the present meta-analysis strongly support the notion that a reduction in mowing frequencies in urban greenspaces benefits insect biodiversity.

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Lets’ Ban Private Jets

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

private jet during sunset

A forward-looking individual decided to start a campaign to ban private jets and it’s gaining steam. The movement to get rid of private jets is growing and now celebrities like Elon Musk and Taylor Swift are getting lambasted in the press about their planet-destroying transportation options. Given how much damage the air industry does to the planet, focussing on banning private jets, which are used by a very tiny percentage of people, should be socially acceptable by everyone.

Maybe we should start championing private trains instead 😉

The argument in favor of banning private jets is a simple one. If you were trying, for whatever reason, to have as large of a carbon footprint as possible, the first thing you would do is fly in a private plane. You would especially do so for very short flights, because taking off is the most energy-intensive part of any flight. A common model of a private plane burns 226 gallons of jet fuel an hour on average. And jet fuel—which is typically not taxed—emits more toxic gasses than gasoline.

Not only is flying in a private plane just about the worst thing one can do for the planet, it is also one of the habits with the easiest substitutes. Private jets emit approximately seven times as much greenhouse gasses as a business class ticket on a commercial airliner, 10 times as much as an economy seat, and some 150 times more than an electric train journey. Although “ban private jets” sounds like a radical argument, it is really quite modest, since rich people would still have any number of ultra-luxurious alternatives at their disposal and plenty of money to hire security guards to ensure the privacy they say flying private ensures.

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Celebrity Climate Criminals Get Called Out

- Adam Clare

private jet during sunset
While the average person has reduced their meat consumption, switched to paper straws and are more conscious of their energy use, celebrities have been outputting carbon at an offensive rate. People are finally turning on the outrageous planet-killing lifestyle of these wealth celebrities. The turning point seems to be when one famous person took a three minute flight to avoid a 45 minute drive, and locally in Ontario the performer Drake flies the short distance between Toronto and Hamilton.

It’s good to see people holding celebrities to account for their deplorable actions.

In a now-viral video, TikTok user Eryn broke down the data from Celeb Jets to uncover some startling results. She found that, based off the figures provided, between the dates 11 and 18 July 2022, there were 15 celebrities who flew by private jet. In total, these celebrities took 48 flights; that amounts to an average of 3.2 flights within a week. Eryn revealed that Kim Kardashian took three flights in that time period, giving off  23 tons of CO2 emission. “To put that in perspective for you,” Eryn says in the video, “the average American gives off 16 tonnes a year”.

“The more I looked at the numbers, the more I realised this is something that needed to be shared,” Eryn says. “It was mind-boggling to me that us ‘normal people’ are trying to reduce our waste and consumption by driving less, using paper straws, and saving up for solar panels while the celebrities dump 130 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in one week without consequence.”

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