Climate Snapshot

The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, exploded onto the scene as millions of college students held environmental teach-ins. Since then, Earth Day has become an annual and worldwide event.

I’m sure many great things have come from those 42 years of Earth Days. I’ve enjoyed many of them. But when it comes to moving society toward effective action on climate change and its evil twin ocean acidification, these Earth Days have become the equivalent of butterflies splattered on the windshields of our accelerating dirty energy party wagon.

More carbon, not less, since beginning Earth Days

In 1970, the average Canadian was busy was dumping 15.7 tonnes of CO2 every year into the atmosphere and oceans. Today, with the benefit of forty two Earth Days under our belts, we have managed to cut our climate pollution down to 16 tonnes each.  Oh wait … that is more climate pollution, not less. Splat.

All taxes on carbon fuels work as carbon taxes. When any tax raises the price of a carbon fuel, like gasoline, the marketplace will soon find ways to use less of it.

Recently, I read about how the British government raised gas taxes in the 1990s in a partial attempt to reduce carbon pollution. It got me wondering how other gas taxes compare to BC's official carbon tax. So I did the math, and the results surprised me.

As my chart above shows, gas taxes in Britain, Germany and France are equal to an unofficial carbon tax of $500 per tonne of CO2. None of their gas taxes are formally called carbon taxes, but they act as such.

Indeed, the British, Germans and French emit three times less CO2 per person from their transportation. That’s a gigantic difference in climate pollution levels.

Last week I published a chart comparing potential tar sands CO2 to past Canadian emissions. I received a number of requests for similar charts that compare Canada's tar sands to other nation's emissions such as China, USA or a major EU nation.

• Confused by the climate threat? Take a look. 

Rather than make multiple charts, I decided to create one bar chart to rule them all.

Here it is:

For this chart, I removed all the categories of tar sands estimates except this critical one:

How much carbon will eventually become economic to burn

For decades, a mysterious force called yellow-cedar decline has decimated hundreds of thousands of acres of our iconic native yellow-cedars.

When it hits a vulnerable stand, most yellow-cedars die. Recently a team of researchers with the U.S. Forest Service published a paper based on three decades of study that revealed the culprit: by burning oil, coal and natural gas, humans are stealing the trees’ winter blankets, leaving them to literally freeze to death.

With grey papery bark, an evocative spicy-smoky smell, a buttery smooth carving wood and a life span that can exceed a thousand years, these trees have woven themselves deeply into both ancient and modern human culture.

I personally have a deep fondness for yellow-cedar trees born of many long quiet encounters with them in the wilds.