Here’s all the latest local and international news concerning climate change for the week of Feb. 24 to March 2, 2025.
Here’s the latest news concerning climate change and biodiversity loss in B.C. and around the world, from the steps leaders are taking to address the problems to all the up-to-date science.
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In climate news this week:
• Why reaching net zero is getting cheaper in the U.K.
• Scientists scorn EPA push to say climate change isn’t a danger, say just look around at the world
• New research links storm season intensity in B.C. with ocean acidification in Strait of Georgia
Human activities such as burning fossil fuels and farming livestock are the main drivers of climate change, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This causes heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere, increasing the planet’s surface temperature.
The panel, which is made up of scientists from around the world, has warned for decades that wildfires and severe weather, such as B.C.’s deadly heat dome and catastrophic flooding in 2021, would be more frequent and intense because of the climate emergency. It has issued a code red for humanity and warns the window to limit warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial times is closing.
According to NASA climate scientists, human activities have raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 per cent in less than 200 years, and “there is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.”
Climate change quick facts:
• The Earth is now about 1.3 C warmer than it was in the 1800s.
• 2024 was hottest on record globally, beating the record in 2023.
• The global average temperature in 2023 reached 1.48 C higher than the pre-industrial average, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. In 2024, it breached the 1.5 C threshold at 1.55 C.
• The past 10 years (2015-2024) are the 10 warmest years on record.
• Human activities have raised atmospheric concentrations of CO2 by nearly 49 per cent above pre-industrial levels starting in 1850.
• The world is not on track to meet the Paris Agreement target to keep global temperature from exceeding 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, the upper limit to avoid the worst fallout from climate change including sea level rise, and more intense drought, heat waves and wildfires.
• On the current path of carbon dioxide emissions, the temperature could increase by as much 3.6 C this century, according to the IPCC.
• In April, 2022 greenhouse gas concentrations reached record new highs and show no sign of slowing.
• Emissions must drop 7.6 per cent per year from 2020 to 2030 to keep temperatures from exceeding 1.5 C and 2.7 per cent per year to stay below 2 C.
• There is global scientific consensus that the climate is warming and that humans are the cause.
Latest News
Why reaching net zero is getting cheaper in the U.K.
These days, whether it’s right-wing populists or green-minded politicians, there seems to be an agreement that the costs of meeting climate goals are higher than governments can afford. But hope might come from a little-celebrated bureaucratic organization: the U.K.’s Climate Change Committee.
In a report published on Wednesday, it said the U.K. can reach net-zero emissions by 2050 while spending as little as 0.2 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product or about £4.3 billion ($5.4 billion) each year on average. That’s a 75 per cent reduction from the committee’s previous estimate in 2020 of net costs of £16.1 billion each year between 2025 and 2050.
What happened? “Technology has continued to innovate between the last time we issued advice to the government and today,” said Emma Pinchbeck, CCC’s chief executive. The biggest reductions in cost come in the form of cheaper renewables and electric cars.
The committee was counting on the costs of solar, wind and batteries to fall even when it gave its advice on the carbon budget in 2020, but the new estimate confirms that these technologies have fallen in cost faster than the committee was projecting.
This view is backed up by others tracking clean energy markets. Since 2010, researcher BloombergNEF finds the price of solar and batteries has fallen by more than 90 per cent, whereas wind turbines have become 59 per cent cheaper.
—Bloomberg News
B.C. to expand three existing provincial parks, two renamed with Indigenous names
B.C. is expanding three provincial parks and renaming two with Indigenous names.
Enderby Cliffs Park near Salmon Arm will be renamed Tplaqín/Enderby Cliffs Park while Maquinna Marine Park near Tofino will be renamed Nism̓aakqin Park.
“Indigenous people have been stewards of the water, land and wildlife for millennia,” said Tamara Davidson, minister of environment and parks.
“Renaming these parks to traditional Indigenous names recognizes significant cultural values and supports continuing reconciliation with First Nations.”
The proposed additions will add approximately 143 hectares to three parks:
• Naikoon Park (Haida Gwaii): 104 hectares of land that is already surrounded by the existing park.
• Wells Gray Park (near Clearwater): 33 hectares of land to protect wetland and forest that is surrounded by the existing park on three sides;
• Cinnemousun Narrows (near Sicamous): three hectares of land and three hectares of adjacent lake shore.
— Postmedia
Scientists scorn EPA push to say climate change isn’t a danger, say just look around at the world
As President Donald Trump’s administration looks to reverse a cornerstone finding that climate change endangers human health and welfare, scientists say they just need to look around because it’s obvious how bad global warming is and how it’s getting worse.
New research and ever more frequent extreme weather further prove the harm climate change is doing to people and the planet, 11 different scientists, experts in health and climate, told The Associated Press soon after word of the administration’s plans leaked out Wednesday. They cited peer-reviewed studies and challenged the Trump administration to justify its own effort with science.
“There is no possible world in which greenhouse gases are not a threat to public health,” said Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb. “It’s simple physics coming up against simple physiology and biology, and the limits of our existing infrastructure to protect us against worsening climate-fuelled extremes.”
Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin has privately pushed the White House for a rewrite of the agency’s finding that planet-warming greenhouse gases put the public in danger. The original 52-page decision in 2009 is used to justify and apply regulations and decisions on heat-trapping emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
“Carbon dioxide is the very essence of a dangerous air pollutant. The health evidence was overwhelming back in 2009 when EPA reached its endangerment finding, and that evidence has only grown since then,” said University of Washington public health professor Dr. Howard Frumkin, who headed the National Center for Environmental Health at the time. “CO2 pollution is driving catastrophic heat waves and storms, infectious disease spread, mental distress, and numerous other causes of human suffering and preventable death.”
—The Associated Press
After a month of Trump’s pro-oil and gas moves, Dems target his energy emergency
President Donald Trump began dismantling his predecessor’s climate change and renewable energy policies on his first day in office, declaring a national energy emergency to speed up fossil fuel development — a policy he has summed up as “drill, baby, drill.”
The declaration calls on the federal government to make it easier for companies to build oil and gas projects, in part by weakening environmental reviews, with the goal of lowering prices and selling to international markets.
Democrats say that’s a sham. They point out that the U.S. is producing more oil and natural gas than any other country and the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act boosted renewable energy at a critical time, creating jobs and addressing the climate change threat — 2024 was Earth’s hottest year on record amid the hottest 10-year stretch on record.
“It would also set a horrible precedent, that a president of either party can invent a sham emergency and then grab away from Congress powers that Congress has” in the Constitution, said Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
Kaine spoke Wednesday in support of a Senate resolution from Democrats to terminate Trump’s declaration that later failed on a party-line 52-47 vote.
—The Associated Press
Most Americans who experienced severe winter weather see climate change at work, AP-NORC poll shows
Matt Ries has lived in Florida only three years, but everyone told him last summer was unusually hot. That was followed by three hurricanes in close succession. Then temperatures dropped below freezing for days this winter, and snow blanketed part of the state.
To Ries, 29, an Ohio native now in Tampa, the extreme weather — including the bitter cold — bore all the hallmarks of climate change.
“To me it’s just kind of obvious,” said Ries, a project manager for an environmental company and self-described conservative-leaning independent. “Things are changing pretty drastically; just extreme weather all across the country and the world. … I do think humans are speeding up that process.”
About 8 in 10 U.S. adults say they have experienced some kind of extreme weather in recent years, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, with about half saying they’ve been personally affected by severe cold weather or severe winter storms.
Among those saying severe cold was among the types of extreme weather they experienced, about three-quarters say climate change is at least a partial cause of those events — suggesting that many understand global warming can create an unstable atmosphere that allows cold air from the Arctic to escape farther south more often.
—The Associated Press
New research links storm season intensity in B.C. with ocean acidification in Strait of Georgia
B.C. scientists are a step closer to understanding why ocean acidification is more extreme during some parts of the year in the northern Strait of Georgia.
The findings have implications for the shellfish industry and provide insight into where climate mitigation strategies, like farming kelp, will be most needed. An eight-year study led by Hakai Institute scientists and published in the journal Nature last week found that ocean acidification levels in the northern Strait of Georgia were linked to storm season intensity in B.C.
Between 2018 and 2020, weak storm seasons correlated with extreme ocean acidification. Strong storm seasons, like the one in 2023, led to better conditions due to increased gas exchange and freshwater influx.
“We noted that there’s a relationship between how stormy the storm season is and what the ocean acidification parameters look like in the northern part of the strait,” said Wiley Evans, lead oceanographer at the Hakai Institute based in Campbell River.
—Tiffany Crawford
Trump’s EPA plots single strike against U.S. climate change rules
President Donald Trump’s top environmental regulator is recommending the US government scrap its formal conclusion that greenhouse gases endanger the public, a move that would sweep away the legal foundation for regulations limiting planet-warming pollution from power plants, automobiles and oil wells.
In private recommendations to Trump, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has urged a rewrite of the so-called endangerment finding, setting the stage for a potentially sweeping attack on federal climate regulations. The recommendations were described by people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the assessment isn’t public.
The president has frequently criticized what he calls the “green new scam,” referring to government policies fighting climate change and promoting emission-free energy. Trump hasn’t formally endorsed the plan outlined by Zeldin, and it’s unclear if he will embrace it. But if he does, the effort would dovetail with priorities such as building more power plants and abolishing incentives for electric vehicle sales. And it would be consistent with recent Trump administration moves to retreat from work on climate change, including preventing a US official from attending a scientific meeting on the issue in China.
“This is the Holy Grail of the climate agenda,” said Marc Morano, who runs the climate-skeptic website ClimateDepot.com. “If you want to permanently cripple the United States climate agenda you have to go at the heart of it. This is the heart of it: the endangerment finding.”
—Bloomberg News