Here’s all the latest local and international news concerning climate change for the week of Feb. 3 to Feb. 9, 2025.
Here’s the latest news concerning climate change and biodiversity loss in British Columbia and around the world, from the steps leaders are taking to address the problems to all the up-to-date science.
Recommended Videos
In climate news this week:
• Report warns new housing in B.C. high-risk zones could cost billions in damages
• ‘It’s surreal’: Trump’s freeze on climate money sows fear and confusion
• January warmest on record: climate scientists
Human activities like 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 become 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.”
The NOAA notes there has been a steady rise in CO2, from just over 421 ppm one year ago and under 320 ppm in 1960.
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 last 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
Report warns new housing in B.C. high-risk zones could cost billions in damages
The province should steer housing investment to low-hazard areas, as financial losses from new builds in flood and wildfire zones in B.C. are projected to soar over $2 billion a year by 2030 — the highest in Canada — a new climate change report says.
The report Thursday from the Canadian Climate Institute says floods and wildfires are the greatest climate change threats to housing in Canada, yet new homes continue to be built in high-hazard zones. The costs of building in high-risk zones are substantial, the report says, leading to combined damages to new housing in Canada as high as $3 billion a year.
B.C. faces the steepest bill compared with other provinces, the authors say, projected to make up more than two-thirds of new national losses by the end of the decade.
For instance, the report says nearly 90 per cent of Canada’s wildfire risk to new housing is projected to happen in B.C.
Annual wildfire damages alone in B.C. could more than triple by 2030, increasing from roughly $400 million a year now to nearly $1.5 billion a year, analysis shows.
Then there are the flood losses. New housing development in flood zones in the province could add up to $1.1 billion in losses by 2030, the report says.
—Tiffany Crawford
January warmest on record: climate scientists
The agency said last month was 1.75 C above the pre-industrial level, exceeding the 1.5 C threshold set out in the Paris Accord.
The last 12-month period (February 2024 to January 2025) was 0.73 C above the 1991-2020 average, and 1.61 C above the estimated 1850-1900 average used to define the pre-industrial level, the agency said.
European countries, particularly in southern and eastern Europe, including western Russia, were the hottest while outside Europe temperatures were most above average over northeast and northwest Canada, Alaska, and Siberia.
They were also above average over southern South America, Africa, and much of Australia and Antarctica.
—Tiffany Crawford
‘It’s surreal’: Trump’s freeze on climate money sows fear and confusion
When President Donald Trump’s administration last week shut off the spigot of federal grant money, which a federal judge said is likely in violation of U.S. law, it caused confusion and panic among groups and researchers that work on clean energy, climate change and environmental justice.
Nonprofits, small businesses and state and city agencies abruptly lost access to millions of dollars that were already under contract and being used. After the National Science Foundation (NSF) paused all its grants, researchers rushed to find out if their projects were affected, and some had their salaries frozen.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the spending pause days later. But uncertainty persists, and the full impact of the disruption, which was unprecedented, is still coming into view.
“It’s been very confusing,” says Alex Bomstein, executive director of the non-profit Clean Air Council, which is headquartered in Philadelphia and has offices in Wilmington and Pittsburgh. The group has three Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants and says its access to this money was turned off, then back on, then again switched off over the course of the week. “We’ve got mixed messaging, and obviously it concerns our employees as well as the communities that we serve,” Bomstein says.
The Ridgeland, Mississippi-based non-profit 2C Mississippi can’t access project funds from an EPA grant awarded last August, says Dominika Parry, the group’s founding president and CEO.
“It’s surreal. None of this makes sense,” she says. “I am overwhelmed trying to make decisions based on the information we have, and the information keeps changing.” By Monday night, Parry was hearing from peers that their funding was available again, although she was still locked out of her grant.
—Bloomberg News
Guilbeault, the carbon tax’s staunchest defender, admits it could be ‘replaced’
He fought tooth and nail for the tax, promising there would be “no exemptions to carbon pricing in this country.” Now, federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault admits the consumer carbon tax “has become very unpopular” and that maybe, just maybe, the government could replace it with something else.
“Our plan to fight climate change is much broader than just one measure. There’s about 100 different measures that we have deployed to fight climate change in Canada and the consumer carbon-pricing element is an important element, but it’s not the only one,” Guilbeault said Monday.
“I am not telling you that this is not an important measure, it will have to be replaced with something else.
“The industrial pricing component of carbon pricing in Canada gives us three times more emission reduction than the consumer pricing,” he said.
Ten provinces and the territories are subject to the federal carbon tax regime, and Guilbeault is the Trudeau government’s chief proponent of the measure.
Guilbeault made the comments as he arrived at the cabinet retreat in Montebello, Que., amid a Liberal leadership race in which three of the best-known candidates have said they would revisit the consumer carbon tax.
—Antoine Trépanier
Chris Wright, who once drank fracking fluid to prove its safety, confirmed to lead U.S. energy agency
Chris Wright was confirmed as Secretary of Energy, putting the founder of an oil and gas fracking services company in charge of an agency that will play a key role in President Donald Trump’s plans for a sweeping overhaul of U.S. energy policy.
Wright is poised to help Trump make good on plans that include expanding of the power grid, building power plants and bringing more nuclear power online. He supports the president’s desire to unleash exports of liquefied natural gas amid a broader goal of promoting fossil fuel production and pulling back the fight against climate change.
Wright, who was confirmed by a vote of 59 to 38, reassured Democrats during his confirmation hearing he supports renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower. He also said the Energy Department would play an important role in fighting climate change, the threat of which he previously has said is exaggerated.
“He’s not a product of D.C. I think that’s going to be his strength,” said Les Csorba, a friend of Wright and leadership adviser to him as a partner at firm Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. “He’s a self-proclaimed energy tech nerd.”
Wright, who has said he would step down as chief executive of Liberty Energy Inc. upon his confirmation, has no previous Washington experience but is known as an unapologetic defender of the oil and gas industry. He once drank fracking fluid to refute critics who questioned its safety.
—Bloomberg News
Trump is trying to halt the EV charger build out. Experts say it’s not that easy
Experts are questioning President Donald Trump’s latest effort to slow the electric vehicle charging build out in the U.S.
In a letter Thursday night, the Trump administration directed states to stop spending money for EV charging infrastructure, funds they were allocated under former president Joe Biden. Trump has slammed federal funding for electric vehicle chargers as “an incredible waste of taxpayer dollars.”
The administration may need an act of Congress for this, and it’s unclear there will be one. Industry leaders say customer demand will continue to drive growth in the charging network, regardless of federal funding.
The Tesla Supercharger network — led by CEO Elon Musk, now a prominent member of Trump’s inner circle — itself has received millions of dollars through the program that was just halted. But it also has a massive footprint of chargers across the country. Tesla will continue expanding its network regardless of federal money — and likely still benefit from its competitors receiving fewer funds.
On his first day in office Trump paused billions of dollars in funding for a countrywide build out of fast electric car chargers that had been allocated to states through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula program.
—The Associated Press
NOAA targeted by DOGE staffers: Media reports
“They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information,” Rosenberg was quoted as saying.