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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
The city of Vancouver says clearing dead wood from Stanley Park is vital for safety. Today, we look at a story about how a local group is challenging its science.
Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Mining: Near the Minnesota wilderness, a town by the Canadian border confronts what an end to the mining ban means for its future
- Evacuations: Flood-plagued Peguis First Nation in Manitoba prepares for possible evacuation as nearby river rises
- Hydropower: B.C. faces surge in electricity demand, looks to dust off big dam plans
- Analysis: Ontario is buying clean generation. But its long-term plans remain anything but technologically agnostic
- Report on Business Magazine: Governments are on a mission to standardize climate labels on investments
- Life: For two British mountaineers, climbing in Baffin Island is now a family tradition
A deeper dive
An area of Vancouver’s Stanley Park that saw significant tree removals and other wildfire fuels reduction.Jesse Winter/The Globe and Mail
A national crown jewel
For this week’s deeper dive, a closer look at the challenge of protecting urban green spaces.
Vancouver’s Stanley Park is home to 600,000 trees, but not all are living ones. Almost a third of the public park’s trees were killed between 2020 and 2023 by a type of moth that consumed the needles of the park’s famously giant trees.
The city says removing some of the dead trees is necessary to protect people from falling trees and branches, and the area itself from wildfire as debris from dead trees could become fuel in dry conditions. Under dry, windy conditions, piles of dead brush could go up like a bonfire.
Workers rake up fallen branches and debris after wildfire mitigation work in Vancouver’s Stanley Park in February.Jesse Winter/The Globe and Mail
“If there was ever a fire in Stanley Park that, God forbid, damaged one of the steel girders on the bridge and resulted in that bridge being closed for weeks or months or longer, that would have just a shocking effect, I think, on the economy of the region,” said Joe McLeod, the city’s associate director of urban forestry.
The Globe’s Jesse Winter reported and photographed the iconic park and the people who care most about it – but not everyone agrees on what is best for the environment.
A small but vocal group of park devotees are challenging the science behind removing the trees, which they say amounts to “logging” a national crown jewel.
Michael Robert Caditz founded the Stanley Park Preservation Society in 2023 specifically to oppose the tree removals.
“This entire narrative about a looper moth killing trees and the trees are dangerous and they need to be removed, is a complete false narrative,” he said.
A worker cuts off the top of a dead hemlock tree during wildfire mitigation work in Vancouver’s Stanley Park in March.Jesse Winter/The Globe and Mail
In an affidavit filed as part of Caditz’s lawsuits to end the removals, ecologist Rhonda Millikin alleged the tree thinning would unnecessarily ventilate the forest and actually increase wildfire risk, not lower it.
Beyond arguments over which trees should be cut or saved, Jesse writes that what’s happening in one of Canada’s most iconic urban parks underscores the broader challenges of managing city green spaces in the era of climate change.
What else you missed
- Canada’s emissions reductions slowed to almost zero in 2024, federal data show
- Oil industry leaders are putting economy, environment at risk, former minister Catherine McKenna says
- Rising waters endanger Gatineau homes as spring flood concerns grow in Quebec, Ontario
- Super Typhoon Sinlaku in the Pacific Ocean batters remote U.S. islands with heavy winds and rains
Opinion and analysis
The audacity of Artemis is needed back on Earth
The ambition and determination of space travel is reason to believe that humanity can achieve great things. If we can fly around the moon, we can come to grips with climate change.
— The Editorial Board
Mark Carney gets it right with bold new nature strategy
We are a stable, wealthy democracy with abundant resources, a well-educated work force and more intact nature than any place on Earth. If Canada can’t show the world how to do it right, who can?
— Stewart Elgie, Jarislowsky Chair in Clean Economy and Innovation at the University of Ottawa
By deliberately targeting water, warring factions in the Persian Gulf have weaponized thirst
The Middle East has long been a region defined by the politics of oil. It may now be entering an era shaped by the geopolitics of water. And unlike oil, water has no substitute. It is irreplaceable.
— Brahma Chellaney, author of two award-winning books on water
Business and investing
Global conflict is making the case for renewables that climate politics couldn’t
Donald Trump is unwittingly fuelling the clean energy transition in the war on Iran. The lesson from the Strait of Hormuz is clear: Energy that depends on distant travel is energy that can be taken away. Paul Kershaw writes that renewables aren’t just clean – they’re sovereign. The policy professor at UBC has applied this in his own life: His home is now officially net-energy positive.
- Canada forges new link in crucial lithium supply chain in B.C. industrial zone
- When an oil shock is renewable energy’s best friend
- Oil and gas CEOs say they see the Carney majority as a vote for Canadian energy
- Ottawa wants LNG to be shipped from Port of Churchill by 2030, Manitoba Premier says
Photo of the week
A family walks through a field of English bluebells in a beech woodland near Ashford, England, on April 15. English bluebells are a protected species in the U.K., and it is against the law to pick, uproot or destroy the plants.Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Guides and Explainers
- We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP30 and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
- We have ideas to make your travelling more sustainable, your lifestyle at home more ecofriendly, and to talk to your kids about climate change.
- In a series of essays from writers exploring the role The Globe and Mail has played in Canada’s history, A Nation’s Paper also highlights the journey of the newspaper’s green evolution.