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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
As promised, we’ve got winners of 2025’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest on display in today’s visual newsletter.
Now, let’s take a look at other news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Policy: Canada’s carbon tax is dead. But it’s not dearly departed
- Photo essay: In Cape Breton, a fight to protect the land
- Policy: Electric-vehicle companies urge Ottawa to maintain EV sales mandate
- World: Indonesian nickel industry harming local communities, environment, report says
- Mining: Trump’s investments in Canadian critical minerals could push Ottawa to follow suit, industry players say
- Animals: Meet Beef, an Alberta farmer’s steer who is Guinness-certified as the tallest in the world
- Travel: My trip to the Georgian Bay, where an Anishinaabe maple syrup operation carries on a sweet tradition
A deeper dive
Images to make us reflect and reconnect with the natural world
For this week’s deeper dive, a closer look at winners of the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.
The images from this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest blur the lines between wilderness and the spaces we live.
The annual event, which tells the story of a planet under pressure, is organized by the Natural History Museum in London; each year it receives tens of thousands of submissions. The organizers hope the power of photography can advance scientific knowledge, spread awareness of important issues and (like this newsletter aims to), nurture a love for nature.
An exhibit of the winning photos opened last week in London, and arrives at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum on Nov. 8. According to the ROM’s website, the contest is the world’s longest-running and most prestigious nature photography competition. Here are some highlights.
Ghost Town Visitor
Wim van den Heever of South Africa photographed this haunting scene of a brown hyena among the skeletal remains of a long-abandoned diamond mining town.Wim van den Heever/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
- Taken by Wim van den Heever in Kolmanskop, Namibia
- Adult Grand Title Winner
- “It took me 10 years to finally get this one single image,” the South African says. Jury chair Kathy Moran praised van den Heever’s shot for challenging ideas of what is urban and what is wild: Kolmanskop is “still a town – it would seem that way to me – just no longer ours.”
Like an Eel out of Water
Shane Gross of Canada witnessed a peppered moray eel very much in its element hunting for carrion at low tide.Shane Gross/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
- Taken by Shane Gross in D’Arros Island, Seychelles
- Winner of the Animals in their Environment category
- Canadian Shane Gross tried over several weeks to see the animals forage for dead fish in the intertidal zone before capturing this shot. Through his work, Shane wants to shine a light on the impact, both positive and negative, people are having on the oceans and on freshwater ecosystems.
Caught in the Headlights
Simone Baumeister of Germany captured an orb weaver spider on its web on a pedestrian bridge, silhouetted by lights from the cars below.Simone Baumeister/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
- Taken by Simone Baumeister in Ibbenbuuren, Germany
- Winner in the Natural Artistry category
- Spiders tend to build webs around artificial light sources, but the ones in this photo are farther away than they appear. There are cars far below the pedestrian bridge where the orb weaver spider sits – removing part of the lens has distorted them, but not the spider. To achieve this kaleidoscopic effect, Simone reversed one of the six glass elements in an analogue lens.
Eye of the Tundra
Alexey Kharitonov (of Israel and Russia) finds art in unexpected perspectives across Russia’s northern swamps.Alexey Kharitonov/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
- Taken by Alexey Kharitonov across Russia’s northern swamps
- Winner of the Portfolio Award
- When ice-rich permafrost below ground thaws, it can create a striking thermokarst landscape where the ground sinks and forms large surface depressions. These depressions can develop into swampy bodies of water called thermokarst lakes. This one is 30 metres wide.
Rattled
In his work, Javier Aznar González de Rueda of Spain explores the complex relationship between humans and rattlesnakes across the United States.Javier Aznar González de Rueda/Wildlife Photographer of the Year
- Taken by Javier Aznar González de Rueda in Fort Davis, Tex.
- Winner of the Photojournalist Story Award
- Spaniard Javier Aznar González de Rueda is a biologist turned photojournalist. He began his career as a freelance wildlife photographer in Ecuador, where he’s spent the majority of the past decade.
What else you missed
- Therapeutic rock climbing helps people with physical challenges improve their mental health and physical strength
- Rangers test their mettle in Arctic lands where help is far off, and the prospect of a ‘Golden Dome’ even more so
Opinion and analysis
Sheldon Jordan and Yves Goulet: Global trade controls could stop the $4.8-billion eel smuggling crisis
Robyn Urback: Are zoos destined to go the way of Marineland?
Green Investing
Canada can lead EV supply chain despite trade war and murky policies, industry players say
The Canadian EV industry has been battered this year by the termination of failed battery manufacturer Northvolt’s Quebec plant; U.S. President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on the auto sector and threats to stop imports; and the expiry of federal incentives for EV buyers.
But even as thorny trade disputes continue, players in the Canadian industry still envision a complete domestic electric-vehicle supply chain, from mining to manufacturing.
The Climate Exchange
We’ve launched the The Climate Exchange, an interactive, digital hub where The Globe answers your most pressing questions about climate change. We have been collecting hundreds of questions and posing them to experts. The answers can be found with the help of a search tool developed by The Globe that makes use of artificial intelligence to match readers’ questions with the closest answer drafted. You can ask a question using this form.
Photo of the week
Boats are moored along the rubbish-strewn banks of the Rio Negro in Manaus, northern Brazil, earlier this month.MICHAEL DANTAS/AFP/Getty Images
Guides and Explainers
- Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that: Green Investing 101 newsletter course for the climate-conscious investor. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
- We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP29 and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
- We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills - Little Steps to Big Change.
Catch up on Globe Climate
- Carney’s climate vision
- Lessons from wildfire survivors
- How one activist found compassion in jail
- PFAS in the water
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