Globe Climate: Great Lakes caught up in trade war

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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.

This year’s winners in the World Press Photo Contest covered some of the biggest stories of recent times – including the war in Gaza and climate upheaval in the Amazon – but also other moments that would have otherwise gone overlooked.

Take a look at some of the highlights. The World Press Photo of the Year will be announced on April 17.

Now, let’s catch you up on other news.

Noteworthy reporting this week:

1. Orphan wells: Can ‘ClosureCos’ solve Alberta’s oil and gas liability problem?
2. Report: Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions edge down in 2023, among lowest totals since 1990s
3. Geography: Despite centuries of efforts to map our planet precisely, our view of the world will always be political and imperfect
4. From The Narwhal: One of Canada’s biggest copper mines plans to expand. B.C. says it won’t need an environmental assessment

A deeper dive

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Environmental risk within Canada-U.S. trade turmoil

The following is pulled from reporting done by Patrick White, The Globe’s water reporter. You can follow Globe updates to the trade war with our explainer.

For decades, the Great Lakes region has been a model of cross-border collaboration. Together, Canada and the United States authored one of the world’s great environmental comeback stories.

Civil servants from both countries have been working together on everything from sea lamprey control to toxic-algae tracking, and water-quality monitoring to water-level forecasting.

But the Trump administration’s combative stand on binational relations have strained the partnership.

Scientists on either side of the border say the U.S. administration has put a freeze on cross-border communication for civil servants. Joint meetings have been cancelled or delayed and travel to Canada has been curtailed.

“A lot of scientists have been told, ‘You’re not going to Canada and you’re not talking to Canadians,‘” said Gail Krantzberg, an engineering and public policy professor at McMaster University who specializes in the Great Lakes.

And the strain on the relationship is not the only thing putting the region’s hard-won environmental progress at risk. It’s coupled with deep job cuts to U.S. civil servants dedicated to Great Lakes initiatives.

Elon Musk’s chainsaw-inspired cutbacks have carved hundreds of jobs from the Fish and Wildlife Service, a federal agency that is a key player in the binational effort to control the invasive sea lamprey – a major threat to Great Lakes fisheries. Cuts have also targeted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where more than 1,000 scientists and other employees could be fired, according to the Associated Press. That’s not including the casualties of 10 to 20 per cent of the staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency responsible for ocean, weather and climatic forecasting.

“We can’t rely on what’s going to happen in Washington every day or every week,” said Brian Masse, NDP MP for Windsor West. “We need to take a stronger position to protect the water and the economy.”

Read Patrick White’s full story today

What else you missed

• One-fifth of pollinator species in North America at risk of extinction, report says
• Ontario’s cottage country hit by ice storm, tens of thousands without power
• Snow and freezing rain cause crashes, road closures as wintery conditions hit much of Canada
• South Korea struggles to contain wildfires that have killed at least 28
• Rare Mongolian dinosaur wielded ‘big, sharp and nasty’ claws

Opinion and analysis

Marsha Lederman: Why are we still keeping elephants in zoos?

Martin Olszynski and Julien O. Beaulieu: As we dump carbon taxes and push pipelines, remember there’s no such thing as a free lunch

Green Investing

Thanks to Elon Musk, EV virtue signalling is disappearing. Maybe that’s a good thing

Investment reporter David Berman is starting to wonder what image his EV is projecting now that environmentalism and progressive values have been tossed out the window.

Some car buyers may be thinking: Is an EV the sort of vehicle I want to own today, when a gas-powered Civic or RAV4 will get me through any political traffic jam? It’s a tough one to answer. But here’s what he’s hoping for: As EVs shed their virtue-signalling, they become regular cars.

• Opinion: Ben & Jerry’s social activism vs. its corporate owner

The Climate Exchange

We’ve launched the next chapter of The Climate Exchange, an interactive, digital hub where The Globe answers your most pressing questions about climate change. More than 300 questions were submitted as of September. The first batch of answers tackles 30 of them. They 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. We plan to answer a total of 75 questions.

Photo of the week

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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

• Cleanup bill for oil and gas wells
• Your Canadian travel guide
• Chasing glaciers
• The climate Changemakers

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