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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
Tomorrow marks the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. In observance of this, The Globe and Mail will not be publishing newsletters that run on Tuesday. We hope to encourage learning, reflection and meaningful conversations about the history and continued effects of colonialism in Canada.
Please consider reading this excerpt from A Nation’s Paper: The Globe and Mail in the Life of Canada, a collection of history essays from Globe writers past and present. Willow Fiddler wrote about how The Globe supported residential schools for decades, and how it stopped.
Now, let’s catch you up on news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Policy: B.C. pushes Heritage Act reform with First Nations amid concerns over development slowdowns
- Analysis: China, the world’s worst polluter, is becoming an unlikely climate leader
- Electricity: Hitachi plans $270-million expansion of Quebec power transformer factory
- Waste: An Ontario town dreads garbage day as province plows ahead with landfill
- Agriculture: U.S. targets Canadian mushroom growers with anti-dumping investigation
- Homes: Ottawa’s closing of green-homes loan program leaves homeowners, businesses in lurch
- Technology: Exoskeleton companies vie to break into the mainstream
- Space: Debate over value of sending humans to space is unlikely to be resolved by Artemis
A deeper dive
As a member of climate justice group Last Generation Canada, Concordia University student Étienne Eason went to jail in 2024 after vandalizing an Ottawa museum dinosaur replica to protest climate change.ROGER LEMOYNE/The Globe and Mail
A different kind of climate justice
For this week’s deeper dive, a closer look into a radical act that led one activist to new optimism for the future.
Erin Anderssen is a reporter for The Globe based out of Ottawa. She is currently working on a year-long investigation into happiness, with a focus on social issues and public policy, mental health and how we live together.
When Erin met Étienne Eason several years ago, it was at the church where her husband serves as minister, and where Eason had started attending the meetings of an activist climate justice group called Last Generation Canada.
The grassroots organization, whose members ranged from their 20s to their 80s, sought change through non-violent civil disobedience. They led sessions on the history and tactics of passive resistance and protest, and how to be respectful of the police and prepare to be taken into custody.
But last winter, Erin saw Eason on the news. He had bought a ticket to the Museum of Nature in Ottawa, made his way to the dinosaur exhibit and pulled a fire extinguisher filled with pink paint out of his knapsack. He then began spraying the museum’s 12-foot replica Carnosaur skeleton (while avoiding any genuine fossils).
The self-described “goody two-shoes” says the museum protest was his idea. If he was going to get arrested, he wanted to make it count.
Like so many of his peers facing a future of climate threats and challenges, Eason was searching for a way to make his choices matter, to find meaning and lessen his despair. He didn’t know he was about to find hope in the most unexpected of places.
After his arrest, he was sent overnight to the Ottawa correction centre.
Eventually, one cellmate asked why he’d been arrested, chuckling at his explanation. Others shared their food and showed him how to make his bunk. A middle-aged man invited him to play Scrabble, and they discussed climate change while searching for words among their game tiles, as if they were sitting at a kitchen table. He was advised, repeatedly, not to do something so foolish again.
Eason was ordered to complete 150 hours of community service, which he finished in August by volunteering for a social justice organization. He is still saving to pay off the $11,000 fine for damages.
He came away disheartened by a system that never gave him a chance to explain his motives. But today he is still trying to raise awareness, albeit within the bounds of the law.
What else you missed
- Microplastics are creating huge health problems, and it’s time we do something about it
- Ottawa informally reviewing China EV tariffs with no specific deadline
- B.C. Green Party elects Emily Lowan as new leader
- China plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 10% by 2035, Xi tells UN
Opinion and analysis
Jessica Kelly: Carney’s Brexit-era approach to climate finance needs an upgrade
Editorial board: Why the Dutch are retreating from the sea
Green Investing
GE Vernova to install direct-air carbon-capture unit at Deep Sky site
The energy technology company, spun off last year by General Electric, plans to operate equipment designed to capture 1,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually starting in late 2026.
The installation marks the biggest name yet to contribute direct-air capture technology to Montreal-based Deep Sky’s Alpha facility in Innisfail, Alta.
Not green
- CPPIB investing $3-billion in Sempra Infrastructure, a North American natural gas business
- Northback to submit new proposal to develop Alberta’s Grassy Mountain coal mine
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
Tens of thousands of wading birds gather from late summer through early winter to feed on the mudflats of the shallow bay known as the Wash near Snettisham in England. During high tides, the 'whirling waders' take to the air in large numbers as they did here on Sept. 25, offering a dazzling display as they roost along the estuary's waterline and wait for the tide to recede, revealing their feeding ground once more.Dan Kitwood/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
- PFAS in the water
- Wildfire ash speeds up glacier melt
- Strategizing the fight against wildfires
- The keepers of the coast
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