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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
We are two weeks away from the federal election. Have you taken the time to familiarize yourself with what you need to know? If not, we’ve got you.
Whether you need to know what you missed on the campaign trail or to simply get answers on how to vote, we have it all. You can also listen to our most recent politics podcast and sign up for our politics newsletter.
Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Pollution: Keystone oil pipeline shut down after rupture in rural North Dakota, owner South Bow confirms
- Investing: Scotiabank CEO says Canada needs to boost investment in energy infrastructure
- Listen to the Decibel: What happened to the ‘carbon tax election’?
- Space: Atmospheric researchers have bid farewell to what may be the longest running space science experiment in Canadian history.
- On the ground with The Narwhal: A deadly disease is killing millions of bats. Now Trump funding cuts threaten a promising Canadian treatment
A deeper dive
Daniel Palacios, senior scientist and director with the Center for Coastal Studies, monitors the computer and talks to the crew up while looking for North Atlantic right whales in Massachusetts's Cape Cod Bay on March 25, 2025.LAUREN OWENS LAMBERT/The Globe and Mail
Great expectations
For this week’s deeper dive, we’re taking a closer look at the second story in a series on Canada-U.S. cross-border measures to protect North Atlantic right whales.
Off the tip of Cape Cod, on the bay side of the national shoreline, a North Atlantic right whale and her four-month-old calf swim in a synchronized dance. The mother’s name is Nauset, after a local lighthouse, because of the shape of the white marking on her skin.
Nauset is one of the most crucial members of her species. With fewer than 70 reproductively active females remaining in a population of 370 whales, scientists consider these mothers the key to the species’ survival.
An aerial survey got a good look at Nauset and her calf – the first mother and calf sighting of the 2025 calving season – on Dec. 1 last year around Sapelo Island, a wildlife preserve south of Savannah, Ga.Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute, taken under NOAA permit #26919
Since 2017, North Atlantic right whales have been caught in what the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calls an “Unusual Mortality Event.” More than 20 per cent of the population is sick, injured or has been killed. Plus, stressors such as entanglements, vessel strikes, declining prey and ocean noise have disrupted their birthing cycle.
Scientists warn that if the loss of six to seven breeding females a year continues, the number of reproductive females will soon drop below the quasi-extinction threshold of 50 individuals – a tipping point from which recovery may be impossible.
Nauset and her newest calf have already defied extraordinary odds. Their journey together began hundreds of kilometres away, in the calving grounds off the coast of Georgia. By reaching Cape Cod Bay they have arrived in one of the few refuges where, for a short time, they can enjoy relative safety. For the next leg of their migration they will go as far north as the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Travelling north, the whales navigate threats from ship strikes; entanglements in fishing gear; climate change, which is altering their migratory patterns and feeding areas; and ocean noise, which can affect their ability to communicate.
Efforts to reduce human-caused mortality – which the NOAA Fisheries reports as the only solution to save North Atlantic right whales – are under way on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.
Read the full story from Jenn Thornhill Verma today.
What else you missed
- B.C. expands heat-pump rebate program as end of carbon tax weighs on CleanBC
- Trump threatens sanctions, tariffs on Mexico in water dispute
- Greenland appoints its first Arctic ambassador, pledges sustainable development
Green Investing
Carney and Poilievre have promised they’ll get major resource projects done faster, but is that actually possible?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre have both promised to fast-track approval processes. But similar promises have been made across the country before with limited effect. Court cases, Indigenous consultation and the complexity of major projects with potential environmental consequences have all stymied many an enthusiastic politician.
- Interest in responsible investing is up but ownership is down amid ESG ‘reset’: survey
- BMO defends climate efforts as investors push for more disclosure at annual general meeting
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
Plantation workers climb a ladder to harvest black pepper on April 12, 2025, in Somwarpet, in the southern state of Karnataka, India. The country's black pepper sector is bracing for a difficult year, with output falling to 46,000 metric tonnes from 55,000 metric tonnes in 2024, largely owing to unpredictable weather and the increasing impact of climate change.Abhishek Chinnappa/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
- Nostalgic gardens make a comeback
- Great Lakes caught up in trade war
- Cleanup bill for oil and gas wells
- Your Canadian travel guide
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