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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
This spring, don’t forget the story of the flower, and how it changed our world. Keep reading, because we’ll get into the weeds of the evolution of beauty in blossoms.
Now, let’s catch you up on other news, including space updates.
The moon is seen in a picture taken by an Artemis II crew member through the window of the Orion spacecraft on Monday, Day 5 of the mission.NASA/Reuters
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Space: How the Artemis II mission is rekindling humanity’s long love affair with the moon
- Adventure: Canadian Olivia Cazes wants to be the first woman to horseback ride across the Americas
- Conservation: Ottawa announces $3.8-billion nature strategy, laying out path to protect 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030
- Pollution: First Nations chiefs demand apology after Carney says he could “outlast” First Nations woman who was protesting over mercury poisoning in her community
- Agriculture: It’s getting harder to find real chocolate, but Canadian craft chocolate makers are fighting the good fight
A deeper dive
Flowers in the Butchart Gardens in Saanich, B.C., in March.Alana Paterson/The Globe and Mail
Spring awakening
For this week’s deeper dive, we take a closer look at the power of the flower.
As blooms emerge this spring, here is your reminder that they connect us to one of life’s most powerful creative forces. Today, we forget how radical they were at first, because flowering plants are nature’s great disruptors.
Floral beauty is a world-changing superpower, writes David George Haskell whose latest book is How Flowers Made our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries. He says that flowers use beauty to link plants and animals into the collaborative unions that build and sustain much of the natural world.
Camellias at the Government House Gardens in Saanich, B.C., in March.Alana Paterson/The Globe and Mail
About 130 million years ago, floral takeover of Earth was created through new forms of co-operation, often mediated by beauty.
Flowering plants have since built ecosystems from the rainforests to the Prairies, and they are the foundation of human agriculture. Flowers evolved to attract and motivate pollinators, and these reliable couriers are rewarded with nutritious nectar and pollen. Before that, insects were pests for most plants.
And while humans are not pollinators, flowers beguile us, too. Of course, without flowering plants in agriculture, most humans would starve. But we also use them to mark important connections and transitions in our life: courtship, weddings, burials and religious and secular celebrations.
You don’t need to remind those who participate in the annual Greater Victoria Flower Count about the power of the flower. While the rest of Canada was still in the throes of winter in early March, the Greater Victoria Area showed off the mildest climate in the country with a flower-counting competition.
Ellise Guigon’s Grade 4/5 class at Deep Cove Elementary School in North Saanich, B.C., participates in the flower count.Alana Paterson/The Globe and Mail
And it’s not just schoolkids who join in the fun: For more than 50 years many adults tally flowers, too. It’s a fun method to boost local pride. It’s also a tongue-in-cheek way to gently tease the rest of the country.
This year, 86 billion blooms marked spring’s awakening.
“At a time when the news is dominated by violence and ugly top-down control, it’s good to remember the wisdom of flowers, time-tested over one hundred million years,” Haskell writes.
“Delighting in a flower therefore gives us more than a moment of sensory pleasure. The joy we feel connects us to the ancient, productive bond between flowers and animals,” he continues. “When the flowers emerge this spring, let’s celebrate them for what they are, catalysts for positive, opportunity-building change.”
What else you missed
- Renewables surged to almost half of global electricity capacity in 2025
- How a drought-resistant, GMO mustard plant could upend the farming industry
- Wolf bites woman in a shopping area in Germany
- Rays are eager to return to Tropicana Field for the first game since hurricane damaged roof
Opinion and analysis
Ford government’s haste in Ring of Fire road development is risky business
Rushing the design and construction of an unprecedented road through sensitive landscapes carries real risk of causing irreversible damage to ecosystems – on top of financial concerns. Problems that careful planning could address will instead be discovered after the fact, at far greater cost.
— Adam Kirkwood, peatland conservation scientist at Wildlife Conservation Society Canada
Business and investing
B.C. to reduce zero-emission vehicle sales mandate to 75%, down from 100%
British Columbia is diluting its electric-vehicle mandates, but will remain one of only two Canadian provinces with legislated sales targets.
B.C. Attorney-General Niki Sharma introduced legislation on Wednesday that will reduce the zero-emission vehicle sales mandate to 75 per cent, down from 100 per cent, for the year 2035. Adrian Dix, B.C.’s Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions, said the new law will bring B.C. into alignment with Ottawa’s emerging new policy.
Photo of the week
Astronaut and Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch peers out of one of the Orion spacecraft's main cabin windows, looking back at Earth, as the crew travels toward the moon on Thursday.The Associated Press
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 Globe writers exploring the role the it has played in Canada’s history, A Nation’s Paper also highlights the journey of the newspaper’s green evolution.
Catch up on Globe Climate
- What we learn from whales
- How far do deer go in a year?
- Ottawa insists it’s holding the environmental line
- Water and oil in the Middle East