Here’s the latest news concerning climate change and biodiversity loss in British Columbia and around the world, from the steps leaders are taking to address the problems to all the up-to-date science. Read More
Here’s all the latest local and international news concerning climate change for the week of March 24 to March 30, 2025.
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Here’s all the latest local and international news concerning climate change for the week of March 24 to March 30, 2025.
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Here’s the latest news concerning climate change and biodiversity loss in British Columbia and around the world, from the steps leaders are taking to address the problems to all the up-to-date science.
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Check back every Saturday for more climate and environmental news or sign up for our Climate Connected newsletter HERE.
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In climate news this week:
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• Renewable energy jumps to new high, powered by China solar boom
• ‘A long journey for us’: Merritt gets $60 million from B.C. government to improve flood protection
• Arctic sea ice hits record low for its usual peak growth period
• South Korea battles worst ever wildfires as death toll hits 28
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Human activities like burning fossil fuels and farming livestock are the main drivers of climate change, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This causes heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere, increasing the planet’s surface temperature.
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The panel, which is made up of scientists from around the world, has warned for decades that wildfires and severe weather, such as B.C.’s deadly heat dome and catastrophic flooding in 2021, would become more frequent and intense because of the climate emergency. It has issued a code red for humanity and warns the window to limit warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial times is closing.
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According to NASA climate scientists, human activities have raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 per cent in less than 200 years, and “there is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.”
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As of March 14, 2025, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen to 427.09 ppm parts per million, up from 426.65 ppm last month, according to NOAA data measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory, a global atmosphere monitoring lab in Hawaii. The NOAA notes there has been a steady rise in CO2, from over 421 ppm one year ago and less than 320 ppm in 1960.
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Climate change quick facts:
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• The Earth is now about 1.3 C warmer than it was in the 1800s.
• 2024 was hottest on record globally, beating the record in 2023.
• The global average temperature in 2023 reached 1.48 C higher than the pre-industrial average, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. In 2024, it breached the 1.5 C threshold at 1.55 C.
• The past 10 years (2015-2024) are the 10 warmest years on record.
• Human activities have raised atmospheric concentrations of CO2 by nearly 49 per cent above pre-industrial levels starting in 1850.
• The world is not on track to meet the Paris Agreement target to keep global temperature from exceeding 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, the upper limit to avoid the worst fallout from climate change including sea level rise, and more intense drought, heat waves and wildfires.
• On the current path of carbon dioxide emissions, the temperature could increase by as much 3.6 C this century, according to the IPCC.
• In April, 2022 greenhouse gas concentrations reached record new highs and show no sign of slowing.
• Emissions must drop 7.6 per cent per year from 2020 to 2030 to keep temperatures from exceeding 1.5 C and 2.7 per cent per year to stay below 2 C.
• There is global scientific consensus that the climate is warming and that humans are the cause.
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Latest News
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Renewable energy jumps to new high, powered by China solar boom
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Installation of renewable energy worldwide hit a record high last year, with 92.5 per cent of all new electricity brought online coming from the sun, wind or other clean sources, an international agency reports.
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Nearly 64 per cent of the new renewable electricity capacity in 2024 was in China, according to Wednesday’s report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Overall, the world added 585 billion watts of new renewable electrical energy, a 15.1 per cent jump from 2023, with 46 per cent of the world’s electricity coming from solar, wind and other green non-nuclear energy sources.
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But even that big jump does not put the globe on track to reach the international goal of tripling renewable energy from 2023 to 2030, with the world on pace to be 28 per cent short, IRENA calculated. The goal was adopted in 2023 as part of the world’s efforts to curb the increasing impacts of climate change and transition away from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.
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“Renewable energy is powering down the fossil fuel age. Record-breaking growth is creating jobs, lowering energy bills and cleaning our air,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “But the shift to clean energy must be faster and fairer.”
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—The Associated Press
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‘A long journey for us’: Merritt gets $60 million from B.C. government to improve flood protection
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The B.C. Interior community of Merritt received $60 million Tuesday from the B.C. government to upgrade its dike system on the Coldwater River after the entire community was evacuated in 2021 due to historic flooding.
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The forest, mining, ranching and tourism community has earlier received funding from the province to repair damaged dikes and other infrastructure, but this new money will upgrade the diking system to modern standards to better protect the community from increased and more severe flooding expected from climate change.
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“This has been a long journey for us,” said Merritt Mayor Mike Goetz. “We’re absolutely thrilled with this announcement. It allows us to move forward, it allows us to keep the community safe, and it allows us to grow and see a better future.”
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Merritt, with a population of 7,100, is the first among the communities hardest hit by the November 2021 flooding to be able to start work on a modernized dike system. The B.C. Interior community of Princeton and Abbotsford in the Fraser Valley have also received provincial money, but not enough to start on major climate-resilient upgrades.
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Kelly Greene, B.C.’s minister of emergency management and climate readiness, who made Tuesday’s funding announcement in Merritt, noted the entire province is experiencing more intense wildfire seasons, extremes heat event and floods.
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—Gordon Hoekstra
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Arctic sea ice hits record low for its usual peak growth period
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Arctic sea ice had its weakest winter buildup since record-keeping began 47 years ago, a symptom of climate change that will have repercussions globally, scientists said Thursday.
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The Arctic reaches its maximum sea ice in March each year and then starts a six-month melt season. The National Snow and Ice Data Center said the peak measurement taken Saturday was 14.33 million square kilometres — about 80,000 square kilometres smaller than the lowest previous peak in 2017.
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That’s a difference about the size of California.
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“Warming temperatures are what’s causing the ice to decline,’’ ice data scientist Walt Meier said. “You know, sea ice in particular is very sensitive… 31 degrees is ice skating and 33 degrees it’s swimming.”
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Jennifer Francis, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Cape Cod, said this is yet another ringing alarm bell in the form of a broken record.
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“Disappearing sea ice is a particularly worrisome story because it’s truly an early warning system alerting us about a variety of hard-to-see changes,” Francis said in an email.
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—The Associated Press
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South Korea battles worst ever wildfires as death toll hits 28: Reuters
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Wildfires raging in South Korea doubled in size on Thursday from a day earlier, as authorities called the blazes the country’s worst natural fire disaster with at least 28 people killed and historic temples incinerated.
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More than 38,000 hectares have been charred or were still burning in the largest of the fires that began in the central Uiseong county, making it the biggest single forest fire in South Korea’s history. The previous record was 24,000 hectares in a March 2000 fire.
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“We are nationally in a critical situation with numerous casualties because of the unprecedented rapid spread of forest fires,” Acting President Han Duck-soo told a government response meeting.
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The military has released stocks of aviation fuel to help keep firefighting helicopters flying to douse flames across mountainous regions in the southeast of the country where fires have been burning now for nearly a week.
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—Reuters
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Climate talk on S&P 500 earnings calls drops by three-quarters
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In boardrooms across America, mentions of sustainability and related terms on earnings calls have dropped steeply as public companies see less to gain from associating themselves with environmental goals.
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Bloomberg Green analyzed transcripts of S&P 500 company earnings calls going back to 2020, tracking mentions of more than a dozen terms including climate change, global warming, ESG, clean energy and green energy. On average, companies are talking about the environment 76 per cent less than they were three years ago.
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Green chatter on quarterly calls peaked at the beginning of 2022, months before passage of then-President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. In 2025, it has dropped to the lowest level since the second quarter of 2020, at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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The dearth of green talk comes as President Donald Trump pivots the U.S. away from climate action. Trump has pulled the country out of the Paris Agreement for the second time and has targeted environmental programs and jobs for elimination. Agencies have flagged climate terms as words to avoid.
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—Bloomberg News
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Plastics are seeping into farm fields, food and eventually human bodies. Can they be stopped?
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In Uganda’s Mbale district, famous for its production of arabica coffee, a plague of plastic bags locally known as buveera is creeping beyond the city.
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It’s a problem that has long littered the landscape in Kampala, the capital, where buveera are woven into the fabric of daily life. They show up in layers of excavated dirt roads and clog waterways. But now, they can be found in remote areas of farmland, too. Some of the debris includes the thick plastic bags used for planting coffee seeds in nurseries.
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Some farmers are complaining, said Wilson Watira, head of a cultural board for the coffee-growing Bamasaba people. “They are concerned – those farmers who know the effects of buveera on the land,” he said.
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Around the world, plastics find their way into farm fields. Climate change makes agricultural plastic, already a necessity for many crops, even more unavoidable for some farmers. Meanwhile, research continues to show that itty-bitty microplastics alter ecosystems and end up in human bodies. Scientists, farmers and consumers all worry about how that’s affecting human health, and many seek solutions. But industry experts say it’s difficult to know where plastic ends up or get rid of it completely, even with the best intentions of reuse and recycling programs.
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—The Associated Press
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