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 31 to April 6, 2025.
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Here’s all the latest local and international news concerning climate change for the week of March 31 to April 6, 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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• Fisheries Department monitoring toxic algae in B.C. waters as hundreds of dolphins, sea lions die in California
• Post carbon tax, advocates take aim at another B.C. electrification policy
• EV rebate could be on chopping block as carbon tax eliminated in B.C.
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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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Fisheries Department monitoring toxic algae in B.C. waters as hundreds of dolphins, sea lions die in California
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B.C. scientists will be keeping a close eye on a toxic algae this summer as hundreds of sea lions, seabirds and dolphins have been washing up sick or dead on beaches in Southern California.
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The toxin responsible for the deaths of Californian marine mammals is domoic acid, a neurotoxin produced by certain marine algae harmless to small fish and shellfish but can be deadly for larger marine animals, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), which is monitoring local sea life such as sea otters and orcas to find out if the toxin is present.
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These algae blooms with domoic acid aren’t a new phenomenon and occur in B.C. waters — particularly off Vancouver Island — in the spring and summer, but the difference is that the amount of the neurotoxin is increasing in the blooms of algae in California. Scientists aren’t sure why it’s increasing but have linked it to an upwelling of nutrients likely due to high winds blowing along the shore.
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While the high concentrations don’t appear to have spread to B.C., scientists are concerned this could become a future problem because algae blooms are becoming larger and more frequent because of climate change and ocean warming.
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The DFO has been monitoring domoic acid in B.C. since 2016, without any serious threats to marine mammals and seabirds. But this mass mortality event in California has them on alert.
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“Our marine biotoxin team is working with marine mammal scientists within and outside DFO to assess the potential impacts of domoic acid on local marine mammals, including sea otters and killer whales,” said Andrew Ross, a PhD research scientist who runs the marine biotoxin monitoring program at DFO’s Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney.
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—Tiffany Crawford
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Post carbon tax, advocates take aim at another B.C. electrification policy
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Now that B.C. has scrapped its consumer carbon tax, an energy advocacy group has renewed its call to change incoming building code requirements for the electrification of home heating.
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It’s called the B.C. Energy Step Code, which is aimed at removing fossil fuels for home heating in new home construction by 2030. It has already been adopted by 33 municipalities and First Nations in the province.
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A group called the Energy Futures Institute, however, argues that homeowners should still have the choice of natural gas, since scrapping the carbon tax has cut natural gas costs some 23 per cent — or $30 per month for the average Fortis B.C. customer — at the same time that the province is raising B.C. Hydro rates.
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“Per unit of energy, natural gas is now about one-third the cost of electricity,” said Barry Penner, chairman of the Energy Futures Institute.
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However, the arguments that the Energy Futures Institute are making present “at best, an incomplete picture,” said Evan Pivnick, program manager for the climate research group Clean Energy Canada.
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A researcher with Clean Energy Canada pointed to a cost-comparison calculator maintained by the Canadian Climate Institute that estimated that for a new Vancouver single-family home, electricity would cost $412 per year for a heat pump versus $549 for natural gas.
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—Derrick Penner
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EV rebate could be on chopping block as carbon tax eliminated in B.C.
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B.C.’s energy minister indicated Tuesday that the government may consider cutting rebates for electric vehicles as part of its efforts to make up for budget shortfalls caused by the elimination of the consumer carbon tax.
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While the elimination of B.C.’s long-standing price on pollution succeeded in dropping gas prices across the province, it has also left a $1.8 billion hole in government revenue used to pay for some of the NDP’s signature climate policies under the CleanBC plan.
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“That’s one of the CleanBC issues we’re reviewing and we will have more to say about that shortly,” Energy Minister Adrian Dix told reporters at the legislature on Tuesday when asked about whether EV rebates could be eliminated.
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He did, however, tout the province’s efforts to increase the number of zero-emission vehicles in B.C. and said there are no plans at this time to change the legislated mandate that all new light-duty vehicles in B.C. must be zero-emission by 2035.
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—Alec Lazenby
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Ryan Reynold’s Wrexham club criticized for 37-minute private jet ride
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Ryan Reynolds and his soccer club have been criticized by an environmental group for chartering a private plane to whisk the squad to a match that was roughly a three-hour drive away.
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Wrexham AFC has been climbing the ranks of British football since it was purchased by the Vancouver-born Deadpool star and American actor Rob McElhenney in 2020. It currently plays in the third-tier League One and won a match against the Wycombe Wanderers F.C. on March 15.
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But the club is getting a red card from Fossil Free Football, which called out the team for opting to fly its players on a private plane from Hawarden Airport in Wales to Oxford Airport near Wycombe and back the next day.
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That 37-minute flight required the plane to travel to and from its base on the Channel Islands each day, tallying up to “an incredible 1,860 kilometres in just two days just for this one match,” said Fossil Free Football campaigner Peter Crisp in an Instagram video.
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—Cheryl Chan
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Leaked files raise fears over safety of Shell oil production fleet, years after devastating spill
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Off the coast of Nigeria, one of the world’s largest oil production ships, called the Bonga, was taking oil from a field on the ocean floor and transferring it to a tanker ship. Such transfers are routine in the offshore oil industry, but something went wrong on the Bonga, owned by energy giant Shell.
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A major leak began in one of the lines that connected the two vessels. Over the next three hours, the crew detected that more oil was being pumped from the ship than the tanker was receiving. Another hour passed before an oily sheen was spotted on the water. An hour after that, the crew member in charge of the fuelling shut off the flow.
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By then, about 40,000 barrels of oil had escaped into the Atlantic Ocean, according to an English High Court evaluation, making the December 2011 incident one of Nigeria’s worst spills in a decade. At the height of the spill, an oil slick spread over 1,776 square kilometres, twice the size of New York City. Nigerian regulators later fined the subsidiary Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo) $3.6 billion, an amount being appealed today.
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Now a confidential review of Shell’s fleet of production ships, obtained by The Associated Press, plus internal company safety surveys and interviews with two whistleblowers, show that as recently as three years ago — almost 11 years after the Bonga spill — there were safety issues with the fleet, including the Bonga. The 2022 review found fault with the same systems involved in the Bonga spill. The whistleblowers said the problems risk another Bonga-type disaster.
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—The Associated Press
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A Jesuit priest prefers prison over a fine to draw attention to climate change
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A Jesuit priest says he prefers going to prison than paying a 500-euro ($541) fine for participating in a climate activists’ street blockade in the southern German city of Nuremberg.
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The Rev. Jörg Alt started serving his nearly month-long prison sentence on Tuesday in Nuremberg.
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“Today, I am starting my 25-day alternative custodial sentence in Nuremberg prison,” he said before entering the prison. “I don’t like doing this, especially as my health is no longer the best at the age of 63. But I see no alternative, because it’s the last form of protest I have left in this specific case to draw attention to important issues” such as climate change.
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In November, Alt said that “as a priest, I have no income and no bank account due to my vow of poverty and that I do not want to harm the order and my fellow brothers by paying my fine,” German news agency dpa reported.
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His remarks came after a Bavarian Higher Regional Court rejected his appeal to a lower court’s decision and confirmed Alt’s conviction for coercion for participating in a sit-in blockade.
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—The Associated Press
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Nearly half of National Weather Service offices have 20 per cent vacancy rates, and experts say it’s a risk
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After Trump administration job cuts, nearly half of National Weather Service forecast offices have 20 per cent vacancy rates — twice that of just a decade ago — as severe weather chugs across the nation’s heartland, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.
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Detailed vacancy data for all 122 weather field offices show eight offices are missing more than 35 per cent of their staff — including those in Arkansas where tornadoes and torrential rain hit this week — according to statistics crowdsourced by more than a dozen National Weather Service employees. Experts said vacancy rates of 20 per cent or higher amount to critical understaffing, and 55 of the 122 sites reach that level.
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The weather offices issue routine daily forecasts, but also urgent up-to-the-minute warnings during dangerous storm outbreaks such as the tornadoes that killed seven people this week and “catastrophic” flooding that’s continuing through the weekend. The weather service this week has logged at least 75 tornado and 1,277 severe weather preliminary reports.
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—The Associated Press
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