Muddling through the Anthropocene. Weekly Zero Carbon newsletter for @NatObserver.
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Articles by Chris Hatch
America's climate movement is celebrating
American climate advocates are positively jubilant about the “blue tsunami” that crashed across the US midterm elections. “It’s officially a Green Wave too,” declared Antonia Juhasz, an investigative journalist who isn’t usually prone to happy hyperbole (her book titles range from The Tyranny of Oil to Black Tide).
The Fab Fifteen take climate failures to court
The Fab Fifteen walked through a raucous guard of honour on their way into Federal Court in Vancouver this week. It was the kind of reception usually reserved for championship-winning sports teams but, in this case, assembled for the group of young Canadians heading in to challenge the government’s lack of action on climate change. It’s actually difficult to know how to describe the 15 “youth” who come from Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities around the country.
The tantalizing promise of a ‘point of return’
We are going to blow through the guardrails for global heating according to the annual assessment published by the UN ahead of each year’s climate negotiations. And for the second time in as many months, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) has trained its focus on “overshoot” — the notion that we will exceed the thresholds we’d set but might claw our way back to safer territory at some point in the future.
The Yes Agenda is ready. Is Canada?
Let’s begin this week with some promising climate news. It’s tough stuff to find in Canada these days, and it will need some contextualizing, but let’s head to Nova Scotia where the customary grouping of federal and provincial politicos gathered for an energy announcement. Refreshingly, the federal energy minister and premier were on a wharf in Halifax to talk up wind power.
The whales are suing — and they're winning
Now Austin Abrams yelped and grumbled in the face of zombified mutants. He screamed his way down the gullet of a sperm whale that had accidentally swallowed him, and then he fought to survive inside its slimy stomach. Perhaps most impressively, he made those outlandish scenarios feel … relatable. As the …
The whales are suing — and they're winning
It has happened again. Another grieving orca mother carrying her dead baby off the West Coast. We don’t know when, exactly, her baby died, or how long Tsuchi had been carrying her calf’s body, but it was mere days before the flurry of fossil fuel expansion projects announced for the coast last week. Tsuchi is one of very few remaining mothers among the critically endangered southern resident orcas. And she is one of those we’ve seen carrying a dead calf before.
Fossil fuels are climate action. Pipelines are nature protection
Another day, another megatonne. Or was it gigatonnes? No one in power seems much bothered either way. It has been quite a week on the fossil front. On Tuesday Prime Minister Mark Carney arrived in Vancouver to celebrate the multinational consortium moving ahead to build LNG Canada Phase 2. It will become the second-largest LNG facility in the world, the PM cheered. Carney, along with BC Premier David Eby, also “welcomed” the decision by TC Energy to double the capacity of the Coastal GasLink pipeline.
The UN chief who refused to hush climate change
In a saner world, late September would still be the time when the nations of the world gather to sort out our collective problems. And despite all the trash-talking of the United Nations and its annual General Assembly, some world leaders are still trying to make it so. Very notably, António Guterres, the outgoing secretary-general of the UN who has been a lucid voice for the victims of climate impacts and a forceful proponent of climate action.
From shock doctrine to end-times fascism
In an extraordinary feat of timing, just as we’ve been watching the tech titans tumble over one another to cover their gilded asses, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s new book has landed: End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World. It is not the first time either writer has hit the moment with exquisite timing.
What do you do when the world is burning?
It was the hottest August ever recorded on our precious planet, a thoroughly unsurprising statistic capping months packed with shattered records and deadly extremes through the Northern Hemisphere summer. More surprising, and ominously so, is the fact that the world’s oceans have been driven to record temperatures. Surprising because most seawater is in the Southern Hemisphere, so ocean heat peaks late in the austral summer.
This isn't the new normal. It's just the beginning
My youngest son has moved to Europe, so the news this summer has me in a state of persistent parental panic. He’s fine, for the record, but sweltering through the fourth (fourth!) deadly heat wave to grip the continent since May. While my own perceptions are definitely skewed, the statistics are not reassuring. Nearly 10,000 people have died from high temperatures in Germany alone, where my son now lives — and those figures only track that one country, and only through the middle of summer.
The headline that shouldn't have shocked me
I almost choked on my morning coffee scanning the headlines a few days ago. In among the torrent of harrowing news about wildfires around the world, one item jumped out: “'Just stop burning fossil fuels.' Scientists stress that our smoky skies have only one true fix.” It is remarkably rare that a news story about climate impacts actually mentions climate change. Rarer still are the stories that pinpoint fossil fuels as its primary cause. To do so in a headline is virtually unheard of.
When surprise becomes the forecast
It is impossible even to begin trying to summarize the climate shocks hitting communities around the world this week. There are simultaneous deadly heat domes at the scale of continents, floodwaters surging off the charts, raging fires and choking smoke. We can’t even begin to gauge the most terrifying situations.
The fiscal fantasy of fossil fuels
I was spraying a coat of paint on some new rooftop wildfire sprinklers this week, oscillating between gratitude that the fires have been pretty quiet in my region so far, and a smouldering resentment at being left to DIY fire suppression while great gobs of public cash stoke the flames.
Mark Carney's new climate doctrine
6 hours ago WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump got what he wanted from NATO at last year’s summit: an alliance whose members had largely acceded to his demands to step up their defense spending. This week when he meets leaders in Turkey, his mission is to enforce that pledge. The speed with which most NATO …
Mark Carney's new climate doctrine
When Mark Carney laid out his vision for climate and energy policy for the country, the backdrop to his video said it all: a strange and sorrowful hodgepodge of despondent greenery.
This may be the coolest summer Europe has left
When the French are banning booze, you know things are really getting extreme. It is only June, but Europe is suffering through its second major heat wave in two months, and this one is shattering records by astonishing margins. It’s the most severe heat wave ever recorded on the continent — temperatures and humidity that are only possible because of fossil-fuelled climate change, according to a scientific analysis released on Friday.
The battery revolution has turned night into day
A funny thing happened on the way to buy more fossil fuels last week. The winner wasn’t gas. It was batteries. Ontario held one of those arcane energy procurement processes that only the nerdiest of energy nerds can love. They might be hugely consequential but these auctions are impenetrably complex, packed with cryptic jargon, mystifying units of measurement and judged on baffling criteria.
Concern is up. Priority is down. Welcome to the climate paradox
Canadians are often accused of being conflicted about climate change. The latest roundup of public opinion research suggests something more complex: we are conflicted about our own conflicts. And looming over the conflicts in our own minds is the dire disconnect between the climate of public opinion and climate change itself. This week, scientists determined that climate change is accelerating and Earth’s energy imbalance has already doubled.
What happens when El Niño meets a hotter planet?
Well, it’s official. Or, at least as official as any prediction can be: the United Nations issued a stark warning this week that world governments should prepare for an El Niño with ensuing extreme heat and disasters over the coming months. Although the UN World Meteorological Organization emphasizes there is still uncertainty about its peak strength and timing, the forecasts have been getting steadily worse since we last covered El Niño in this newsletter.
You don’t know what you’ve got till Guilbeault’s gone
1 hour ago PHOENIX – Rising gasoline prices have some Americans thinking about buying an electric vehicle. It's a big financial decision, especially since Republicans ended federal subsidies last year worth up to $7,500. Guadalupe Higuera, 30, of Phoenix, Ariz., bought his Chevrolet Equinox EV before that …
You don’t know what you’ve got till Guilbeault’s gone
A few tumultuous years ago, kvetching about Canadian climate policies over dinner, I got myself on the receiving end of one of those clarifying questions that really stick with you. “Would any of us, if we got elected to politics, do any better?” asked a friend, who now runs one of the bigger climate outfits in the country. It was the era of Steven Guilbeault as minister of environment and climate change and he had just agreed to some outrageous compromise or other.
Why climate deniers are celebrating the wrong victory
There’s a wonderful old saying that you should never make forecasts, especially about the future. Its origins have been obscured by the mists of time, although it probably began as a Danish proverb and came down to us in various formulations from the likes of the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr, Mark Twain and the greatest of recent philosophers — Yogi Berra.
Carney puts climate policy on the ropes
2 days ago The Trump administration has frequently accused US allies of failing to live up to mutual defence obligations. The United States has said it will not take part in a joint board for continental defence with Canada, depicting the country as failing to live up to its defence obligations. On Monday, US …
Carney puts climate policy on the ropes
It’s been a bruising week of boxing combinations from the Carney government. Just scan the headlines coming from Ottawa: In a matter of days, the feds have released a “plan to weaken clean electricity regulations,” moved to “fast-track federal approval for major projects — from pipelines to powerlines,” and then capitulated to Alberta’s demands to “weaken industrial carbon pricing” and paved the way for a new oilsands pipeline to the Pacific. The details are complicated.
The blind spot is closing — led by those with the least
The most heart-wrenching thing about the assembly of nations in Santa Marta, Colombia this week, has been to hear from country after country describing the impacts their people are already suffering from floods and fires, rising seas and rising heat. The most humbling has been to hear from nation after nation, so much poorer than ours and facing wildly greater challenges, but nevertheless committed to tackling the phase-out of fossil fuels.
The f-words are everywhere in Santa Marta — except in Canada’s speech
1 day ago SANTA MARTA, Colombia — As the sun sets on the Caribbean coast, the lights turn on at the giant port that exports millions of tons of Colombia's coal to the rest of the world. Colombia is a major global coal producer, as well as an oil and gas producer. But in recent years, Colombia's government has …
The f-words are everywhere in Santa Marta — except in Canada’s speech
Only one solitary country managed to avoid mentioning the words “fossil fuels” at the big climate conference in Santa Marta, Colombia this week. You may not be shocked to hear that it was Canada. It took some impressive verbal acrobatics to avoid the F-words in Canada’s opening address to the plenary of nations — it is quite literally called The First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels.
A fossil fuel reckoning, within earshot of a coal port
A coal port is a curious location to plot the end of fossil fuels, but the Colombian city of Santa Marta has long been a contested space. It might actually be the perfect spot to face the challenge clearly and chart a cleaner, safer future.
A new front in the push to phase out fossil fuels
Fifty-five countries is a lot of countries. Especially given that their gathering next week is an oblique middle finger to the lumbering madman currently deranging the world with his shambolic wars and “drill, baby, drill” agenda.
The thin line between everything and nothing
It must have been a relief. For about 40 minutes, those four astronauts were incommunicado, completely cut off from any news transmitted from Earth. It has been a surreal split-screen, toggling between those absurdly high-functioning, yet adorable spacefarers, beaming their astonishing photographs and goodwill back to an Earth wracked by war and suffering, energy shocks and US President Donald Trump’s cavalier threats of genocidal destruction.
The scariest climate statistic
The world’s top weather agency just added a new number to the climate story — and it may be the most fundamental one of all. It’s not 1.5 C. Not 2 C. Not the carbon loading of the atmosphere or the string of record-breaking annual temperatures. For the first time, the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) annual assessment includes the “Earth's energy imbalance” as a key climate indicator. It sounds arcane but it’s powerfully simple.
El Niño is back — but the planet has changed
“Not now, El Niño,” pleads the astrophysicist-turned climate scientist, Kate Marvel. On top of the fossil fuel crisis and conflicts derailing the world, it appears that Mother Nature is about to provide the umpteenth lesson that we mess with the grand cycles of the Earth to our peril. The telltale plume of hot water has been spreading in the Eastern Pacific and the world’s forecasters are converging on agreement that an El Niño is brewing.
The fine art of infinite delay
Given the threadbare state of Canada’s remaining climate policies and the windfall profits the fossil fuel industries are poised to pocket from the attacks on Iran, you might think they’d be satisfied. Instead, fossil fuel boosters are doubling down on the strategy of predatory delay. It’s a useful term, first coined by Alex Steffen, to describe a shift in tactics.
The geopolitics of fossil fuel addiction
It took several years after the US invaded Iraq before top officials began admitting what was plainly obvious — it may not have been a war “for” oil, strictly speaking, but it was most definitely a war “about” oil. As so often happens, we only get the candid admissions when people write their memoirs. In the case of America’s last major assault in the Middle East, it was Alan Greenspan, the long-time chair of the US Federal Reserve, appointed by Ronald Reagan.
The spiral of silence around climate change
This column is adapted from Chris Hatch's Zero Carbon Newsletter. Sign up here for columns — and a rundown of stories from CNO and elsewhere — every Sunday in your inbox. “Why is no one talking about it anymore?” asked the guy cutting my hair a few weeks ago. He meant climate change, as you’ve probably guessed, and there was a sharp edge to his tone, uncharacteristic for the chatty barber.
China’s carbon curve may be bending at last
It’s being hailed as “the biggest and most consequential climate story in the world right now,” by people in the know: after decades of soaring climate pollution, China may have cut carbon emissions last year. Even more encouragingly, Chinese emissions have been “flat or falling” for almost two years. And carbon pollution appears to have dropped in 2025 even though the country used more energy overall and electricity demand kept growing.
Canada’s auto strategy is driving blind
I suppose we have to talk about cars again. The Canadian government announced its new auto strategy and reactions varied wildly, even among climate wonks. If you are confused whether the whole thing is good or bad, there’s a very good reason for that — government officials don’t know either.
Winter storm are set to hit parts of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador
Heavy snow is set to sweep through Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador today as a third storm in as many weeks moves throughout Atlantic Canada. Environment Canada says an orange winter storm warning is in effect for parts of eastern Newfoundland, where up to 50 centimetres of snow is expected in the Avalon and Burin peninsulas, including St. John's, by Tuesday.
The multi-billion problem Canada’s oilpatch doesn’t want to disclose
Here’s a striking trivia factoid: the biggest dam in the world is in northern Alberta. If you rank dams by the amount of construction material piled into them, the winner is the Syncrude Tailings Dam in the oilsands. Much less trivial is the astonishing amount of toxic waste and looming cleanup costs swelling behind it and the many thousands of other fossil fuel operations spread across the land. Canada’s oil and gas industry is steadily building an environmental time bomb.
What Carney didn’t say at Davos
It was a good speech. Even a great speech. Poke around online, and you’ll find people reaching for descriptions like “Churchillian” about the PM’s address in Davos. “The most important speech in Canadian history up to this point,” declared Max Fawcett in these pages. But, for all its clarity about the behaviour of the world’s great powers, it dodged one notable issue that the great powers did not shy away from themselves.
Is Carney's China deal our EV onramp?
The Maple Leaf flew alongside the Five-star Red Flag over Tiananmen Square this week, as Canada’s prime minister was welcomed into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to meet with the Chinese leadership. The scenes were dignified, even friendly. Back home, tensions are much more public. Premier Doug Ford and the auto lobby are slamming the deal to relax Canada’s 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is cheering the deal on behalf of Prairie farmers.
Oil wars in an electrifying world
We are just days into the new year and Donald Trump has already declared the clock will be turned back by a couple of centuries. Late in 1823, US President James Monroe articulated the foreign policy doctrine that would later be named after him. It was, for its time, an anti-imperial stance by the United States towards the great powers of the day — the mighty Europeans.
Readers' choice: What you were reading (and watching) in 2025
Last week, I asked for your recommendations of your top books of the year, and you delivered in more ways than one. Sifting through your recommendations, I was struck by the shift in mood over the past year. The acceleration in climate change and its rising toll is so despicably synchronized with the surge in hatred and violence, the far-right frenzy and roll backs of climate ambition in much of the world.
and not available here
A year ago, I couldn't have told you what a Zeekr is. Some kind new party drug or military drone maybe? I had never even heard the word until I happened to walk by a shop window in Copenhagen last Spring. It's A Chinese EV. The thing is advertised to go over 700 km and charge in 10 minutes. And it's one of many names that few of us in North America have ever heard. Take, for example, the Xiaomi SU7.
carbon soars, nature falters
There's a single figure that encapsulates our climate predicament: the amount of carbon dioxide in the sky. It is surging into treacherous new territory and the size of the surge is even more disturbing: it soared by a record amount in 2024. The fact that we set a new record for carbon in the atmosphere was an unwelcome, but predictable finding by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) when it released its annual stocktake ahead of the upcoming UN climate talks.
Jane Goodall's gaze is still on us
That intellect, though, it's what gives us a chance. That, and our capacity for compassion - in Jane's case, compassion mixed with an irresistibly contagious mischievousness. In one delightful episode, Gary Larson drew a cartoon in which a chimpanzee calls Jane a "tramp." Jane was off-grid in Africa. Her institute was outraged, sending off indignant letters denouncing it as offensive and warning of litigation. But when Jane returned, she was delighted.
Trump's climate con job
If you thought climate change was off the political agenda, Donald Trump would like a word. A lot of words. Meandering words. Megalomanical words. Menacing words. Words tortured into the obverse of obvious truths. It's a rare gift but, somehow, even after everything, he still finds words to shock the world.
Canada's climate progress has flatlined
Has Canada bent the curve on climate pollution? As recently as Wednesday, the prevailing orthodoxy was that we had - progress has been uneven and the results modest at best, but the overall trend was finally headed in the right direction. And then, on Thursday, we learned that Canada made no progress cutting climate pollution last year.
The World Court throws f-bombs
It's been a long time coming, but when the World Court delivered its opinion on climate change this week, the judges overturned decades of official timidity about naming the main cause of climate change. The opinion was long (140 pages) but interspersed among the legalese, the court threw F-bombs aplenty, fingering "fossil fuels" as the prime culprit 35 times in the summary alone.
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