The lie of a cleaner oilsands

In May 2022 a tailings pond at Imperial’s Kearl Lake facility started leaking toxic waste into groundwater and outside its lease boundaries. But no one reported the leak to water users living downstream of the massive oilsands project for nine months.

In a nutshell:

Award-winning journalist, Andrew Nikiforuk, writing for The Tyee, lays out a damning, but all-too-familiar chronology of ongoing hydrocarbon spills in the Alberta Oil patch that go unreported and unregulated by a seemingly complicit Alberta Energy Regulator. Indigenous leaders, their food sources and drinking water contaminated, have expressed total distrust with the state of monitoring and reporting, repeatedly castigating the Alberta Energy Regulator as a “joke” or unaccountable.

Key quote:

“All trust with the Alberta government has been broken and has been broken for a long time. They can’t be trusted to oversee the mess,” Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam told Parliament’s Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.

Big picture:

At one time the Alberta government and industry promised to control the proliferation of the mining waste stream with stiff regulations. But industry ignored 2009 rules to reduce the volume of tailing waste and then regulators abandoned them. Now government and industry propose to rid themselves of the tailings waste problem with the cheapest possible solution — by minimally treating wastewater by filtering it through petroleum coke (a bitumen byproduct) with the goal of releasing that water into the Athabasca River.

Read the full story from The Tyee.

environmental justice

LISTEN: Robbie Parks on why hurricanes are getting deadlier

"In places where there are high minority populations they bear, by far, the most burden of deaths from tropical cyclones."

Dr. Robbie Parks joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast for a bonus episode to discuss how hurricanes have become deadlier in recent years and how we can better protect vulnerable communities.

Keep reading...Show less
Senator Whitehouse & climate change

Senator Whitehouse puts climate change on budget committee’s agenda

For more than a decade, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse gave daily warnings about the mounting threat of climate change. Now he has a powerful new perch.

Mosquitoes are a growing public health threat, reversing years of progress

Don't miss this compelling global health series by The New York Times: The fight against mosquitos has never been more urgent as climate change and the rapid evolution of the insect have thwarted efforts to combat devastating diseases like malaria and dengue. Scientists are innovating, reports Stephanie Nolen, pursuing new strategies to protect public health.
Keep reading...Show less
person using phone and laptop
Photo by Maxim Ilyahov on Unsplash

Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows

False narratives about renewable energy are malleable and adapted to different languages after extreme weather events in different countries, the researchers found.

Laila Benkrima: Ultra-processed foods are not only bad for our bodies, their production damages our environments

Ultra-processed foods are bad for our health and our planet and must be central to any efforts to reduce our carbon emissions, and waistlines.

A revelation about trees is messing with climate calculations

Trees make clouds by releasing small quantities of vapors called “sesquiterpenes.” Scientists are learning more—and it’s making climate models hazy.

For Sanibel, the recovery from Hurricane Ian will be years in the making

Thousands of residents of this barrier island remain displaced a year after the costliest hurricane in state history.

From our Newsroom
Heat, air pollution and climate change … oh my! Was summer 2023 the new normal?

Heat, air pollution and climate change … oh my! Was summer 2023 the new normal?

Intense heat waves induced by climate change create favorable conditions for air pollution to worsen. Scientists say this isn’t likely to change unless action is taken.

children nature

Opinion: When kids feel the magic of nature, they will want to protect it

Improving our quality of life starts with the simple of act of getting kids outdoors.

birds climate change

In the Gulf of Maine, scientists race to save seabirds threatened by climate change

“I could see that, if successful, the methods developed could likely help these species."

fracking economics

Appalachia’s fracking counties are shedding jobs and residents: Study

The 22 counties that produce 90% of Appalachian natural gas lost a combined 10,339 jobs between 2008 and 2021.

Marathon Petroleum y una ciudad de Texas muestran una  potencial crisis de comunicaciones sobre sustancias químicas

Marathon Petroleum y una ciudad de Texas muestran una potencial crisis de comunicaciones sobre sustancias químicas

En los últimos tres años, Marathon ha violado repetidamente la ley de Aire Limpio y tuvo tres emergencias en el semestre de febrero a julio de 2023.

WATCH: How Marathon Petroleum and one Texas city show the potential for a chemical communication crisis

WATCH: How Marathon Petroleum and one Texas city show the potential for a chemical communication crisis

Marathon in Texas City has repeatedly violated the Clean Air Act and had three emergencies in the span of a six month period.

Stay informed: sign up for The Daily Climate newsletter
Top news on climate impacts, solutions, politics, drivers. Delivered to your inbox week days.