Oil giant BP will pay nearly $21 billion to settle its 5 year old dispute with US Federal and State authorities over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which killed eleven workers, and spilt millions of gallons of oil across the Gulf of Mexico.
The speech by Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, earlier this week about the risks of climate change and “stranded assets” has certainly stirred up the debate about global warming.
For years a growing number of voices – from activists, analysts and scientists - have been warning that we cannot afford to burn all the reserves of fossil fuels if we are going to keep global warming to 2 degrees. They argue that huge amounts of oil, coal and gas risk becoming “stranded assets”, which can never be burnt.
Twenty four hours after Shell’s seismic announcement that it was pulling out of the Arctic “for the foreseeable future” the announcement is still making waves.
Irony. You have got to love irony. Just imagine, in a cartoonish kind of way, that there is a climate villain out there defying all logic and reason and hurting the planet at its most vulnerable point.
The issue of water is slowly creeping up the political and media agenda in Canada. After last Thursday’s televised leaders' debate being held in the run up to next month’s general election, one columnist for the influential Globe and Mail noted about the subject of water that “So many opportunities to bring up what should be the topic du jour – yet no one touched it.”
