Sierra Club Blog Posts

By Paul Beckwith

On March 23, 2013, I made the following prediction:

“For the record—I do not think that any sea ice will survive this summer. An event unprecedented in human history is today, this very moment, transpiring in the Arctic Ocean.

The cracks in the sea ice that I reported in my Sierra blog and elsewhere have spread. Worse news is at this very moment the entire sea ice sheet (or about 99 percent of it) covering the Arctic Ocean is on the move (clockwise), and the thin, weakened icecap has literally begun to tear apart.

This is abrupt climate change in real-time.

By John Bennett

It’s that great Canadian time of year...beginning of the camping season. In the thousands, we head to the Great Outdoors hoping to catch a glimpse of nature and its critters!

For the endangered Jefferson Salamander and Western Sage Grouse, it’s just like any other day -- avoiding predators, finding enough food and hoping to survive. They can’t do any more than that, so their survival is up to us.

Are we willing to leave them a little room on the planet or must we take it all away? Sadly, that’s the question facing Canada’s 300 endangered and 400 threatened species. Every day is critical… every day they inch closer to extinction.

RELATED: (Video) Where endangered species go when they lose their home... Read more »

I, like most Canadians, don't like it when a member of the family misbehaves in public and I feel it’s necessary to apologize on their behalf (for the good of the family name).

Well this is one of those occasions. So here goes:

On behalf of Canadians, I would like to extend a full and sincere apology to Dr. James Hansen (or “Jim” as his friends call him). He is owed an apology for recent derogatory remarks by Joe Oliver, the Federal Minister of Natural Resources.

So what’s this all about? Oliver, Canada’s Oil Minister (as the UK Guardian recently dubbed him), was in Washington last Tuesday flogging the Keystone XL pipeline yet again. While speaking, he dropped the veneer of sober economic pragmatist and diplomat, and the real Joe emerged.... Read more »

By John Bennett

I'm often asked to explain why people should support Sierra Club Canada? “Because we provide one of the best, most up-to-date sources of information on issues impacting the Canadian environment,” I often reply.

For example, late last night I received a high-priority email from our in-house climate expert Paul Beckwith (Paul is a climatologist, physicist and part-time professor with the University of Ottawa). In his email Paul wrote: “John, it’s urgent you see the new NASA satellite visualization of the cracking sea ice between February 17th and March 18th…this has never happened before! Normally the ice just melts at the outer edges but in this case almost the entire ice sheet is on the move and breaking up (which is indicative of the extreme thinness, and slushiness, and weakness of the ice). March is always the time of year when the ice should be strongest ... this is REALLY bad news!... Read more »