Why Canada is so far behind Europe in electrifying rail & More News Here

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This week:

• Why Canada is so far behind Europe in electrifying rail
• Sunscreen: Protecting people on the expense of marine life
• This First Nation in Manitoba was swindled out of its land — and right into a flood zone

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Why Canada is so far behind Europe in electrifying rail

Electric trains are widespread in Europe — but right here in Canada, most trains are diesel or diesel-electric, except for some public transit traces in main cities.

A 2020 report by the Canadian Urban Transit Research & Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC) discovered that Canada’s adoption and implementation of electrical and hydrogen rail is “slower than most developed countries and some developing countries, such as Morocco and China.”

About 60 per cent of Europe’s rail community is electrified — double what it was in 1975, the examine discovered.

“Europe moved to a zero-emissions agenda over 10 years ago,” mentioned Josipa Petrunic, president and CEO of CUTRIC and co-author of the 2020 report.

Many rail traces in Europe have been electrified with overhead catenary wires, however different applied sciences have additionally been transferring ahead. For instance, in 2018, the Coradia iLint hydrogen gas cell prepare, made by French rail firm Alstom, began business service in Germany, the place dozens of models have been ordered by two states. The prepare has since been ordered by Italy and examined in Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden and France.

So why is Canada so far behind on electrified rail?

Petrunic says there are a number of causes: our massive geography and low inhabitants density, in addition to the truth that in Canada, about 80 per cent of rail site visitors is freight.

In Europe, a small continent with a excessive inhabitants density, electrification is cheaper and 80 per cent of rail carries passengers. Petrunic instructed ticket revenues are excessive sufficient to offset the price of electrification.

She mentioned that in Canada, it makes extra sense to look to freight to impress. But given the scale of the nation and low inhabitants density, Europe’s technique of electrifying rail with overhead catenary wires would not work right here. 

“Imagine connecting a CP or a CN rail vehicle to the electrical grid across Canada through the Rocky Mountains,” Petrunic mentioned. “If we want expensive rail, that’s the way to do it. That is extremely complicated.”

Hydrogen is not a simple resolution, both, she mentioned, given the dearth of a developed hydrogen gas provide chain and infrastructure. Then there’s the truth that the rail community crosses into the U.S. 

“It’s not enough to get the hydrogen deployed across Canada. It has to be across the NAFTA region,” mentioned Petrunic.

Gord Lovegrove, an affiliate professor of engineering on the University of British Columbia Okanagan, mentioned one other issue is there is no regulation in Canada requiring rail operators to attain greenhouse gasoline targets or net-zero emissions by a sure date.

Even so, he and Petrunic say stress is mounting from governments and shareholders, as are enterprise prices such because the carbon tax and air air pollution rules. All of this is prompting railways to voluntarily electrify. 

CN has a challenge to check a battery-electric locomotive, whereas CP is engaged on creating a hydrogen gas cell locomotive. Lovegrove is working with Southern Railway of B.C. on a hydrogen gas cell locomotive challenge as nicely.

“Their bottom line is driving this change to decarbonize,” Lovegrove mentioned, even with out the federal government requiring it. “It’s happening. How fast it happens is really, to me, the only difference, regulated or not.”

— Emily Chung

Reader suggestions

James Cleland: 

“I read your article on ‘yard gardens.’ I grew up in southern Saskatchewan, which is semi-desert. I have lived in northwestern Ontario and now live in northwestern New Brunswick. The  soil and climate is very different across Canada. An activity like this needs to recognize and use the learnings of local farmers and gardeners. Transplanting techniques that worked in Ontario and Quebec to the dry Prairies was a disaster. It took many decades to learn how to farm without losing soil to wind and water.”

Old problems with What on Earth? are proper right here.

***NEW*** CBC News just lately launched a devoted local weather web page, which will be discovered right here.

There’s additionally a radio present and podcast! Coco the squirrel is apprehensive about local weather change and he or she’s on a quest together with her dad to cease it. What On Earth producer Kristin Nelson explores how Coco’s story, advised in a brand new children guide, gives an answer for each coping with environmental nervousness and the right way to have the “climate talk” with youngsters. What On Earth now airs on Sundays at 11 a.m. ET, 11:30 a.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app or hear it on demand at CBC Listen.

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The Big Picture: Sunscreen and water

To get pleasure from sunny climate, we have been taught to use a layer of safety to our pores and skin. Thought to have been invented in the late Nineteen Twenties or Nineteen Thirties, sunscreen has been a necessary out of doors accent for the higher a part of a century as a strategy to keep away from UV radiation, with producers growing the solar safety issue (SPF) alongside the best way. While sunscreen has been essential for people managing doubtlessly carcinogenic rays, it is proving much less type to creatures of the ocean. 

It has been estimated that 20,000 tonnes of sunscreen wash off into the Mediterranean Ocean yearly, whereas one other 14,000 tonnes find yourself in coral reefs. This has a poisonous impact. Sunscreen accommodates a wide range of ultraviolet filters, together with oxybenzone and octinoxate, which contribute to coral bleaching and endanger the event of sure species, like sea urchins. They additionally include kinds of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl chemical compounds, dubbed
“forever chemicals,” which, owing to their seeming indestructibility, find yourself in different waterways.

While the analysis on the long-term ecological results of sunscreen is nonetheless in an early part, international warming is more likely to solely improve its use. It’s exhausting to persuade folks to cease utilizing a product that was expressly invented to maintain them secure, however some areas with wealthy marine ecosystems have made an effort to staunch the circulation of sunscreen into our bodies of water. For instance, in Mexico, persons are requested to forsake sunscreen when swimming in pure swimming pools.

• Do you’ve gotten a query about local weather change and what is being executed about it? Send an e-mail to [email protected] 

Hot and bothered: Provocative concepts from across the internet

• The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have supplied extra proof of how susceptible fossil fuels are to wild value swings due to financial and political components. Some specialists say the transition to wash vitality will not simply mitigate local weather change, it’s going to additionally “solve massive geopolitical problems, which have been just a plague for the last 100 years.”

• Two large photo voltaic tasks that invoice themselves as record-breaking have began producing energy in Europe: the continent’s largest floating photo voltaic farm, in Portugal, and the world’s largest photo voltaic carport, in the Netherlands.

• A pilot challenge is launching in B.C. to scale back waste from single-use beverage cups. Customers at taking part Tim Hortons, Starbucks, A&W Canada and McDonald’s Canada eating places will be capable to get a reusable cup for a deposit and drop it off in bins across the metropolis to be cleaned by recycling group Return-It. The challenge will even provide recycling bins for single-use cups.

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This First Nation in Manitoba was swindled out of its land — and right into a flood zone

The present flooding on Peguis First Nation, believed to be the worst the neighborhood has ever seen, has displaced greater than 1,800 folks and ravaged lots of of houses. 

Peguis, the biggest First Nation neighborhood in Manitoba, has 3,521 members often residing on reserve and 6,504 off-reserve members.

It’s no stranger to flooding — over the previous couple of a long time, residents have been chased from their houses a number of occasions by rising waters. But that wasn’t at all times the case. 

A couple of generations in the past, the neighborhood lived on prime farmland simply north of Winnipeg, far from the flood-prone delta on the Fisher River about 160 kilometres north of the capital, the place it is right this moment.

In a means, the story of how they had been pushed so far north into the Interlake area is the story of Manitoba, mentioned Niigaan Sinclair, a professor of Indigenous research on the University of Manitoba.

“You can map Manitoba by the removals of Indigenous peoples. So the story of Peguis is unfortunately not abnormal,” mentioned Sinclair, who’s additionally a member of the First Nation.

“It is particularly awful for [me] in that I witness my relatives every year having [a] massive amount of property damage, their livelihoods being consistently under duress and the fact that it’s just impossible to make a way of life … in this territory that we’ve been forced to live upon.”

At the flip of the twentieth century, land simply northeast of Winnipeg was often called the St. Peter’s Reserve — a predecessor to right this moment’s Peguis First Nation. Today, the realm is dwelling to town of Selkirk.

The folks of St. Peter’s had been profitable farmers, mentioned Karen Froman, an assistant professor on the University of Winnipeg who teaches Indigenous historical past. But an thought endured amongst settlers that First Nations had been incapable of utilizing the land correctly.

“There was pressure and resentment on the part of the settler population to remove Indigenous peoples from productive, valuable land,” mentioned Froman, who is Mohawk from Six Nations of the Grand River. “It’s racism, pure and simple.”

In 1907, authorities officers devised a scheme for the reserve land to be surrendered — although the folks of St. Peter’s “utterly opposed it,” Froman mentioned.

By all accounts, the vote on whether or not the First Nation would hand over its land to the federal government “was pretty shadily done,” she mentioned. For one factor, it was held in September, when many members had been away searching, fishing and trapping, and was scheduled on quick discover, Froman mentioned.

The consequence was shut: 107 in favour, 98 in opposition to. It wasn’t a majority of the 233 eligible voters. But the federal government determined it had gained the vast majority of the vote, although no file was stored of who was voting, Sinclair mentioned.

“You cannot call that a vote. That was a sham,” he mentioned. “The land was stolen, period.”

The St. Peter’s Reserve was dissolved, and its folks compelled from the location the place they’d been for generations to a brand new one chosen by the federal government, Froman mentioned.

What awaited the newly established Peguis First Nation — named after Chief Peguis, who had led a band of Saultaux folks to determine a settlement at Netley Creek and later at St. Peter’s — was a far cry from the thriving neighborhood they as soon as knew, Froman mentioned. There had been no homes, no faculties, no church buildings, and even any roads. 

“They took one hell of a backward step when they moved,” mentioned Bill Shead, whose great-grandfather, William Asham, was a former chief of St. Peter’s who was on the assembly when the vote was held. It was “scrubland, poor land — sort of marshy and no real big trees.”

Today, the neighborhood is nonetheless coping with the aftermath of being relocated to such a flood-prone space, mentioned Chief Glenn Hudson, repeating his name for long-term flood mitigation measures in the realm.

“We deserve better, especially when our land was taken from us illegally,” Hudson mentioned. “People need to understand and know the history of how our lands have been swindled from us.”

It’s a sentiment shared by elder and Peguis First Nation member Ruth Christie — not simply to make folks conscious of her neighborhood’s historical past right this moment, however to verify its tales are preserved for tomorrow.

“The elders that knew these stories, they’re passing away now,” Christie mentioned.

“If the young people aren’t interested in the history of their people … that history will be lost.”

— Caitlyn Gowriluk

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