It's Climate Change I tell'ya!! IT'S CLIMATE CHANGE!!
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And looking at all the road construction everywhere I go tells me the asphalt factories are doing just fine .
Canada’s costly climate gamble on food needs to end
When climate assumptions change, policy should follow
Author of the article
r. Sylvain Charlebois
Published May 11, 2026 • Last updated 13 hours ago • 3 minute read
Unlike many sectors, food has no pause button. Products perish. Refrigeration cannot stop. Trucks must move. Grain must dry. Livestock must eat.
Unlike many sectors, food has no pause button. Products perish. Refrigeration cannot stop. Trucks must move. Grain must dry. Livestock must eat. Photo by Adobe Stock
For years, Canadians were told that catastrophic climate scenarios justified virtually any policy imposed in the name of emissions reductions. In agriculture and food, this translated into mounting costs across the supply chain, escalating industrial carbon pricing, and a policy environment increasingly disconnected from affordability and competitiveness.
Now, quietly, the scientific conversation is evolving.
A recent paper published in Geoscientific Model Development, tied directly to the next generation of UN-backed climate modeling for the IPCC’s upcoming assessment cycle, suggests that some of the most extreme warming scenarios used for years are no longer considered plausible. The infamous SSP5-8.5 pathway, often portrayed publicly as a “business-as-usual” future, assumed an explosion in coal consumption, extraordinarily high fossil fuel dependence, and emissions trajectories that increasingly diverged from economic and technological realities.
In plain English: some of the world’s leading climate scientists are now acknowledging that humanity is unlikely to follow the catastrophic path that dominated climate communication for much of the last decade.
Yet Canadian policy, especially in agri-food, still behaves as though we are one harvest away from Mad Max.
This matters because few sectors absorb policy costs more directly than food.
Even after Ottawa effectively zeroed out the consumer carbon levy on fuels in 2025, the industrial carbon pricing regime remains firmly in place and continues to rise, reaching $110 per tonne this year. These costs ripple through virtually every segment of the food economy: fertilizer production, trucking, warehousing, refrigeration, food processing, packaging, greenhouse operations, grain drying, and cold-chain logistics.
Food systems are extraordinarily energy intensive. Unlike many sectors, food has no pause button. Products perish. Refrigeration cannot stop. Trucks must move. Grain must dry. Livestock must eat.
And while government officials often insist the carbon price has only a “minimal” effect on grocery bills, that argument misses the broader economic picture entirely. The real issue is not simply retail pass-through. It is competitiveness.
Canada’s agri-food sector competes globally. When domestic costs rise faster than those faced by competitors in the United States or elsewhere, investment shifts. Processing capacity weakens. Domestic production becomes less attractive. Imports increase. Over time, consumers pay the price through weaker food sovereignty and higher structural costs.
This is not theoretical anymore.
Canadians are already visiting grocery stores more frequently in search of deals. Restaurant bankruptcies are accelerating. Food affordability remains the number one concern for households according to repeated national surveys conducted by Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab. Families are adapting, trading down, and increasingly prioritizing price over virtually every other food value.
Meanwhile, policymakers continue layering costs onto the supply chain as though affordability were a secondary concern.
The irony is that the climate science itself is becoming more nuanced while public policy remains rigid.
To be clear, none of this means climate change is fake, harmless, or irrelevant to agriculture. Canadian farmers still face drought risks, floods, extreme weather volatility, and shifting growing conditions. Agriculture has always been vulnerable to nature. It always will be.
But policy should be proportional to realistic risks, not permanently anchored to worst-case scenarios that scientists themselves are now reassessing.
Recalibration required
Canada’s food strategy needs recalibration.
Instead of obsessing over punitive cost mechanisms, Ottawa should focus on resilience and productivity: modernizing transportation infrastructure, investing in irrigation and water systems, accelerating precision agriculture, supporting genetics research, strengthening domestic processing capacity, improving trade logistics, and encouraging technological innovation throughout the food chain.
Innovation reduces emissions. Efficiency reduces waste. Productivity strengthens food security.
Punishing domestic production does not.
The danger now is not climate denial. It is policy inertia.
Governments built much of today’s climate framework around assumptions that are quietly being revised by the scientific community itself. Yet admitting that some assumptions may have been overstated has become politically difficult because too many institutions, activists, and even media organizations spent years presenting worst-case scenarios as inevitabilities rather than possibilities.
The result is a dangerous disconnect between economic reality and policy ambition.
Canada needs climate policy rooted in pragmatism, not ideology. Especially in food.
Because in the end, no country can claim to care about sustainability while simultaneously making food less affordable, weakening domestic production, and eroding its own supply chains.
– Sylvain Charlebois is director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, co-host of The Food Professor Podcast and visiting scholar at McGill University.
torontosun.com
When climate assumptions change, policy should follow
Author of the article
r. Sylvain CharleboisPublished May 11, 2026 • Last updated 13 hours ago • 3 minute read
Unlike many sectors, food has no pause button. Products perish. Refrigeration cannot stop. Trucks must move. Grain must dry. Livestock must eat.
Unlike many sectors, food has no pause button. Products perish. Refrigeration cannot stop. Trucks must move. Grain must dry. Livestock must eat. Photo by Adobe Stock
For years, Canadians were told that catastrophic climate scenarios justified virtually any policy imposed in the name of emissions reductions. In agriculture and food, this translated into mounting costs across the supply chain, escalating industrial carbon pricing, and a policy environment increasingly disconnected from affordability and competitiveness.
Now, quietly, the scientific conversation is evolving.
A recent paper published in Geoscientific Model Development, tied directly to the next generation of UN-backed climate modeling for the IPCC’s upcoming assessment cycle, suggests that some of the most extreme warming scenarios used for years are no longer considered plausible. The infamous SSP5-8.5 pathway, often portrayed publicly as a “business-as-usual” future, assumed an explosion in coal consumption, extraordinarily high fossil fuel dependence, and emissions trajectories that increasingly diverged from economic and technological realities.
In plain English: some of the world’s leading climate scientists are now acknowledging that humanity is unlikely to follow the catastrophic path that dominated climate communication for much of the last decade.
Yet Canadian policy, especially in agri-food, still behaves as though we are one harvest away from Mad Max.
This matters because few sectors absorb policy costs more directly than food.
Even after Ottawa effectively zeroed out the consumer carbon levy on fuels in 2025, the industrial carbon pricing regime remains firmly in place and continues to rise, reaching $110 per tonne this year. These costs ripple through virtually every segment of the food economy: fertilizer production, trucking, warehousing, refrigeration, food processing, packaging, greenhouse operations, grain drying, and cold-chain logistics.
Food systems are extraordinarily energy intensive. Unlike many sectors, food has no pause button. Products perish. Refrigeration cannot stop. Trucks must move. Grain must dry. Livestock must eat.
And while government officials often insist the carbon price has only a “minimal” effect on grocery bills, that argument misses the broader economic picture entirely. The real issue is not simply retail pass-through. It is competitiveness.
Canada’s agri-food sector competes globally. When domestic costs rise faster than those faced by competitors in the United States or elsewhere, investment shifts. Processing capacity weakens. Domestic production becomes less attractive. Imports increase. Over time, consumers pay the price through weaker food sovereignty and higher structural costs.
This is not theoretical anymore.
Canadians are already visiting grocery stores more frequently in search of deals. Restaurant bankruptcies are accelerating. Food affordability remains the number one concern for households according to repeated national surveys conducted by Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab. Families are adapting, trading down, and increasingly prioritizing price over virtually every other food value.
Meanwhile, policymakers continue layering costs onto the supply chain as though affordability were a secondary concern.
The irony is that the climate science itself is becoming more nuanced while public policy remains rigid.
To be clear, none of this means climate change is fake, harmless, or irrelevant to agriculture. Canadian farmers still face drought risks, floods, extreme weather volatility, and shifting growing conditions. Agriculture has always been vulnerable to nature. It always will be.
But policy should be proportional to realistic risks, not permanently anchored to worst-case scenarios that scientists themselves are now reassessing.
Recalibration required
Canada’s food strategy needs recalibration.
Instead of obsessing over punitive cost mechanisms, Ottawa should focus on resilience and productivity: modernizing transportation infrastructure, investing in irrigation and water systems, accelerating precision agriculture, supporting genetics research, strengthening domestic processing capacity, improving trade logistics, and encouraging technological innovation throughout the food chain.
Innovation reduces emissions. Efficiency reduces waste. Productivity strengthens food security.
Punishing domestic production does not.
The danger now is not climate denial. It is policy inertia.
Governments built much of today’s climate framework around assumptions that are quietly being revised by the scientific community itself. Yet admitting that some assumptions may have been overstated has become politically difficult because too many institutions, activists, and even media organizations spent years presenting worst-case scenarios as inevitabilities rather than possibilities.
The result is a dangerous disconnect between economic reality and policy ambition.
Canada needs climate policy rooted in pragmatism, not ideology. Especially in food.
Because in the end, no country can claim to care about sustainability while simultaneously making food less affordable, weakening domestic production, and eroding its own supply chains.
– Sylvain Charlebois is director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, co-host of The Food Professor Podcast and visiting scholar at McGill University.
CHARLEBOIS: Canada’s costly climate gamble on food needs to end
Canada needs climate policy rooted in pragmatism, not ideology. Especially in food. Find out more.
Rising water levels will engulf New Orleans, study says
Relocation must start now as water levels rise, experts say
Author of the article:Brian Towie
Published May 25, 2026 • Last updated 14 hours ago • 2 minute read
Residents flee flood waters in a canoe on August 30, 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina. The 20th anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina is August 29, 2025.
Residents flee flood waters in a canoe on Aug. 30, 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina. The 20th anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina is Aug. 29, 2025. Photo by Getty Images
See more Toronto Sun on Google — save as a Preferred Source
New Orleans is sinking and you’re not gonna swim, a new study says.
Louisiana’s biggest city has reached a “point of no return” and could be surrounded by the ocean within a few decades due to climate change, according to a study in the journal Nature Sustainability, adding that city residents should start relocating now.
Rising sea levels are a major threat to the Crescent City, which sits in a basin mostly below sea level. The city is surrounded by south Louisiana’s coastal wetlands that reduce the impact of heavy storms and hurricanes. Those wetlands are under threat from human activity, however, as people drain them for developments and build canals for the oil and gas industry. The U.S. Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority says that Louisiana has lost nearly 2,000 square miles of land since the 1930s and could lose another 3,000 over the next 50 years if no action is taken and could cause and average of $15.2 billion annually in flood damages.
“Given the importance of so many of south Louisiana’s assets — our waterways, natural resources, unique culture, and wetlands — the effects of this additional land loss and the increased risk of flooding would be catastrophic. We must take bold action now before it’s too late,” the group said.
People already leaving: Study author
According to Brianna Castro, one of the authors of the study and a professor of urban sustainability at Yale, New Orleanians are already leaving town. Since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005, killing almost 1,400 people, the city has lost about 25% of its population, and every major storm since then has prompted a spike in departures, she said. Billions have already been spent to improve the city’s levees, floodgates and pumps after Katrina, but the paper says it’s unlikely that will be enough to save the city in the decades to come.
There could also be a social impact, particularly for the city’s poor, the study argues. A chaotic relocation would erode the tax base, leading to worsening social services and rising insurance premiums, if insurers want to even continue to cover potential flood losses there.
“If the writing is on the wall that we need to go eventually, do we want to wait until people’s resources are exhausted and there’s a crisis?” Castro said.
britannica.com
coastal.la.gov
torontosun.com
Relocation must start now as water levels rise, experts say
Author of the article:Brian Towie
Published May 25, 2026 • Last updated 14 hours ago • 2 minute read
Residents flee flood waters in a canoe on August 30, 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina. The 20th anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina is August 29, 2025.
Residents flee flood waters in a canoe on Aug. 30, 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina. The 20th anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina is Aug. 29, 2025. Photo by Getty Images
See more Toronto Sun on Google — save as a Preferred Source
New Orleans is sinking and you’re not gonna swim, a new study says.
Louisiana’s biggest city has reached a “point of no return” and could be surrounded by the ocean within a few decades due to climate change, according to a study in the journal Nature Sustainability, adding that city residents should start relocating now.
Rising sea levels are a major threat to the Crescent City, which sits in a basin mostly below sea level. The city is surrounded by south Louisiana’s coastal wetlands that reduce the impact of heavy storms and hurricanes. Those wetlands are under threat from human activity, however, as people drain them for developments and build canals for the oil and gas industry. The U.S. Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority says that Louisiana has lost nearly 2,000 square miles of land since the 1930s and could lose another 3,000 over the next 50 years if no action is taken and could cause and average of $15.2 billion annually in flood damages.
“Given the importance of so many of south Louisiana’s assets — our waterways, natural resources, unique culture, and wetlands — the effects of this additional land loss and the increased risk of flooding would be catastrophic. We must take bold action now before it’s too late,” the group said.
People already leaving: Study author
According to Brianna Castro, one of the authors of the study and a professor of urban sustainability at Yale, New Orleanians are already leaving town. Since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005, killing almost 1,400 people, the city has lost about 25% of its population, and every major storm since then has prompted a spike in departures, she said. Billions have already been spent to improve the city’s levees, floodgates and pumps after Katrina, but the paper says it’s unlikely that will be enough to save the city in the decades to come.
There could also be a social impact, particularly for the city’s poor, the study argues. A chaotic relocation would erode the tax base, leading to worsening social services and rising insurance premiums, if insurers want to even continue to cover potential flood losses there.
“If the writing is on the wall that we need to go eventually, do we want to wait until people’s resources are exhausted and there’s a crisis?” Castro said.
Hurricane Katrina | Deaths, Damage, & Facts | Britannica
Hurricane Katrina was a tropical cyclone that struck the southeastern United States in August 2005, breaching levees and causing widespread death and damage. Ultimately, the storm caused more than $125 billion in damage (more than $200 billion in 2024 dollars), and it reduced the population of...
britannica.com
A Changing Landscape | Coastal Protection And Restoration Authority
Louisiana is in the midst of a land loss crisis that has claimed nearly 2,000 square miles of land since the 1930s, and a scientific analysis confirmed that without action, we could lose up to another…
coastal.la.gov
Rising water levels will engulf New Orleans, study says
Study says city is at "point of no return" and resident should leave town now.
They really really could be surrounded , circle the wagons .Rising water levels will engulf New Orleans, study says
Relocation must start now as water levels rise, experts say
Author of the article:Brian Towie
Published May 25, 2026 • Last updated 14 hours ago • 2 minute read
Residents flee flood waters in a canoe on August 30, 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina. The 20th anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina is August 29, 2025.
Residents flee flood waters in a canoe on Aug. 30, 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina. The 20th anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina is Aug. 29, 2025. Photo by Getty Images
See more Toronto Sun on Google — save as a Preferred Source
New Orleans is sinking and you’re not gonna swim, a new study says.
Louisiana’s biggest city has reached a “point of no return” and could be surrounded by the ocean within a few decades due to climate change, according to a study in the journal Nature Sustainability, adding that city residents should start relocating now.
Rising sea levels are a major threat to the Crescent City, which sits in a basin mostly below sea level. The city is surrounded by south Louisiana’s coastal wetlands that reduce the impact of heavy storms and hurricanes. Those wetlands are under threat from human activity, however, as people drain them for developments and build canals for the oil and gas industry. The U.S. Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority says that Louisiana has lost nearly 2,000 square miles of land since the 1930s and could lose another 3,000 over the next 50 years if no action is taken and could cause and average of $15.2 billion annually in flood damages.
“Given the importance of so many of south Louisiana’s assets — our waterways, natural resources, unique culture, and wetlands — the effects of this additional land loss and the increased risk of flooding would be catastrophic. We must take bold action now before it’s too late,” the group said.
People already leaving: Study author
According to Brianna Castro, one of the authors of the study and a professor of urban sustainability at Yale, New Orleanians are already leaving town. Since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005, killing almost 1,400 people, the city has lost about 25% of its population, and every major storm since then has prompted a spike in departures, she said. Billions have already been spent to improve the city’s levees, floodgates and pumps after Katrina, but the paper says it’s unlikely that will be enough to save the city in the decades to come.
There could also be a social impact, particularly for the city’s poor, the study argues. A chaotic relocation would erode the tax base, leading to worsening social services and rising insurance premiums, if insurers want to even continue to cover potential flood losses there.
“If the writing is on the wall that we need to go eventually, do we want to wait until people’s resources are exhausted and there’s a crisis?” Castro said.
Hurricane Katrina | Deaths, Damage, & Facts | Britannica
Hurricane Katrina was a tropical cyclone that struck the southeastern United States in August 2005, breaching levees and causing widespread death and damage. Ultimately, the storm caused more than $125 billion in damage (more than $200 billion in 2024 dollars), and it reduced the population of...A Changing Landscape | Coastal Protection And Restoration Authority
Louisiana is in the midst of a land loss crisis that has claimed nearly 2,000 square miles of land since the 1930s, and a scientific analysis confirmed that without action, we could lose up to another…Rising water levels will engulf New Orleans, study says
Study says city is at "point of no return" and resident should leave town now.
OMGosh, the roads here are HORRIBLE - pieces of my car are falling off because when I try to avoid one pot hole, I hit another one. It's disgusting & yet our taxes have been going up on the average of 6.5 - 7% a year!! Who gets that kind of raise (unless you're a politician)?
I don't know about highways but I'm specifically referring to the City of Edmonton. We USED to have really good roads but in the last 5 years or so, bike lanes b became more important I guess even tho' very few people actually use them. Considering we're a winter city for about 8 months of the year, it's a pretty pathetic city council that we have. Their priorities are not what the cities priorities should be. But even after bitching from the community, when it came to the election, the same people (except for 4) were re-elected!! How dumb are people anyway? So needless to say, the same policies are being implemented - you know, the ones that most citizens of this city are against.