“To see all these young folks from all around the world working together in a shared way, with shared objectives and passion,” he says today, “it really shaped the course of my life.”

Another turning point for Guilbeault unfolded this spring in Ottawa, as the well-known and controversial former environment minister took a bow from federal politics, marking a clear split from the Mark Carney government on environmental and energy policies.

On May 27, Guilbeault, 56, announced his retirement as a member of Parliament, a few months after resigning from Carney’s cabinet. It capped off a heady and influential four years at the helm of one of the most sensitive government portfolios in the country. He served as minister of environment and climate change from 2021 to 2025, with stints as minister of heritage, minister of Canadian identity and culture and minister responsible for official languages before and after.

Upon his announcement, environmental groups heralded his integrity and work, with the David Suzuki Foundation celebrating his “vital contribution to the fight against climate change” and Environmental Defence calling on more MPs to “publicly reject the government’s assault on climate, nature and Canada’s economic and social future.”

“If I had to do it all again, I would,” Guilbeault says of his political career, on a recent morning bike commute from his home in Montreal. “I would fight for the same policies.”

For the first time in recent memory, he has “no plans” – aside from going on a voyage to the Arctic with the non-profit Students on Ice, alongside 40 Canadian youth. He is staying on as MP for a few more weeks to complete projects in his urban Montreal riding of Laurier–Sainte-Marie, such as a youth theatre and a new hub for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

“I have greatly enjoyed politics. It’s very demanding,” he says, acknowledging the stark challenges from growing populism, online hate and the harmful effects of social media. “The political arena . . . has become more difficult, but it’s also incredibly rewarding.”

At its annual gala on June 24, 2026, Corporate Knights recognized Guilbeault with its Award of Distinction, an honour that has previously gone to Ken Dryden, Tom Mulcair, Kathy Bardswick and Vicky Sharpe, among others.

Politics with conviction

Guilbeault’s list of achievements is long. Born in rural Quebec, he co-founded Équiterre, an acclaimed Quebec-based non-profit environmental and sustainable agricultural organization in 1993 (originally known as Action for Solidarity, Equality, Environment and Development). He worked as an environmental activist for many years, notably with Greenpeace, and engaged in direct actions designed to strike a nerve and raise awareness. In 2001, he scaled the CN Tower with fellow Greenpeace activist Chris Holden to unfurl a banner that read “Canada and Bush – climate killers” as a way to criticize a lack of government action on the Kyoto Protocol. He was subsequently arrested and convicted of mischief.

It was that brand of conviction that drew the attention of Justin Trudeau, who recruited him to his Liberal ranks. In a recent podcast with political strategist David Herle, Guilbeault described how the then-prime minister introduced his environment minister to former U.S. president Joe Biden – as a “real activist” who had been arrested four times. Trudeau, he said, was looking for someone who would bring a “jolt” to the environment file. And in many ways, that’s what Guilbeault did.

As a Liberal, he has been steadfast in his convictions, defending and expanding the Trudeau policy of carbon pricing, publishing Canada’s Clean Electricity Regulations, draft regulations capping oil and gas pollution, single-use plastic prohibitions, and 2035 emissions targets. He was a leading voice brokering the landmark Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity agreement in which 196 countries agreed to restore at least 30% of degraded terrestrial, inland-water, and coastal and marine ecosystems.

“We’ve shown that using public policy you can have an impact. For the first time in our history, emissions were going down while the economy was going up,” he says.

Navigating criticism

But Guilbeault was a target for the Conservative Party – which linked some of his policies to his “radical” past – and particularly for Canadians furious over carbon pricing. “There are things I would do differently,” he says. “I think we were very slow to respond to the anti-carbon-tax campaign from the Conservatives.”

He also navigated fierce criticism from environmentalists when he approved the Bay du Nord deep-sea offshore oil project off the coast of Newfoundland in 2022, which the government said met strict environmental standards but which environmentalists said exposed “Canada’s climate hypocrisy.” Modelling showed that Canada was making progress but falling short of hitting its 2030 emissions targets while Guilbeault was environment minister, and it has slipped further behind under the current government.

Guilbeault has made no secret of his view that the Carney government is headed in the wrong direction on climate policies. He first resigned from cabinet last year in protest of a memorandum of understanding Carney signed with Alberta that paves the way for a new oil pipeline to the B.C. coast. Environmental groups have criticized the MOU for key concessions to the oil-producing province that lower federal targets for the price on carbon. “We need an effective carbon-pricing system,” Guilbeault says. “With the agreement we’ve signed with Alberta, we’ve just delayed by 10 years the implementation of carbon pricing.”

He understands the pressure of tariffs from the United States and the wider shifting geopolitical landscape, but some fundamentals will not change, he says: “We can try to ignore climate change, [but] climate change won’t ignore us. We’ll likely have the mother of all El Niños coming up in the coming months, wreaking havoc in North America [and] around the world. We’re seeing Pakistan with more than 59°C daytime temperatures.”

Climate change has already displaced tens of thousands of Canadians, he points out – a far greater toll than other geopolitical challenges. “Unfortunately, you don’t hear anyone in the government talk about this.”

He says the tools are in place for better action, such as the national adaptation strategy that maps out what needs to be done for Canadians to be better prepared for climate change. “Where are we with the implementation of that?” he asks.

A ‘radical pragmatist’

Mark Calzavara, a prominent environmental campaigner in Canada, says he understands why Guilbeault decided to quit. The pair have known each other for decades, hatching numerous Greenpeace campaigns, including one that saw Guilbeault climb onto a massive piece of bitumen-refining equipment during a freezing Alberta winter, to stall it from being driven from Edmonton to the oil sands. “Nobody was calling in on our side,” Calzavara recalls of the talk-show interviews Guilbeault did at the time. “They were all ‘I hope you guys get shot, or somebody should take you out.’ Steven was remarkable, under difficult conditions, to talk to people and meet them where they’re at.”

While Guilbeault “did as good or better a job as anyone” as environment minister, Calzavara says that his tenure shows the limits of what is possible within the political system. “The power is so centralized in the prime minister’s office, and if the prime minister is not a fan of the ideas you’re promoting, you go backwards.”

For his part, Guilbeault still holds on to a descriptor offered by a friend many years ago that he is “a radical pragmatist.”

Still, the Conservatives continued their criticism as he exited the political arena. During Guilbeault’s departure announcement in the House of Commons in May, Conservative Calgary MP Shuvaloy Majumdar offered a restrained nod to his “deep convictions” while stressing that “his policies caused so much hardship for so many families across this country.”

Bloc Québécois Patrick Bonin, MP for the riding of Repentigny, called him “by far the best environment minister that this country has ever known” during that same farewell session. And Guilbeault’s friend Elizabeth May, former leader of the Green Party, said it was an honour to work with him. “Courage should be respected, regardless of views,” she said in Parliament, her voice cracking. “What we are dealing with is a crisis.”

Of that, there should be little doubt. But like any effective politician, Guilbeault chooses to focus on the positives and the progress that has been made, and on a record of activism and improbabilities that can inspire hope.

“If [you] told 25-year-old Steven Guilbeault who was at COP1 in Berlin,” he says, having reached his destination and parked his bike, that “one day he would be environment minister of a G7 country, working with others to achieve all those things, I’m not sure he would have believed you.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights.

The post Steven Guilbeault is still fighting appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Vibrio bacteria are invasive pathogens that thrive in brackish and warmer water. They have been recorded in areas that used to be too cold for their taste, including the northeastern coast of the United States. Vibrio causes an infection called vibriosis, whose symptoms commonly include diarrhea, vomiting and fever. But an aggressive “flesh-eating strain” can be deadly, causing severe infections within days when coming into contact with open wounds.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, 3,743 cases of vibriosis were reported in 2024, including 222 cases of the particularly dangerous Vibrio vulnificus. Atlantic Coast states accounted for the largest share of infections. The CDC cautions that these figures likely underestimate the true toll because many infections are never diagnosed or reported. Not to mention that these numbers are only growing as the warming of oceans continues.

Scientists have long warned about the numerous consequences of warming oceans. Water has a remarkable capacity to absorb heat, but that buffering effect comes at a cost.

According to NASA, about 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases over the past century has accumulated in the ocean, making ocean heat content one of the clearest indicators of climate change.

Vibrio bacteria are particularly sensitive to these changing conditions. Naturally found in coastal waters around the world, they multiply rapidly as temperatures rise and salinity levels shift. Researchers have increasingly documented the appearance of Vibrio bacteria in places once considered inhospitable. In a landmark 2012 study published in Nature Climate Change, scientists linked unusually warm conditions in the Baltic Sea to the emergence of Vibrio infections at higher latitudes and warned that continued warming could expand the pathogen’s range even further.

A growing body of research suggests Vibrio may serve as a blueprint for understanding how climate change can reshape the spread of infectious diseases more broadly. A 2024 review in PLOS Pathogens argues that the Vibrio bacteria can be used as a model organism to illustrate the complex ways in which environmental change, ocean warming, pathogens and diseases, as well as human health more broadly, intersect.

The oceans’ ability to absorb humanity’s excess carbon and heat has slowed the pace of atmospheric warming. Yet the same process is transforming marine environments in ways that can have immediate consequences for human health. The appearance of Vibrio bacteria in new waters raises difficult questions for health authorities: how to recognize emerging threats early, communicate risk without causing alarm and protect populations that may no longer be as insulated from these infections as they once were.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. Alexandre Paquet is a Toronto-based researcher writing about video games and culture industries.

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But climate change has turned this transient phenomenon into a moving target. Tokyo’s sakura peak this year was around March 19, which is up to a week earlier than usual. Early arrivals between 2021 and 2023 in Kyoto smashed 1,200-year-old records. The main culprit is rising temperatures, but erratic winters may also threaten a tree’s ability to bloom at all. Research suggests that under a medium emissions scenario, peak bloom may move up another week by 2100.

“To me, the cherry blossom record really captures how extreme these changes are,” Elizabeth Wolkovich, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia who studies plant communities and climate change, told National Geographic.

The study of recurring biological events such as flowering and leaf emergence, known as phenology, has arguably become one of the most powerful tools for understanding climate change. Studies by Wolkovich show that rising temperatures are advancing spring biological events across the globe, with plant phenology shifting by roughly four to six days for every degree Celsius of warming. Her research has also found that experimental studies often underestimate how rapidly plants respond to warming compared with long-term observational records.

For more than 1,200 years, Kyoto’s cherry blossoms have been documented in imperial court diaries, temple records, aristocratic journals and historical chronicles, creating one of the world’s longest continuous phenological datasets. Yasuyuki Aono and Shizuka Saito, two researchers affiliated with Osaka Metropolitan University and Fujicco Co. Ltd., have reconstructed temperatures of medieval Kyoto by “gap-filling” cherry blossom records beginning in 812 CE. Their research suggests that peak bloom dates remained relatively stable around mid-April throughout the medieval period, making the recent string of record-breaking early blooms especially striking against a millennium of historical precedent.

This shift is changing how people experience one of Japan’s most important seasonal traditions. Hanami, the centuries-old practice of gathering under blooming cherry trees, is traditionally timed around the short window of peak cherry blossom, often coordinated through workplace outings, school calendars and travel itineraries. As flowering now arrives earlier and with greater variability, these social rhythms are increasingly strained. Visitors and locals alike rely on increasingly precise forecasts, yet even small temperature fluctuations can shift peak bloom by days, compressing or displacing long-planned gatherings. What emerges is a subtle reordering of seasonal life: a cultural calendar once anchored in predictable natural cycles is now being recalibrated in real time to a climate that is less stable, making hanami not only a ritual of appreciation, but also one of adaptation.

If current warming trends continue, the timing of cherry blossoms may keep shifting beyond familiar seasonal boundaries, leaving a tradition once anchored in predictability to unfold within an increasingly uncertain climate future.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. Alexandre Paquet is a Toronto-based researcher writing about video games and culture industries.

The post With climate change, an ancient cherry blossom tradition in Japan shifts appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Since then, funerals have been held for other glaciers in Switzerland and the United States, with eulogies and dirges performed by flute and string quartets. And the stream of tourists flocking to catch a glimpse of the disappearing frozen giants has also broadened. Known as “last-chance tourism,” this trend occupies the space between loss and celebration, as people navigate growing strains of ecological grief.

A 2026 study out of Rice University in Texas noted that some 14 million people visit the most popular glaciers on the planet every year. The university also keeps a “global glacier casualty list” to “remember their names and tell their stories.” Since 2000, thousands of glaciers of varying size have disappeared.

“Most people on Earth will never be able to visit a glacier, and that fact becomes truer every day as they disappear,” said Rice University anthropologist Cymene Howe, who co-authored the study. “But the desire is there. To be near these giant bodies of ice is a powerful experience because they are unique natural wonders that move, creak, whisper and invite reflection.”

The desire to be near to glaciers as they melt and fade away is a double-edged sword. As Howe notes, the tourism draw may end up harming the glaciers, not just directly from increased traffic, but also indirectly from the emissions caused by the travel required to get to them. Emmanuel Salim, a mountaineer and geography professor at the University of Toulouse in southern France, suggested in a paper that tourists risked “loving glaciers to death.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor of Corporate Knights.

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The Pacific Ocean has become a particularly important backdrop. For months now, the United States Coast Guard has been aggressively tracking and intercepting high-speed boats allegedly carrying thousands of pounds of cocaine across choppy international waters. One operation alone nabbed US$133-million worth of illicit drugs in January. Further afield, near the Philippines and Japan, China has deployed various aircraft carrier strike groups, testing the geopolitically sensitive region. Not to be outdone (or outgunned), the United States has significantly increased military exercises in the region, including large-scale drills in the Philippines and Japan that involve thousands of troops from various nations, along with air and maritime exercises.  

But arguably the most disruptive force in the Pacific is just pulling up. Forces of nature are gathering to create what some are predicting will be another “Super El Niño” season. In April, a typhoon flipped a U.S.-flagged cargo ship in the Pacific, near Guam, killing at least one crewmember and another five are still missing.  

El Niño and La Niña are two sides of the same meteorological coin, known as ENSO – or the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. The WMO says its impact on rainfall, drought and extreme events give it the ability to “reshape global weather.” 

El Niño comprises warm sea-surface temperatures in the central Pacific that extend all the way to South America. Super El Niño, a more extreme weather pattern, increases the chances of drought and damage to food crops in various parts of the world. For nations most dependent on agriculture, it can have a serious impact on livelihoods. The WMO does not use the “Super” moniker because it is not part of standardized classification. The term emerged in 2003 when Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, used it to describe events where the Niño 3.4 index – a measure of sea-surface temperature anomalies in the central equatorial Pacific – exceeded 3°C. Yale Climate Connections notes that the term has been used more liberally, and informally, by the media and commentators.  

La Niña operates in an opposite way, pushing warm water toward Asia and cooler water toward the Americas. This can still lead to drought in places like the southern United States and heavy rains and flooding in the Pacific Northwest. Winter is warmer than normal in the south during La Niña and cooler than normal in the north.  

According to the WMO, forecasts point to above-normal temperatures across nearly the entire world this summer. There is an 82% chance of El Niño taking shape in May through July, according to a May 14 outlook from the National Weather Service Prediction Center. Scientists have found that the combination of ENSO and a warming climate make for more extreme weather events.  

So far, 2026 paints a grim picture. The World Weather Attribution, a global climate research collaboration, compiled a long list of already worrisome events, including record-low levels of Arctic sea ice, the hottest winters ever for a number of U.S. states, record rain in Spain (just a few years after record dry spells), and temperatures as high as 46°C in India. Combined with El Niño, the planet could be headed toward “an unprecedented year of global fire and record-breaking weather events,” the organization said in a statement.  

Countries are bracing. International organizations such as the WMO have been pushing for vital early-warning systems to help nations and communities plan. The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) notes that El Niño effects will feel harshest in places with preexisting structural vulnerabilities. The U.S.–Israel war in Iran and its impact on the Strait of Hormuz have triggered “the most severe energy crisis in history,” according to Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency – one that will have wide-reaching effects beyond the shipment of goods.  

“Together, these pressures leave governments and households less able to absorb climate shocks than during previous El Niño cycles,” ESCAP said.  

The post The coming Super El Niño summer appeared first on Corporate Knights.

As an industrial powerhouse, it has more recently turned into an example of Chinese green transformation, boasting the world’s first smart and zero-carbon port that is 100% electricity driven and green-energy backed. Onsite industrial-scale wind turbines and solar panels ensure renewable-energy self-sufficiency in the 10th-busiest port in the world, handling more than 20 million shipping containers annually.

It’s perhaps no wonder, then, that China chose to host last year’s summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tianjin, on the banks of the Bohai Sea, in yet one more show of growing influence from Beijing. With twice the number of world leaders in attendance since the summit launch in 2001, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Indian head of state Narendra Modi, Xi Jinping called for an end to the “Cold War mentality” that was triggering “turbulence and transformation” and called for “equal and orderly multipolarization” of the world that could pave the way to a “more just and equitable global governance system.”

The group pledged increased cooperation in energy, infrastructure, green industry, AI and innovation. These are the economic pillars of the present and the future that is being built. And they are the architecture for a new kind of cold war, one over our ecological future, propelled by a growing geopolitical rivalry between the giants of the 21st century.

Great power rivalry

In an article last year in Foreign Policy magazine, the influential historian and futurist Nils Gilman argued that the advent of the “ecological cold war” is upon us, driven by a struggle “over the metabolic basis of modern industrial society.”

“Call it a Green Entente vs an Axis of Petrostates,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

In the wider transition to a low-carbon economy, China needs no introduction. Its influence in the green transition – through supply chain routes and cheap hardware – is plain to see. It has installed more solar and wind than the rest of the world combined, the United Nations has said. Its capacity to drive down the cost of clean technologies has been a boon for reining in the growth of carbon emissions, giving vast swaths of the planet the tools to shift to renewables.

It has also played at least some role in the U.S. decision to retreat from climate policies, with a Trump administration that has made a U-turn to a fossil fuel agenda and adopted protectionist measures in an “America first” attempt to decouple from Chinese economic might. At the same time, the United States has signalled a sharp interest in ridding itself of dependency on China for critical minerals, which are not just key to green tech but intrinsic to military hardware. This year, Trump launched “Project Vault,” which includes loans for domestic mining and a bid to stockpile reserves.

Europe has responded to growing national backlash to climate policies by cooling them down and doubling down on its own protectionist measures. In the midst of all this, emerging economies that could help accelerate the energy transition are running up against roadblocks.

A piece of the green pie

While some observers take issue with Cold War framing, others are mapping out the ripple effects of these geopolitical tensions when it comes to the race to slow down planetary warming. “We are in the midst of a green cold war,” agrees economist Jorge Arbache, a professor at the University of Brasília. “The implications are that China, which is already leading, will probably lead even more because China will keep investing in green production.”

For Arbache, the heart of the struggle has to do with the amount of money that is at stake. Suffice to say, it’s a lot. One 2025 estimate from the Boston Consulting Group pegs the opportunities embedded in four key sectors – critical minerals, green tech manufacturing, green industrial material and green services – as US$11 trillion by 2040. “We are talking about an extremely big business agenda, and of course there is a competition in terms of who will eat what size of the cake,” Arbache says.

Although many developed countries are well positioned to participate in that agenda, it is also true that they do not necessarily have the key elements, such as critical minerals, available clean energy, carbon markets, abundant water and biodiversity. “Geography is back,” Arbache says. That means that developing economies that do have those assets could find themselves better positioned than before. “It gives those economies a bargaining power that they did not have very recently,” he says.

Chaos vs. foresight

But the name of the game, lately at least, has been chaos, driven by its number-one agent, U.S. President Donald Trump. “If I could sum it up, it’s better to govern chaos, because order is too costly,” observes Sabino Vaca Narvaja, a political scientist and former Argentine ambassador to China. “A fragmented society is easier to manipulate.”

China, of course, is steeped in contradiction, pouring money into coal projects, and facing accusations of human rights violations. It also has a different logic to its movements, Vaca Narvaja notes, one that bets on the long term. And so far, it has paid off.

The Chinese incursion into the green market was not about business at the outset, Arbache notes; it was about domestic security. Beijing registered, decades ago, the vulnerability it could face when it came to power supply. A desire to become energy self-sufficient shifted it into green-tech development, which has positioned it as a leader in renewables development. It now has a stranglehold on a huge chunk of the critical-minerals market, controlling 50% of global production and 87% of processing and refining.

China’s formula also relies on the rest of the world, Vaca Narvaja notes. It needs the world to buy its products. And it is. “China’s cleantech products are going basically everywhere in the world,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, non-resident senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Climate Hub, in a conversation held last year on China’s climate path amid trade tensions.

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For all major cleantech products except batteries, “the Global South, broadly understood, has overtaken the old developed world as the larger destination,” Myllyvirta said. There are countries with impressive uptake in solar, such as Pakistan, South Africa and Middle Eastern countries, but it’s the broad-based nature of the boom that’s sending the biggest signal. “From one side, there is the cost competitiveness of Chinese supply, and from the other side, there is a massive diversity of drivers,” he said.

Electrification is everywhere. Cities are turning to electric buses. Drivers are turning to electric vehicles. Governments and individuals alike are turning to solar power in the Middle East and Africa. Clean-energy sectors continued to drive growth in China in 2025, doubling in value from 2022 to US$2.1 trillion – which is equal to the economies of Brazil or Canada, according to an analysis from the think tank Carbon Brief.

At the same time, a glut in solar panel production is leading to uncertainty. Beijing set its 2026 growth target between 4.5% and 5%, the lowest level in 35 years, noting a “grave and complex” landscape.

“I don’t think we will be talking about renewable energy the way we are if it wasn’t for what China has been able to accomplish in the last decade,” says Jai Asundi, executive director of the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy, in Bangalore, India. “Taking a technology that has been developed somewhere else, and driving the price down. A classic capitalistic efficiency market. That is, if you are more efficient in the way you use a resource, then the capital flows to you.”

Emerging economies demand protagonism

The flip side of that efficient flow of capital, of course, is that it can make it difficult for other economies to compete. Take a place like India, where attempts to jump-start domestic green-energy device production have stalled. “Energy prices are very high in India. So to produce something is already very costly. And some of these technologies are very energy intensive,” Asundi says.

India, which represents 17% of the world’s population, is a prescient case study for wide swaths of the world that are trying to shrink a yawning inequality gap by raising gross domestic product, without contributing to global warming. The developed world built its industrialized wealth at the expense of the environment. That is no longer an option.

“What we are struggling with is this notion of how we work as an ecosystem,” Asundi says. “How do we work as a global society as opposed to a country-driven society? Because after all, climate change is not a country phenomenon; it is a global phenomenon.”

Chen Yu, senior policy officer at the non-profit Global Witness, agrees. “U.S.–China competition may continue, and the global energy landscape seems to be becoming more regionalized and multipolar, but this does not necessarily mean inevitable confrontation,” she says. “The key question is whether competition preserves space for cooperation and allows for fairer rules and resource distribution, rather than creating exclusive blocs.”

Whatever the mix, what matters, she stresses, is that the process of reducing emissions is not delayed.

The rise of ‘powershoring’

Unfortunately, the current moves and countermoves of nations trying to bolster national economies, and respond to electorate demands, is proving detrimental. Arbache says there are alliances available now using today’s technology that could speed up decarbonization, but they are being squandered. The Brazilian economist, who is also the former vice president of the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, coined the term “powershoring” to describe the strategic relocation of energy-intensive industries to countries that have clean, abundant and secure energy. To produce one tonne of aluminum using coal-fired electricity results in 20 to 22 tonnes of carbon dioxide, Arbache says. But if you produce that same aluminum in Iceland, which runs on nearly 100% renewable power, the carbon output drops to 2 to 3.5 tonnes.

Countries like Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay also offer abundant green grids for manufacturing. But they are not attracting as many powershoring projects as anticipated from places like Europe, Arbache says. “Although they need new allies and friends to solve their problems, they are still very skeptical because of this very notion of protectionism,” he says. “In the end, they are harming their own economies and they are also harming our economies.”

Canada’s balancing act

Canada, with three-quarters of its exports going to the United States, is also navigating tricky terrain. The shifting sands of Trump tariffs has led the government to overhaul how it approaches trade and put it in hot pursuit of new partners – or increasing the strength of existing ones.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said as much in his headline-grabbing speech at Davos this year, where he warned middle powers that if “we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” The phrase carried added weight because it came on the heels of an announcement to expand trade with China, and, crucially, allow at first up to 24,500 Chinese EVs annually into the Canadian market. Carney has since signed agreements with India to export uranium for its fleet of nuclear reactors, critical minerals, and oil and gas. The government also announced a split from the United States over auto policy, revitalizing incentives for EV production and purchase, and the intention of customizing new tailpipe emissions rules, rather than defaulting to the U.S. ones.

The divergence from U.S. policy is significant, says Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute. “All we get from the Trump administration is this drumbeat that fossil fuels are the future. It’s very easy to let that overwhelm us as Canadians – to assume that that’s correct, and it’s not,” he says. “The actual economic opportunity is in decarbonization.”

While there are inherent challenges to decarbonization for an oil- and gas-producing country that other nations do not have, Smith says Canada is in a privileged position to move in on the booming battery market. “We’ve got all the elements of a very significant battery supply chain in Canada. And very few countries can say that,” he says. “In a grand contest between China and the United States, should we just be happy that China’s winning on the decarbonization front? No. We should also be getting our elbows up and trying to compete.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor of Corporate Knights.

The post The race for low-carbon energy is turning into a green cold war  appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Cubans have been navigating chronic blackouts for years. A routine built around flickering light has created a sort of collective muscle memory for the country’s inhabitants. “They turn the electricity on at 7 a.m., and they turn it off at 1 p.m.,” says Ramon, a vegetable delivery worker who lives in Güira de Melena, 50 kilometres from Havana. “They turn it back on until 10 p.m… It’s a fixed cycle.”  

This power-supply free fall has also expedited the energy transition. In the midst of a crisis, the renewables lifeline appears, albeit incrementally.

The stranglehold on oil shipments has placed renewed emphasis on a plan to transition to renewable energy. At the start of 2025, just 4% of Cuba’s electricity came from renewables. By the end of this year, that is supposed to jump to 17%, according to Ramses Montes, director of national energy policy and strategy at the Cuban Ministry of Energy and Mines. China has been donating thousands of solar panels to Cuba, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. Brazil sent 300 solar panel kits in 2025, and a new activist-led campaign is raising funds to install the equipment in schools. 

In March, Cuba’s Communist Party announced via Granma, its official newspaper, that it would soon begin installing 5,000 panels donated by China, following another major blackout that plunged two-thirds of the country into darkness. Half of the panels will head to maternity homes, seniors’ centres, hospitals, banks, radio stations and other public infrastructure.  

There are about 30 solar fields in operation now on the island, with plans to add 92 more by 2028 with the help of China. But for the average Cuban, who earns around $16 a month if employed by the state, the options are slim. Many people rely on coal or firewood to cook and stay warm. Most Cubans can’t afford to install solar panels, which can cost thousands of dollars. Electric power generators that run on fuel are a more affordable option, but they are noisy and still cost-prohibitive. A 4,600-watt generator uses about 15 litres of gasoline every 12 hours, with each litre of gas costing as much as US$8 on the informal market.  

Christa Hernández is among the privileged few who were able to install solar panels last year. At that point, the scheduled blackouts were between two and six hours in Havana. But Hernández, who owns the hostel Kerida and the Cimarrón dance school, could see that the power situation was going to make or break her business. Gasoline generators were too loud. She looked into buying solar panels on Amazon, but her credit card kept getting blocked. Finally, she connected with a friend living in the United States who purchased the panels for her, and then she hired a company in Miami that packed them up and delivered them to her doorstep in Cuba. All the equipment, including batteries and shipping, cost US$12,000.  

Our workers come in from their homes already tired, because they weren’t able to sleep, because there is no electricity, there is no water, there is nothing.

— Christa Hernández, business owner in Havana

“We made the switch just in time, because soon after, travel agencies stopped working with hostels that did not have that safety net,” Hernández says. “We’re one of the few privileged people who can invest in this,” she adds. If you don’t have a business, or family who live outside the country, it’s impossible to make the investment.  

“The neighbourhood is very dark. When you look outside, you see how few people have light,” she says. “Life is not the same. You go out into a darkened Cuba, where the cost of everything goes up and there is suffering.”  

“Our workers come in from their homes already tired, because they weren’t able to sleep, because there is no electricity, there is no water, there is nothing.”  

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. Berta Reventós is a Buenos Aires-based Latin America correspondent who works for Spanish media and reported from Cuba.

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“For us, it’s very important,” says Guindani, an advocate of cooperative food systems who comes from a family of farmers. The shelves of Raízes’s modest showroom were stocked with the fruits of their labour: organic white rice, chocolate made from Bahian cocoa and coffee beans from the southern reaches of Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. Plus a trendy yellow ballcap boasting “Agroecologia” on the front for good measure.  

But nothing can compete with the international exposure of COP. Raízes received another boost thanks to famed Indigenous Brazilian chef Tainá Marajoara, who was in charge of catering for world leaders at the conference and had invited the start-up to showcase its products alongside her. “All the work and effort we’ve put so far into raising awareness around our brand really has been a drop in the ocean,” Guindani says.  

Guindani started the Raízes do Campo project in 2018 in an attempt to help transform the food supply model in Brazil, bringing small-scale producers closer to Brazilian consumers and creating a more equitable system to deliver fair earnings to farmers. The start-up officially launched in 2022, marketing products by hundreds of cooperative producers under a single brand. Its line includes coffee, chocolate, rice, beans, sugar and fruit juices. Three years later, it now represents some 3,000 producers. Along the way, Guindani has come up against myriad challenges, everything from needing barcodes in order to sell in supermarkets to understanding product placement in the aisles. She has learned that the one of the greatest challenge revolves around storytelling – how to help consumers understand the higher costs of sustainable products that abide by an agroecology ethos.  

“We couldn’t market this coffee as if it is any coffee from any hacienda,” Guindani says. So they created something called the “spiral of agroecology,” which assigns value along three pillars: social, economic and environmental. They meet with each cooperative to learn about their process, and then try to guide consumers to understand the attention that the producer places on each of those pillars. So, for example, if there are no women who are part of the management of the cooperative, it may rank lower on the social spiral. “The consumer has to understand that there is a difference,” says Guindani, who has long worked in the farming cooperative movement in Latin America. “At Raízes do Campo, our idea was to turn the families into the protagonists.” 

Proponents of agroecology took COP30 as an opportunity to showcase how small-scale and family farming can transform food systems and provide lasting solutions to climate change. It is the first time that family farming has occupied a formal space at the climate conference, says Paulo Petersen, a Brazilian special envoy for family farming at COP30.  

Petersen wants policymakers to recognize family farming as a “decisive actor” in restructuring food systems that are currently responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions globally. In Brazil, family farming is the backbone of its food system, even if it is largely invisible. Family farms make up 77% of Brazil’s five million rural properties, according to the World Bank, and produce most of what more than 200 million Brazilians eat. While COP30 did not produce an agreement regarding agroecology, Petersen says, their voice was stronger than ever: “Our presence in different spaces at COP was about creating our own narrative.”  

The role that food systems play in the climate battle has only recently joined the global conversation. But it’s Big Ag that takes up most of the room, even now as the narrative shifts into technological advances that promote “regenerative” or “climate intelligent” agriculture. Industrial agriculture has sought to encompass family farming in its messaging and lay claim to practices that support biodiversity and equity. 

“Family agriculture is not part of Big Ag,” Petersen stresses. “What has happened in the last 50 years is that industrial agriculture has disconnected agriculture from its natural environment, production from consumption, and nutrition from health,” he says. Monoculture farming and commodities-based agriculture destabilize the ecological environment in a way that is then remedied with pesticides and chemical fertilizers, he says, which have their own detrimental effect. 

“Family agroecology is a recognition of the peasant farmer methods of doing agriculture, that is based on diverse production, biodiversity, culture and local markets,” Petersen says. Its principles are not just ecological but economic, since a large part of the production is to feed the families themselves. That which is meant for sale requires local markets – but the farmers are at the mercy of powerful middlemen.  

Guindani has seen this first-hand, and how those unequal power balances leave families with meagre returns. “Since they are small pieces of land, and small productive units, they don’t have enough of a volume to make it to the bigger market,” she says. So, it’s the wholesale buyer that ends up occupying an outsized role, scooping up the product, generating volume and leaving the earlier links of the value chain further behind.   

At Raízes do Campo, our idea was to turn [family farmers] into the protagonists.

– Carla Guindani, executive director, Raízes do Campo

In order to reap the benefit of the agroecological family-farming model, it has to be integrated into food distribution systems that reduce energy consumption in processing, packaging, refrigeration and transport and shorten the chain of intermediaries. That means that public investment can’t just be directed at the small farmer; it must be invested in the entire supply chain that creates the conditions for it to make a wider impact.  

Petersen points to policies in Brazil’s semi-arid region in the northeast that helped turn around an area that is home to half the country’s family farms, and is particularly vulnerable to droughts. The policies provided public services and social protection to farming families, including a cistern system with access to potable water. And it devised local chains of supply and demand that supported small-scale farms. The result is an area that is now more resilient and better able to withstand the shocks of droughts that have become more extreme.  

“What we’re saying is that there isn’t a policy for the climate,” Petersen says. “There are policies for food sovereignty, and it’s those policies that generate mitigating effects around greenhouse gas emissions, that promote adaptation, food security, women’s empowerment and local economies. It’s a win-win effect.”  

For Guindani, the focus continues to be on telling the story of Brazil’s family farmers, who are key to a more sustainable future.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights. 

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In the aftermath, demonstrations both in favour of and against the U.S. action have cropped up around the world.

Glinelide Aponte was sandwiched among thousands of Venezuelans in Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires on January 3, celebrating the ouster of a man they blamed for forcing them out of their homeland. Some eight million Venezuelans, or one-quarter of the population, are estimated to have fled their country since 2014, according to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, fanning across the world in search of a better life and upending regional immigration politics.

Aponte, 28, left seven years ago. She first took a bus to Lima with friends, then travelled on to Buenos Aires, where she has built a life, working and in a relationship. Her decision to leave was largely based on chronic shortages that made it impossible to plan for the future. “There was nothing, from basic supplies, food, even transport to be able to go to university,” Aponte says. The news of Maduro’s removal was “one of the happiest days of my life,” even if she admits to confusion over what could happen next. “We were in a very difficult position,” she says, one that “can’t get worse.”

While the legitimacy and legality of the U.S. stealth attack on Venezuela in the early-morning hours of January 3 are deeply contested, the possible ripple effects extend far beyond the courts. The United States appears to have abandoned any nominal respect for sovereignty, particularly where its energy ambitions lie, and unlike with previous regime changes in Latin America, its intentions have been crystal clear. “We are going to run the country until such time that we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” President Donald Trump said in the hours after the attack. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are being held in New York City and have been formally charged in a narco-terrorism conspiracy that includes the importation of cocaine to the United States. They have both declared their innocence.

Indeed, beyond the shock and awe, U.S. imperialism has, arguably, never been so transparent. Trump has already taken steps to claim what he declared was a prime motivation: Venezuelan oil, which had suffered a severe decline in recent years, because of mismanagement and also U.S. sanctions that crippled Venezuela’s petroleum-dependent economy.

Trump’s administration has elected to keep the rest of the regime established by Maduro’s predecessor, the populist socialist Hugo Chávez, in place and work with Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who has been sworn in as interim president. On Monday, Trump declared himself the “acting president of Venezuela” in a post on his social media site Truth Social. The Trump administration made the surprising choice of backing Rodríguez as interim leader, rather than María Corina Machado, the leader of the right-wing opposition whose party is widely seen as having won the 2024 elections in Venezuela and who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to return democracy to her home country. Last week, Machado said she would share her Nobel Prize with Trump, something the committee that awards the prize says she is not able to do.

Legal experts around the world have condemned the U.S. intervention. “I remain deeply concerned that rules of international law have not been respected with regard to the 3 January military action,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said before a meeting of the Security Council last week. “The [UN] Charter enshrines the prohibition of the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”

The response from the international community has been divided, with countries in Latin America such as Brazil, Colombia and Mexico roundly criticizing the unilateral move, along with Russia and China. But other powers, including the European Union and Canada, refrained from explicitly saying the United States went too far, focusing instead on their long-time refusal to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader following electoral fraud and well-documented human rights abuses.

“The European Union calls for calm and restraint by all actors, to avoid escalation and to ensure a peaceful solution to the crisis,” a statement signed by 26 EU member states, not including Hungary, declared.

But the U.S. action is about more than a dictator. It is the starkest evidence of a new era in foreign policy that reactivates the Monroe Doctrine, an 1823 declaration by the United States that sought to assert dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The reinterpretation has been dubbed the “Donroe” doctrine, and Trump has since made controversial insinuations of possible interventions in Colombia and Mexico. Denmark’s Arctic territory of Greenland is once again in his crosshairs. “One way or another, we’re going to have Greenland,” he said over the weekend. “If we don’t take Greenland, Russia or China will.”

The geopolitical chess board is shaky. What the U.S. intervention in Venezuela means for energy policy is still unclear. U.S. forces have intercepted five oil tankers since Maduro was removed, and Trump has said that Venezuela will be “turning over” up to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States. It stands to reason that Canada, as a primary exporter of oil to the United States, will bear some impact, although the timeline for ramping up production in Venezuela is unclear, with analysts suggesting it could take years.

But there are other signals of important changes, namely the release of more than 100 political prisoners, which by some estimates represents about 10% of those incarcerated under Maduro’s regime.

The post In the wake of U.S. capture of Maduro, the geopolitical consequences are just emerging appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It’s the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, that lofty climate pledge that has helped push – in some cases reluctantly – countries toward carbon-cutting measures. COP30 organizers are determined to make this year different, shifting from “ambition to implementation,” and they’re making the point with a backdrop of stark inequality.  

“We cannot hide the fact that we are in a world with lots of inequalities and where sustainability and fighting climate change is something that has to get closer to people,” André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, president designate for COP30, said in an interview with the Associated Press. “President Lula wants this to be the COP of truth. He wants people to be told the truth about how climate change will affect their countries,” he added in September.  

Brazil proved to be its own study in contradictions in the lead-up to Belém, which has made headlines for a dearth in accommodations for the influx of thousands of delegates, as well as a controversial new highway cutting through rainforest to facilitate the conference. South America’s largest country, with a population of more than 212 million, Brazil has sought to regain environmental bona fides that were left in tatters under the previous administration of Jair Bolsonaro, when deforestation ran rampant in the Amazon.  

Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, former union leader turned president, assumed his third term in office in 2023 with bold pledges to end deforestation in the Amazon by 2030, boosting the use of satellite monitoring and other mechanisms to guard against illegal logging and mining in the so-called lungs of the earth. He also established a dedicated ministry for Indigenous Peoples as a way to protect their rights, setting out to demarcate their territories. In the lead-up to COP30, Brazil launched a tropical-forest conservation fund that aims to raise US$125 billion. Hosting COP30 was an important show of his government’s environmental commitment. Brazil has pledged to reduce its emissions by 59% and 67% below 2005 levels by 2035. But various activists and organizations have drawn attention to the cracks in Brazil’s narrative, not least for its plan to continue to exploit its oil reserves.  

Lula has pushed for Brazil to drill in the mouth of the Amazon, arguing that the development will help the country complete its energy transition. The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources approved the drilling of an exploratory well in an offshore oil field in the Amazon, a site that had long been in the sights of the national oil company, Petrobras. The petroleum giant had previously been denied rights to explore, in large measure because of doubts over its ability to respond to oil spills or other accidents in the ecologically sensitive area. In its October approval, the environmental watchdog said the company had made various improvements to its emergency response plan, which led to the green light. 

Brazil is also pushing ahead with new mining projects for critical minerals, with as many as 800 mining companies exploring in the Amazon. “There is no energy transition without mining,” Alexandre Silveira, minister of mines and energy, said in early 2024. 

“Brazil cannot lead the world to a cleaner, healthier future by loosening environmental regulations, promoting a fossil fuel build out, and allowing mining projects that violate Indigenous sovereignty and destroy carbon sinks like the Amazon,” Patricia Rodriguez and Jan Morrill wrote in a commentary for Earthworks, an organization that advocates against oil, gas and mining pollution.   

The question of environmental regulations has exposed fault lines within Lula’s administration. Environment and Climate Change Minister Marina Silva, an internationally acclaimed environmentalist, slammed a decision by the Brazilian Senate in May to approve a bill that loosened environmental licensing rules, calling it a “death blow” to important protections in Brazil. Her position in turn drew the ire of industry and other sectors. The legislation was later modified, earning Silva’s support. 

But the showdown underscored the powerful forces that are at play in Brazil, which has taken an even more prominent role on the international stage as President Lula presents one of the clearest voices of opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump and his trade war tactics.  

In opening remarks at COP30 last week, Lula stressed the need for true climate commitments, to “take the scientific warnings seriously” and “face reality.” He closed by thanking people for coming to the Amazon.

“Many people did not believe that it was possible to bring a COP to an Amazonian state, because people are more used to parading around big cities,” he noted. “We wanted people to come here to see what the Amazon really is.”

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