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Today, world leaders agreed that collectively, we’re destroying the planet.
“The atmosphere doesn’t care where the emissions get emitted, it only cares that it gets emitted or in this case not emitted.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined 150 other global leaders in Paris to discuss how each nation could lower carbon emissions and in turn slow the effects of global warming.
“The political leadership realize that we have some urgency because the loss of life and economic losses are great and you cannot ignore it anymore.” said Altaf Arain, Director, McMaster Centre for Climate Change
According to the government of Canada, disaster relief funds have ballooned over the past 40 years from $10 million to $280 million a year. In the last 10 years, natural disasters on average have cost about $200 billion/year worldwide.
Trudeau is diving head first into renewable energy. Last week he announced a $20 million investment in a geothermal plant.
The government also announced an annual $200 million investment in clean energy innovation that could help bring technology like energy storage to the masses.
“Energy storage allows us to lower our peaks so we can charge and use our batteries at opportune times you get additional benefits like resilience for instance when there’s a blackout you’re still okay because you have generation locally.” said Jessie Ma, from the Centre for Urban Energy.
Technologies Trudeau hopes will create more jobs for Canadians while preserving the planet.
“It wont be hurting economic opportunities in fact it’ll create more economic opportunities.”
On top of what Canada plans to do to limit it’s greenhouse gas emissions, the government has contributed $30 million towards a $250 million fund made up by Canada, the U.S. and 9 European countries to help poorer nations deal with the immediate effects of global warming, like flood and drought.