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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during the European Council summit at the headquarters of the European Council, in Brussels, Belgium, on June 26, 2026.

Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto

Hard Numbers: European leader faces no confidence vote, Sheinbaum wants to sue SpaceX, & more

401: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen faces a no-confidence vote over “Pfizergate,” a scandal over how she secured vaccines in 2021 by personally texting Pfizer’s CEO. It would take an unlikely 401 votes in the 720-strong European Parliament to oust her, but the vote may push her to make political concessions to both the left and right to shore up support.

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Paige Fusco

Graphic Truth: Canada braces for wildfire season

As the weather warms, the US and Canada are bracing for the potential of another record-breaking wildfire season. Canada’s 2023 wildfire season was the most destructive on record, with more than 6,000 fires tearing through tens of millions of acres and blanketing the US East Coast and Midwest in smoke.

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Paige Fusco

Graphic Truth: Home insurance costs are on the rise

From devastating hurricanes and ceaseless wildfires to catastrophic floods, natural disasters are increasing in frequency and cost in Canada and the US. As climate change makes disasters more frequent and destructive, insurers are having to raise rates and reduce coverage.

In the US, the home insurance industry has had three straight years of underwriting losses. Insurance rates rose an average of 21% in 2023 as a response, with some insurers in disaster-prone places like California and Florida ceasing to write new policies altogether. As a result, homeowners are forced to pay higher premiums for the fewer insurance options that remain.

In Canada, last summer’s record wildfires compounded with historic floods, costing more than $3.1 billion in insured damage and spiking rates in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and British Columbia.

For this week’s Graphic Truth, we looked at how much insurance rates have risen around the US and Canada.

Paige Fusco

Graphic Truth: When it comes to freshwater, Canada is king

Water covers 71% of the Earth’s surface, but good ol’ H2O is a much more precious resource than it appears.

Less than 0.8% of Earth’s water is freshwater in lakes, rivers, or underground aquifers. And much of that already tiny fraction has been rendered unusable by pollution or is lost to poor management and inefficient agricultural practices. What’s worse, climate change and overexploitation of existing water resources mean that communities from California to Cambodia are struggling to provide safe water at an affordable price.

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Participants enter the Dubai Exhibition Centre during the COP28, UN Climate Change Conference.

Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto/Reuters

Can climate activism and AI coexist?

AI is on the lips of climate-policy negotiators gathered for the United Nation’s COP28 conference in Dubai, and for good reason — it presents a high-risk but potentially high-reward scenario.

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Jess Frampton

Who should pay to fix our warming planet?

Global leaders are gathering in Dubai for COP28, the 28th annual United Nations climate summit, starting tomorrow through Dec. 12. But before the meeting even begins, I can already tell you one thing: Just like every COP that came before it, COP28 will fail to resolve the central debate on “solving” climate change.

At the heart of this failure lies a trillion-dollar roadblock: disagreement between developed and developing countries over who’s to blame for the problem – and who should foot the bill to fix it. The US and Europe blame Chinese and Indian coal plants and call for their immediate phase-down. China and developing countries blame the West’s historical emissions and insist on compensation for their mitigation and adaptation efforts. Africans and Indians assert their right to develop their economies as Westerners did. Vulnerable nations demand reparations to cope with the harmful consequences of the global warming that’s already baked in. Neither side wants to make concessions.

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A person walks past a "#COP28" sign in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

REUTERS/Amr Alfiky

Controversies at COP28 and the future of climate change

Global climate talks are kicking off at COP28 on Thursday amid revelations that its host, the United Arab Emirates, is using the event to lobby for fossil fuel production. On the one hand, no one is surprised. Climate activists were already outraged and suspicious that one of the world’s largest oil and gas producers was hosting a meeting meant to move the world away from their production. On the other, as scientists uncover that climate change is progressing faster than expected, are the few global institutions meant to be speeding up our transition to carbon neutrality actually working against it?

For answers, we looked to Eurasia Group Vice Chairman Gerald Butts, who was a part of Canada’s delegation when the Paris Agreement was adopted at COP21 in 2015.

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Tug of war rope between US & Canada over green subsidies and tech workers.

Luisa Vieira

Hard Numbers: Canada snaps up US tech workers, greenhouse gasses surpass grim mark, green hydrogen comes to Quebec, shrimp paste alarm

6,000: Nicely played, Canada. Back in July, as US tech giants were laying off tens of thousands of employees, Canada seized the moment, changing its immigration rules to permit US H-1B visa holders to get work visas in Canada. So far this year, more than 6,000 holders of the US visa have relocated north of the border.

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