Taylor Noakes
Taylor C. Noakes is an investigative journalist with DeSmog who tracks how Canada’s oil and gas sector shapes politics, finance, technology, and public debate. His reporting focuses on greenwashing, astroturf campaigns, and the promotion of so-called false solutions such as carbon capture, hydrogen, and liquefied natural gas. A public historian by training, he brings archival depth and a systems view to coverage of Canada’s fossil fuel industry and its wider influence on policy and media.
Fossil Fuel Lobbying and Political Power
Noakes’ core line of work is mapping the reach of fossil fuel lobbying into Canada’s political institutions and public-interest spaces. He has reported on a database of Canada’s fossil fuel lobbyists, using it to show the scale and organisation of lobbying around oil and gas policy. His coverage includes environmental groups that retain lobbyists who also represent fossil fuel interests, highlighting conflicts in campaigns that present themselves as independent from industry.
He has examined connections between the Conservative political movement and major oil and gas firms, treating party networks, advocacy organisations, and corporate actors as parts of a single ecosystem.
On the international stage, Noakes has covered the composition of Canada’s delegation to COP30, detailing how it is “loaded with” representatives tied to fossil fuel companies. He follows how official delegations, advisory panels, and trade groups position Canadian oil and gas in global climate negotiations. Across these pieces, the constant is his focus on who is in the room when climate policy is made and how their industry ties shape the outcomes.
False Solutions and Carbon Capture
Noakes devotes significant reporting to industry-backed “solutions” that extend fossil fuel production rather than replace it. He has followed the carbon capture and storage beat, tracing how governments in Canada and the United States have become top public funders of CCS and are preparing to inject tens of billions of dollars more into these projects.
His work shows how these investments sit alongside continued fossil fuel expansion, challenging the framing of CCS as a climate fix.
He has reported on grassroots opposition to new carbon capture pipeline projects, documenting how communities organise against infrastructure promoted as climate-friendly. In other stories he has examined how Canadian oil companies adjust their public messaging on carbon capture on corporate websites ahead of new regulations, treating changes in language as evidence of shifting strategy rather than genuine climate ambition. Hydrogen and LNG appear in his work in the same context: technologies promoted as clean while used to justify long-term fossil fuel build-out.
Pathways Alliance, a major oil sands group, is a recurring subject in his reporting on false solutions and climate communications. He approaches it as a case study in how coordinated industry campaigns, search advertising, and branding aim to control the public narrative around emissions reductions while keeping production intact.
Energy Conferences, Greenwashing, and Media Influence
Noakes regularly reports from major energy conferences in Canada and the United States, treating these events as key stages for fossil fuel messaging. His coverage follows what executives, lobbyists, and politicians say on stage about climate policy, renewables, and technology, and contrasts those talking points with the industry’s actual investments and lobbying records.
Greenwashing and astroturfing are central themes: he tracks front groups, coalition campaigns, and sponsored panels that present industry positions as grassroots or expert consensus.
Beyond conference halls, he writes about how Canada’s oil and gas sector influences mass media and public discourse. This includes attention to industry-funded advertising, search optimisation, and partnerships that push favourable narratives about fossil fuels and downplay environmental impacts. In 2024 he concentrated on industry and political reactions to new anti-greenwashing legislation and on Canada’s culture war against renewables, including political decisions such as imposing a moratorium on solar and wind projects in a province well suited to both. The consistent through-line is his focus on how climate misinformation and strategic communications are produced, financed, and circulated.
Finance, Tech, and Institutional Fossil Fuel Ties
Noakes often follows the money behind Canada’s fossil fuel sector. His reporting on the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board examines the growth of its ties to fossil fuel companies and the implications of that exposure for public retirement savings and climate risk.
These stories treat pension funds, banks, and other large investors as critical enablers of continued oil and gas expansion rather than neutral market actors.
He also explores the relationship between Big Oil and Big Tech, showing how technology firms support federal fossil fuel infrastructure development and participate in industry-led climate strategies. In these pieces, digital platforms, data centres, and tech-sector lobbying appear alongside pipelines and production facilities as part of the same infrastructure build-out. His wider body of work for DeSmog is complemented by regular contributions to magazines such as The Walrus, Jacobin, Cult MTL, and the National Observer, where he continues to write on energy economics, political influence, and the social impacts of fossil fuel projects.
4 more environment journalists.
Adam Kovac
Adam Kovac is a breaking news reporter at Scientific American who explains fast-moving stories where science, climate and public policy intersect. His beat spans climate-driven extremes, El Niño, energy, infrastructure, space, mathematics and public health. He has written about super El Niño, extreme weather, ozone recovery, diesel prices, electric rain, peeling paint, wine chemistry, lunar craters, space missions, NASA telescopes, vaccines, IVF treatments, TikTok remedies and AI-created viruses. He also covers regulation, political campaigns and pressures on scientific institutions. His stories are fast-turn news features and explainers. He uses expert quotes and clear descriptions of underlying mechanisms to show why developments matter. He connects technical details to practical stakes, including risks to ecosystems, economies, patients, public safety, technology and long-term scientific work.
Angela Capobianco
Angela Capobianco stands out for reporting how policy, infrastructure and environmental decisions translate into concrete effects for workers, residents and vulnerable communities. She is a digital broadcast journalist at Global News and works as a general assignment video journalist with a focus on environmental reporting, municipal affairs, housing and labour. Her stories cover labour protections, municipal governance, environmental conflicts and social policy. She reports on how land use, climate and regulatory choices affect communities, from glyphosate spraying fears in Bear River to extreme heat and support for people sleeping rough. She also covers workers’ rights, long-term care strikes, municipal budgets, ferry service delays, heritage designation, housing reuse, and bridge replacement plans, with close attention to negotiations, official decisions and on-the-ground impact.
Arrthy Thayaparan
Arrthy Thayaparan is a CBC News reporter who shows how government decisions affect daily life. She covers climate, transportation, education, community issues, trade, tariffs and the cost of living. Her reporting examines how policy changes affect prices, public services, employers, workers, consumers and families. She has written about Ontario businesses facing tariff pressures, ticket resale rules, tariff support funding, transit changes after the Scarborough RT derailment, highway speed limits, education union talks and mandatory school platforms. She also covers public-service work rules, community-service funding, municipal campaigns, tenant protections and the economic effects of major events. Thayaparan reports through concrete numbers, program details and timelines. She gives space to governments, unions, workers, businesses and residents, and traces decisions from political debate to their effects on commutes, classrooms, budgets, workplaces and neighbourhoods.
Bianca McKeown
Bianca McKeown stands out for reporting the everyday consequences of climate change, infrastructure decisions, social policy and Indigenous governance in northern communities. She reports for CBC North across television, radio and digital. Her work focuses on how weather shifts, wildlife changes and development projects affect daily life, travel, safety and local economies. She covers large infrastructure and energy proposals, foster parent payments, cost of living, vulnerable families and Indigenous leadership. She also reports on national reconciliation efforts and the role of Inuit voices in decision-making. Her stories rely on practical details, community voices, interviews and clear descriptions of what residents, officials and advocates face on the ground. Her coverage is direct and descriptive, and it connects policy decisions to lived reality.