It’s always fun to poke into The Conversation Canada’s archives and look back at the year’s environment and energy stories. In a little under a year, we published 141 articles by 173 authors. This year, we also held our first live events: two panel discussions on the ocean, one in Halifax and the other in St. John’s, Nfld., as part of Science Literacy Week.

The environment — and climate change in particular — made headlines around the world this year as children and youth skipped school en masse to protest their governments’ lacklustre action on climate change. Closer to home, we saw the federal government’s carbon pricing take effect and Canadians raise climate change as a key issue in the federal election. And, days apart, Parliament declared a climate emergency and then approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

But it’s not all serious: I won’t forget the day I got the pitch about the giant ancient beavers that once roamed across North America tens of thousands of years ago.

So, perhaps it’s of no surprise that some of our top stories this year — and my favourites — helped make the complexities of climate change, energy transition and environmental activism more clear.

Of course, most of these articles weren’t only environment or energy stories — they were business stories, culture stories, health stories — stories that show just how much environment and energy issues are intertwined with all aspects of our lives and will continue to be for decades to come.