RCMP find it's not easy being green; Ticketmaster lawsuit: CBC's Marketplace cheat sheet | CBC News (2024)

Can the RCMP turn North America's largest law enforcement vehicle fleet green? They're about to find out.

As the national police service, the RCMP falls under Ottawa's Greening Government Strategy — a commitment to lower the environmental footprint of the federal government and get it to net‑zero emissions by 2050.

The strategy calls on the RCMP to replace as many of their approximately 12,000 cars and trucks with zero-emission vehicles as operationally possible by 2035.

But those tasked with meeting that goal are predicting speed bumps along the way.

Two Teslas are currently being field tested, and while their panoramic glass sunroofs make them popular with some of the Mounties, Sgt. Shaun Vickery says they likely won't be used in general duty.

"We're [not] going to be putting prisoners and such in the back because the glass roof and stuff like that does pose a bit of a challenge," said Vickery, who works in the RCMP's national traffic programs and operational technologies unit.

The early field testing is also assessing how electric vehicles can handle the demands of police work.

"Responding to a call may require driving at a higher speed, which is going to consume more battery and decrease your range," he said.

In case you missed it,Marketplacefound a wide range of pricing inconsistencies and reliability at public charging stations. Watch "Putting electric vehicles to the test" anytime onCBC GemandYouTube.

The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) and a group of 30 states and the District of Columbia on Thursday sued to break up Live Nation, arguing the big concert promoter and its Ticketmaster unit illegally inflated concert ticket prices and hurt artists.

"It is time to break up Live Nation," said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Concert fans and politicians for years have been calling for a re-examination of Live Nation's purchase of Ticketmaster in 2010, especially after the ticket seller in 2022 botched sales to Taylor Swift's first concert tour in years, sending fans into hours-long online queues, charging prices that customers said were too high and drawing charges of poor service.

The debacle prompted congressional hearings and bills in state legislatures aimed at better protecting consumers.

"Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters and venue operators," Garland said. He went on to say that as a result fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to perform and smaller promoters get squeezed out.

The suit says Live Nation directly manages more than 400 musical artists and controls around 60 per cent of concert promotions at major venues. It owns or controls more than 265 concert venues in North America, and through Ticketmaster controls roughly 80 per cent or more of big venues' primary ticketing for concerts.

In the lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, the DOJ argued the "vast scope" of Live Nation and Ticketmaster allowed them to "insert themselves at the center and the edges of virtually every aspect of the live music ecosystem."

Live Nation called the suit a possible "PR win for the DOJ in the short term," but said the entertainment company would prevail in court. The lawsuit "won't solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees and access to in-demand shows."

"There is more competition than ever in the live events market," it added.

Marketplacehas investigated Ticketmaster before, sharing how a Canadian reseller scores tickets and resells them for a profit. Watch that story and more anytime onCBC GemandYouTube.

Most people who have flown have likely felt their stomach drop when the "fasten seatbelt" sign switches on during a bumpy flight, but turbulence can be severe and experts warn it's becoming more common.

"Turbulence fatalities on commercial flights are fortunately very rare, but have sadly increased by one today," Paul Williams, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading, U.K., told CBC News in an email interview.

On Tuesday, one passenger was killed and 30 were injured after a Singapore Airlines flight from London hit severe turbulence en route, forcing it to make an emergency landing in Bangkok, officials and the airline said. A passenger on board the flight told Reuters the plane dropped dramatically, launching everyone not wearing a seatbelt into the ceiling.

A 73-year-old British man died, likely due to a heart attack, Suvarnabhumi airport general manager Kittipong Kittikachorn told a news conference. Seven people were critically injured with head injuries.

Turbulence — a sudden, violent shift in air flow — is the most common cause of airline accidents involving injuries, according to a 2021 study by the National Transportation Safety Board.

And it's likely only going to get worse due to climate change, climate and aviation experts have said.

Turbulence on flights can be caused by storms, mountains and strong air currents called jet streams, Williams noted. But the type of turbulence likely involved in today's accident is called clear-air turbulence, he said.

"It can be difficult to avoid because it doesn't show up on the weather radar in the flight deck," Williams said.

Other recent research published in Nature Climate Change shows climate change is distorting the jet stream, making the powerful winds in the upper atmosphere even faster.

"Based on these results and our current understanding, we expect record-breaking winds," Tiffany Shaw, a professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, said in a news release last year.

"And it's likely that they will feed into decreased flight times, increased clear-air turbulence and a potential increase in severe weather occurrence."

Jenny Cowley

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