In-depth discussion of hereditary government for First Nations with activist Nipawi Kaknoosit. Updating the sovereignty crisis in Wet’suwet’en Territory. !00% Renewable Kootenays passes in Rossland and clip from the web: Naomi Klein talks climate change with Bernie Sanders!!!
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Environment News for January 22, 2019
An effort to protect a recreational area near Nelson has surpassed its $50,000 crowdfunding goal in less than a month.
The fundraising campaign, supported by 393 donors so far, is being led by the newly formed Cottonwood Lake Preservation Society. Their goal is to save two large parcels of private land surrounding Cottonwood Lake and the Apex cross-country ski area from logging.
“The community support for this campaign has been rapid and very strong,” said Andrew McBurney, spokesperson for the society.
He says “Meeting our $50,000 crowdfunding goal so quickly sends a clear message: the community deeply cares about Cottonwood Lake and the Apex area. We hope to multiply the GoFundMe fund by matching it with grants and government partnerships over the next month.”
https://www.nelsonstar.com/news/cottonwood-lake-preservation-group-surpasses-50000-fundraising-goal/
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In a room filled with loggers, Premier John Horgan unveiled policy reforms to cut raw log exports and get more logs manufactured in B.C.
For years BC has been exporting more logs and making less lumber and value added materials. As a result many local mills have closed. And then there is no where to sell logs… so more and more are heading to the US and overseas.
Horgan was not very specific about incentives to keep the logs in B.C. He said those will be developed in the coming months after consultations with communities, industry and trade unions.
The province also promised to curb wood waste and make it easier for logging contractors to negotiate rates with the companies that hire them.
Between 2013 and 2016, according to some reports, B.C. exported nearly 26 million cubic metres of wood worth an estimated $3 billion.
Even though B.C. the law requires logs be milled in Canada, but there are exceptions. Raw logs are subject to a “surplus test,” where loggers must first advertise logs to the domestic market. If there are no fair offers, the logs can then be sold and shipped overseas.
In parts of the province where there are few or no processing plants, raw logs don’t even have to be offered to local industry.
Even in the Kootenays some of the best logs are being shipped south.
Horgan says there plans could mean increased fees for log exporters in certain regions, as early as this summer.
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Almost every day last week a new heat record was broken in Australia.
Hottest day records were falling all over with 45 degree temperatures and higher.
It was 45C or higher for four consecutive days in Broken Hill – another record – and more than 40C for the same time period in Canberra, the nation’s capital.
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News reports say more than 90% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the oceans. Billions of people living in coastal areas are under threat from rising sea levels, due both to the melting of ice – happening at a frightening and increasing rate – and the physical expansion of water as it warms. Climate change is making storms more powerful and disrupting the patterns of marine life on which communities depend.
Carbon emissions are also causing ocean acidification. Intensive fishing, pollution and the exploitation of mineral resources are all taking their toll. Between a fifth and a quarter of marine species are already threatened with extinction; global marine populations have halved since 1970. Though only three humans have reached the deepest known point, the Mariana trench, our collective impact is felt there in the form of pollutants and plastics.
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Jagmeet Singh says the federal government should be willing to terminate the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline if consultations do not end in “partnership” and “buy-in” from all the communities along the route.
“They can’t say that they want to build something and say it’s going to be built, and then on the other side say, ‘We’re going to meaningfully consult with communities.’ That is not meaningful consultation if you’ve already decided the outcome,” the NDP leader said in a wide-ranging interview to air on CBC’s The National this Sunday night.
Singh declared last spring that he was opposed to the Trans Mountain expansion project. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, a New Democrat who has been lobbying hard for Trans Mountain, called Singh’s position on the pipeline “naive.”
Last August, the Federal Court of Appeal quashed licensing for the $7.4 billion expansion project, telling the Trudeau government it would have to do further “meaningful” consultation with First Nations and that concerns about increased tanker traffic had not been adequately addressed.
The government accepted those findings and named former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci to lead Phase 3 of its Indigenous consultations. No deadline has been set for those consultations to end.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trans-mountain-singh-pipeline-trudeau-1.4983757
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A recent Monmouth poll found that 78 percent of Americans believe climate change is real and leading to sea-level rise and more extreme weather. That’s up from 70 percent three years ago. The headline-grabbing takeaway: A majority of Republicans — 64 percent — are now believers, a 15-point jump from 2015.
To learn more about these converts, researchers at Yale and George Mason crunched the numbers from a blend of responses to surveys conducted between 2011 and 2015. They found that 8 percent of Americans said they had recently changed their opinion on the matter, according to a new analysis from Yale University and George Mason University. Nearly all of the recent converts said global warming had become a bigger concern for them.
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The United States is “gearing up to unleash the largest burst of new carbon emissions in the world between now and 2050,” with an oil and gas expansion equivalent to nearly 1,000 coal-fired power plants, according to an explosive new analysis released last week by Oil Change International and 17 other organizations.
“At precisely the time in which the world must begin rapidly decarbonizing to avoid runaway climate disaster, the United States is moving further and faster than any other country to expand oil and gas extraction,” Oil Change states in a release. If the country’s 120 billion tonnes of new carbon pollution between 2018 and 2050 are not curtailed, “U.S. oil and gas expansion will impede the rest of the world’s ability to manage a climate-safe, equitable decline of oil and gas production.”
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Wet’suwet’en leaders this week raised the alarm again about RCMP activity in their territory.
In a release they say: “RCMP have invaded and occupied their territory and are working to establish a police detachment on Gidumt’en territory without the consent of the people.”
The chiefs have entered into an agreement with the RCMP, under the threat of further police violence, to allow CoastalGas Link to temporarily work within Wet’suwet’en territories until the interlocutory injunction is heard.
That agreement, which dictates that all police exclusion zones will be lifeted immediately and that our members will have free access to our territories, has already been violated by the RCMP, they say.
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Hydrogen fusion energy may come on stream soon enough to finally end dependence on oil. That’s according to an analysis by CBC’s Don Pittis. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/green-power-fusion-1.4981885)
Many new start-ups are using science accumulated by government researc and new technologies like 3D printing and growing computing power
New energy experts, say commercial fusion is coming, hae but it may be 30 years away but it could be as short as ten years.
When fusion goes ‘on line’ it will massively disrupt fossil fuels.
But some scientists say it’s too long to wait. We must move fast on renewables immediately. There will still be a transition time, certainly not just months.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/green-power-fusion-1.4981885
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