One of Nelson’s Fridays fur Future organizers, Danni Lynch is introducing the Stop EcoCide Campaign to make ecocide the Fifth Crime Against Peace. Coming up November 23rd in Nelson.
At the end of the Forest Summit Convergence in Nelson organizer Jennifer Houghton talks about what steps will be taken now to protect the province’s forests.
Dr. Peter Vogels, a social worker who built environmentalism into his teaching, talks about his introduction to deep ecology, and what it means in terms of current environmental crisis and action. An old friend… so it’s good to talk to him about one of our favourite topics.
Environment News for Nov. 5, 2019
Right now, community members from Oregon and Washington have shut down part of the Port of Vancouver in Washington to block a shipment of pipeline that is destined for the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion.
Five climbers have locked themselves to the dock where the shipment is to be off-loaded in order to prevent the pipeline pipes from making it to Vancouver, B.C.
They are calling themselves Mosquito Fleet and are supported by dozens of kayakers and other boaters who are rallying to tell the Port of Vancouver, Governor Inslee, and Prime Minister Trudeau to stop this dangerous fossil fuel project that is jeopardizing a livable future for everyone on this planet.
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On Monday, November 4th, Elizabeth May she was leaving as leader of the Green Party of Canada, although staying on as an MP and as leader in the House of Commons.
Elizabeth May is a very prominent and accomplished MP raising issues and pushing the government hard over her three terms as an MP.
Moreover she says she is leaving as leader, but will likely run to an MP again in the next election, which she says could come as soon as 2021.
The 2019 election was the party’s second-best showing under May’s leadership. The party achieved 6.5 per cent of the national vote, marginally less than the 6.78 per cent the Greens won in the 2008 campaign.
Former journalist Jo-Ann Roberts will serve as the party’s interim leader. The Green Party decided to hold the leadership vote in October of 2020 at a convention in Charlottetown, P.E.I.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/elizabeth-may-green-party-leader-1.5346635
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Now a collection 11,000 scientists from 153 countries has issue a new declaration published Tuesday in the journal BioScience, the collective put forth six “critical and interrelated steps”.
The paper notes:
The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle. The most affluent countries are mainly responsible for the historical GHG emissions and generally have the greatest per capita emissions.
The world must quickly implement massive energy efficiency and conservation practices and must replace fossil fuels with low-carbon renewables (figure 1h) and other cleaner sources of energy
Excessive extraction of materials and overexploitation of ecosystems, driven by economic growth, must be quickly curtailed to maintain long-term sustainability of the biosphere.
Eating mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of animal products (figure 1c–d), especially ruminant livestock (Ripple et al. 2014), can improve human health and significantly lower GHG emissions
The good news is that such transformative change, with social and economic justice for all, promises far greater human well-being than does business as usual.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/scientists-declare-climate-emergency-1.5347486
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An estimated 1.4 million litres of oil have spilled from TransCanada’s Keystone crude pipeline in North Dakota, state authorities said last Thursday
Initial estimate are that it is one of the largest onshore crude spills in the past decade and the largest for Keystone, according to U.S. Pipeline Hazardous Materials and Safety Administration (PHMSA) data.
TransCanada has been seeking to expand its pipelines linking Western Canadian oil fields to U.S. refineries with its proposed Keystone XL project. The $6 billion US ($7.8 billion Cdn) project has faced regulatory and environmental challenges even though it has been supported by U.S. President Donald Trump.
The resistance of course includes the historic confrontation in North Dakota at Standing Rock.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/keystone-spils-over-1-million-litres-oil-north-dakota-1.5343509
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Near Ft McMurray, Alberta, The Fort McKay First Nation is fighting the approval of 10,000-barrel-a-day oilsands mine that would come within two kilometres of the shore line of Moose Lake in its territory.
Grand Chief Mel Grandjamb said the band has a five-year-old letter from former premier Jim Prentice putting a 10-kilometre buffer around the lake. The deal was never ratified t however and in June 2018, Alberta’s energy regulator approved a $440-million mine.
The chief said it’s time Kenney lived up to the government’s promises — and his own.
The First Nation is surrounded on three sides by oilsands development. Mines come as close as four kilometres from the community.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-chief-mel-grandjamb-oilsands-jason-kenney-1.5344056
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United Nations climate scientists say an investment of just $300 billion could help stop the rise in greenhouse gases and buy up to 20 years of time to fix global warming. That’s the equivalent of what the world spends on military budgets every 60 days.
The $3090 billion wouldn’t buy fancy new technology but could use simple, age-old practices to lock millions of tons of carbon back into the soil.
Barron J. Orr, lead scientist for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification says “We have lost the biological function of soils. We have got to reverse that,”“If we do it, we are turning the land into the big part of the solution for climate change.”
UN Food and Agriculture Organization, says 2 billion hectares (almost 5 billion acres) of land around the world that has been degraded by misuse, overgrazing, deforestation and other largely human factors, 900 million hectares could be restored.
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The United Kingdom has issued a temporary moratorium on shale gas fracking, citing the industry’s inability to “reliably predict and control tremors”.
The announcement comes in the wake of a highly critical audit of the UK’s fledging fracking industry, and with the public growing ever more resistant to the process. But with the country in the throes of a snap election scheduled for December 13, the Labour opposition is declaring the ban an “election stunt” calculated to re-elect a government that still sees fracking as a good thing to do.
The moratorium comes two months after fracking by Lancashire-based Cuadrilla Resources was suspended following an earthquake that measured 2.9 on the Richter scale, reports the BBC.
https://theenergymix.com/2019/11/03/uk-sets-nation-wide-fracking-moratorium/
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The world’s seven biggest fossil companies, including ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell, must cut their oil and gas production 35% by 2040 to avoid driving average global warming above 1.5°C, according to a new analysis published last week by UK-based Carbon Tracker.
“Global governments would also need to stop issuing new oil and gas licences for fossil fuel exploration,” The Guardian reports, citing the study. “It showed that global oil projects that have already been approved are almost enough to meet demand in a 1.6°C scenario,” leaving “very little headroom” for new fossil development
“The industry is trying to have its cake and eat it—reassuring shareholders and appearing supportive of [the carbon reduction goals in the 2015 Paris Agreement], while still producing more fossil fuels,” said Carbon Tracker analyst Mike Coffin. “If companies and governments attempt to develop all their oil and gas reserves, either the world will miss its climate targets or assets will become ‘stranded’ in the energy transition, or both. This analysis shows that if companies really want to both mitigate financial risk and be part of the climate solution, they must shrink production.”
Last month, a Guardian investigation revealed that colossal fossils were plotting to increase their oil production by 35% through 2030.
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A recent episode of Quirks and Quarks on CBC reported some interesting facts on human impact on the biosphere. Quirks reports that one of the most significant ways we’ve reduced the biomass is by changing the kinds of life living on our planet. Deforestation to make way for agriculture and crops is one major change. Forests represent more living material than fields of wheat or soybeans.
But when it comes to animals, there’s also been a major shift, from wild to domestic. One scientist reports our planet now has 20 times more biomass in domesticated livestock like cows, pigs and sheep than in all the wild mammals — like elephants, caribou and whales — combined. And there are twice as many domesticated birds as there are wild ones.
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