Caitlyn Vernon from Sierra Club of BC discusses the $830 million in subsidies, and billions more in tax write downs for LNG in the province, as uncovered by a new report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Fridays for Future activist Danni Lynch talks about StopEcocide.Earth campaign. Citizens Climate Lobby activist Laura Sacks talks about 24 Hours of Climate Reality.
International Institute for Sustainable Development report, Locked In and Losing Out: https://www.iisd.org/library/locked-in-losing-out
Environment News and Links for November 26, 2019
European budget airline easyJet says it is planning to be theirst major carrier to run net-zero carbon flights by offsetting carbon emissions from the fuel used on every flight.
The company says it will offset the carbon “by investing in projects that include planting trees or protecting against deforestation.” The cost of the program is estimated at ($43 million Cdn).
The airline described the effort as an “interim measure” while new technologies are being developed, including efforts to develop hybrid and electric planes.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/easyjet-net-zero-carbon-1.5255977
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Ecojustice, the environmental charity that was in the crosshairs of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s government, has launched a legal challenge of the province’s controversial inquiry into alleged foreign-funded attacks on Alberta’s energy industry.
In a judicial review application filed last week, Ecojustice asked the court to scrap the $2.5 million Public Inquiry Into Funding Of Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns. EcoJustice says the inquiry was created for “partisan political purposes” and has been tainted by bias from the outset.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/ecojustice-inquiry-legal-challenge-1.5367444
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Boreal caribou have been declining for decades, but public awareness and government action doesn’t seem to change, according to Rachel Plotkin, a caribou expert with the David Suzuki Foundation.
The foundation has an interactive map that visualizes the impact of human activity on caribou habitat. They spent three months building the map using data from the federal and provincial governments, as well as non-profits like the Canadian Wildlife Federation and Global Forest Watch Canada.
There are 34,000 boreal caribou that continue to live across the country. The World Wildlife Foundation estimates their population has declined 30 per cent over the past two decades.
The map shows a correlation of weaker populations and more degraded forests with higher levels of oil-and-gas activity around the northern border between British Columbia and Alberta. In 2016, there were 728 boreal caribou across five herds in northeastern B.C.
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The Clack Creek forest on BC’s Sunshine Coast is a 24-hectare patch of forest with well-used trails.
Users have puty up more than 1,000 felted hearts on some of. the areas biggest trees.
The hearts symbolize the hope of the locals that Clack Creek will be part of an expanded Mount Elphinstone Provincial Park — and not a logging cutblock.
But, despite numerous objections from the Sunshine Coast Regional District, a legal challenge and predictions of a renewed war in the woods from the conservation group Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF), the trees are about to fall.
In May, BC Timber Sales, the provincial government agency responsible for auctioning off 20 per cent of the province’s annual allowable cut of timber to the highest bidder, awarded a logging contract to Black Mount Logging of Squamish to cut 29,500 cubic metres of timber around Clack Creek.
The contract shocked the local community.
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Southern California’s San Bernardino County Transportation Authority has contracted for a Flirt H2 hydrogen fuel cell powered multiple-unit to enter passenger service in 2024.
The manufacturer, Stadler said the contract announced on November 14 was ‘a major milestone in bringing zero-emission passenger rail technology to the USA’.
The Flirt H2 unit will have two cars with a total of 108 seats and ‘generous’ standing room, plus a central power module holding the fuel cells and the hydrogen tanks. It will have a maximum speed of 79 mile/h (127 km/h).
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The first of Montreal’s new long-range electric buses has arrived. The city is getting 30 new long-range electric buses.
The public transit authority says its first long-range electric bus, manufactured by New Flyer, has batteries with a range of 250 km and will be tested on the city’s streets in the coming months.
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Earth is headed toward warming of 3.2 C in less than 100 years, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It’s called the Emissions Gap Report — 168 pages, and was put together by 57 leading scientists from 33 institutions across 25 countries.
The report is calling on governments to act immediately, within the next decade, to limit global warming to 1.5 C or 2 C by 2100.
“By now, we know all we need to know. The science is pretty clear, and very frightening,” said Anne Olhoff, head of strategy, climate and planning and policy for the UNEP DTU (Technical University of Denmark) Partnership. “But we also know we have the technological options that are needed, at least to the short to medium term.”
• Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) have increased 1.5 per cent annually over the past decade.
• By 2030, annual emissions need to be 15 gigatonnes of CO2 lower to reach the 2 C goal, and 32 gigatonnes lower for 1.5 C.
• GHG emissions have to drop by 2.7 per cent per year from 2020 to 2030 for the 2 C goal, and by 7.6 per cent per year for the 1.5 C target.
• To reach these goals, efforts must increase at least fivefold for the 1.5 C goal and threefold for the 2 C.
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Hiking in nature is very good for one’s mental health according to some recent studies. The study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that spending time in nature decreases obsessive, negative thoughts by a significant margin.
Many of us often find ourselves consumed by negative thoughts, rumination, which takes us out of the enjoyment of the moment at best and leads us down a path to depression and anxiety at worst.
The research psychologists found that creative problem solving can be drastically improved by both disconnecting from technology and reconnecting with nature.
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The 25th COP (Conference of the Parties) starts next week in Madrid Spain and will run from December 2-13. Governments have been meeting annually at United Nations Climate Conferences since 1992. The goal of the COP negotiations has been for global leaders to listen to the science and agree to keep global warming below dangerous levels.
So far however, it hasn’t succeeded.
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Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Canada and developed countries are required to report their greenhouse gas emissions every year. They only account, however, for emissions physically occurring within their national boundaries.
This means that Canada does not count more than 900 million tonnes of carbon dioxide that comes from others burning our fossil fuel exports each year. This amount far exceeds our own territorial emissions that are just over 700 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents.
Canada completely washes its hands of any responsibility for the greenhouse gas emissions that result from our massive fossil fuel exports. Yet, we know full well that the impacts of carbon emissions are shared globally. To put it crudely: not only are we screwing future generations ourselves, we are aiding and abetting other countries in doing so too.
Since Canada committed to the UN Convention on Climate Change in 1992, our territorial carbon emissions have gone up by an embarrassing 17 per cent. But this is nothing compared to the emissions from our fossil fuel exports that have almost tripled!
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/18/Trudeau-Climate-Change-Math-Incomplete/
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It’s just another case of talk and log. The province has begun a months long process on public feedback on protecting old-growth trees. It’s a new round of engagement over rules for forestry and conservation in B.C.
The Old Growth Strategic Review follows a similar consultation process, intended to result in the overhaul of B.C.’s forestry rules to better protect ecosystems, maintain jobs and reconcile with First Nations.
Changing forestry management was a campaign promise of the NDP’s election platform in 2017.
Conservationists say the review is stalling new legislation that would protect more of B.C.’s huge trees, some as old as 800 years.
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