A new round of protests and blockades and railroad blockades started this week, after the RCMP arrested ten at the rail blockade of the Tyendinaga Mohawk east of Toronto. The Union of BC Indian Chiefs and the BC Civil Liberties Association held a news conference with a surprising announcement from the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. We have clips from Gidmint’en spokeswoman Molly Wickham and from Harsha Wallia from the BCCLA. Vancouver Island futurist and author Guy Dauncey is presenting to the Parliamentary Climate Caucus on his 26-week plan for Canada… a comprehensive framework for actually bringing down emissions. Guy tells us about his plan, found at thepracticalutopian.ca
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Environment News and Links for Feb. 25, 2020
The Unistot’en Solidarity Brigade says that RCMP are arresting Gitxsan chiefs, elders, and matriarchs on railroad tracks near New Hazelton in northwestern B.C.
Gitxsan hereditary chiefs joined Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs as appellants in the Delgamuukw case, which went to the Supreme Court of Canada more than 20 years ago.
They claimed title to 58,000 square kilometres of land in northwestern B.C.
Today’s rail blockade by traditional allies of the Wet’suwet’en people came after Ontario Provincial Police took down a Tyendinaga Mohawks’ camp beside CN Rail’s main line near Belleville, Ontario. Ten people were arrested.
As the arrests in northwestern B.C. were occurring this evening, a sacred fire was set on the railroad tracks at Neskonlith.
This carries special significance because the Neskonlith reserve in the B.C. Interior is where four-time chief Arthur Manuel grew up.
Another blockade has been set up this evenong on the CN Rail line in the Fraser Valley.
According to the Red Braid Alliance for Decolonial Socialism Twitter feed, about two dozen land defenders are on the scene.
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In a bombshell announcement Vancouver-based Teck Resources withdrew the application for its C$20.6-billion Frontier tar sands/oil sands mine in northern Alberta, less than a week before the federal cabinet was due to accept or reject the contentious and carbon-intensive project.
“Global capital markets are changing rapidly, and investors and customers are increasingly looking for jurisdictions to have a framework in place that reconciles resource development and climate change, in order to produce the cleanest possible products,” Teck CEO and President Don Lindsay wrote in a letter to Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.
Greenpeace Canada Senior Energy Strategist Keith Stewart told CBC the decision came as a surprise, but Teck had made the right call.
“This project never made economic sense; it didn’t make climate sense; it wasn’t really going to happen,” he said. “So I’m glad that we can now actually focus on real projects that will create good jobs in Alberta, across the country, fighting climate change.”
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The federal government’s carbon tax has been ruled unconstitutional by the Court of Appeal of Alberta, on the grounds that it intrudes on provincial jurisdiction.
The 4-1 decision, released Monday, rejects Ottawa’s argument that regulation of greenhouse gas emissions is an issue of national concern, citing the division of powers in the constitution that gives the provinces responsibility for non-renewable resources.
The majority opinion called the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act “a constitutional Trojan horse.”
It says the legislation contains no limits on the scope of the federal government’s power.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/federal-carbon-tax-unconstitutional-alberta-court-1.5473482
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Scientists and governments alike have been greatly underestimating emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane from oil and gas operations, according to new research published recently.
A new study in the influential journal Nature, draws on samples of ancient air extracted from within the Greenland ice sheet to measure levels of atmospheric methane before humans started burning fossil fuels.
Surprisingly, these air pockets, dating back as far as the 18th century, contained very little of the oldest type of methane — multimillion-year-old fossil methane gas, which originates from deep within the crust of the Earth. This suggests that in its natural state, the planet just doesn’t belch out much fossil methane from geological sources, such as undersea seeps and towering mud volcanoes.
If the researchers are right, then tens of millions of tons of methane could be wafting into the atmosphere, unaccounted for, from oil and gas fields around the world.
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Tar sands carbon emissions per barrel are still 70% above the global average the Pembina Institute reports in a study released last week. The report says Alberta tar sands/oil sands producers on a “collision course” with Canada’s climate targets and with changing expectations in global markets,.
Pembina notes that the tar sands/oil sands are Canada’s fastest-growing emissions source, impairing the country’s ability to meet its 2030 carbon reduction targets and placing the industry “on a clear collision course with Canada’s plan to become carbon-neutral by 2050.”
While carbon performance varies widely across producers and products, and the industry has reduced carbon intensity by 4.0 to 21% since 2009, “absolute carbon emissions from the oilsands continue to increase overall, as growth in production outpaces gains from reductions in per-barrel intensity.”
While head-to-head comparisons get complicated, Pembina estimates a barrel of Canadian oil still produces 70% more emissions than the global average.
Pembina: Emissions 70% Above Global Average Put Tar Sands/Oil Sands on ‘Collision Course’
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Alberta’s public pension plan bought a major share in the Coastal GasLink pipeline late in December.
Unfortunately, this late Christmas gift is likely to be a liability, due to the financial, regulatory, reputational and legal risks involved with the purchase.
On Dec. 26, 2019, the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, which manages public-sector pension plans and other provincial government funds, announced a partnership to purchase a 65-per-cent stake in the TC Energy pipeline.
Part of the heavily-subsidized LNG Canada project, CGL is a $6.6-billion pipeline that would ship gas from fracking fields in northeastern B.C. to an export terminal in Kitimat, B.C., locking in an additional 8.6 million tonnes of carbon pollution per year by 2030 and undermining B.C’s and Canada’s insufficient emissions reduction efforts.
Opinion: AIMCo's stake in GasLink project a bad investment
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The social media conversation over the climate crisis is being twisted by an army of automated Twitter bots, according to a new analysis. Research showed that a quarter of all tweets about climate on an average day are produced by bots, according to the Guardian.
The stunning levels of Twitter bot activity on topics related to global heating and the climate crisis is distorting the online discourse to include far more climate science denialism than it would otherwise.
An analysis of millions of tweets from around the period when Donald Trump announced the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement found that bots tended to applaud the president for his actions and spread misinformation about the science.
The study of Twitter bots and climate was undertaken by Brown University and has yet to be published.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/21/climate-tweets-twitter-bots-analysis
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