Rachel Holt is a Kootenay-based ecologist who recently co-authored a report showing BC has vastly over-estimasted the amount of old growth forest remaining in the province. We have an indepth interview with her. A few weeks ago we were talking about the Climate law that has forced Britain to reduce emissions. In Canada we have had several emission reduction targets, missed them all, and our emissions have again been going up. Our polllution has increased from the 1990 level of 603 megatonnes of carbon emissions to 729 megatonnes in recent years. And still rising. Now several major Canadian environmental organizations say Canada needs a Climate Accountability Act like the one in the UK. We speak with West Coast Environmental Law staff counsel Andrew Gage about what a climate law could do to actually tackle emissions in Canada.
Links:
Holt’s Forest Report: https://veridianecological.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/bcs-old-growth-forest-report-web.pdf
West Coast Evironmental Law and others, Canadian Climate Accountability Act: https://www.wcel.org/sites/default/files/publications/policy-brief-new-canadian-climate-accountability-act-1.pdf
Listen here:
Environment News (with links) for June 23, 2020
Temperatures in Siberia in the Arctic Circle have topped 38 degrees Celsius, the Arctic’s hottest temperature in recorded history.
The average temperature in the Arctic in June is nearly half that, 20 degrees Celsius.
The rapid melting of northern Russia, caused by climate change, as both wildfires and thawing permafrost are releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, is causing temperatures to rise even more.
Climate data show last month was the planet’s warmest May ever recorded, keeping 2020 on pace to become the hottest year since records began. Scientists say the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average.
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/10/headlines/record_heat_wave_grips_russias_arctic_circle
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Worst-case global heating scenarios may need to be revised upwards in light of a better understanding of the role of clouds, scientists have said.
Previous IPCC reports tended to assume that clouds would have a neutral impact because the warming and cooling feedbacks would cancel each other out. But in the past year and a half, a body of evidence has been growing showing that the net effect will be warming. This is based on finer resolution computer models and advanced cloud microphysics.
Compared with the last assessment in 2014, 25% of them show a sharp upward shift from 3C to 5C in climate sensitivity – the amount of warming projected from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from the preindustrial level of 280 parts per million.
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Seven major European investment firms have told Reuters news agency they will divest from beef producers, grains traders and even government bonds in Brazil if they do not see progress in resolving the surging destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
Deforestation jumped to an 11-year high in 2019 and now in 2020, under the authority of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro who has loosened environmental regulations, made racist attacks against Indigenous people, and called for increased mining and farming.
The rising threats of divestment by investors with more than $2 trillion in assets under management, including Finland-based Nordea and the United Kingdom’s Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), show how the private sector is beginning to take global action to protect the world’s largest rainforest
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The Vatican is urging Catholics to divest from fossil fuel companies and arms manufacturers.
In May, a group of 42 Methodist, Anglican, Quaker, Buddhist and Catholic organizations issued a joint pledge to divest from fossil fuel companies.
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In North America, the future’s looking grim for our continent’s last remaining tropical rainforest.
Al Jazeera is reporting that more than 90 percent of the Lacandon Jungle has been cut down to make way for farming.
In southern Mexico’s Chiapas state, more forest is being lost every year, despite conservation efforts.
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A United States federal appeals court has blocked California from requiring that Bayer, the owner of Monsanto, label its glyphosate-based weed killer, Roundup, with a cancer warning, handing the company a victory in its ongoing litigation over the product.
In his ruling on Monday, US District Judge William Shubb called California’s cancer warning misleading and said the state’s label is not backed up by regulatory findings.
Regulators worldwide have determined glyphosate to be safe with the exception of the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, which determined the herbicide to be a “probable carcinogen” in 2015.
The ruling is separate from the wider litigation in the US over whether Roundup causes a type of blood cancer, where plaintiffs allege that Bayer manipulated studies and deceived the scientific community. Bayer denies the claims and insists glyphosate does not cause cancer and is safe for people to use, despite many European governments having implemented bans on glyphosate products.
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In a move that could challenge the proposed path of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline—and acknowledges the U.S. government’s long history of abusing Native Americans and forcing them off their lands—a Nebraska farm couple has returned a portion of ancestral land to the Ponca Tribe.
At a deed-signing ceremony earlier this week, farmers Art and Helen Tanderup transferred to the tribe a 1.6-acre plot of land that falls on the Ponca “Trail of Tears.” Now, as the Omaha World-Herald explained, rather than battling the farmers, “TransCanada will have to negotiate with a new landowner, one that has special legal status as a tribe.”
The transfer was celebrated by members of the Ponca Tribe as well as environmental advocates who oppose the construction of the pipeline and continue to demand a total transition to renewable energy.
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Teck proposal to expand B.C.’s largest coal mine is raising alarm bells about pollution on both sides of the Canada-US border.
Selenium pollution emanating from Teck’s five metallurgical coal mines has increased steadily in recent years despite warnings the contaminant could lead to the collapse of sensitive species in the Elk River watershed. The Elk river flows onto the Kootenay River in the United States, where selenium pollution from BC has drawn the ire of United States politicians, scientists, and the EPA.
The Kootenay river of course returns to Canada at Creston, turning into Kootenay Lake and later joining the Columbia River at Castlegar. Therefore, much of our listing area is downstream from Teck’s leaking mines.
In April, the Narwhal reported there was a 93 per cent decline in the westslope cutthroat trout population just downstream from the Fording River mine.
On the heels of that population crash, Teck is proposing to massively expand the Fording River mine even though it admits it will not be able to limit selenium pollution to meet the province’s guidelines.
A metallurgical mess: why Teck Resources is facing pushback over its latest mine proposal
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And farmers in Area D of the Regional District of Central Kootenay, will soon be able to grow and slaughter more livestock in what the RDCK chairperson Aimee Watson considers a win for local food security and local economies.
The provincial government has relaxed its meat inspection regulations to allow farmers in the North Kootenay Lake area to butcher and sell meat from up to 25 animals annually to markets and restaurants or directly to the public.
Watson, the RDCK board chair, told the Nelson Star that she has been lobbying for this change for eight years.
“It will mean a re-invigoration of our area’s agriculture sector and … will also assist in a desperately needed economic recovery and support jobs in our remote communities, and hopefully encourage more of the pig, cattle and sheep farms that used to thrive here.” said Watson.
https://www.nelsonstar.com/news/province-relaxes-meat-sale-rules-for-lardeau-area-farmers/
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