LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD THE FULL February 23 EcoCentric here
Nelson is said to be one of the most wildfire vulnerable cities in BC. The Regional District of the Central Kootenay and Kalesnikoff lumber are getting set to log the mountain side right above the city, and to do it in a special way to reduce fire risk. We talk to Kalesnikoff forester Gerald Cordiero about how they plan to do that.
Last week the province’s Mountain Resorts Branch gave David Harley the go ahead to work on a full proposal for his Zincton resort development just east of New Denver. The plan to make a whole swath of back country into a resort is meeting resistance. We get an update from TheWildConnection.ca and talk to Nicky Blackshaw and KL Kivi.
The BC government has had lots of reports and research on the viability of the $12 billion Site C dam and it isn’t releasing much of the information. The BC Green Party held a webinar specifically on this secrecy this week and we have a clip from Harry Swain the former top civil servant who chaired the federal-provincial assessment of the dam project back in 2013.
Environment News for Feb. 23 2021
A report published this week by the United Nations offers the gravest warning to humanity yet. Biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change are bringing earth to the brink of planetary collapse.
Unlike past U.N. reports that have focused on the issues and avoided telling leaders actions to take, this report specifically names policies that governments must implement to preserve life on earth. These policies include aggressive taxes on high-emissions industrial activity, a unilateral end to fossil fuel use, and valuing nature above gross domestic product.
The report issued a stark condemnation of existing inadequate environmental policies around the globe. According to the UN, planet earth is currently on track for 3.5 degrees of warming by the end of this century, wildly missing the 1.5 degree target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
“Without nature’s help, we will not thrive or even survive,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “For too long, we have been waging a senseless and suicidal war on nature. The result is three interlinked environmental crises.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-change-environment-crisis-1.5918801
https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/02/1085092
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In more international news, The United States officially reentered the Paris Agreement to limit global warming last Friday.
On January 20, the day he was sworn-in President Joe Biden signed an executive order to begin the 30-day process for the US to reenter the global accord.
Former President Donald Trump had officially pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement late last year. The US was the only country to formally pull out of the deal since it was created in 2015.
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The Israel government has closed all Mediterranean beaches in that country after a catastrophic oil spill deposited tar across over 160km of coastline.
Activists began reporting globs of black tar on Israel’s coast last week, and the Environmental Protection Ministry is investigating but have said little, other than that the culprit is likely a ship.
The most impacted victims of the spill appear to be wildlife including birds, sea turtles, and whales. Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority called the spill “one of the most serious ecological disasters” in the country’s history.
The environmental protection ministry and activists estimate that at least 1,000 tonnes of tar have already washed up onshore.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/21/israel-shuts-mediterranean-shore-after-oil-devastates-coast
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US President Biden has signed a major disaster declaration for parts of Texas after devastating winter storms last week cut power to millions, created water shortages and killed an estimated 70 people across the country.
The catastrophic winter cold snap sent rolling outages across the grid, and cut off clean water supply to over 200,000 homes. Many Republican politicians, including the Governor of Texas Greg Abbott baselessly accused the state’s small renewable energy sector for the outages, while the majority of energy experts blamed Texas’s deregulated and privatized energy system for being unprepared for extreme weather.
Scientists are also raising alarm bells about the role climate change likely played in the cold snap experienced by much of the northern hemisphere. As extreme weather events increase, energy infrastructure around the world is expected to come under greater strain.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/02/18/texas-cold-global-climate-change/
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One year after militarized RCMP stormed peaceful Wet’suwet’en land defenders in northern British Columbia, there remains a strong occupation of heavily armed police and private security forces in the unceded territory.
Ever since the RCMP carried out mass arrests and tore down blockades to service a court injunction to allow work on the Coastal Gaslink pipeline, heavy RCMP presence has been reported around local Indigenous settlements. Local Indigenous civilians and activists are reporting harassment in the form of repeated vehicle patrols, being tailed by police vehicles, and traffic stops in the remote wilderness territory.
“I just get so mad and frustrated because we’re living with it every day,” said Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, who lives with her family in a cabin on the territory and is the spokesperson for the Gidimt’en Checkpoint, one of the sites of the police raids. “They’re patrolling all the roads. You could get pulled over at any point in time for no reason at all. If you go anywhere, they’re going to follow you.”
This is despite repeated calls for the Canadian Government to remove the police pressence by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. While the UN committee, Amnesty International, and the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary leadership have been united in calling for the removal of RCMP forces, the BC government and Canadian government have signalled no intentions to remove the police occupation.
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On Vancouver Island, the Fairy Creek blockade of logging in that watershed has been going on for months. It has successfully been preventing forestry company Teal Jones’ from road building and sending in logging crews.
Now, Teal Jones has filed an application with the Supreme Court of British Columbia for an injunction to remove blockades at Fairy Creek near Port Renfrew and other parts of its logging areas.
“Forest defenders” have been blocking access to the area, which they say contains the last unlogged watershed in the San Juan River System. Teal Jones is trying to build access roads to an area it wants to log, but the protesters say it would have adverse effects on a protected area of old growth in the valley below.
“It’s not that we’re anti-logging,” Kathleen Code, a spokeswoman for the protesters, said Saturday. “We don’t obstruct second-growth logging. It’s the old-growth forests we have so little of. … That’s our primary focus, that’s what we are protecting.”
The application for the injunction will be heard in Vancouver on March 4. Teal Jones is asking that the blockades be taken down and the RCMP be authorized to arrest and remove anyone who resists the order.
The protest group plans on defying a potential order and is calling on others to join them and prepare to participate in a campaign of civil disobedience to defend the last of Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests at Fairy Creek.
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The Regional District of Central Kootenay will soon start building the composting facility at the old landfill site in Salmo. It’s supposed to be ready in early 2022.
The RDCK’s general manager of environmental services Uli Wolf says it will start with a flat piece of compacted land with a lightly paved surface on which the material will be composted in a process called aerated windrows.
The facility will include a building that will house a large mixer, electrical components, and blowers to aerate the compost mixture.
Wolf says the facility will be ready for delivery of organic materials from residents of Castlegar and Nelson by early 2022. Rural residents will have to wait just a big longer.
In Nelson, the city anticipates only eight deliveries to the facility per year because the household use of FoodCyclers will reduce the volume of the material drastically. The City says the FoodCyclers will make compost smell free to store before pickup.
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