The West Coast Climate Action Network had a live online grand kick off. With over 150 BC organizations already signed on, We-Can is an exciting development in the BC climate movement. We have some short clips from the all-star launch. Grand Chief Stewart and Joan Phillip, Seth Klein and Tzeporah Berman.
Cranbrook Climate Hub has put out a petition on transition from fossil fuels, we speak with Sue Cairns in Cranbrook.
As of Thanksgiving, the Wet’suwet’en blockade has for 16 days stopped any pipeline work at the drill site at Wedzin Kwa, the River. It’s the spot where Coastal Gas Link is hoping to drill the pipeline under the river. We have a clip from yesterday by Sleydo, Molly Wickham watching RCMP officers approaching the camp.
LISTEN TO OCT 12 ECOCENTRIC HERE:
LINKS:
Video of the West Coast Climate Action Network WeCAN Launch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZqYBkrQnaw&t=1717s
West Coast Climate Action Network
https://westcoastclimateaction.ca/
Gidmint’en Checkpoint
https://www.facebook.com/wetsuwetenstrong
Cranbrook Climate Hub
https://www.facebook.com/CranbrookClimateHub
Cranbrook Climate Hub PETITION:
Coming….
The EcoCentric Environment News for Oct 12, 2021
The injunction against old growth logging defense at Fairy Creek is back after a new court decision last week.
Justice Sunni Stromberg-Stein said the potential economic harm to Teal Jones was the reason for her decision Friday afternoon.
Lawyers for Teal Jones appeared in court Friday to argue for an interim injunction against old-growth logging blockades on southern Vancouver Island, while the company appeals a Supreme Court decision last week that put an end to its original injunction.
Back in September, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Douglas Thompson stopped the injunction against old-growth logging blockades at Fairy Creek, which had been in place since April. He said the actions of RCMP officers put the court’s reputation at risk and infringed on civil liberties.
Since the injunction was lifted in September, activists have returned rapidly to the logging roads and blockades and RCMP violence was much reduced. It remains to be seen how the RCMP will respond after being so severely chastised by the court.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/fairy-creek-injunction-appeal-1.6204905
Last week Environmental defenders in the US supportred the Biden administration’s proposal to reinstate key elements of one of the United States’ foundational environmental laws a year after former President Donald Trump destroyed it.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) announced its plan to restore three major provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). It was passed by Congress in way back in 1969 and requires environmental analyses of the impact projects such as highways and pipelines will have on local communities and the planet.
Stephen Schima, from Earthjustice said: ”This critical law has played an undeniable role in giving communities the legal recourse to fight for their access to clean air, clean water, and land free from contaminants and pollution,”
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The British Columbia government and BC Hydro are taking steps to encourage people to switch from fossil fuels to electricity, but according to critics, it’s not fast enough or big enough fo BC to meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments.
This week, the government and BC Hydro announced a $260-million plan over five years that includes more rebates for heat pumps, adding 227 charging stations for electric vehicles and encouraging more clean businesses to come to the province.
But Dylan Heerema at Ecotrust said that even if the plan succeeds, it amounts to just 1.3 per cent of B.C.’s total emissions.
He said: “The utility is still planning for a future where B.C. fails to meet its targets,” he said. “To achieve its own goals, the province needs to hold utilities to account on this matter, and that starts with bringing the BC Utilities Commission’s mandate into the 21st century.”
https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/10/01/BC-Latest-Climate-Effort-Electrification-Falls-Short/
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Last week we reported on Vancouver’s plan for a massive parking fee plan to fund climate mitigation efforts and penalize high emitting vehicles. This week Vancouver Council, and mayor Kennedy Stewart who cast the deciding vote, sent the plan back to staff. Stewart said the plan was inequitable as well-heeled homeowners often have off street parking and lower income people would shoulder more of the tax plan.
Chlorpyrifos is a dangerous pesticide that is sprayed on crops such as wheat and potatoes and all too often winds up on the dinner plates of Canadians.
There is strong evidence that Chorpyrifos is a risk to human health and is notorious for its potential to cause brain damage in children, and Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) announced that the use of chlorpyrifos would be cancelled in Canada.
However, it is allowing a three-year phase-out period meaning that this dangerous pesticide can still be used until December 2023.
EcoJustice says the extension of use for three more years of chlorpyrifos is too long.
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Canada is on track to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by only 16% this decade, far short of the 40 to 45% target that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced earlier this year, partly thanks to strategies that favour greater efficiency in fossil fuel use over a transition to non-emitting energy, according to an analysis released this week by the Trottier Energy Institute.
The tough assessment landed just a day before the Institute for Sustainable Finance at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business warned that the country has been too slow to integrate climate disclosure and reporting into its financial system.
The critical analysis leaves out climate-related policies like the government’s C$8-billion Net Zero Climate Accelerator that don’t have specific emissions goals, and “only includes policies that the government has implemented, not those it has merely promised,” writes the Globe and Mail’s climate specialist Adam Radwanski.
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A damning provincial report indicates that fears that Coastal GasLink’s pipeline work is damaging water quality and the environment may be well-founded.
The report, which was posted by B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office in September, says the company continues to violate its Environmental Management Plan by allowing sediment and contaminants from the project to flow into rivers and streams.
As a result, the EAO has recommended an administrative penalty under the province’s Environmental Assessment Act, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change said in an email to The Tyee.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/10/11/Coastal-GasLink-Blasted-Again-Environmental-Damage/
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More than 50 people blockaded five parallel rail lines outside a CN rail yard in Point Saint Charles, Montreal for more than an hour and a half this Saturday, October 9th. We were there to support the Wet’suwet’en fight to defend their territory against the Coastal GasLink pipeline. There were two banners, one saying “#AllOutForWedzinKwa 1312” and the other “All Out For Wet’suwet’en #ShutDownCanada.” Multiple trains were stopped and some rerouted, and some still seemed be sitting idle on the tracks for at least an hour after the blockade ended. Maybe because of a backlog, or an inspection of the tracks.
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The United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday voted for the first time to formally recognize the right to a clean and sustainable environment, a move that climate campaigners applauded as the hard-won result of activism from grassroots groups and small-island countries.
“Today’s historic decision is the culmination of over 40 years of efforts to recognize the right to a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment,” Sébastien Duyck, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said in a statement.
“Even though the vast majority of the world recognizes this right, until this afternoon, universal recognition remained elusive,” Duyck added. “Now, thanks to the leadership of a core group of countries including Costa Rica, the Maldives, Morocco, Slovenia, and Switzerland, the right is recognized at the United Nations. This new recognition will serve as a catalyst for institutions and other stakeholders to take steps that better respect, protect, and fulfill the right. It includes, but is not limited to the mobilizing of resources and political will.”
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The B.C. government is moving forward with a long-promised review of its decades-old oil and gas royalty program — a system described as “broken” in an independent expert assessment published on Thursday.
Commissioned by the province, the expert assessment found the outdated royalty system isn’t consistent with broader government and societal goals, including B.C.’s commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
“It is our view that nothing short of a comprehensive overhaul of the royalty system will ‘fix’ it,” concludes the report, written by Nancy Olewiler, a Simon Fraser University economist, and Jennifer Winter, an economist at the University of Calgary.
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A group of demonstrators calling on the B.C. government to take urgent action on the climate emergency plans to block multiple major bridges, intersections and highways over a two-week period.
Extinction Rebellion’s Vancouver chapter says it demands “commitment from the provincial and federal governments to end fossil fuel subsidies before COP 26, in Glasgow,” explains a news release. If no action is taken, the group will move forward with several nonviolent climate change protests that will include an attempt to shut down Vancouver International Airport.
Janice Oakley, a local Extinction Rebellion organizer, says: “This is the fight of our lives. By engaging in civil disobedience in the streets, we are confronting the criminality of the federal and provincial governments and our inability so far to act proportionately by rebelling. This is why I will rebel.”
The group highlights that the government spends billions on fossil fuel subsidies despite the alarming advice from the scientific community on climate change. This behaviour ultimately condemns humanity to “social collapse.”
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