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The BC government has released its updated Clean BC ‘road map’ to reduce emissions and mitigate the climate crisis. But not everyone thinks its enough or even entirely credible. Anjali Appadurai from Sierra Club talks about it.
The plan promises to reduce the critical methane emissions from the LNG fracking and delivery… but not until 2035… 15 years too late. Jan Gorski a researcher with the Pembina Insitute follows methane policy closely.
The Zincton backcountry resort held a large online forum to showcase its proposals for the huge area just east of New Denver. Nicky Blackshaw from the Wild Connection tells us what’s happening.
LINKS:
The Union of BC Indian Chiefs is harshly critical of BC’s climate plan. Read more here:
https://www.ubcic.bc.ca/end_lng_fracking_industry_in_response_to_climate_emergency
TheWildConnection.ca campaign AGAINST the Zincton backcountry proposal:
This weeks Environment News bits
The Saik’uz First Nation announced last week that forest licensees and the Province of British Columbia will not be allowed to proceed with any forestry or other resource development in their territory without their consent. Saik’uz First Nation Chief Priscilla Mueller made the announcement at the House of Ancestors in Prince George.
She said: “We are not opposed to sustainable forest and resource management in specific areas of our territory but the key word here is sustainable,”
“No more government and industry making important long-term land-use and forest management decisions while ignoring our needs and input and without our consent. The land belongs to us.”
During the conference they showed a 13-minute documentary called Old Growth, New Beginnings showed multiple clear-cut logging areas in Saik’uz territory that is south of Vanderhoof.
The area is filled with a monoculture of pine plantations that illustrated the devastating effects forest practices of the past have had on the land and its people.
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A new climate alliance set to launch at the COP26 conference is taking aim at the oil and gas industry, putting pressure on Canada to set a clear date to wind down oil and gas extraction in this country.
The Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, headed by Denmark and Costa Rica, will bring together countries and subnational entities willing to set an end date for fossil fuel extraction. The list of those signing on will be released in Glasgow, Scotland, during the major climate conference starting there next week.
“We think that to be a climate leader you also have to lead on the difficult questions, and ending oil and gas extraction is definitely one of the defining questions of climate action,” Tomas Anker Christensen, Denmark’s climate ambassador, said in an interview with CBC’s The House airing Saturday.
Denmark announced last year it would stop issuing new licenses for oil and gas exploration as part of a wider plan to phase out extraction by 2050. Denmark has been the largest oil producer in the European Union since the United Kingdom left the bloc in 2020.
Canada is unlikely to join the new group, according to one expert
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/beyond-oil-and-gas-canada-cop26-1.6221494
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The report came out last week from Alberta government’s $3.5 million inquiry into whether foreign funds, and Canadian environmental organizations were unfairly attacking and hurting the Alberta oil patch and tar sands development.
But the report didn’t find a smoking gun or a conspiracy to make Alberta’s oil less competitive.
The Commissioner of the Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns, Steve Allan, reported “While anti-Alberta energy campaigns may have played a role in the cancellation of some oil and gas projects, I am not in a position to find that these campaigns alone caused project delays or cancellations,”
“There is no doubt that these campaigns have occurred in an environment of reduced investment in oil and gas projects, at least since 2014 when global oil prices fell by almost half and other economic factors were at play.”
The 657-page report released last Thursday ended up criticizing Jason Kenney’s War Room, set up to counter environmentalist “misinformation” about the fossil fuel industry. Now called the Canadian Energy Centre, Commissioner Allan that after years of research, the Centre had “almost universal criticism.”
“Was it illegal? No. Was it wrong? I think the majority of Albertans would say it was wrong, and they want to know how it happened, who was involved, and how they can make sure it doesn’t happen to the energy resources of the future,”
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Global security and stability could break down, with migration crises and food shortages bringing conflict and chaos, if countries fail to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, the UN’s top climate official has warned ahead of the Cop26 climate summit.
Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said: “We’re really talking about preserving the stability of countries, preserving the institutions that we have built over so many years, preserving the best goals that our countries have put together. The catastrophic scenario would indicate that we would have massive flows of displaced people.”
The impact would cascade, she said, adding: “It would mean less food, so probably a crisis in food security. It would leave a lot more people vulnerable to terrible situations, terrorist groups and violent groups. It would mean a lot of sources of instability.”
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Thousands of dormant oil and gas well sites dot the landscape of British Columbia, and last week the government voted for new rules that could allow companies to further delay cleaning them up.
On Oct. 21, the B.C. legislature voted in favour of removing a clause from an existing act that set timelines for the cleanup and restoration of dormant wells. The move means the BC Oil and Gas Commission (BCOGC), a Crown corporation created in the late 1990s, will have the power to exempt “permit holders from requirements of the Dormancy and Shutdown Regulation in circumstances that merit it.”
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