A tribute to local environmental activist Michael Jessen who passed away in October. Lisa Bramson tells us about this amazing man and his lifelong determintation. Reports from the COP 26 climate talks. The Gidimt’en Clan in Wetswuetwen territory announced they are evicting the Coastal Gas Link pipeline workers this week. The BC government is in the middle of a review of the province’s oil and gas royalties. Alexandra Wordsworth from DogwoodBC explains it. Some events and environment news wind up the show.
LISTEN TO THE FULL NOVEMBER 16 SHOW HERE:
LINKS FROM THE SHOW
The Nelson Star has a fine tribute to Michael Jessen.
DogwoodBC has details on BC Oil and Gas Royalty review
Have your input into the BC oil and gas royalty review here
ENVIRONMENT NEWS AND EVENTS
Wildsight’s Youth Climate Corps (YCC) program, Kalesnikoff, and the Slocan Integral Forestry Cooperative (SIFCo). have announced a food forest iniative at Bannock Point just south of Silverton on Slocan Lake.
Work begins this week, at Bannock Point to test a model for ‘agroforestry’. Agroforestry combines community-based forestry and agriculture through intentional planning. The aim is to work with the local landscape and plant valuable food crops that strengthen local food security and are both drought and wildfire resistant. In this case, a mixture of native and non-native plants, such as
salmonberries and walnut trees, will be planted among trees in an area that has been previously thinned to reduce wildfire risk
For more information about Youth Climate Corps, visit wildsight.ca/youth-climate-corps. Also, see sifco.ca and kalesnikoff.com/sustainable-forest-stewardship/ for more
project details.
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A new international movement, Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance was launched at the COP 26 summit in Glasgow. It started small— only 12 governments—but it immediately exposed the gap between what nations promise in greenhouse gas reductions and what they actually are planning.
Founding countries, Costa Rica and Denmark, were joined by France, Greenland, Ireland, Quebec, Sweden, and Wales. California, Portugal, and New Zealand are associate members, which means they share the organization’s aims but have not yet aligned their policies to gain full membership. Italy joined as a “friend” and Scotland was in “active talks” to join.
Absent from the new Alliance were the hosting country, the UK, although Wales and likely Scotland are signing on. Canada and the US are missing as well, but Quebec and California are signed on.
Signing on to the Alliance is simple, governments must commit to end new oil and gas exploration permits. That effectively stops the growth of fossil fuel production.
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Canada fell from 58th to 61st spot in the latest Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), released this week during the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow, with its current climate performance and 2030 targets well below what would be consistent with a 2.0°C limit on average global warming.
This year’s edition of the annual analysis by the non-profit Germanwatch gives Canada a “very low” rating for greenhouse gas performance and targets, renewable energy deployment, and per capita energy use, and a low rating for climate policies operating at the national and international levels. It places the country in a “very low” category of global climate laggards that includes Algeria, Australia, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.
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Glasgow’s COP 26, billed as the last chance to save the world from catastrophic climate change, failed to make the radical steps scientists said were needed but finally ended in a political consensus agreement 24 hours later than planned.
The UK’s stated aim to “keep 1.5°C alive”, in other words to keep the planet’s temperature from exceeding that dangerous threshold of warming, was not achieved by the agreements at the conference. The world is still on course to warm by 2.4°C if all the country’s promises in Glasgow are kept.
UN Secretary General António Guterres said that to rescue the 1.5°C aspiration they must increase their efforts to reduce carbon emissions and come to COP 27 with updated plans for deeper emissions cuts by 2030.
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Another significant advance in the COP declaration was the mention of fossil fuels for the first time, with a call for parties to scale up clean power generation with a view to “accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.”
While it was the first mention of fossil fuels in any of the 26 COP declarations to date, the subsidy wording was a disappointment for many. Some wanted a statement that said all coal, oil, and gas should be phased out, while others wanted the word “inefficient” removed in an attempt to get all fossil fuel subsidies stopped. Global fossil fuel subsidies ran to $5.9 trillion in 2020, or $11.2 million a minute, far more than any aid package offered to the developing world to combat climate change.
As well, the declaration language on coal was watered down from a stronger call to phase out the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel.
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World leaders must ban industrial fishing to preserve the ocean, an essential weapon in the fight against climate change, the marine biologist and oceanographer Sylvia Earle said this week.
Earle, 86, spoke at the COP26 global climate conference in Glasgow this week, participating in panel discussions with the politician and environmentalist Al Gore and U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, among others.
“It’s the No 1 priority, because we have the chance, in a stroke, to safeguard the blue heart of the planet,” she said. “It’s where most of the oxygen that comes from the ocean is generated. It’s where most of the carbon is taken up.”
The industrial fishing industry’s unprecedented growth has depleted marine life at an alarming rate, and a third of commercial fish populations are being harvested at biologically unsustainable levels, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said in a 2018 report.
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November 30 MIR Centre for Peace lecture series: Seth Klein
Author Seth Klein on A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency. Drawing on lessons from our wartime experience, Seth Klein offers an original and uniquely hopeful vision of a way through the climate crisis. Reminding us that we have come together before in common cause cross class, race and gender, he shows us that it is possible to entirely retool our economy in the space of a few short years, and align our politics and economy with what the science says we must do to address the climate crisis.
Nov 30, 2021 at 7:00pm PST
Adults $10 • Seniors $8 Free for students
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Journalist and author Andrew Nikiforuk speaks Nov. 17 at 2 p.m. The Tyee contributing editor has written about the use and abuse of natural resources and wild landscapes in Canada for more than 30 years.
This article is part of a Tyee Presents initiative. Tyee Presents is the special sponsored content section within The Tyee where we highlight contests, events and other initiatives that are either put on by us or by our select partners. The Tyee does not and cannot vouch for or endorse products advertised on The Tyee. We choose our partners carefully and consciously, to fit with The Tyee’s reputation as B.C.’s Home for News, Culture and Solutions. Learn more about Tyee Presents here.
Andrew Nikiforuk shares a lot of words in written form in The Tyee. But hearing him speak his brilliant mind in person is a rare event. You’ll have that opportunity on Wednesday, Nov. 17, when Nikiforuk gives the prestigious Harvey S. Southam lecture by invitation of the department of writing at the University of Victoria. If you can’t be in the room, the address will be livestreamed.
The title of his talk is “Energy Dead-Ends: Green Lies, Climate Change and Chaotic Transitions.” If you’ve been reading Nikiforuk over the years, you may recognize some of those themes. This presentation, he said in a phone conversation, will not only knit together research and forecasts in new ways, but explore fresh territory.
Longest running Enviro News show on the Radio! 
Mass addiction to fossil fuel products by the larger public undoubtedly helps keep the average consumer quiet about the planet’s greatest polluter, lest they feel and/or be publicly deemed hypocritical. Meanwhile, neoliberals and conservatives everywhere remain willfully preoccupied with vocally criticizing one another for their relatively trivial politics and diverting attention away from some of the planet’s greatest polluters, where it should and needs to be sharply focused.
Industry and fossil-fuel friendly governments can tell when a very large portion of the populace is too tired and worried about feeding/housing themselves or their family, and the virus-variant devastation still being left in COVID-19’s wake — all while on insufficient income — to criticize them for whatever environmental damage their policies cause/allow, particularly when not immediately observable.
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