Last Stand West Kootenay, the activist group that has been working to stop local old growth logging mobilized today at the Six Mile Forestry office. Miguel Pastor gives us a live report.
The City of Nelson has been talking a lot about dealing with the climate crisis City Councillor Rik Logtenberg talks about how it’s going.
The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation initiative released some polling in December showing British Colujmbians support protecting wild nature in the province. Local Candace Batycki talks about what could be coming up in 2022 on protecting nature in our area.
Listen or download here:
ENVIRONMENT NEWS
Regina’s city councillors were bullied by the fossil fuel industry when the city tried to distance itself from the industry, according to a new report by the independent think-tank Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
Regina pledged to become 100 per cent renewable by 2050, and set out to add fossil fuel companies to a list of industries that can’t advertise or sponsor city events or buildings. The proposal in January of 2021, was informally adopted by a 7-4 vote.
However, what followed was described by Mayor Sandra Masters as an “avalanche” of opposition, kicked off by Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe. And the motion was withdrawn at the Jan. 27 council meeting.
When Councillor Dan LeBlanc first introduced the idea of the ban, his rationale was that the city shouldn’t accept money from the fossil fuel sector because of conflicting values.
Premier Moe quickly issued a statement condemning the initial proposal and also threatened to cut revenues to the City from SaskPower and SaskEnergy.
Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers spokesperson Jay Averill said industry workers and supporters were offended by the proposal to ban fossil fuel companies from city-related advertising or sponsorship.
The hammer came down hard and some Councillors faced intimidation from people who threatened their jobs and economic livelihoods.
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The city of Burnaby, is in tussle with the federally-owned Trans Mountain pipeline corporation over fire safety plans for its controversial storage tank farm.
In December, Trans Mountain asked the Canada Energy Regulator for a “constitutional declaration” that would allow it to build without having secured proper fire safety permits from the Burnaby. Since then, the city has filed sworn affidavits accusing Trans Mountain of dodging critically important fire safety requirements.
The central issue is how quickly the fire department could respond to a blaze at the facility. Right now, the Burnaby terminal has 13 storage tanks with capacity for 1.6 million barrels of oil. Trans Mountain’s expansion plans would see the number of storage tanks doubled.
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The compounding effects of climate change and logging are contributing to the degradation of Pacific salmon habitat, experts are saying in an article last week in the Vancouver Sun.
They say reassessment of watershed logging and restoration practices will be key to helping struggling fish populations.
Younes Alila, a professor in the department of forest resources management at the University of British Columbia, said decades of clear-cut logging across B.C. have disrupted the landscape’s natural mechanisms for mitigating floods and landslides.
Before logging, the forest canopy helps to collect rainfall and shade snowpack, slowing down the springtime melt, Alila said. The trees also pump moisture out of the ground, increasing the soil’s capacity to absorb runoff, he said.
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Toronto now becomes the first large city in Canada and just one of three in North America to plan to reach net zero by 2040. Toronto’s city council set an interim target to cut local emissions 65% by 2030. Councillor Mike Layton for championed the move which was supported by many other councillors and the City’s Mayor.
The City’s TransformTO Net Zero Strategy outlines a pathway to achieve net zero emissions in Toronto by 2040 – was adopted by Toronto City Council on December 15, 2021.
The plan also includes 2030 targets to get there including:
All new homes and buildings will be designed and built to be near zero greenhouse gas emissions/ Greenhouse gas emissions from existing buildings will be cut in half, from 2008 levels.
30 per cent of registered vehicles in Toronto are electric
75 per cent of school/work trips under 5km are walked, biked or by transit
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Alberta’s quiet transition to renewable energy from coal is moving faster than planned—fast enough that the province could hit its target of generating 30% of its electricity from renewables seven years ahead of its 2030 target.
In 2020, Alberta produced 14% of its power from renewable sources like wind, solar, and hydro. With growing investments in the sector, the Canadian Energy Regulator (CER) projects that total rising to 26% by 2023 and sees the province adding “significant” solar capacity—around 1,200 megawatts—within the next two years.
A recent Royal Bank report predicts continued renewables growth in Alberta, noting that 61 solar projects now under development across the province are expected to be complete by the middle of the decade.
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The days for plastic grocery bags and Styrofoam takeout containers in Canada are coming to an end.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault published draft regulations late last year outlining how Canada will ban the manufacture, sale, and import of these items, as well as plastic cutlery, stir sticks, straws, and six-pack rings, by the end of the year. The banned products can still be manufactured in Canada for export.
World-wide countries prepare to gather in Nairobi, Kenya in February to advance a global treaty to control plastics pollution.
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A new federal incentive, modelled on a U.S. tax credit for carbon capture, utilization and storage, would be tailor-made to drive higher greenhouse gas emissions and could produce unexpected surprises for private investors, a veteran U.S. energy consultant and attorney told The Energy Mix.
The fossil industry and its allies had been intensifying their push for carbon capture (CCUS) subsidies ahead of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s April budget, with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney calling for C$30 billion in federal largesse over 10 years. In an email Tuesday, Ian Cameron, press secretary to Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan, said carbon capture technology “creates jobs, lowers emissions, and increases our competitiveness. It’s an important part of our government’s plan to get to net-zero emissions by 2050 and we are working with all provinces, including Alberta, to keep Canada at the forefront of this promising technology.”
But the signature tax measure that is generating much of the hype, the Section 45Q tax credit [pdf] named for the relevant section of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, creates an incentive for power plant operators to emit more carbon, while giving investors a false picture of projects’ viability, said David Schlissel, a Massachusetts-based consultant associated with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
“The oil industry and the coal industry see this as a way to keep their industries going,” Schlissel told The Mix. “So they green-wrap it as a way to save produced CO2.” But the economics of those failing power plants, coupled with a volume-based tax credit that pays up to US$50 per tonne for any carbon an operator can capture, turn Section 45Q into an incentive to burn and emit more carbon, not less.
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Tens of thousands of Coloradans were forced to leave their homes last week as two fast-moving wildfires—whipped up by wind gusts reaching 170 km h — tore through communities just outside of Denver. Whole neighborhoods went up in flames and over a thousand buildings destroyed.
“None of this is normal,” said Colorado state Rep. Leslie Herod (D-8). “We are not OK.”
Experts said the combination of months of unusually dry conditions, warm winter temperatures, and ferocious winds set the stage for the devastating blazes, which meteorologist Eric Holthaus viewed as further evidence that “we are in a climate emergency.”
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In December, the New York City Council voted to pass legislation banning the use of natural gas in most new buildings. Under the law, construction projects submitted for approval after 2027 must use sources like electricity for stoves, space heaters and water boilers instead of gas or oil. The new law will cut about 2.1 million tons of carbon emissions by 2040, equivalent to the annual emissions of 450,000 cars, according to a study by the think tank RMI.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/15/new-york-city-is-banning-natural-gas-hookups-for-new-buildings.html
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While BC was huddling under an arctic outflow, Alaska was hitting record high temperatures last month. The extreme winter warm spell in Alaska brought daytime temperatures over 15.5C (60F) and lots of rain at a time of year normally associated with bitter cold and snow.
At the island community of Kodiak, the air temperature at a tidal gauge hit 19.4C (67F) degrees the highest December reading ever recorded in Alaska, said scientist Rick Thoman of the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. He called it “absurd.”
There were at least eight December days of temperatures above 10C (50F) at the Aleutian town of Unalaska, including a reading of 13.3C (56F) that was Alaska’s warmest Christmas Day on record.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/29/alaska-sets-record-high-december-temperature-of-194c
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Longest running Enviro News show on the Radio! 
It’s an interestingly informative article. … Mass, global addiction to fossil fuel products 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 remain 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. In fact, until about three months ago, I had not heard Greta’s name in the mainstream corporate news-media since COVID-19 hit the world.
As individual consumers, however, far too many of us still recklessly behave as though throwing non-biodegradable garbage down a dark chute, or pollutants flushed down toilet/sink drainage pipes or emitted out of elevated exhaust pipes or spewed from sky-high jet engines and very tall smoke stacks — even the largest toxic-contaminant spills in rarely visited wilderness — can somehow be safely absorbed into the air, water, and land (i.e. out of sight, out of mind); like we’re inconsequentially dispensing of that waste into a black-hole singularity, in which it’s compressed into nothing.
Collectively, human existence is still essentially analogous to a cafeteria lineup consisting of diversely societally represented people, all adamantly arguing over which identifiable person should be at the front and, conversely, at the back of the line. Many of them further fight over to whom amongst them should go the last piece of quality pie and how much they should have to pay for it — all the while the interstellar spaceship on which they’re all permanently confined, owned and operated by (besides the wealthiest passengers) the fossil fuel industry, is on fire and toxifying at locations not normally investigated. As a species, we can be so heavily preoccupied with our own individual little worlds, however overwhelming to us, that we will miss the biggest of crucial pictures.
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