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The West Kootenay EcoSociety is drawing national attention for one of its new climate campaign efforts. We speak with EcoSociety executive director Montana Burgess.
Public discussion on Watershed protection continues in BC, and the folks from the local small community of Glade are actively encouraging. We have information from a fun little primer video Glade Watershed Protection folks have released.
The TransMountain Pipeline costs balloon to over $20 billion. Who will pay now? We talk to West Coast Environment Law staff lawyer Eugene Kung.
Plus, George Monbiot borrows from Don’t Look UP! to talk about the immediate danger of the climate crisis.
Environment Events and Links
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Solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en starting at 10 am Friday, February 25th
Nelson students of Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion West Kootenays are holding an event in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en people starting at 10 am this Friday, February 25th in front of Nelson City Hall.
They say they are gather in support of the activists who have faced police violence and suppression for peacefully defending their unceded Yintah (territory). For three years in a row, peaceful occupation under the leadership of Wet’suwet’en Hereditary chiefs have faced guns, dogs, and arrest at the hands of the RCMP.
Nelson Interfaith Climate Action Collaborative is hosting a review of COP26
Sunday, February 27th at 4pm
Firsthand participants and observers Linn Murray, Nelson Lee and Janet Gray will offer their reflections of what took place in Glasgow last fall and where we go from here. What changes need to take place with respect to government policy, human behaviour, and international cooperative actions. Q & A to close.
Online via Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83067871943 Passcode: 151711
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The Nelson/West Kootenay chapter of The Council of Canadians is gathering signatures to petition Parliament for Just Transition legislation.
Petitions and National Day of Action for a Just Transition
Stay tuned for more details for a local event on Saturday, March 12 as part of the National Day of Action.
Building a stronger democracy
Tues. Feb. 22, 4 p.m. PT
The Council of Canadians invites you to a public panel discussion to reflect on and make sense of the moment we’re in vis-à-vis the government’s response to the pandemic, current threats to public services, and what concrete steps need to be taken to ensure our democracy is stronger in the face of division, polarization, and hate? With Linda McQuaig, Jackie Walker and Alex Silas.
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_u9NzYkLOSQ6Pz0Eo3ig-hw
Environment News for week of February 22
The American West’s megadrought deepened so much last year that it is now the driest in at least 1,200 years and is a worst-case climate change scenario playing out live, that’s according to a new study reported by the CBC.
2021 was a really dry year in the American west… and on the Canadian prairies too — about as dry as 2002 and one of the driest years ever recorded for the region. It pushed the 22-year drought past the previous record-holder of megadroughts, in the late 1500s. And the drought doesn’t look like its going to end any time soon, according to the report published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Human-caused climate change is major factor, the report says. They calculated that 42 per cent of this megadrought can be attributed to the climate crisis.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/megadrought-climate-1.6352052
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Last Novembers deadly landslides may well have been caused by abandoned logging roads, says Calvin VanBuskirk, a 30-year member of Engineers and Geoscientists of BC. In early December he wrote to several BC ministries about preventing such destruction and tragedy.
He pointed out evidence an old logging road was the point of origin of the slide that caused the deaths of five people and washed out Highway 99, between Pemberton and Lillooet.
The landslide above Highway 99 started on a road constructed in the late 1960s, which was used until the mid- to late-1990s. It appeared the road was not deactivated and had not been inspected or maintained for a few decades. Deactivation of a road includes managing water and preventing slides with cross-ditching – building ditches across a road to intercept water and direct it onto stable slopes below.
Van Buskirk wrote: “Research supports that concentrated/redirected water from resource (logging) roads and trails is the single greatest cause of landslides in BC, and this has been known for several decades…”
He suggested that had the road above Highway 99 been monitored, the potential for the landslide could have been detected and preventative measures put in place.
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Two men involved in anti-Trans Mountain pipeline protests in Burnaby were jailed Feb. 15 after pleading guilty, while a third goes to trial in June after a not-guilty plea. This follows the jailing the day before of three women protestors. All together the group has become known as the Brunette Six.
They were charged with criminal contempt of court for allegedly breaching a court injunction aimed at preventing disruption of work onTrans Mountain Pipeline expansion project (TMX).
The “Brunette River 6” are part of a nondenominational, multi-faith prayer circle. These Burnaby and Vancouver residents came together to oppose tree cutting and stream degradation they believe is being caused by the pipeline construction.
The harsh sentences for Dr. William Winder, 69, and Zain Haq, 21, were from B.C. Supreme Court Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick. She went on to threaten even longer sentences in the future.
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Meanwhile in Prince George the trial of over 30 land defenders from Gidimt’en checkpoint were postponed for months. Lawyers for Coastal Gas Link asked for the delay because they said the RCMP had inappropriately given them information they shouldn’t have. The arrestees from the heavily militarized RCMP raids late last year will have to wait months longer for their day in court.
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The federal government has signed a $1-billion federal loan guarantee for Newfoundland and Labrador to do another capital restructuring for the 824-megawatt Muskrat Falls dam project.
It is the third guarantee of borrowing by Ottawa for the troubled project and was made necessary because the Newfoundland Public Utilities Board predicted a sharp increase in electricity rates to pay for Muskrat Falls.
Monday’s announcement builds on a $5.2-billion agreement-in-principle announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Andrew Furey in late July.
Power rates could have nearly doubled if all the mega dam project’s costs were to be included in customer rates.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/muskrat-mitigation-update-1.6350736
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A new government report projects sea levels on U.S. coastlines will rise an average 10 to 12 inches by 2050, and the sea level increase over the next 30 years will equal that of the past century.
Nicole LeBoeuf, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Ocean Service said “Make no mistake: Sea level rise is upon us,”
Much of the American economy and 40% of the population are located near coastlines. The NOAA warns the rising seas could seriously endanger communities and ecosystems.
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Fossil fuel companies in Europe are using an international treaty signed nearly three decades ago to sue several governments for taking climate action and phasing out coal power plants.
The 1994 Energy Charter Treaty is the basis foir lawsuits from large fossil fuel businesses against Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and other countries.
“Time to throw this treaty out.” say environmental observers.
Longest running Enviro News show on the Radio! 
Thinking about the awe experienced and even love felt by astronauts for the spaceship Earth below, I wonder: If a large portion of the planet’s freely-polluting fossil-fuel corporate CEOs and friendly governing leaders rocketed far enough above the earth for a day’s (or more) orbit, while looking down, would have a sufficiently profound effect on them to change their apparently unconditional political/financial support of Big Fossil Fuel? …
With the unprecedented man-made global-warming-related extreme weather events, etcetera, I wonder how many fossil-fuel industry CEOs and/or their beloved family members may also be caught in climate change harm’s way?
Assuming the CEOs are not sufficiently foolish to believe their descendants will somehow always evade the health repercussions related to their industry’s environmentally reckless decisions, I wonder whether the unlimited-profit objective/nature is somehow irresistible to those business people, including the willingness to simultaneously allow an already squeezed consumer base to continue so — or be squeezed even further? It somewhat brings to mind the allegorical fox stung by the instinct-abiding scorpion while ferrying it across the river, leaving both to drown.
Still, there must be a point at which the lopsided status quo — where already large corporate profits are maintained or increased while many people are denied even basic securities, including environmental — can/will end up hurting big business’s own economic interests. I can imagine that a healthy, strong and large consumer base — and not just very wealthy consumers — are needed.
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