DOWNLOAD OR LISTEN TO MARCH 15 SHOW HERE:
The West Kootenay Cycling Coalition has some great ideas about expanding the active transportation routes between our communities. Solita Work from the Coalition tells us about it and what they are calling the Kootenay ‘Dream”.
To keep track of the journey of the Zincton All Season Resort proposal, we called up Nicky Blackshaw of TheWildConnection.ca and she gives us an update and report on a Silverton community meeting on the plan.
The Regional District of the Central Kootenay announced $75,000 in small grants through the Kootenay Lake Conservation Fund. Area E Director Ramona Faust says these local grants often are important funding matches that trigger larger grants to local conservation projects.
SOME EVENTS AND LINKS
Friday, March 18th Noon
The West Kootenay Climate Hub is hosting an online webinar with the West Kootenay Cycling Coalition to talk about big plans for expanding regional biking and active transportation routes. Anyone can join and you can get the link on https://www.westkootenayclimatehub.ca/ or The West Kootenay Cycling Community on Facebook.
Friday March 25
There’s a global climate strike event coming up. Fridays for Future youth climate group in Nelson is planning to call students out to participate in the world-wide event. More details will be coming soon.
Saturday March 26 8 pm
Bike Rave meet up at Lakeside Park for a musical ride through Nelson. Prizes for best costume! Lots of fun
https://www.facebook.com/events/682522372781407?ref=newsfeed
ENVIRONMENT NEWS BYTES
Oil and gas companies and lobby groups in Canada are heavily investing in campaigns to present themselves as defenders of Indigenous interests, reports The Guardian newspaper.
“I’m being a steward to my land and I’m being a defender,” reads one of 21 ads targeting British Columbia in November 2021, quoting a Coastal GasLink worker from Nak’azdli Whut’en’ First Nation.
As the ad conveying Indigenous support for the pipeline appeared on the Facebook and Instagram feeds of people in B.C., 30 Wet’suwet’en Nation members and supporters were being violently evicted from their territory along the pipeline. Police breached two cabins with an axe, chainsaw, dog unit, and snipers aimed at the door.
_____________________________________
Rich countries may finally be on the verge of keeping their promise to deliver US$100 billion per year in international climate finance. Critics point out however that this includes private investment that isn’t well suited to needs in the global south.
United States climate envoy John Kerry said the world’s wealthiest nations are poised to fulfill a pledge that goes back to the 2009 UN climate conference in Copenhagen—and was supposed to be met by 2020. Kerry was speaking to a meeting of the United Nations Security Council last week.
“This lack of ambition is breathtaking,” and “it is the people living on the front line of the climate emergency who will bear the brunt,” Fionna Smyth, head of global policy and advocacy at London, U.K.-based Christian Aid, said at the time. “It is over a decade since the world’s richer countries agreed to $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020. It was already a drop in the ocean, yet still the target has been missed and is now set to be watered down.”
_____________________________________
Also last week, International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan in Ottawa announced the creation of the Partnering for Climate initiative. It will allow Canadian organizations to apply for
They announced an initial funding pool of CAD $315 million, to be distributed as part of Canada’s climate finance for the 2021-2025 period. The funding includes $20 million for advancing women’s rights and adaptation, and a $15 million envelope to support Indigenous Peoples and organizations in Canada in advancing climate action alongside Indigenous partners in developing countries.
_____________________________________
The US Congress has approved a mere $1 billion in international climate finance for 2022 – falling far short of Joe Biden’s pledge to provide $11.4bn a year by 2024.
The budget is only $387 million more than Trump-era spending, according to calculations by Joe Thwaites, researcher on global climate finance at the World Resources Institute.
If the US continued to scale up at that rate, it would take until 2050 to get to $11.4bn, Thwaites estimates, describing the bill as “extremely disappointing for climate finance”.
_____________________________________
At COP26 last year Canada committed to capping emissions from the oil and gas sector at today’s level and setting 5-year emissions reduction goals for the sector to bring it to net zero by 2050
But now the federal government is considering a major new oil development project that would jeopardize Canada’s and the world’s ability to meet our
climate goals.
The Bay du Nord project off the Newfoundland coast will produce up to 73 million barrels per year. Treenhouse gas emissions would be equivalent to adding 7-10 million fossil fuel cars to the road or building 8-10 new coal power plants
______________________________________
China plans to build 450 gigawatts of wind and solar power capacity in the Gobi desert by 2030, they announced last week.
That’s more than twice the total amount of solar and wind power installed in the USA.
Client Earth’s China representative Dimtri De Boer said: “450GW is really huge. That would be the lion’s share of new solar and wind capacity installation until 2030.”
Greenpeace East Asia’s Li Shuo said: “This is the positive side of the China climate story. People should get used to big numbers… China’s challenge is how to stop the coal side of the story, which is growing in equally big numbers.”
Last spring, years of campaigning for accountability and consistency in climate planning paid off when the federal government passed the Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act (NZEAA, formerly known as Bill C-12). Now, the deadline is rapidly approaching for the first step required under the Act:
By the end of March 2022, Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault must table a plan setting out how Canada will reach its 2030 emissions target.
Canada has still not bent the curve of its greenhouse gas emissions. Previous climate plans have failed to provide clear and accessible information, required to assess the effectiveness of climate policy commitments. They haven’t shown the public how the government is supporting a just transition away from a fossil-based economy, and that how will better the lives of Canadians at a time when we’re facing the incredible strain of converging crises.
Canada’s current target range of 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels is inadequate. In order for Canada to do its fair share of the global effort to limit warming to 1.5°C, national emissions must be reduced by 60% below 2005 levels by 2030.
_______________________
The BC government faced an onset of oil and gas lobbying after last year’s— a B.C. Supreme Court ruling, which determined the province violated the Treaty Rights of Blueberry River First Nations. The narwhal.ca reports that freedom of information legislation show petroleum and natural gas (PNG) lobbyists told public servants B.C. could lose more than $90 million in annual revenue and up to 10,000 jobs as a result of the Blueberry decision.
Former Vancouver city councillor Andrea Reimer said that the one-sided nature of information provided by corporate lobbying highlights a flaw in the structure of most governments. Reimer, who was a councillor at Vancouver City Hall from 2008 to 2018, said this level of influence can translate into stalled progress when it comes to policy.
Longest running Enviro News show on the Radio! 