PHOTO: WILLETWILDERNESSFOREVER.CA
Talking with this year’s winner of the Suzy Hamilton Legacy Award, Jessica Ogden. Update on the July 19 court hearing for the forest protectors who were arrested on the Argenta slope. Gary Diers from Argenta gives us an update on what’s happening on the slope above Kootenay Lake. And he’ll talk about what the WilletWildernessForever.ca campaign is doing about it.
Last week Canada’s Environment and Climate Change minister said the country has to give the oil and gas industry more time to bring down carbon emissions. That came just after they announced discussions on capping emissions from oil and gas. Julia Levin from EnvironmentalDefence.ca tells us what it all means.
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EVENTS AND LINKS:
Campaign to Make it a park! and protect Argenta Slope. At https://www.willetwildernessforever.ca/
Contribute to Legal and support fund for Last Stand West Kootenay forest defenders. Check Last Stand West Kootenay on Facebook. The fundraiser is a campaign on Fundrazr.
The Peace and Unity Summit
Starting 9 am Wednesday, July 27th and running all through to 5 pm July 28.
The two-day summit will bring together people who have dedicated their lives to wild salmon, Indigenous rights and a safe climate future, from all over so-called British Columbia.
ENVIRONMENT NEWS FOR JULY 26
The B.C. government has banned the hunting of black bears in the territories of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais and Gitga’at First Nations in the Great Bear Rainforest, in response to a joint proposal by the nations to protect one of the rarest bear species on the planet: the spirit bear.
Spirit bears, also known as kermode bears or moksgm’ol in the Tsimshian language, are black bears with a white coat — the result of a recessive gene found in about one in 10 black bears in British Columbia’s Central and North Coast regions, according to research from the University of Victoria in collaboration with the nations.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/spirit-bear-black-bear-hunting-ban-1.6525954
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The Sue Big Oil campaign applauds the City of Vancouver’s historic vote this afternoon [6-5] to allocate funds towards a future class action lawsuit by local governments against global oil and gas companies for climate costs. The commitment is a first step in the Sue Big Oil campaign’s call for BC local governments to protect their taxpayers from paying the full climate costs that they are experiencing – such as sea wall repairs or protections from extreme heat – by working together to bring a lawsuit against the world’s most polluting oil companies.
After the extreme heat, wildfires and catastrophic flooding that occurred in 2021, Vancouver and other municipalities around the province are increasingly recognizing what climate change could end up costing them – both in damages and adaptation. The Insurance Bureau of Canada estimates that Canadian local governments should collectively spend $5.3 billion each year to prepare for climate impacts, and Vancouver is expected to spend $1 billion in the coming years to address rising sea levels fueled by climate change.
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London has become the biggest city so far to endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty—
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said in a June 28 announcement. “When it comes to tackling air pollution and the climate emergency, cities like London have a responsibility to act,”“We have to be the doers and not the delayers. We must safeguard our future.”
Khan called on cities around the world to “follow London’s lead” and commit to phasing out the use of fossil fuels as the treaty mandates. “The cost of inaction to our economies, livelihoods, environment, and the health of Londoners is far greater than the cost of transitioning to net-zero,” he said. “We simply don’t have time to waste.”
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The oil and gas industry has delivered $2.8bn (£2.3bn) a day in pure profit for the last 50 years, a new analysis has revealed.
The vast total captured by petrostates and fossil fuel companies since 1970 is $52tn, providing the power to “buy every politician, every system” and delay action on the climate crisis, says Prof Aviel Verbruggen, the author of the analysis. The huge profits were inflated by cartels of countries artificially restricting supply.
The analysis, based on World Bank data, assesses the “rent” secured by global oil and gas sales, which is the economic term for the unearned profit produced after the total cost of production has been deducted.
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In a separate report: Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., Shell Plc, TotalEnergies SE and BP Plc — collectively known as the supermajors — are set to make even more money than they did in 2008, when international oil prices jumped as high as $147 a barrel. That’s because it’s not just crude that has soared during the crisis created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, natural gas prices and refining margins have also broken records.
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The ferocious heatwave that is gripping much of the US south and west has highlighted an uncomfortable, ominous trend – people are continuing to flock to the cities that risk becoming unlivable due to the climate crisis.
Some of the fastest-growing cities in the US are among those being roasted by record temperatures that are baking more than 100 million Americans under some sort of extreme heat warning. More than a dozen wildfires are engulfing areas from Texas to California and Alaska, with electricity blackouts feared for places where the grid is coming under severe strain.
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Earlier this year the UK government nnounced a £15bn package of support for households struggling with the cost of living crisis, part-funded by a £5bn windfall tax on energy companies.
The chancellor set out what he called a “significant set of interventions” to help offset the impact of rocketing inflation.
These will include a £650 one-off payment for families on means-tested benefits, and an extra £200 for all energy bill payers that will not have to be repaid.
The package will be partly funded by what Sunak called a “temporary, targeted energy profits levy” – a windfall tax.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/26/sunak-announces-windfall-tax-energy-firms
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With Canada lagging far behind Europe and the United Kingdom in tackling carbon pollution from aviation, the country’s upcoming 10-year climate plan for the sector must be developed with public input and enforce a 30% emissions reduction target by 2030, climate advocates say.
“Canada has given its aviation industry a free ride on climate change for too long,” write Lyn Adamson, co-chair of ClimateFast and Joe Vipond, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) in a recent op-ed for the Ottawa Citizen.
They add that Canada’s 2012 action plan for aviation “was developed solely with the airline sector, did not require any reductions in climate emissions until 2050, has no credible plan to do so, and has allowed emissions from that sector to increase by 35%.”
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Students from around the world announced Today, Tuesday, their intention to “disrupt business as usual” at their universities and schools this fall, pressuring administrators and policymakers to ramp up efforts to combat the climate crisis by holding occupations and refusing to attend classes as normal.
Dozens of students and student groups co-signed an op-ed published by The Guardian, promising that their new campaign, “End Fossil: Occupy!” will include young people from across the globe demanding “the end of the fossil economy.”
“Since giving in to defeatism will never be an option for us, we must now organize at a massive scale.” The students said.
“Taking a lesson from student activists in the 1960s, the climate justice movement’s youth will shut down business as usual,” said the organizers. “Not because we don’t like learning, but because what we’ve learned already makes it clear that, without a dramatic break from this system, we cannot ensure a livable planet for our presents and futures.”
The op-ed was signed by students from countries including Portugal, Spain, Argentina, the U.S., the Ivory Coast, and the U.K. Occupations are already planned at Emerson College in Boston, Leeds University in the U.K., and the Ivory Coast’s capital of Abidjan.
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