Challenger for the leadership of the BC NDP Anjali Appadurai visited Nelson on Tuesday August 30. Earlier she gave The EcoCentric an exclusive interview about her bold move and what she sees as the future for the province. A solar powered bicycled sped through Nelson on a world tour for peace and climate security in the last week of August. After pedalling 27 countries, Frenchman David Liqouy stoped to talk about it in Nelson’s Lakeside Park. Darrin Qualman from the National Farmers Union has become an expert in analyzing Canadian farming and its climate emissions. We have a clip from a revealing technical talk on agriculture.
LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD THE AUGUST 30 ECOCENTRIC HERE:
ENVIRONMENT NEWS
The latest round of talks at the United Nations on protecting the ecosystems of the oceans ended without agreement August 27th.
UN members failed to agree on how to share benefits from marine life, and establish protected areas.
Environmental campaigners, who noted that discussions had been continuing on and off for 15 years, expressed disappointment and blamed wealthy countries, including the US, of being too slow to compromise.
Among the issues holding up the treaty is agreement on a process for creating protected areas as well as environmental impact assessments.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/27/united-nations-ocean-treaty-marine-life
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A new study shows up to 90% of ocean species are facing extinction if current levels of fossil fuel emissions are maintained. Daniel Boyce, a research scientist at Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Nova Scotia, examined 35,000 species of marine flora and fauna as well as bacteria and protozoans.
Under the current level of emissions, which the United Nations said in 2019 were on track to raise global temperature by 3-5° Celsius, nearly 90% of marine species would be at high-to-critical risk of being wiped out and 85% of those species’ native habitats would be affected, on average, the study showed.
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The Alvarez family from Trail has donated the Bonanza Marsh at the north end of Slocan Lake, to the Nature Conservancy of Canada to ensure it’s ongoing protecvtion. The family has owned and cared for the Bonanza Marsh property since the early 1960s.
The five-hectare property includes a significant portion of an ecologically important wetland that supports an incredible diversity of wildlife and sensitive ecosystems, and plays an essential role in maintaining water quality in the lake.
Located at the north end of Slocan Lake and straddling the mouth of Bonanza Creek, the Alvarez’s gift of land builds on other efforts to protect the entire Bonanza Marsh wetland. The donated property encompasses the lakeshore portion of the marsh. The property also borders the Snk’mip Marsh Sanctuary, which protects the upper reaches of the marsh complex.
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More than two dozen plastic makers are asking the Federal Court to put an end to Ottawa’s plan to ban several single-use plastic items including straws, cutlery and takeout containers.
It is the second lawsuit filed in the court by a coalition of plastics makers calling themselves the Responsible Plastic Use Coalition.
The first suit filed in 2021 seeks to overturn the government’s decision to designate plastics as “toxic” under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault used that designation to publish regulations that will ban the sale, import and production of six plastic items.
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France has become the first European country to ban adverts for fossil fuels under a new climate law.
Announced on 22 August, the legislation prohibits advertising for all energy products related to fossil fuels such as petrol products, energy from the combustion of coal mining and hydrogen-containing carbons.
Adverts for natural gas are still allowed for now but new rules are set to be introduced in June next year.
Companies that go against the new law could face fines of between €20,000 and €100,000 with repeat offenders paying double the amount.
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California has approved a ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 as the state takes dramatic steps to reduce emissions and combat the climate emergency.
In a vote on Thursday, state regulators moved forward with a plan to phase out the sale of gas cars over the next 13 years in America’s largest auto market.
The move is being hailed as a major victory that could point the way forward for others. It gives the most populous US state some of the world’s most stringent regulations for transitioning to electric vehicles.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/24/california-ban-sales-gas-powered-cars-2035
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A new study out of the US shows most Americans are concerned about the climate crises and want governments to act, but they believe they are in the minority and their views and unpopular with most other citizens.
The study published in Nature concludes that because many Americans are unaware of the popularity of their pro-climate action views that encourages inaction, and political paralysis on climate action.
The authors say there is a built in tendency of a ‘conservative’ bias. If you believe the climate crisis demands immediate action, but you don’t see governments acting that way, you tend to believe you are an outlier, and public is not where you are.
The study’s date show \ most Americans believe that less than half of the country is worried about climate change. But research actually show two-thirds os the country is.
Americans’ also believe support for major climate policy support is even lower when in fact two-thirds of the country or more would support much great action on the crisis.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32412-y#Sec2
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Experts are debunkinga Viral Post Claiming 1,100 Scientists Say ‘There’s No Climate Emergency’. Dubbed the World Climate Declaration and allegedly signed by “over 1,100 scientists and professionals,” the petition appears to show a faction of the science community that—concerned the debate surrounding climate change has strayed from empirical evidence and become too political—is courageously breaking from dangerous groupthink to declare that “there is,” in fact, “no climate emergency.”
But despite its measured tone and its list of supporters with impressive-sounding titles like professor or doctor, the declaration isn’t what it appears to be, several career climatologists and disinformation experts told Inside Climate News.
They said, the post seems to be the latest iteration of a broader disinformation campaign that for decades has peddled a series of arguments long discredited by the scientific community at large.
the vast majority of the declaration’s signatories have no experience in climate science at all, and the group behind the message—the Climate Intelligence Foundation, or CLINTEL—has well-documented ties to oil money and fossil fuel interest groups.
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Natural gas, or Methane, is a potent greenhouse gas, has been rising in the atmosphere at an accelerating rate since 2007. But scientists are unsure where it’s all coming from.
TIn 2021, methane rose more than other any other year on record, according to a preliminary analysis of weekly measurements taken at 40 sites globally. 2020 also broke records.
Methane is one of the most powerful levers to quickly stop warming. According to the IPCC’s latest report, meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement is impossible without cutting methane emissions by one third this decade.
A large portion of methane emissions that come from oil and gas could be slashed with existing, low-cost technology, according to the IPCC and others.
But there’s a fear from scientists that even if we cut emissions from fossil fuels, methane in the atmosphere will continue to grow. Higher emissions may be coming from natural swamps, bogs, and marshes, and anthropogenic emissions from livestock and landfills are likely growing as well. Thawing permafrost from the North looms large, too.
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Longest running Enviro News show on the Radio! 
I believe that B.C.’s governing NDP are becoming increasingly conservative toward fiscal and big business matters. They’re also increasingly realizing that, sadly, they/we are governed by a seemingly solidified system in which corporate lobbyists heavily manipulate even our top elected officials. (Albeit, some elected heads will be better at concealment via their habitual general practice of secrecy with the news-media.)
One wonders how many other governing politicians got elected without being aware? I say: anyone wanting to run for office should have to first pass a post-secondary political science course that teaches this in length and detail.
Lobbyists will even write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time. In the national-level case of the Trudeau Liberals, they, like the Conservatives when in power, pander to corporate objectives, and the very wealthy, albeit the Liberals maintain their traditional liberal social policies (notably those involving race, gender and sexuality).
Apparently, politically potent and focused big business interests get catered-to regardless of which of these two parties rules; and it’s always one or the other. It seems they can’t really lose, at least as long as the federal NDP stay out of high office.
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