LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD THE OCTOBER 4 ECOCENTRIC:
An identified old growth forest up Russell Creek in the Slocan Valley area is now threatened by adjacent clearcutting by Interfor reports Fox from the Last Stand West Kootenay group. Good news came recently on protecting the Bonanza Creek marsh at the north end of Slocan Lake. Wendy King from the Slocan Lake Stewardship Society tells us the group continues to steadily watch over the health and natural nature of the beautiful local lake. Building multi-billion dollar fossil fuel pipelines in the face of the climate emergency seems like a poor business plan but here in BC, and in many places around the world that’s what’s happening. Mitchell Beer from The Energy Mix says governments are betting on Climate Failure. We chat with Mitchell about what looks to be more climate insanity.
EVENTS AND LINKS
Last Stand West Kootenay https://www.facebook.com/LastStandWestKootenay
SUBSTACK: Betting on Climate Failure https://energymixweekender.substack.com/p/betting-on-climate-failure
Slocan Lake Stewardship Society https://slocanlakess.com/
ENVIRONMENT NEWS
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Cars are vanishing from Paris! Car use in Paris has consistently fallen since 2012, and in 2020 it fell in the Greater Paris region for the first time. The proportion of journeys by car in Paris has dropped about 45 percent since 1990, according to a paper published by the journal Les Cahiers Scientifiques du Transport. At the same time, the use of public transit has risen by 30 percent and the share of cyclists has increased tenfold.
Mayor Anne Hildago has led the changes, one of which was to close what was a traffic-clogged, 3.3 kilometer road along the banks of the River Seine . Now there are sand beaches, the Paris Plages, a heavily used recreation area along the river.
Bikes are winning big time: During the pandemic, 50 kilometers of cycle routes were added to the city’s existing 700 kilometer network.
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Ontario can deliver enough distributed energy to clear a large electricity shortage over the next decade, but a prominent analyst says the provincial government is still only choosing between two equally “catastrophic” options—relying more on methane gas plants, or extending the life of the old Pickering nuclear station..
The assessment of distributed resources like solar, small hydro, and energy storage shows up in a study by Montreal-based Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors, released Friday by Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator. The IESO published the report the day after Energy Minister Todd Smith announced plans to extend the operating licence for the Pickering station, the third-oldest nuclear plant in North America, by one year.
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Fossil fuel companies have been banned from recruiting students through a university for the first time. The new policy from Birkbeck, University of London, says its employment recruiters “will not hold relationships of any kind with oil, gas or mining companies”.
The University was responding to pressure from a campaign by the student-led group People & Planet, The campaign to ban fossil employment recruiting is now active in dozens of UK universities.
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Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy will save countries at least US$12 trillion by 2050, an Oxford University research team reports.
The study in the journal Joule concludes that “the decarbonization of the energy system will not only see a major reduction in the cost of producing and distributing energy, but will also allow for greater levels of energy to be produced and therefore help expand energy access around the planet,” “The faster the transition to renewables occurs, the greater the potential for savings,” translating into an “enormous boost to the global economy” as countries abandon fossil fuels.
“There is a pervasive misconception that switching to clean, green energy will be painful, costly, and mean sacrifices for us all—but that’s just wrong,” said team lead Doyne Farmer, director of the complexity economics program at Oxford University’s Institute for New Economic Thinking.
“Renewable costs have been trending down for decades,” he added. “They are already cheaper than fossil fuels in many situations and, our research shows, they will become cheaper than fossil fuels across almost all applications in the years to come.”
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Canadian Senators with a focus on climate change are pushing for evidence-based action and solutions, Last week they official launched Senators for Climate Solutions (SFCS).
At the launch Senate Speaker Pauline Ringuette said “We are seeing real death and destruction. Look at the increased frequency and severity of wildfires in the west, the ferocity of post-tropical storm Fiona linked to increased ocean temperatures.”
With more freedom from Party discipline Ringuette say “it is of the utmost importance that we use our freedom and independence… to work together on this extremely important issue of climate change.”
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Methane leaking from the damaged Nord Stream pipelines is likely the biggest burst of the climate super-pollutant on record by far. Sweden and countries in the region have charged that the undersea explosions were sabotage.
The leaking pipelines are steadily pumping methane into the Baltic Sea and atmosphere. Some experts estimate they could release as much as five times as much of the potent greenhouse gas as was released by California’s Aliso Canyon disaster, the largest known terrestrial release of methane in U.S. history.
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With record profits, the oil industry is developing 24,166 km of new oil pipelines—enough to stretch nearly two-thirds around Earth— of which 10,351 km of which are already under construction, according to new data from Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
The oil pipeline build-out is dramatically at odds with efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 ºC or 2.0 ºC and represents a stranded asset risk of up to USD 75.4 billion for project developers, GEM estimates, as the world increasingly transitions from oil and gas to renewables.
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Another BC LNG project is nearing the end of the environmental approval process and Friends of Wild Salmon and other groups are calling for public input on the plan. Cedar LNG is a proposal for a new floating fossil fuel liquefied natural gas facility near Kitimatf. Gas to feed the export facility would come from fracking operations in northeastern BC through the controversial Coastal Gas Link pipeline.
Friends of Wild Salmon, the Kitimat-based group Douglas Channel Watch and the Terrace Council of Canadians in encouraging the public to submit comments to the BC Environmental Assessment Office that call for the inclusion of the full climate impacts of Cedar LNG.
Research has found that the full lifecycle emissions of BC LNG are greater than coal, but the BC government is only considering the emissions that are produced from the Cedar LNG facility itself, and not the emissions that are released by fracking for the gas in the northeast.
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An environmental activist has been killed every two days on average over the past decade, a new study shows.
The report from Global Witness says that more than 1,700 people have died while trying to prevent mining, oil drilling or logging on their lands. Over the 10 years, Brazil and Colombia have recorded the highest numbers of deaths.
Earlier this year, the murders of British journalist Dom Phillips and a local indigenous expert, Bruno Pereira, brought global attention to the lawless conditions prevailing in some parts of the Amazon.
In this latest report from Global Witness, Latin America is very much the frontline when it comes to deadly attacks on environmental campaigners and activists. The study finds that 68% of the murders took place across this continent, with Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Honduras recording the highest totals.
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