
WHAT DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF?
LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD JUNE 20, 2023 SHOW HERE:
Lily Mayall and the Nelson End of Life Society are making a presentation, Tuesday, June 20th at Nelson City Council about making green burials a reality in the Nelson Cemetery.
Ursula Lowery and her husband Terry from the North Shore have been picking up waste styrofoam from the beach and around the lake for years. They have hauled trailer loads away, but she says there’s always more… and she’d like to see it stop.
The Regional District of the Central Kootenay unveiled its Climate Plan proposals in the spring and announced a series of public consultations, but a wave of local concerns caused the RDCK to put a hold on the meetings. Paris Marshall Smith a sustainability planner with the Region tells us the Region has been responding to the concerns and will go ahead with the consultations later in the year.
LINKS:
Nelson City Council meetings available to watch online: https://nelson.civicweb.net/Portal/MeetingInformation.aspx?Org=Cal&Id=1786
Regional District of Central Kootenay Climate plan
https://www.rdck.ca/EN/main/services/sustainability-environmental-initiatives/climate-action.html
EVENTS:
______________________
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 2023 AT 6 PM PDT
Retallack Nature Connection – Piq kiʔláwnaʔ, Sinixt tmxʷulaʔxʷ
Come ponder with the river and the river as we wander the Retallack Old Growth trail.
We will be giving thanks to the land and have time for introspection as we incorporated different awareness exercises and games…
______________________
Wednesday, June 21
Rabble Off-the-Hill panel on reconciliation 4:30 pm PT
Wednesday, June 21 marks National Indigenous People’s Day in Canada, and many activities will be underway across the country. The reality, however, is that reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples can only happen in a genuine way if the truth has been told, understood and accepted. And currently, Canada’s colonial, settler and racist history is still barely accepted.
This week, join our live Off the Hill panel as our guests discuss the critical nature of “truth” and how it plays out in the media, politics and communities across the nation.
Special guests include: Joan Phillip, Melanie Mark and Rachel Snow. Hosted by Robin Browne and Libby Davies.
Register here.
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wh1NLdKuTQ2TlyswlMZ22Q#/registration
________________________________
SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 2023 AT 8 PM PDT
National Indigenous Peoples Day Gathering. Lakeside Park, Nelson, BC
West Kootenay Metis invites people to Lakeside Park on Saturday for celebrating and gathering for National Indigenous Peoples Day (the June 21 national holiday).
There will be entertainment, activities, local service providers, food, and local Indigenous artisans.
________________________________
Saturday, July 01, 10:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Canada Day, Lakeside Park, Nelson
Come celebrate Canada Day with West Kootenay Climate Hub by stopping by our table at Lakeside Park in Nelson on July 1. There will be a kids’ activity, information, and good cheer.
The Climate Hub is also putting up a display at the Canada Day event in Rossland.
ENVIRONMENT NEWS
Environmental groups in Canada are taking legal action against the country’s environment minister, arguing his delay in protecting old growth forest is harming the critically endangered northern spotted owl.
In February, Steven Guilbeault said he would recommend an emergency order after determining the species was facing “imminent threats” to its survival.
Decades of old growth clearcutting have wiped out much of the northern spotted owl’s habitat in British Columbia, leaving the wild population in Canada at just one female, down from about 40 breeding pairs in the 90s.
The minister initially determined that old-growth logging must stop within an area of the Spô’zêm Nation territory, including the Spuzzum and Utzlius watersheds, as well as a further 2,500 hectares (6,200 acres) of forest habitat at risk. But in the four months since Guilbeault announced plans for an emergency order, environmental groups say he has failed to follow through.
______________________________
A motion tabled last month in the House of Commons is the latest effort to address the fossil fuel investments and climate risk exposure of Canadian banks and other financial institutions—including the world’s biggest fossil fuel financier in 2022.
Members of Parliament from four of the five parties in the House expressed support for Motion 84, a measure tabled by MP Ryan Turnbull (L, Whitby) that calls on the government to “use all legislative and regulatory tools at its disposal to align Canada’s financial system” with the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The motion received cross-party support from MPs Taylor Bachrach (NDP, Skeena-Bulkley Valley), Elizabeth May, (GPC, Saanich-Gulf Islands), and Jean-Denis Garon (BQ, Mirabel).
It also served as the latest prompt for the Climate Aligned Finance Act, Bill S-243, introduced more than a year ago by Sen. Rosa Galvez (ISG-Quebec). The bill is still waiting its turn for a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee.
______________________________
Human activity has pushed the world into the danger zone in seven out of eight newly demarcated indicators of planetary safety and justice, according to a groundbreaking analysis of the Earth’s wellbeing.
Going beyond climate disruption, the report by the Earth Commission group of scientists presents disturbing evidence that our planet faces growing crises of water availability, nutrient loading, ecosystem maintenance and aerosol pollution. These pose threats to the stability of life-support systems and worsen social equality.
Prof Johan Rockström, one of the lead authors, said:
“We have reached what I call a saturation point where we hit the ceiling of the biophysical capacity of the Earth system to remain in its stable state. We are approaching tipping points, we are seeing more and more permanent damage of life-support systems at the global scale.”
______________________________
A C$1.7-billion, 1.4-gigawatt solar farm is expected to be Canada’s largest once it’s fully online in 2026 or 2027. Greek industrial and power giant Mytilineos SA is investing in the project after it was “more comfortable” building in Canada than in the United States.
The development consists of five separate projects in southern Alberta that Mytilineos will buy from Calgary-based Westridge Renewable Energy Corp. for between $217 and $346 million, the Globe and Mail reports.
______________________________
Renewable energy is “set to soar” to a record 440 gigawatts of new capacity this year, an eye-popping 107-GW increase over last year, with solar accounting for two-thirds of the total, the International Energy Agency reports in its annual Renewable Energy Market Update released June 1.
The new installations will exceed the total power capacity of Germany and Spain combined, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a release. In an “accelerated” scenario, new renewables could hit 550 GW (550 billion watts), the IEA projects.
______________________________
Recent reports from Copernicus, the EU Earth Observation Programme, and Dr. James Hansen, Earth Institute Columbia University, point to the risks of an earlier than expected upside breakout of the 1.5°C (2.7°F) limit set by the Paris Agreement of 2015 and endorsed by 195 countries.
A recent YaleEnvironment360 headline: As 1.5 Degrees Looms, Scientists See Growing Risk of Runaway Warming, Urgent Need to Slash Emissions, March 15, 2023.
______________________________
British Columbia’s second-largest single wildfire in recorded history is rapidly gobbling up hundreds of thousands of hectares of forested land in the province’s northeast, but it’s not just the size of the burn that makes fire experts nervous, it’s the extreme temperatures inside of it.
Burning out of control through more than 500,000 hectares of boreal forest between Fort Nelson and Fort St. John, the Donnie Creek wildfire is being fed by dense fuel and dry conditions, both of which promise a hot blaze.
And that matters, says B.C. wildland fire ecologist Robert Gray. The higher the temperature a fire burns at, the more energy it releases and the more carbon it emits into the atmosphere. Werner Kurz, who leads the development of a National Forest Carbon Accounting System for Canada, says the Donnie Creek blaze has likely already let off over 77 million tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions, based on the Taiga Plains ecozone where it’s located and emissions averages from Natural Resources Canada.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-bcs-largest-blaze-stokes-long-term-carbon-concerns/
