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KCR reporter Scott Onashyk brings us a chat with a BC conservation group that raises that’s bringing $1.2 million in conservation funding to the Kootenays. Former US President Al Gore put the climate crisis into mainstream consciousness nearly twenty years ago with his book and film An Inconvenient Truth. Last week he released a new TED Talk on the climate crisis and he directly criticizes the global oil industry. The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis, says Al Gore. A proposed new roadmap for Canada’s clean energy future includes a large nuclear power component. Susan O’Donnell from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton is back to tell us about all the problems with this plan.
COMING EVENTS
The Regional District of the Central Kootenay is starting up its postponed Climate plan public consultations, starting this month. Climate Action Open Houses will start August 24 and run in communities all around the district until the end of October. The RDCK is also hosting special Dialogue Circles to hear more directly from people how to cope with the climate emergency. The RDCK has also launched an online way you can send in your views at engage.rdck.ca.
Friday, September 15.
Global Climate Strike
Climate activists world wide are ramping things up This September, as world leaders discuss climate action at the United Nations in New York. People on every continent will join the largest-ever globally coordinated action to demand that governments end fossil fuels.
Saturday, September 16
Climate Action Provincial Assembly
The West Coast Climate Action Network, We-CAN is holding its 4th provincial Climate Action Provincial Assembly on Saturday September 16, and you can join in online. Register at:
https://westcoastclimateaction.ca/
NOW
The Fairy Creek camp is back and is calling all allies and members of the public who wish to participate in the blockade to come join them. Anyone who wishes to participate does not need to go through a pre-arrival introduction process, instead you will be met at the camp and will go through an introduction process on the ground. This Camp is led by local Indigenous Peoples, accomplices and allies, and blessed by Elder Bill Jones. You can find the Blockade easiest on Facebook.
11 am to 5 pm Sunday, August 20
Nelson TownHall Square on Baker Street
Come one and all to the 500 block of Baker Street for all kinds of activities as volunteers test drive a new public space on Baker Street.
10:30 am Sunday, August 20
CRITICAL MASS RIDE meet at Lakeside Park
Riders of all ages and abilities, join in to ride together to the Nelson Townhall Square. Meet up at 10:30 am at Lakeside Park.
ENVIRONMENT NEWS
Charges have been withdrawn against nearly 150 protesters who were arrested for participating in a blockade around old-growth logging on Vancouver Island after a judge found Mounties did not read the full text of the injunction before the arrests.
The B.C. Prosecution Service said cases against 146 protesters have been dropped because their ability to succeed was “placed in doubt” by a ruling that acquitted protester Ryan Henderson in February.
“Those cases are now concluded as a result of this ruling,” read an email to CBC News.
The confirmation comes hours after the Supreme Court of Canada said it would not hear the Crown’s appeal of the Henderson decision, marking the end of the legal road for prosecutors trying to keep the cases against protesters alive.
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Canada’s wildfires have broken yet another record — this time, for heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.
This year, climate change has driven Canada’s most severe wildfire season on record. So far, wildfires in Canada have already emitted more than double the previous record annual amount of emissions. Greg Evans, an air pollution and public health expert at the University of Toronto, said the emissions create a “feedback loop.”
“The additional release of carbon dioxide is going to result in additional warming, which results in additional drought and additional wildfires,” Evans said.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/08/04/news/canadas-wildfire-emissions-smash-another-record
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B.C. is considering a plan to reinstate grizzly hunting seven years after public outcry pushed the province to ban it. Afirst draft of the province’s new Grizzly Bear Stewardship Framework, suggests a renewed hunt in recommendations for the future of grizzly conservation.
Grizzly hunting was banned in 2017 following intense opposition from conservation groups. The new report says the ban was not made for conservation purposes but instead reflected “many British Columbians’ ethical or moral opposition towards grizzly bear hunting.”
Proponents of grizzly hunting defend it as a valid conservation measure and a critical source of income for small communities.
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A German solar manufacturer is planning to develop a $3 billion facility that could create 8,000 permanent, full-time jobs. The province says that market demand for solar panels in the United States is forecasted to reach 45 gigawatts of annual sales by 2027. The RCT Solutions plan would have an annual production capacity of 10 gigawatts of solar power when fully operational.
https://winnipegsun.com/news/provincial/german-solar-company-plans-to-build-factory-in-manitoba
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This Saturday, August 19, protestors with @on2ottawa will begin roadblocks and media events in the lower mainland to demand immediate real action on the climate crisis.
like the one we staged in May 2023 painting Victoria’s Royal BC Museum’s Woolly the Mammoth’s tusks pink. This will engage the public. After two to three weeks, we will retreat and train a new wave of activists drawn to us with the publicity and the integrity of our cause. Once 1,000 to 2,000 people join us in being arrested, history shows we have a decent chance of success.
The protestors, who had participated in the Extinction Rebellion earlier have two demands. Canadians need the federal government to fund, train and co-ordinate 50,000 firefighters. Current resources are insufficient to protect forests and climate from rampaging wildfires.
They also are demanding a national Citizens Assembly to make legally binding decisions on decisive action to bring down emissionis. Despite widespread public support for action, our four-year election cycles, combined with the power of the industry lobby, means the current political system cannot deliver its first responsibility: to keep us safe.
“People will get out of their cars and rage at us. We will be jailed. We will be subjected to hate. But I remember the suffragettes who died to give me the vote. This is worth any price,” says one of the organizers Laura Sullivan. ”Protection from wildfires, accessibility to clean air and water, and healthy soil are possible. We have to reach for this.
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Scientists have found that ocean heat waves are rapidly increasing around the world, killing off kelp, corals, shellfish and other marine life. “The research found heatwaves are becoming more frequent, prolonged and severe, with the number of heatwave days tripling in the last couple of years studied,” the Guardian reports.
The 2021 heat dome alone killed more than one billion marine animals off British Columbia’s coast. Because we rely on the ocean for so much — oxygen, food, medicine, carbon sequestration and climate regulation, recreation, transportation, storm protection — this damage affects us all.
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On July 6, the world set a revcord high average temperature at 17.23 C. That beat the previous highs on… July 3 and 4! June was the hottest month ever, but July is shaping up to be even hotter. Experts expect more records to break over the next while, as an El Niño weather pattern combines with record emissions to drive temperatures up.
“We have never seen anything like this before,” Carlo Buontempo, director of Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, told the Washington Post, noting that “we are in uncharted territory.” Temperatures are hotter than they’ve been in 125,000 years!
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The fearsome heatwaves that seared western North America, southern Europe, and China in July would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, a new study has found.
Analysis by the World Weather Attribution initiative (WWA) revealed that the furnace-like lethal heat spanning 18 days in parts of the United States and Mexico, 14 days in the lowlands of China, and one week in southern Europe “would have almost no chance of happening in a world without climate change,” reports the Washington Post. “The Chinese heatwave was made about 50 times more likely given global warming, the study found, while the European and North American heatwaves were at least 1,000 times more likely.”
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To help counter their greenhouse gas pollution, Microsoft and other companies invested millions in a project to store more carbon in Southern Oregon trees. The 2021 Bootleg Fire upended that plan.
The trees were killed by the fierce heat of the Bootleg Fire, which raged through here in July 2021, sending up huge pyrocumulus clouds of smoke and ash some 30,000 feet into the earth’s atmosphere — generating their own thunderstorms.
This was supposed to be a showcase for Seattle-based Green Diamond’s forestry strategy for a warming world. The company had committed to century-long plans to slow the pace of logging on some 570,000 acres. In exchange, the company received millions of dollars in payments from Microsoft and other companies seeking to offset their carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels by paying to grow more wood on this land.
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/08/02/climate-change-carbon-offset-oregon/
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