LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD AUGUST 22 SHOW HERE:
Talking local concern and preparation for wildfires with Kaslo forestry and fire expert John Cathro. Paris Marshall-Smith from the RDCK tells us about the climate acdtion consultations going on this fall. Economist Marc Lee from the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives in BC unravels the contradictions between selling fossil gas and really facing the climate crisis.
SOME ENVIRONMENT EVENTS
Nelson Townhall Square
Baker Street 11 am to 2 pm Sunday, September 17
The Nelson TownHall Square Event on Baker Street that was planned for this past Sunday was cancelled because of the heavy wildfire smoke and public health concerns. The second TownHall Square is still set for Sunday, September 17th and will run from 11 am to 5 pm on Baker between Ward and Josephine Streets.
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John Valliant speaking in Nelson
Thursdau Sept. 14, 7 pm. Capitol Theatre, Nelson
Award-winning author John Vaillant speak about his newest book, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast. Released during the worst fire season on record, Fire Weather has been described as “riveting, spellbinding, astounding on every page…compulsively readable…a towering achievement”.
Valliant looks at the events and aftermath of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire and describes the tangled history of humans and fire, how this dynamic energy has shaped our society, and how it now threatens it in the context of ongoing climate disruption.
John Vaillant is also the author of the best-selling books, The Golden Spruce, and The Tiger. This community event is hosted by Mir Centre for Peace at Selkirk College.
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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.
The climate crisis is escalating but so is the global movement for climate justice.
A Global Climate Strike is planned by Fridays for Future on September 15, and a March to End Fossil Fuels will be held in New York on September 17. This is a call for others globally to join us with your own creative actions, speakouts, art installations, marches, protests, strikes, occupations, forums, gatherings, civil disobedience or digital mobilisations.
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The West Coast Climate Action Network, We-CAN is holding its 4th provincial Climate Actin Provincial Assembly on Saturday September 16, and you can join in online. This assembly is focused on building solidarity between climate action groups and labour activists; poverty/housing activists; racial justice activists; Indigenous rights activists; faith activists; and climate finance activists. Find out more https://westcoastclimateaction.ca/
ENVIRONMENT NEWS
In a groundbreaking legal decision, a Montana judge last week ruled in favor of young people who had accused state officials of violating their constitutional rights by promoting fossil fuels.
In a 103-page court order, Judge Kathy Seeley of the first judicial district court, ruled that a stable climate is included in a right to a “clean and healthful environment”, guaranteed in the state’s constitution.
She also found a provision in Montana’s Environmental Policy Act, which prohibited the state from considering climate impacts when permitting energy projects, to be unconstitutional.
The Montana young folks celebrated the win in one of many similar case in the US and around the world.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/20/what-happened-montana-climate-trial-decision
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The shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy is moving faster than energy transition advocates dreamed, with China, the United States, and the European Union leading the way.
China opened 107 gigawatts of new solar capacity last year and plans to add twice as much in 2023. Last year’s new installations were “roughly equivalent to the entire historical installed capacity of the U.S.,” the magazine Politico reports.
The New York Times says: “The United States is pivoting away from fossil fuels and toward wind, solar, and other renewable energy, even in areas dominated by the oil and gas industries,”
“Explosive growth in solar power means most EU countries will hit their 2030 renewable energy targets ahead of time, new data shows, fuelling optimism on efforts to bring down global emissions,”
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The Royal Bank of Canada is facing international criticism for its continuing investments in coal mining and power generation, enabled by an October, 2020 policy that contains “two giant loopholes” for investments that many other financial institutions are turning away from.
In a release this week, Paris-based Reclaim Finance says the RBC coal policy [pdf] is “one of the poorest among global banks,” allowing the institution to continue doing business with 319 of the 526 coal mining companies and 400 of the 604 coal power companies on the Global Coal Exit List (GCEL) maintained by Urgewald, a non-profit environmental and human rights organization based in Germany.
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Local fishers, Greenpeace, and others shared fresh concerns this week as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that the release of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear facility into the Pacific Ocean may start as soon as Thursday, more than a dozen years after an earthquake caused a tsunami that triggered reactor meltdowns.
Over the next three decades, Japan plans to discharge about 1.34 million gallons of water—or enough to fill over 500 Olympic swimming pools—into the ocean after using an advanced liquid processing system (ALPS) to remove most radionuclides.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/fukushima-nuclear-water-release
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Ecuadorians voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to reject oil drilling in a section of Yasuní National Park, the most biodiverse area of the imperiled Amazon rainforest.
Nearly 60% of Ecuadorian voters backed a binding referendum opposing oil exploration in Block 43 of the national park, which is home to uncontacted Indigenous tribes as well as hundreds of bird species and more than 1,000 tree species.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/yasuni-national-park-ecuador
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Veteran climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy commeted this week that: “Amid the devastating Maui fires, I see many arguing, ‘it’s weather, arson—anything but climate change’,”
“let’s set the record straight. Climate change doesn’t usually start the fires; but it intensifies them, increasing the area they burn + making them much more dangerous.”
The stage for such an intensification was surely set on the island of Maui this summer, and with shocking speed.
Citing the U.S. Drought Monitor, the Associated Press reports that Maui went from being unusually dry nowhere on the island on May 23, to being “either abnormally dry or in moderate drought” across 66% of its territory on June 13—in less than three weeks.
The speed with which Maui shifted into drought, or near-drought, fits the definition of a “flash drought,” University of Wisconsin atmospheric scientist Jason Otkin told AP.
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