LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD THE OCTOBER 3RD SHOW:
We take part in the Nelson Townhall Square experiment for a sunny Sunday on Baker Street.
Nelson Mayor Janice Morrison was on Baker Street and we asked her for her impressions of the event, and about Grizzly bears in Nelson and more.
Several clips from Baker Street participants highlight how much fun they had at the Townhall Square event. One of the organizers George Chandler gives us his impressions too.
Nelson City Councillor Leslie Payne attended last week’s Union of BC Municipalities conference in Vancouver and she comes on to talk about what she saw and about the housing issues that took front and centre.
There’s some fun music, environment events and environment news tidbits on the show too.
EVENTS COMING UP:
Tuesday, October 3rd @ 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
BC Libraries Present — Kim Stanley Robinson: Imagine a Better Climate Future
BC Libraries Present a series of compelling author talks presented virtually and coming up tonight, Tuesday, October 3rd. It’s author Kim Stanley Robinson. He says, speculative fiction can help us find hope by showing what an alternative, better future could look like. In The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson imagines a world ravaged by climate disaster, where humans find ways to change politics, technology, and the economy to win the fight against climate change.
Register here to attend this live-streamed event. See the individual event listings on the registration page for more details.
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Saturday, October 7
Kootenay Mushroom Festival in Kaslo.
On Baker Street on Sunday I ran into Monique Gottlieb who is helping organize the Kootenay Mushroom Festival coming up in Kaslo on Saturday October 7.
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OCT 10, 2023, 6:30 – 8:30 PM
Mir Centre for Peace, Truth & Justice Speaker Series: Monique Gray Smith
Castlegar, Brilliant Cultural Centre
The MIR Centre for Peace has a timely speaker coming up on October 10th at the Brilliant Cultural Centre. Author Monique Gray Smith will share her personal journey of truth and reconciliation and how that journey has transformed her and her family. She will share stories and offer readings from her various books.
Doors open at 6 pm. The event begins at 6:30 pm.
Get tickets online Mir Centre for Peace.
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10 am to 2 pm SATURDAY, October 14, 2023
Visit Climate Friendly Homes In Your Neighbourhood
Homes in Rossland, Castlegar and Nelson open to show how energy efficiency can save money and energy. Nelson homes are: Granite Road, Heddle Road, Fairview, Observatory St. Find all the details here:
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The Regional District of the Central Kootenay’s Climate Action Open Houses have just started and run in communities all around the district until the end of October.
The RDCK has also launched an online way you can send in your views at engage.rdck.ca.
This is a great chance to get our Region really proactive on reducing the climate crisis, and adapting to the extreme conditions we now have.
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ENVIRONMENT NEWS
Rising emissions from the oil and gas sector and buildings are defeating Canada’s efforts to get its climate pollution under control. That’s the conclusion from the Canadian Climate Institute who have done a preliminary analysis of the country’s 2022 emissions data published late last week
Continued growth in oil and gas sector emissions accounted for nearly three-quarters of the increase, continuing a “longer-term trend of steadily rising emissions,” the institute warned.
The oil industry and buildings and houses have seen substantial increases in carbon emissions since 2005, in contrast with sectors like electricity where emissions have decreased 56% since that time.”
The 2.1% increase over 2021 levels leave the country with just a 6.5% emission reduction since 2005—far short of the federal target of 40 to 45% by 2030, the CCI said in a release.
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We heard a couple of weeks ago on this show how Nanaimo recently voted to ban FortisBC’s natural gas hookups from new buildings. But the oil and gas lobby is pushing back. Alberta’s infamous pro-oil and gas “war room” launched a cross-border political campaign to reverse the decision.
The Canadian Energy Centre (CEC) is funded by the Alberta government to the tune of $31.8 million in 2023, up from $7.7 million in 2022, according to the centre’s annual report and financial statements.
The CEC has launched a hardball lobbying push on its associated Support Canadian Energy website urging oil and gas supporters to flood Nanaimo city council with letters to press the local government to reverse its decision.
The Alberta agency targeted the small municipality of Nanaimo after its city council recently decided to accelerate the phaseout of FortisBC gas hookups in new buildings to meet B.C.’s mandated climate targets.
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The United States Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service will distribute a record US$1 billion in urban forest grants this year, supporting President Joe Biden’s pledge to halve the number of Americans without access to parks and nature by 2030.
Bolstered by the Inflation Reduction Act, the funding is more than 27 times what was allocated last year, reports Smart Cities Dive. Dollars will be awarded to communities across the country to “plant and maintain trees, combat extreme heat and climate change, and improve access to nature in cities, towns, and suburbs where more than 84% of Americans live, work, and play,” the Forest Service said in a release.
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BC’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) has issued two administrative penalties totalling $346,000 to Coastal GasLink Pipeline Ltd. (CGL) on Sept. 19, 2023, for non-compliance in its massive construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. That’s the controversial pipeline running through Wet’swuet’en lands.
Failures in erosion and sediment control measures were identified by BC compliance and enforcement officers during four multi-day inspections along the pipeline construction route in April and May 2022. An additional penalty of $6,000 was issued for providing false and misleading information in October 2022 related to maintenance inspection records.
The BC gov’t says the latest financial penalties reflect the EAO’s continued escalation of enforcement due to repeated non-compliance with EAO requirements. The new fines follow three previous penalties of $213,600 (January 2023), $170,100 (May 2022) and $72,500 (February 2022) for failing to adequately control erosion and sediment.
https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2023ENV0058-001481
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Last week the governments of Antigua and Barbuda, an island nation in the Caribbean highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and Timor-Leste, a Southeast Asian state also vulnerable to climate impacts and heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues, joined a growing bloc of six Pacific nations pushing for the negotiation of a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The island nations announced their endorsement of the major new climate policy proposal at the main stage of the Global Citizen Festival in New York. In a decisive step to address the climate emergency, they showed fellow world leaders what the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres meant when he asked countries to raise their climate ambition just three days ago at the UN Climate Ambition Summit.
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Swedish manufacturer Northvolt AB, a supplier of electric vehicle batteries to automakers Volkswagen and BMW, announced last week it will build a C$7-billion battery gigafactory near Montreal that it claims will represent the largest private investment in Quebec’s history.
The site will include facilities for cathode active material production and battery recycling, and will employ up to 3,000 people, CP says.
Quebec’s government has committed up to $2.9 billion to secure the deal, while the federal government will contribute up to $1.34 billion.
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An industry group that’s called Canada’s federal climate targets “unachievable” and referred to opponents of oil and gas expansion as “climate alarmists” has received nearly $1.23 million in taxpayer money from the British Columbia government.
The First Nations LNG Alliance is among the country’s loudest advocates for projects that can export billions of cubic feet per day of liquified natural gas from Canadian shores to foreign markets. It counts among its affiliate members LNG Canada, a $40 billion gas export project on B.C.’s northwest coast led by Shell, Petronas, PetroChina, Mitsubishi and Korea Gas.
The group, which describes itself as a “collective of First Nations who are participating in, and supportive of, sustainable LNG development in BC,” last September urged Canada to scale back national climate targets the country agreed to following the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, saying in a federal submission that “the climate goals are unrealistic ‘pie in the sky.’”
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