LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD NOVEMBER 26 SHOW HERE:
Solita Work from the West Kootenay Cycling Coalition co-hosts the show. President Peter Ladner tells us why BC’s Cycling Coalition wants 30 km speed limits. Anne DeGrace talks about Taghum Hall as a community centre. Rural transport in other countries is often easier than here. Alex Leffellaar talks about how he’s travelled in Latin America.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW:
BC Cycling Coalition
https://bccycling.ca/
Taghum Hall
https://www.taghumhall.ca/
COMING EVENTS:
10 am Saturday, November 30th
Everything “R” Festival
1765 Columbia Ave, Rossland
Rossland Refractory and Rotary Club of Rossland are hosting a day long festival with a market selling recycled and reuse products, an Earthbox building workshop, youth activities, a bike repair clinic, and more. Also bring your clean and unlabeled (cut them off if you need) plastic so the Refactory can turn it into useful products. Entrance by donation.
Evening dance featuring The Karli Harris band. Tickets $20 available at Out of the Cellar.
For more detailed information, contact Craig at koelsociety AT gmail.com.
Last week on The EcoCentric we heard Dogwood BC’s Kai Nagata on what’s happening in the northwest with the proposed Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline. The decision is coming this month on whether to require an updated environmental assessment on the project.
The pipeline is proposed to bring fracked gas to yet another LNG plant, for export to Asia.
West Coast Climate Action has more information and links on the PRGT and how to lobby now against it.
The Narwhal has a great explainer here: https://thenarwhal.ca/prgt-five-things-explainer/
Kai Nagata’s presentation at an earlier webinar, with slides, is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPxyxkfVJPQ
Dogwood BC’s backgrounder is here. https://www.dogwoodbc.ca/news/what-is-the-prince-rupert-gas-transmission-line/
The Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs’ website is here https://www.gitanyowchiefs.com/news/
https://www.projects.eao.gov.bc.ca/p/588511d9aaecd9001b826b33/project-details
The Power of Forests: features a talk by local forest activist Joe Karthein on BC Timber Sales. BCTS is the government agency meant to act in the public’s interest, but it is leading the charge in unsustainable logging. In this latest video, Joe pulls back the curtain on BCTS. He believes we can have a thriving forestry industry that benefits everyone, from loggers to local communities. Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=VTSr-8hYY32zChun&v=_k2wWYfGxbs&feature=youtu.be
ENVIRONMENT NEWS BITS
The COP29 climate summit finally wound up in the early hours of Sunday morning in Baku, Azerbaijan, with a weak deal. Some United Nations officials and COP veterans tried to call the weak compromise a success but the COP was two weeks of largely futile, failed negotiations.
The process that demands consensus among 195 countries could only come up with a $300-billion climate finance plan that doesn’t take effect until 2035 and is far short of the $1.3 trillion developing countries were looking for.
“COP29 was a dumpster fire. Except it’s not trash that’s burning—it’s our planet,” said Nikki Reisch, climate and energy director at the Center for International Environmental Law. “And developed countries are holding both the matches and the firehose.”
https://energymixweekender.substack.com/p/a-band-aid-on-a-bullet-wound-what
A $4.5 million settlement has finally been announced in a class action lawsuit arising from the 2013 Lemon Creek fuel spill in the Slocan Valley. The people represented in the class action are over 2,776 property and business owners in the Lemon Creek and Slocan Valley watersheds.
The defendants in the case are Executive Flight Centre Fuel Services Ltd., Transwest Helicopters Ltd., the Province of British Columbia, and Danny LaSante, the truck driver whose load spilled into Lemon Creek.
The mishap spilled 35,000 litres of jet fuel into the creek, polluting the stream and causing a local evacuation of people living up to 40 kilometres downstream in the Slocan Valley.
On Thursday, Vancouver city councillors will vote on final bylaw changes that, if approved, would allow home builders in the city to use natural gas for space and water heating in new homes.
It would be a reversal of current climate-friendly practices and council has already shown it’s split over the proposed change.
Since 2016, Vancouver has been on a path to gradually phase out natural gas for space and water heating in most new building types by 2025 because burning natural gas to heat space and water in buildings is the single largest source of carbon pollution in the city, according to materials from City of Vancouver staff.
In July, councillors voted 6-5, with Mayor Ken Sim casting the tie-breaking vote remotely from vacation in favour of Coun. Brian Montague’s motion seeking the change.
Montague argued allowing natural gas for space and water heating would reduce barriers to building middle-income and multiplex housing and make Vancouver more affordable.
Canada’s largest electricity storage battery is up and testing in Ontario and ready to buffer 250 megawatts of power. Industrial-scale battery plants will be key to maintaining Ontario’s grid as power demands rise.
The Oneida plant of $800 million Tesla-made batteries stores enough power to meet the demand of a city of around 200,000 people.
The project now undergoing commissioning tests is in the vanguard of a wider strategy to upgrade Ontario’s strained electricity grid for the future.
Greenpeace activists block Pierre Poilievre’s driveway.
“Poilievre has said he’s going to scrap the oil and gas Emissions Cap, he’s going to scrap the Clean Fuel Standard, he’s going to scrap the Clean Electricity Regulations, he’s going to get rid of the Assessment Act. Every major policy we have in this country to fight climate change, he’s said he’s going to get rid of and that’s a gift to polluters that is Donald Trump size.”
Misleading and false climate content surging through social media and other channels threatens Global climate talks by undermining science-based policy decisions, United Nations officials said.
“We are at the point where the issue of disinformation, the intentional spread of inaccurate information, has been recognized as an urgent threat by the international community at the highest level,” Martina Donlon, head of the climate section of the United Nations department of global communications in New York, said at a Nov. 20 press conference in Baku.
She said a U.N. initiative to tackle the problem, which ranges from outright denial and greenwashing to harassment of climate scientists, is growing quickly.
Longest running Enviro News show on the Radio! 