LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD THE SHOW HERE:
Another look at transportation with co-host Solita Work.
Alastair Craighead from Better Island Transit talks about how the bus service issues on the Island are very similar to those faced in the West Kootenay… extremely low levels of inter-community buses.
Dave Damer is a Nelsonite who works with the National Research Council on innovative business ideas. Solita asks him about the feasibility of a GoShare model for parcels and goods in Canada too.
GoShare is an American app business that offers fast parcel delivery and even full moving services. We speak with Shaun Savage about how it’s competing with Fedex and UPS.
LINKS MENTIONED ON THE SHOW:
Better Island Transit https://betterislandtransit.ca
IRAP Canada from the National Research Council https://nrc.canada.ca/en/support-technology-innovation
GoShare Parcel and delivery https://goshare.co/
COMING EVENTS
5 pm Saturday January 11th, 2025
Skills Centre in Trail. 1060 Eldorado St.
Federal NDP Nominee Forum
Who will represent the NDP in the new riding of Columbia-Kootenay-Southern Rockies in the upcoming federal election first nominees’ debate! This inaugural event provides a crucial opportunity to hear from the two nominees, well known Nelson City Councillor Keith Page and another Nelsonite, Kallee Linns, Executive Director of the West Kootenay Regional Arts Council.
Noon Friday Jan 17, 2025
On line Zoom webinar
BC First Nations Climate Plan
The BC First Nations Climate Action and Strategy Plan is being presented by Cameron Spooner, Hulbux Hodwit Ax, climate change policy analyst for the Union of BC Indian Chiefs.
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/UIqX1OUZTcSrHds_uS5eZw#/registration
3-6 pm Thursday January 23
Mir Centre for Peace in Castlegar
Choral Music: 40 Words for Yes
‘
A surround-sound choral work composed by Nelson’s Doug Jamieson.
40 Words for Yes will be presented continuously from 3:00-6:00 pm. It’s a free event.
Also, there is a beautiful nature trail nearby which meanders through the woods and down along the mighty Columbia river to explore.
1:30 Sunday, January 26, 2025
Capitol Theatre
Science Pub featuring Suzanne Simard.
West Kootenay Watershed Collaborative presents Suzanne Simard for its 2nd Science Pub at the Capitol Theatre.
Dr. Simard, a professor of Forest Ecology at UBC and best-selling author, leads a team of researchers on the Mother Tree Project, which brings together academics, governments, First Nations and forestry companies to test forest renewal practices.
Price for WCWatershed Collaboraive memberws $18! Please visit Become A Member – West Kootenay Watershed Collaborative https://www.westkootenaywater.ca/
ENVIRONMENT NEWS BITS AND LINKS
The prominent anti-whaling activist Paul Watson was released Tuesday from prison in Greenland after Danish officials rejected a request by Japan to extradite him.
Watson was arrested in Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, in July due to a warrant issued by Japan in 2012, which alleged that Watson had interfered with a Japanese whaling vessel and caused injury to a crew member in 2010, according to The New York Times. He could have faced up to 15 years in jail if convicted.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/paul-watson-free-japan-greenland
British Columbia’s New Democratic Party (BC NDP) was just re-elected in a campaign where they talked about BC’s climate leadership. However, the province has turned into a climate laggard, with emissions stuck far above 1990 levels. All the increase in climate pollution has happened while the BC NDP has been running the government.
BC’s climate pollution since 1990 has gone up by 26 per cent.
Canada has the least climate progress in the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies and BC is doing even worse than the country as a whole.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/12/22/analysis/bc-ndp-climate-leader
Ontario has asked the Canadian Supreme Court to rule on an historic youth-led challenge of the province’s climate plan, moving the case a step closer to a possible hearing before Canada’s top court.
“This proposed appeal would ask the Suprene Court to determine, for the first time, whether and to what extent the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms imposes obligations on Canadian governments to combat climate change,” read Ontario’s application for leave to appeal.
The case, Mathur v. Ontario, was brought by seven young people who argue Ontario’s weakened emissions target violated their rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In October, the Ontario Court of appeal breathed new life into the case by ordering a new hearing after a trial judge rejected it.
Youth plaintiffs celebrated on Wednesday after the Montana Supreme Court upheld a judge’s August 2023 decision that the state government’s promotion of climate-wrecking fossil fuels violates the young residents’ state constitutional rights.
“This ruling is a victory not just for us, but for every young person whose future is threatened by climate change,” said Rikki Held, the named plaintiff for Held v. State of Montana, in a statement. “We have been heard, and today the Montana Supreme Court has affirmed that our rights to a safe and healthy climate cannot be ignored.”
Highlighting that “this will forever be in the court record, despite any continued rhetoric of denial coming from people in power in the state,” Grace, another plaintiff, said, “I am thrilled that the Montana Supreme Court has sided with Montana citizens to protect the people and the places we love.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/montana-supreme-court-climate-change
Battery storage capacity in the United States has surged from almost nothing in 2010 to 20.7 gigawatts in July 2024, equivalent to the output of about 20 nuclear reactors.
The rapid growth in storage saw five gigawatts added in the first half of 2024 alone, reports the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
The EIA predicts this capacity could double again to 40 gigawatts by 2025 with planned expansions, writes The Guardian.
This scale of deployment places battery storage in the key role of maintaining electricity supply as intermittent renewables like wind and solar are added to the grid, the EIA says.
Outgoing President Joe Biden on Monday moved to permanently ban offshore oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory, protecting swaths of the East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific, and Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea from fossil fuel exploitation just before President-elect Donald Trump is set to retake power.
Biden said in a statement that his decision “reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs.”
Invoking the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill—the largest in U.S. history—Biden said future drilling off the coasts he’s seeking to protect “is not worth the risks.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/joe-biden-offshore-drilling
Climate advocates in New York on Thursday celebrated a “massive win” for working people, youth, and the climate as Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul made the state the second to pass a law to make fossil fuel giants financially responsible for the environmental damages they cause.
Hochul signed the Climate Change Superfund Act into law after years of advocacy, delivering what Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), called “a welcome holiday gift for New York taxpayers.”
The law is modeled on the 1980 State and Federal Superfund law, which requires corporations to fund the cleanup of toxic waste that they cause, and will require the largest fossil fuel companies, which are responsible for a majority of carbon emissions since the beginning of this century, to pay about $3 billion per year for 25 years.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/new-york-pollution
The UK closed its last coal-fired power plant in 2024. It was a symbolic moment as the UK was the first country in the world to use coal for public power generation and the fossil fuel was the lifeblood of the industrial revolution.
Renewable energy sources are growing rapidly around the world. In the US, wind energy generation hit a record in April, exceeding coal-fired generation.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects the world to add 5,500 GW of renewable energy capacity between now and 2030 and to grow global renewable capacity 2.7 times compared to 2022,
Back in 2021, the Ecuadorian government issued a landmark ruling stating that mining in its Los Cedros cloud forest violated the rights of nature. Another ruling in Ecuador stated that pollution had violated the rights of the Machángara River that runs through the capital, Quito.
Beyond Ecuador, a growing number of natural features and spaces were granted legal personhood in 2024. In New Zealand, the peaks of Egmont National Park – renamed Te Papakura o Taranaki – were recognised as ancestral mountains and jointly became a legal person, known as Te Kāhui Tupua.
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped to a nine-year low in 2024, falling by more than 30% in the 12 months to July, according to data released by Brazil’s national space research institute, INPE. Roughly 2,428 sq miles (6,288 sq km) of the rainforest were destroyed, an area larger than the size of the US state of Delaware. While this area is still vast, it is the lowest annual loss since 2015.
In California, wildlife has benefited from decades-long drives by the Native American Yurok Tribe to replenish animals on tribal territories. In 2024, this culminated in salmon returning to the Klamath River.
After a 100-year hiatus, the fish were spotted in Oregon’s Klamath River basin, following an historic dam removal further downstream in the California stretch of the Klamath. In August, the final of four dams were removed – in what was America’s biggest dam removal project – following pressure from environmentalists and tribes.
Longest running Enviro News show on the Radio! 