Nelson City Councillor Rik Logtenberg is back on the show to give us an update on the ClimateCaucus.ca the group for elected municipal representatives from across Canada who are concerned about the climate crisis. One of the things he talks about is The Infiltration Manual. Prominent author and Council of Canadians leader Maude Barlow wrote the chapter on fresh water in the LNG and Fracking process in All FRACKED Up. The Watershed Sentinel magazine published the book and is holding webinars now with some of the authors in the book. We have a clip of Maude Barlow from the first webinar in the series.
Listen or download the show here:
Useful Links to show sources and events:
Fracking BC: Report from the People #3 The Watershed Sentinel webinar The third webinar in this series, Site C, LNG, and Me, will be held Wednesday, February 24, 2021, from 1 – 12 PM.
https://watershedsentinel.ca/articles/fracking-bc-report-from-the-people-webinar-series/
Webinar 2| From the Grassroots to the Courts: how criminalizing ecocide could benefit land defenders.
Webinar TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2021 AT 4 PM PST
The purpose of this webinar series, co-hosted by RAVENTrust and Stop Ecocide Canada, is to educate and raise awareness on using international law, and specifically a crime of ecocide, to uphold Indigenous rights and environmental protection. In this second discussion, we will hear stories from the frontlines, centered on how criminalizing ecocide could benefit Indigenous communities and land defenders. GET THE LINK HERE.
Virtual Columbia River Treaty meeting Feb. 24 at 6 p.m. PST.
The town-hall-style meeting will feature Canadian negotiators, Indigenous Nations, local government representatives and others involved in treaty negotiations.
Topics include current Canada-U.S. negotiations, ongoing Indigenous Nations-led ecosystem studies, Local Governments’ Committee updated recommendations and work underway domestically to address interests related to the treaty.
Questions can be submitted ahead of time to columbiarivertreaty@gov.bc.ca by Feb. 18.
Download the Climate Caucus Infiltration Manual HERE.
Environment News for Feb. 16 2021
Last week Nelson-Creston MLA Brittny Anderson announced $240,000 in provincial funding to local environmental causes and to search and rescue teams.
Brittny Anderson said: “Search and rescue volunteers provide critical support and aid to people who are in distress. Enhanced training for SAR volunteers helps to keep our community members safe.”
West Kootenay EcoSociety, Central Kootenay Invasive Species Society, Friends of Kootenay Lake Stewardship Society, and Kokanee Creek Nature Centre Society are each receiving money from the Community Gaming Grant program
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The provincial government has approved the Zincton resort concept to proceed in the application process. The concept of a year-round ski, hiking and mountain biking resort east of New Denver is controversial in New Denver and beyond.
The B.C. government’s Mountain Resorts Branch said the Zincton Lift Company can develop a formal proposal document.
The Zincton resort plan is to build a 30-hectare ski village built just off Highway 31A east of New Denver. The resort would feature lift-serviced access into thousands of hectares of alpine backcountry.
The government’s Mountain Resorts Branch received over 3,000 comments on the proposal earlier in 2020.
A spokesperson for the Mountain Resorts Branch said the province considers the Zincton proposal to be a feasible concept and has invited the proponent to submit a formal proposal.”
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A new report finds fossil fuel pollution was responsible for 8.7 million, or one in five, global deaths in 2018 — far higher than previously thought. The study, conducted by Harvard and other universities, found regions with the highest concentrations of particulate matter from fossil fuels had the worst mortality rates and include China and India, as well as eastern North America and Europe.
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The founder of a Vancouver environmental nonprofit is the winner of an international award that will help her and her organization make important contributions toward tackling the climate emergency.
Canopy executive director Nicole Rycroft is one of two recipients of the Climate Breakthrough Award for 2021.
The award honours outstanding climate strategists to develop and execute new strategies to address the climate crisis.
Rycroft will receive a US$3 million grant over the next three years, in addition to support from the Climate Breakthrough Project.
Canopy, has successfully involved hundreds of fashion, publishing, and consumer brands around the world in changing their production chains, encouraging industry innovations, and protecting forests.
Canopy was involved in the final instalment of the Harry Potter series being printed on eco-paper in more than 25 countries, and it also helped transform the fashion industry’s viscose textile supply chain—over 50 percent of global viscose production is now ranked at low risk of originating from ancient and endangered forests.
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Last week the federal government announced plans to spend $14.9 billion over the next eight years on public transportation projects across the country.
The funding includes $5.9 billion in short-term funding that will be disbursed on a project-by-project basis, starting this year.
The rest is to go toward the creation of a permanent transit fund of $3 billion per year starting in 2026. Money from that fund will be earmarked following consultations with provinces, territories, municipalities and Indigenous communities.
“We need efficient and modern public transit systems that make our communities more connected,” Trudeau said ahead of a meeting with the mayors of Canada’s largest cities.
“While these investments are good for the economy and crucial to our recovery from this global crisis, they’re also helping us achieve our climate goals.”
Prime Minister Trudeau said the funding could be used for everything from subway extensions and electrified transit fleets to walkways, cycling pathways and projects to improve rural mobility.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-transit-fund-1.5908346
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A group of more than 500 international scientists last week wrote world leaders to point out the dangers of burning of trees for energy. So-called bio-energy poses “a double climate problem” that threatens forests’ biodiversity and efforts to stem the planet’s ecological emergency.
The scientists say forest “preservation and restoration” is key and slashing of trees for bioenergy is “misguided.”
The destruction of forests, which are a carbon sink, creates a “carbon debt.” And though regrowing “trees and displacement of fossil fuels may eventually pay off this carbon debt,” the signatories say that “regrowth takes time the world does not have to solve climate change.”
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Squamish Nation is planning 6,000 homes in a new Vancouver neighbourhood called Senakw.
“The expression of Squamish values is becoming more and more clear,” said Khelsilem, a Squamish councillor who is leading the project for his nation in partnership with developers Westbank. They plan to start construction late this year.
The project, which is not subject to city regulation, now consists of 12 buildings ranging from 17 to 59 storeys. Since last year, the Squamish and Westbank have added an office tower. It will include low-emissions construction and energy-efficient architecture, very few private cars and a rich mix of activities.
Khelsilem said “It’s about opening up, and not alienating people,” he said. “It’s a village feeling, reminiscent of our historical community here.”
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America’s wealthiest people pay a fraction of the taxes they did 50 years ago.
According to a new IPS briefing paper, the richest .01 percent of Americans, about 33,000 people, pay just one-sixth of what they used to pay in tax, when measured as a percentage of their total wealth.
The top .01 percent in America is a phenomenally wealthy group. Even during America’s most egalitarian periods, the average member of the top .01% held over 200 times the wealth of the average American. Today, the wealth of the average top .01 percenter is nearly 1,000 times that of the average American and is closing in on one billion dollars.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/02/13/taxes-rich-one-sixth-what-they-used-be
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Last week there were changes in the protest at the Mary River mine in Nunavut. Protestors relocated to a nearby cabin, ending a blockade of the airstrip and trucking road that had been preventing traffic in and out for nearly a week.
The blockade is in protest of an expansion at the Mary River Mine, operated by Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation about 176 kilometres from Pond Inlet, and the damage it could do to the environment. The protest started last week during environmental hearings for the mine.
Protesters are calling on their regional Inuit organization to represent them better in negotiations with the mine, or to let their communities represent themselves.
About 700 staff from southern provinces were prevented from leaving when protestors mounted the blockade.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/protesters-move-away-from-mary-river-airstrip-1.5910360
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A new study warns that countries’ pledges to reduce planet-heating emissions as part of the global effort to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement must be dramatically scaled up to align with even the deal’s less ambitious target of keeping temperature rise below 2°C—though preferably 1.5°C—by the end of the century.
Researchers at the University of Washington found that the country-based rate of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions cuts should increase by 80% beyond current nationally determined contributions (NDCs)—the term for each nation’s pledge under the Paris agreement—to meet the 2°C target.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, adds to the mountain of evidence that since the Paris agreement—which also has a bolder 1.5°C target—was adopted in late 2015, countries around the world have not done enough to limit human-caused global heating.
Greta Thunberg of the youth-led climate movement Fridays for Future called the findings further evidence “that our so-called ‘climate targets’ are insufficient.”
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