City of Nelson planner, Matt Kuziak talks about the planning process for the next leg in Nelson’s active transportation corridor and bike route: on into Rosemont. Why is the province building a diesel fuelled ferry for Kootenay Lake and NOT planning to make it electric until 2030? Why the delay? asks Mary Donald. Province starts discussion on watershed protection, Rosie Simms from University of Victoria explains why it’s important.
LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD FEBRUARY 8TH SHOW HERE:
MORE INFO AND LINKS MENTIONNED:
Nelson’s ‘thought-exchange’ on the Rosemont bike route: our Active Transportation Corridor
https://my.thoughtexchange.com/scroll/130980911/welcome
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Information about Norway’s AMPERE electric ferry.
http://corvusenergy.com/marine-project/mf-ampere-ferry/
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POLIS Water Sustainability Project document on BC’s Watershed Security Strategy
https://poliswaterproject.org/polis-research-publication/making-collective-splash/
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BC Government’s discussion paper on watershed security:
Environment News for February 8 2022
The speech from the throne in Victoria today is expected to lay out the provincial NDP’s governments priorities for the next few years and environmentalists are watching closely what its going to do with the multi billion dollar subsidies to the LNG fracking industry. Sven Biggs from Stand.Earth says: “Cancelling our biggest fossil fuel subsidy would mean fracking companies would have to stop drilling wells that are financially unviable and start actually paying royalties on the resources they’re extracting.”
He points out that the Deep Well Royalty Credit is a massive tax loophole for the industry. A single fracking well can be eligible for between $440,000 and $2.8 million in credits. The province still owes fracking companies $3.1 billion in unused royalty credits.
The new provincial budget will follow in the next few weeks and Biggs and the whole environmental movement are closely watching what the government does with these climate killing subsidies.
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With the federal government on a mission to eliminate carbon-intensive, expensive diesel generators in remote Indigenous communities by 2030, an Indigenous financial agency is proposing a new investment mechanism to deliver faster results for the nearly 300 communities that still depend on the fuel.
The non-profit First Nations Finance Authority “is proposing a rethink of how Indigenous infrastructure is funded, and we believe there is a way to begin replacing diesel now rather than in some distant timeline down the road,” writes FNFA President and CEO Ernie Daniels in a recent post for Policy Options.
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BC Journalist Sarah Cox is one winner of the 2021 Press Freedom Award for her investigation into the Site C Dam project in BC, published by the Narwhal. The award is given to nominees who demonstrate that their public-interest work was frustrated by a cloak of secrecy, legal manoeuvres, political intimidation, or tactics that put their safety or career at risk. Sarah Cox also has done extensive reporting on clear cut logging in the province and many other topics, and we’ve had her as a guest, here on The EcoCentric.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nominations-now-open-2022-press-133800016.html?
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Globally big oil is still betting huge investments on failure of the Paris climate targets. Five of the largest planned petro projects are proceeding but will only make money if efforts to control global greenhouse gas emissions fail.
The analysis on behalf of the Carbon Tracker think tank “says that, if the goals of the Paris agreement are met, then many oil exploration projects will not deliver the returns their investors are expecting,” Climate Home News reports.
Four of the five are offshore projects that “tend to be larger and therefore more expensive and time-consuming to build,” Climate Home writes. “They all require an oil price above US$50 a barrel to break even.”
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The British Columbia government says a proposed copper and gold mine on a First Nation’s territory will not be given an environmental assessment certificate, citing potential risks to water quality and fish.
In a news release, the government said Monday it has rejected the open-pit copper, gold and molybdenum Morrison mine located about 65 kilometres northeast of Smithers, B.C., which was expected to produce 30,000 tonnes of ore per day over a 21-year period.
The proposed mine site was located on the territory of the Lake Babine Nation and upstream of the territories of the Gitanyow and Gitxsan First Nations. A portion of the proposed transmission line was on the territory of Yekooche First Nation.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-gold-copper-mine-rejected-1.6343649
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Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane as global methane concentrations soar over 1,900 parts per billion.
Scientists says the grim milestone underscores the importance of a pledge made at last year’s COP26 climate summit to curb emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is from 28 to 80 times as potent as CO2.
The growth of methane emissions slowed around the turn of the millennium, but began a rapid and mysterious uptick around 2007. The spike has caused many researchers to worry that global warming is creating a feedback mechanism that will cause ever more methane to be released, making it even harder to rein in rising temperatures.
Leaked methane emissions from gas fracking operations are a particular concern in BC.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00312-2
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Iceland is Set To End Whaling By 2024 Due To Lack Of Demand Commercial whaling in Iceland had resumed back in 2006. Now it seems that there is little money to be made whale hunting anymore, and a combination of the pandemic restrictions and Japan starting commercial hunting of whales again in 2019 has pushed the few firms allowed to hunt these marine mammals to stop.
Iceland remains one of the few countries that have formally objected to the ongoing global moratorium on whaling established by the International Whaling Commission in 1986.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/4/iceland-to-end-whaling-as-demand-dwindles
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