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‘No Need for Site C’: Review Panel Chair Speaks Out Against Dam in New Video

June 20, 2016

‘No Need for Site C’: Review Panel Chair Speaks Out Against Dam in New Video

Harry Swain, Chair of the Site C Joint Review Panel

“I think we’re making a big mistake, a very expensive one,” Swain says in the video. “Of the $9 billion it will cost, at least $7 billion will never be returned. You and I as rate payers will end up paying $7 billion bucks for something we get nothing for.”

Since 2005, domestic demand for electricity in B.C. has been essentially flat, making it difficult to justify the dam which will flood 107 kilometres of the Peace River and destroy thousands of hectares of prime agricultural land.

“There is no need for Site C,” Swain says. “If there was a need, we could meet it with a variety of other renewable and smaller scale sources.”

With a price tag of $8.8 billion, Site C dam is the most expensive public infrastructure project in B.C.’s history. The joint review panel that Swain chaired found demand for the power had not been proven and called for the project to be reviewed by the B.C. Utilities Commission — a recommendation the B.C. government ignored.

Swain first spoke out about the Site C dam last year, but this is the first video interview on the subject with the former deputy minister of Indian and Northern Affairs.

“The provinces have the responsibility for the management of natural resources. I don’t think British Columbia has done its job,” Swain says, referring to B.C.’s failure to investigate alternatives to the Site C dam.

Swain outlined the economic case against the dam in an opinion piece in the Vancouver Sun on Friday.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How the Fort McMurray Climate Conversation Went Down in Flames

May 14, 2016

How the Fort McMurray Climate Conversation Went Down in Flames

After Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New York and New Jersey in 2012, Bloomberg published a front page spread proclaiming, “It’s Global Warming, Stupid.”

For years, major storms, droughts, floods and fires have been connected to climate change. The climate angle was even fair game during last summer’s wildfires in western Canada.

So how did the climate conversation around the still-raging Fort McMurray wildfire that destroyed thousands of homes become so befuddling-ly messed up?

Conversations about climate change as a factor in the wildfires has garnered about as much attention as the wildfires themselves. For a recap of the “middle-finger salutes,” schadenfreude and #tinyviolins mock-sympathy for the people of Fort McMurray, check out this article on Slate.

(Add in, May 12: It’s worthwhile to point out that while there were a lot of unfortunate aspects of the public conversation about the fire, many environmental NGOs rallied their organizational capacity to raise money and basic support for evacuees. The executive directors of Canada’s most prominent environmental groups including the David Suzuki Foundation, Ecojustice, Ecology Ottawa, Environmental Defence, Equiterre, Greenpeace, LeadNow, Sierra Club, Stand and West Coast Environmental Law urged support for evacuees in a joint press release published Friday, May 6.)

Cara Pike, climate communications expert with Climate Access, says the urge to link what’s happening in Fort McMurray to climate change should be tempered by a keen sensitivity to the very real human suffering on the ground.

“We need to lead with our humanity,” Pike told DeSmog Canada. “This is a good time to listen very, very hard to what people are dealing with, what they care about, what they want for their futures and try to find those common places.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How the Media Shapes Public Response to Climate Change

September 15, 2015

How the Media Shapes Public Response to Climate Change

Windmill ribbon cutting

Climate change stories that give local information and emphasize positive achievements are more likely to encourage people to become active participants in climate change action than stories of political failures, a newstudy by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has found .

Researchers worked with focus groups made up of 53 people from the Metro Vancouver area who were concerned about climate change, but had little involvement with climate politics, causes or organizations. After reviewing news stories with the groups, researchers found that the overwhelming response to news about climate politics was cynicism.

“While there was a strong desire for more aggressive political action to address climate change, virtually all expressed considerable skepticism that governments, corporations or their fellow citizens could be convinced of the need to address the problem,” the paper says.

“Even more troubling was the tendency of many participants to dismiss collective action and political engagement as irrelevant.”

Those taking part in the study were hopeful about the possibilities offered by collective political action, but were discouraged by the power that corporate interests exercise over the political process and the lack of political will to act.

However, when participants read success stories about climate politics, were given information about local “everyday heroes” showing initiative in their communities and were told about the local causes and consequences of climate change, they were more likely to become engaged.

“While many remained skeptical of the broader potential of climate politics, there was much greater willingness to consider the positive impacts of different forms of political activism,” according to the study.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Prime Minister Harper’s Inaction on Climate Killed the Keystone XL Oilsands Pipeline

September 3, 2015

Prime Minister Harper’s Inaction on Climate Killed the Keystone XL Oilsands Pipeline

Stephen Harper climate change

With U.S. President Barack Obama expected to deny a permit to the Keystone XLpipeline this fall, Canada’s oil industry is looking for someone to blame.

The National Post’s Claudia Cattaneo wrote last week that “many Canadians … would see Obama’s fatal stab as a betrayal by a close friend and ally” and that others “would see it as the product of failure by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government to come up with a climate change plan.”

The latter is the more logical conclusion. Obama has made his decision-making criteria clear: he won’t approve the pipeline if it exacerbates the problem of carbon pollution.

Even the U.S. State Department’s very conservative analysis states the Keystone XL pipeline would “substantially increase oilsands expansion and related emissions.” The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed.

While Canada’s energy reviews take into account “upstream benefits” — such as jobs created in the oilsands sector as a result of pipelines — they don’t even consider the upstream environmental impacts created by the expansion of the oilsands.

For all the bluster and finger-pointing, there’s no covering up the fact that Canada’s record on climate change is one of broken promises.

Oil and Gas Regulations Promised Since 2006

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised since 2006 that he’ll regulate oil and gas emissions. Those regulations still haven’t materialized nearly a decade later —and there’s only one person to blame for that.

In recent years, Harper has taken the approach that Canada can’t regulate its oil and gas sector unless the U.S. does too. This argument is fundamentally flawed.

First, it presumes that Canada should outsource its climate policy to another country. On issues from health care to acid rain, Canada has moved independently from the U.S. and prospered as a result.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Will This Be Remembered as The Summer North Americans Woke Up to Climate Change?

September 1, 2015

Will This Be Remembered as The Summer North Americans Woke Up to Climate Change?

Lizard Lake wildfire

Smokey haze, intense heat, encampments of evacuated residents next to the highway: these were the conditions that greeted Renee Lertzman when she recently drove through Oregon. It’s no wonder why the environmental psychology researcher and professor resorts to the term “apocalyptic” to describe the scene.

“It was a surreal experience,” says Lertzman, who teaches at the University of San Francisco and Victoria’s Royal Roads University. “We’re all driving along and it’s so smoky and it’s terrifying. Yet we’re all doing our summer vacation thing. I couldn’t help but wonder: what is going on, how are people feeling and talking about this?”

It’s really the question of the hour. Catastrophic wildfires and droughts have engulfed much of the continent, with thousands displaced from their homes; air quality alerts confine many of the lucky remainder behind locked doors (with exercise minimized and fresh-air intakes closed).

Firefighters have been summoned from around the world to battle the unprecedented fires, which are undoubtedly exacerbated by climate change. Yet the seemingly reasonable assumption that witnessing such horrific natural disasters may increase support for action on climate change is vastly overestimated, Lertzman tells DeSmog Canada.

“I think it’s a fantasy that the worse things get and the more intense the effects are … that will magically translate into a public and political recognition and engagement and getting on board,” she says. “There’s an abundance of evidence that’s not the case and that humans have enormous capacity to avoid and deny reality and what’s staring us right in the face.”

34 ‘Dragons of Inaction’ Impede Climate Action

Humans’ tendency toward denial and avoidance is incredibly complex and entrenched.

Robert Gifford, professor of psychology and environmental studies at University of Victoria, has charted 34 (previously 29) ‘dragons of inaction,’ which prevent people from responding to evidence of climate change, ranging from a naive belief in “technosalvation,” to lack of attachment to geographic place, to straight-up denial.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Experts Make Case for Letting Canada’s Wildfires Burn

July 11, 2015

Experts Make Case for Letting Canada’s Wildfires Burn

Fires ‘reset the landscape to be less flammable,’ say researchers.

As climate change is fingered as a catalyst driving the early rash of forest fires across northern and western Canada, experts say the most prudent approach at this stage is to, whenever possible, let the fires burn.

Western Canada is now enduring one of the worst wildfire seasons on record, with hundreds of people fleeing homes in B.C. and more than 13,000 evacuations across Saskatchewan. But those studying the issue say the human costs of wildfire need to be balanced against research that suggests vulnerable forests are going to burn either way — especially given the mounting pressures presented by climate change.

Fire agencies in the Northwest Territories and British Columbia explicitly name climate change as a factor driving heightened fire risks. The federal ministry that oversees development of the oilsands predicts the amount of area burned by forest fires in previous decades could double during this current one.

”The question becomes, if we’ve got areas where fire can burn, the most responsible thing to do ecologically, fiscally and for long-term health is to let those fires burn,” said Toddi Steelman, executive director of the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan.

”If we don’t let them burn, we have to pay that account down the line… the forest will burn eventually.”

When boreal burns, less flammable trees grow back

 

Jill Johnstone has spent several yearsinvestigating the effects of wildfire on the boreal forests in Alaska and the Yukon and the Northwest territories. One of her discoveries is that in areas where forest fires burn severely and frequently -– a growing phenomenon in a warmer, drier climate — the typical black spruce trees that characterize much of the boreal are replaced by leafy deciduous species such as aspen.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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