By S. T., on January 30th, 2010
 Storm Clouds over Sao Paulo A People’s Submission on Climate Change
The following letter and statement were sent on January 28, from Climate Action Network Canada, to Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Dear Mr. de Boer,
On behalf of the people of Canada, we are making a “Peoples Submission” to the Copenhagen Accord. We realize it is exceptional for you to receive a national submission through a nongovernmental organization. However, the present circumstance in Canada is exceptional. The views and aspiration of the majority of Canadians are not reflected in the views and actions of the present government.
The Canadian people have been very clear in their continuing support for the Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We also support Canada adopting science based emission targets and contributing our fair share to a mitigation and adaptation fund.
We want the international community to know Canadians will one day live up to our obligations.
Please accept this “Peoples Submission” as an indication of the real values and views of Canadians.
Sincerely,
Graham Saul
Executive Director
Climate Action Network / Réseau action climat Canada
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Read the peoples’ submission after the break.
Continue Reading → A People’s Submission on Climate Change
By S. T., on January 25th, 2010
 Wind turbines spin in the wind generating electricity on Hwy 10 North of Shelburne. Ontario is preparing to lift a controversial moratorium on the development of offshore wind projects in the Great Lakes. 25 January 2010 – The Ontario government has just signed an agreement that will (reportedly) bring more green energy and new jobs to Ontario, Canada.
A consortium led by Samsung C&T Corporation and the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) will invest CAD$7 billion (£4.12 Billion) to generate 2,500 megawatts of wind and solar power. These projects will triple Ontario’s output from renewable wind and solar sources and provide clean electricity to more than 580,000 households. The investment will also lead to more than 16,000 new green energy jobs to build, install and operate the renewable generation projects.
QUICK FACTS
- More than 1,200 megawatts of new renewable projects, representing CAD$2.8 billion (£1.65 billion) of investment, have started up in Ontario since 2003.
- $7-Billion (£4.12 Billion) Investment Means Green Energy and 16,000 New Jobs For Ontario, Canada
- Ontario is Canada’s leading province in wind and solar power.
- The Green Energy Act will create 50,000 new jobs in the green energy sector.
- CO2 emissions from coal-fired power generation are 73 per cent lower than 2003 levels, with four more units coming offline in fall, 2010.
Why aren’t more deals like this being made in the U.S.? Continue Reading → Korean Influence on Ontario’s Green Economy
By S. T., on November 28th, 2009
 Canada is melting . . .The Alaska Highway is surrounded by boreal forest running north towards Whitehorse, Yukon. Photo: Andy Clark/Files Global Warming’s effects are predicted to hit and possibly destroy pipes and roads in northern Canada due to melting permafrost.
OTTAWA – Roads, buildings and pipelines in Canada’s north are at risk from global warming and the government must do more to protect infrastructure in the remote frozen region, an official panel said Thursday.
Temperatures in the north — which includes the Arctic — are rising much faster than elsewhere in the world, and this comes at a time of increasing interest in the area’s vast mineral and energy reserves. (This is what I’ve been explaining in the FN podcast.)
The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) said the permafrost layer had begun to melt, a development that can have disastrous consequences.
“Melting permafrost is undermining building foundations and threatens roads, pipelines and communications infrastructure,’ it said in a report, also citing the potential danger to energy systems, waste disposal sites and ponds containing toxic tailings from mines.
“The risk to infrastructure systems will only intensify as the climate continues to warm.”
Melting permafrost is also releasing stores of methane and CO2. This could be disastrous, folks. Read more at World Environment News.
By S. T., on November 5th, 2009
“Canada faces a dilemma as it prepares for next month’s UN climate summit in Copenhagen. It wants to present itself as environmentally responsible but also wants the profits from the tar sands, which cover an area of Alberta’s natural coniferous forest larger than England.”
Yeah, that’s a problem. Coal + Oil shale + Tar Sands = end of human civilization and most species on earth in 200 years or less. We have the ability to use geothermal, solar, and wind power, and more right now, so why does anyone bother with the dirtiest energy on earth that is responsible for so much destruction and pollution? . . . . . . Money.
 Syncrude's Fort McMurray tar sands (Times/UK) A giant mechanical digger gouges out a chunk of topsoil, grass and tree stumps, extending a neat furrow that stretches into the distance. Dozens of similar furrows run parallel with the regularity of a ploughed field.
Yet no crop could grow in the pitch-black surface exposed by the machine working 1,000ft below our helicopter. This is the edge of a fast-expanding open-cast mine in the Canadian tar sands, one of the world’s most polluting sources of oil.
It takes only a few minutes to fly across the 200 sq miles (520 sq km) of mines, processing plants and man-made lakes of toxic water. But Canada has so far extracted only 2 per cent of a resource that it hopes will turn it into a global energy superpower.
BP and Shell are among dozens of oil companies preparing to raise production from 1.3 million barrels a day at present to 2.5 million by 2015 and 6 million by 2030.
Continue Reading → Canada’s Awful Gold Rush
By S. T., on September 19th, 2009
 Photo: Bobby Yip. A contaminated lake is seen near Dabaoshan in the northern part of China's Guangdong province August 27, 2009. China has cancer villages — when I first read that, I thought, “People don’t think things are this bad yet in the United States”. But they are. There was a story last week about how the water pollution caused by coal mining in West Virginia has made nearby towns “cancer villages”. (This was discussed in the FN podcast of last week.) The investigative report was done by the New York Times. Coal mining operations which use a lot of chemicals to wash the dirty coal, dump their waste into streams and rivers and it seeps into the ground water and into people’s water supplies. That means drinking water near these mining operations contains lead, cadmium, barium, arsenic and other deadly pollutants. This has been proven and tested, and it’s so bad the residents have to apply special lotions after they use the water for showers or washing. They can’t even drink their own tap water. One woman said that the stream by their house “ran black” for a few days; runoff from coal mining.
In towns like this, right here in America, people are getting fatal cancers at alarming rates and at young ages. It’s astonishing that it’s not illegal to pollute water like this in the U.S. So it’s not just developing countries that have this problem — “cancer villages” are right here in the United States.
Canada also has cancer villages, and they are mostly Native American villages near tar sand mining operations. There are towns and villages downstream from this mining which dumps chemical and toxic waste into their water supplies. There is an amazing short documentary on this subject called “Downstream“.
“Downstream focuses on the controversy surrounding the development of Alberta’s oil sands. This beautifully photographed documentary is an eye-opening investigation into one of the world’s most polluting oil operations. It includes interviews with ecologists, Canadian politicians, local residents and a very dedicated doctor, discussing the environmental, economic and health issues surrounding the oil sands development. “
 It’s only 33 minutes long and you can watch it by clicking here or on the photo. The video tells the story of Dr. O’Connor, who treated people at Ft. Chipewyan, a small, isolated community which sits on a lake downstream from the Tar Sands operations. The native people there rely on the water for their lifestyles and food. Since mining began, deformed fish and ducks and small animals have been made inedible by pollution. Then rare aggressive cancers started to show up in the people living in Ft. Chip, diseases such as lupus and colon cancer and bioduct cancers, appearing in this community of about 1200 people. The Dr. made his suspicions that these cancers were connected to pollution public, and he soon found himself having charges filed against him by health groups and the federal government of Canada for “causing undue alarm” and “irresponsible practices”; all for pointing out these cancers and trying to find out the causes. He was punished for whistle blowing and ended up having to move. It has been proven that just one of the tailings pond full of toxic chemicals leaks 5.7 million liters per day into nearby waterways. The water there is full of arsenic and mercury and the people there still get very rare cancers. The governments of both Canada and the United States are covering this up so that they can sell this dirty oil in the United States. And Americans are buying this dirty oil.
Continue Reading → Cancer Villages in U.S., Canada, China are Caused by Pollution
By S. T., on August 21st, 2009
 Secretary of Hypocrisy OK, enough! Tar sands oil is being forced down the throat of the American people by our government, and the most vulnerable people are the ones who will suffer from its extraction, processing, transportation, and its use.
Secretary Clinton has signaled the world that climate change is no big deal to her, and this week she has OK’ed the Alberta Clipper dirty oil sands pipeline. This is especially ironic in the face of her climate change talks with other countries, and it’s the height of hypocrisy from Secretary Clinton. It’s clearly a “Do as we say, not as we do” signal to the world, and if I lived in India, or China, I don’t think her pleas about climate change would hold much weight in the future. Way to go, Secretary Clinton, you have let us down again. As a message to the world on climate change, this stinks.
Clinton has not exactly been impressing anyone as Secretary of State, and on the issue of clean energy diplomacy, she is a failure (to date). We’ll see if the Chinese or Indians feel like taking climate change advice from someone who doesn’t practice what she preaches. Most people expected Clinton to take a strong stand against climate change. After all, during the campaign for president, she talked about what a serious problem climate change was, and how we needed an Apollo Program to deal with it. Instead she pisses off very environmentalist in the country and allows the expansion of the dirtiest oil to be used and disseminated by the United States.
This pipeline will come through my state of Minnesota, messing up ecosystems, polluting the environment, and crossing a large American Indian land; the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Many of them have protested this pipeline but of course, when you are a native American up against a powerful Secretary of State, people don’t tend to listen to you. People don’t tend to listen to anyone on this issue who doesn’t have clout or connections. Mrs. Clinton has also demonstrated that you don’t need to know much about the environment to go about seriously destroying it, even as you tell people that global warming is important. To her, it’s obviously not. According to some environmental groups, a court challenge is being prepared to overturn decision. Good. This story is from Dirty Oil Sands.
Flying in the face of a growing host of military experts and research showing the contrary, Secretary Clinton decided that Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper dirty oil sands pipeline is in the U.S. national interest. Presidential Executive Order 11423 allows the Secretary to permit the pipeline ONLY if she judges it’s in the national interest.
The Alberta Tar Sands is the world’s largest energy project, ultimately covering an area the size of Florida. And it produces the world’s dirtiest, most expensive, and arguably most dangerous oil. And if the Alberta Clipper pipeline is actually built, 450,000 more barrels of it, per day, will be burned in the U.S. – releasing five times as much greenhouse gas as conventional oil.
THE FIGHT IS NOT OVER
Although this permit is definitely a setback — both in the fight against dirty oil and for the clean energy economy, the fight is by no means over for the Alberta Clipper or against dirty oil sands.
Continue Reading → Shortsighted Hillary Clinton Permits New Tar Sands Pipelines
By S. T., on August 21st, 2009
 Frac Trucks holding refrigerated liquid nitrogen cool down before Hydraulic Nitrogen Frac Canada is acting as contradictory as the U.S. lately, both increasing carbon emissions and working to reduce them. First the Alberta tar sands, now a new huge natural gas plant planned, and at the same time, a revenue neutral carbon tax is in the works.
British Columbia is proposing a $500-million dollar natural gas plant in the northeast that will become their main source of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. The government could tighten the rules for greenhouse gas emissions from this plant, but it’s unclear whether that will happen. Natural gas is being advertised as “clean” in the United States, and it’s not, but this myth is no doubt migrating north. Unfortunately, it’s a myth that is shared not just by members of Congress but by some environmental groups. A more accurate description is “cleaner than coal” but that’s not saying much.* (see below)
The Pembina Institute, a Calgary-based fossil-fuel watchdog group, reported on August 18th that EnCana and a group of gas producers are trying to get this new plant approved with the B.C. environmental assessment office. They want to build this gas plant 60 km north of Fort Nelson, a beautiful tourist destination in the mountains of British Columbia.
If this plant is built, it will emit 2.166 tons of CO2, twice what B.C.’s top emitter currently produces. That’s an aluminum smelter plant in Kitimat, which represents 3.3% of B.C.’s total industrial emissions.
The new gas plant will produce 800 million cubic feet of gas per day and the emissions, according to Pembina, will be the equivalent of adding about 450,000 cars to the roads in British Columbia. (Someone tell our Congress this means natural gas is not exactly “clean”.)
You can read more of this here. You would think that with our awareness of what CO2 will do to the climate, and even with governments admitting they know this, that these projects would be phased out or stopped. Instead, I read about more things like this every week. Has the human race gone completely off its sanity meds?
“We’ve got the facility capture-ready,” Forgo said. “You could come in and hook into the system without a whole lot of trouble and you could capture the CO2.” But Forgo said that until the provincial and federal governments enact legislation providing direction on carbon capture to industry it is difficult to act.
Why not do it then, if it’s possible? Because there is always a “but”. In a related story: British Columbia, who advertises their province as “the Best Place on Earth” is also taking action on a revenue neutral tax on carbon emissions.
If you haven’t yet heard the Futurism Now podcast about the Tar Sands you should check it out here.
Continue Reading → Natural Gas Blamed for Climate Change CO2 in Canada
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