British Columbia

25/11/21
Author: 
Les Leyne
The B.C. government is in the midst of rule changes that will make more the province's forests off-limits to logging. DARREN STONE, TIMES COLONIST

Nov. 24, 2021

Nearly every one of the last 20 forest ministers, going back 35 years, has stood up at one point or another and indignantly denied that forestry is a sunset industry.

The fact they felt the need in the first place means the impression was out there. More and more, it looks like that impression was and is correct.

25/11/21
Author: 
Stephanie Wood
This past week's B.C. floods have caused extensive damage in the Lower Mainland, including along Highway 11. Experts say governments of all levels need to do more to prepare for climate disasters that are now happening with increasing frequency. Photo: B.C. Ministry of Transportation / Flickr

Nov. 20, 2021

Ninety-six per cent of dikes in the Lower Mainland are not high enough to block extreme floods. Some experts say we have to think beyond concrete

Semá:th (Sumas) First Nation councillor Murray Ned dragged a chair across his front yard to the water’s edge and sat down to take in the lake on Tuesday night. The water sat still under the moonlight. 

25/11/21
Author: 
Dru Oja Jay
TOP | Premier John Horgan tours an LNG Canada Site in Kitimat, BC in 2020. Photo: BC Government

Nov 24 2021

A moratorium vote on industry at centre of Wet’suwet’en standoff has been quashed repeatedly over two years

Rigged conventions. Filibustered meetings. Claims of “lost” paperwork.

For more than two years, members of the British Columbia New Democrats say their governing party has used obstructive tactics to prevent an open debate about its fracked gas industry, which last week led to another militarized police raid on Wet’suwet’en territory.

25/11/21
Author: 
Alex Ballingall
Peter Julian and Jagmeet Singh

[Editor: Note that the expansion is not slated to supply local refineries.]

Nov. 24, 2021

OTTAWA—NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is not pushing to cancel the government-owned Trans Mountain expansion, even though a veteran MP in his caucus is calling for an immediate halt to construction of the controversial oil pipeline project.

25/11/21
Author: 
B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure
The link is to dozens of photos from the recent flooding damage, some of which is still occurring. And, yet another set of forecast storms have already started drenching us on the coast. It appears that nature is forcing a 'just transition' of construction jobs away from pipeline expansion and toward rebuilding highways, bridges, dikes, and devastated communities. A planned transition would have been better, targeting existing needed improvements--and cheaper! Thanks to Sister June Ross in Nanaimo for the link.                  Gene McGuckin
 
25/11/21
Author: 
Zoë Ducklow
A camp at Fairy Creek in October. Photo: James MacDonald / Capital Daily

November 25, 2021

Deferrals and changes to logging legislation is coming. But the activists aren’t leaving

The first thing you need to understand about Fairy Creek, if you’ve never been to Fairy Creek, is that the real fight isn’t in Fairy Creek. It’s beside it in Granite Creek, and above it at Ridge Camp, and to the west in the Walbran Valley.

25/11/21
Author: 
Andrew Nikiforuk
We have entered a new era requiring new rules. Floodwaters in Abbotsford, Nov. 20, 2021. Photo by Dale Klippenstein, Canadian Armed Forces.

Nov. 25, 2021

“Push a complex system too far, and it will not come back.” — Joe Norman, founder and chief scientist at Applied Complexity Science

Last week, Mother Nature taught British Columbia another ugly lesson about the consequences of blah, blah, blah on climate change, unchecked energy use and globalization.

But denial is our society’s most politically powerful drug after fentanyl and Netflix.

24/11/21
Author: 
Trans Mountain monitoring spill of drilling additive in Coquitlam watercourse
Indigenous leaders held a ceremony at Maquabeak Park in Coquitlam in May, 2021 to express concerns about an oil pipeline being drilled under the Fraser River.Fin Donnelly/Twitter

Nov. 22, 2021

Trans Mountain continues to monitor the impacts of a spill of clay-based drilling fluid in a water course near the Mary Hill bypass in Coquitlam last week.

In a statement, the company reported that approximately one cubic meter of bentonite was “inadvertently released” into a watercourse during horizontal directional drilling (HDD) procedures on Friday (Nov. 19).

The drilling is to install a section of pipe from Surrey to Coquitlam for the construction of the pipeline to Burnaby.

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