How times have changed in 2015. Just days away from the Paris climate conference, Prime Minister Trudeau met with the Premiers to talk about working together to make Canada a leader on climate. Compare this to PM Harper, who never met with the Premiers, championed the oil and gas industry, and if anything was a disruptive force in global climate negotiations. And leading the march to Paris?
A series of new aerial photographs show the massive scale of early construction work on the $8.8-billion Site C dam.
Victoria-based photographer Garth Lenz flew over what will be the dam site in June 2014 and returned Sunday to re-shoot the area. Lenz said even though he had flown over the site before, he was not prepared for what he saw.
“I was surprised at how big an area was being destroyed,” said Lenz, who photographed just a few kilometres of a flood zone that stretches more than 80 kilometres upriver.
BC Hydro’s decision to push forward with a $1.5-billion construction contract for the Site C dam megaproject has prompted an outpouring of opposition from First Nations and environmental and advocacy groups across British Columbia.
The Crown corporation’s president and chief executive officer, Jessica McDonald, announced on Wednesday that the utility is poised to sign the largest deal in its history with Peace River Hydro Partners as the preferred proponent.
Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi have done it again. This time they’ve spelled out how 139 countries can each generate all the energy needed for homes, businesses, industry, transportation, agriculture—everything—from wind, solar and water power technologies, by 2050. Their national blueprints, released Nov. 18, follow similar plans they have published in the past few years to run each of the 50 U.S. states on renewables, as well as the entire world. (Have a look for yourself, at your country, using the interactive map below.)
The B.C. government is proposing to increase moose-hunting for a Peace Region First Nation to compensate for impacts of the Site C dam.
For the First Nation and others concerned about the $8.8-billion hydroelectric project which this month marked 100 days of construction, the moose meat in question is one item on a list of Site C-related controversies disturbing the Peace.
Today in Victoria, lawyers representing two First Nations will be in B.C. Supreme Court arguing that the provincial government violated First Nation rights by rushing to approve the controversial $9 billion (and counting) Site C dam on the Peace River.
Regardless of the outcome of the case, which is one of three B.C. First Nations legal proceedings against Site C currently underway, First Nations opposition to Site C is understandable.
The Treaty 8 Tribal Association has set up an observation shack overlooking the Peace River at the Site C dam site where opponents and other interested parties can watch what critics say is the destruction of the Peace River valley.
The military is not just a prolific user of oil, it is one of the central pillars of the global fossil-fuel economy. Today whether it is in the Middle East, the Gulf, or the Pacific, modern-day military deployment is about controlling oil-rich regions and defending the key shipping supply routes that carry half the world’s oil and sustain our consumer economy.
If you believe press reports, governments are preparing for “serious” climate negotiations at the upcoming December UN climate conference in Paris. I put quotes around serious because there is good reason to believe that most governments, at least the most powerful, care little about the outcome. One indicator is their commitment to protecting the environment in two so-called free trade agreements.
