Wildfires 2010

I cannot see past the house across the street - no trees - no mountains - no river - just a wall of grey smoke.   Even the dog sneezes when she spends time outdoors as the air quality is very poor.   I think I'll take another anti-histamine while I consider the fact that most of our summers may be like this one - hot , smoky, and miserable. 

An article in Scientific American states

fires are not just a result of a changing climate, they're also contributing to the overall warming trend much more than imagined, the authors report. As vegetation burns, it releases stored-up carbon into the atmosphere, speeding global warming and thereby exacerbating conditions that may generate a greater incidence of wildfires in the coming years. But across the globe, fires have been getting larger and stronger. "We are witnessing an increasing instance of these megafires," says Thomas Swetnam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fires-fuel-climate-change

In other words, wildfires are partly a result of climate change - and accelerate climate change at the same time.   BC is particlarly vulnerable to this feedback loop due to all the pine beetle killed trees.   A wonderful prospect......

Oil Is A Curse

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell

According to Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.  In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month....According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more than 7,000 spills between 1970 and 2000, and there are 2,000 official major spillages sites, many going back decades, with thousands of smaller ones still waiting to be cleared up. More than 1,000 spill cases have been filed against Shell alone.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2629678120090227

A rupture in Ecuador's second largest oil pipeline has polluted the Santa Rosa river in the lush Amazon jungle and shut off the flow of crude to a Pacific port in the city of Esmeraldas....Repeated oil spills by foreign companies and the country's state oil company, Petroecuador, are a threat to rare species of jaguars and river dolphins in the Amazon jungle, where most of the Andean country's oil operations are located.

Oil is a curse: its possession subverts democracy, impoverishes the local population, and destroys the environment.   But we - we Canadians , that is,  intend going to get every drop out of the tar sands and sell it to Asia regardless of any risks.

 http://dcnonl.com/article/id39094

“The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project will open important new markets for Canadian crude oil,” Enbridge president and chief executive Patrick Daniel said in a statement last week. “It will create jobs and a substantial long-term boost to our nation’s economy as well as the communities through which it will pass.”

And we're in the process of weakening environmental protections that might prevent oil spills.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/05/31/OilSpillPrevention/

Many British Columbians watching the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are wondering what safeguards are in place to ensure such a disaster does not happen here. What they don't know is that the federal government recently made sweeping changes to the primary advisory panel put in place to ensure that a major oil spill does not occur on the B.C. coast.

Are we insane?

Please write to the Prime Minister and to your local MP and register your protest against this insanity. Think about walking to work. Or biking. Or taking the bus. Get involved with  your local environmental group. Or create your local environmental group.  Educate yourself and your family and your friends. 

Costs of Cheap Oil

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/may/27/cheap-oil-cost-developing-countries

Big Oil is holding its breath. BP's shares are in steep decline after the debacle in the Gulf of Mexico. Barack Obama, the American people and the global environmental community are outraged, and now the company stands to lose the rights to drill for oil in the Arctic and other ecologically sensitive places.  The gulf disaster may cost it a few billion dollars, but so what? When annual profits for a company often run to tens of billions, the cost of laying 5,000 miles of booms, or spraying millions of gallons of dispersants and settling 100,000 court cases is not much more than missing a few months' production. It's awkward, but it can easily be passed on....Big Oil's real horror was not the spillage, which was common enough, but because it happened so close to the US. Millions of barrels of oil are spilled, jettisoned or wasted every year without much attention being paid.
If this accident had occurred in a developing country, say off the west coast of Africa or Indonesia, BP could probably have avoided all publicity and escaped starting a clean-up for many months

Ethically, if we (that means you and I) don't press our governments to invest in alternative energy, we are complicit in oil spills like Deepwater Horizon. If we don't lobby for and use rapid transit we are complicit. If we do nothing to prevent Enbridge building a pipeline to the BC coast from the tar sands, we will be reponsible for spills from oil tankers carrying oil down the coast.  If we don't work to change the system, we will be complicit in climate change.

BC Government Is Changing Cosmetic Pesticide Legislation

The Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria is encouraging you to "learn about provincial government's plans to ban the sale and use of cosmetic chemical pesticides through legislation."
http://www.elc.uvic.ca/
Please click on the link above - scroll down slightly to Cosmetic Pesticide Legislation - and read the ELC's response which is intended to assist citizens in drafting their own response to the Ministry of Environment's questions on  pesticide use.  

This is our opportunity to have our voices heard - please draft a response and forward it to the BC governemnt.  I'll post mine on this website as soon as I can.

On Top of Contamination - Increases in GHG Emissions

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/12/21/bc-greenhouse-gas-increase.html

British Columbia was the only province in the country to report an increase in greenhouse gas emissions from major industries in 2008, according to figures released by Environment Canada.  The figures cover so-called "facility greenhouse gas emissions" from power plants and heavy industries such as mining, pulp and paper, and petroleum.  British Columbia's dubious distinction was largely the result of oil and gas extraction, Environment Canada said.

Not only are we failing to monitor contamination at oil and gas wells,  we are increasing greenhouse gas emissions.   This sounds like an environmental disaster - especially when one considers that most of the natural gas produced in BC is probably going to be used in mining the Alberta tar sands.

Oil and Gas Site Contamination Risks

http://policymonitor.ca/energy/bc-oil-and-gas-commission-report/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PolicyMonitorCanada+(Policy+Monitor+Canada)

An audit of the BC Oil and Gas Commission has found that it must improve its oversight of oil and gas sites in order to adequately manage the risks of contamination, says Auditor General John Doyle in his latest report, released today.

Mr Doyle's report states that " An independent field review of sites that have received a Certificate of Restoration is not carried out to ensure that objective assessments are being made. The OGC relies mainly on desk reveiw of consultant restoration reports, submitted by operators, to provide oversight of the certificate process."  http://www.bcauditor.com/

 Can you imagine the Canada Revenue Agency relying on H & R Block to ensure that tax returns filed were correct?  Plenty of room exists for fudging in this system....

And worse - Mr Doyle's report states that " There are also a number of sites known as "legacy sites" that were certified as reclaimed to environemntal standards of the day before the OGC was established, and before modern standards existed."  The Oil and Gas Commission has not taken any steps to test these sites - so any contanimation that may exist is essentially ignored.  If we don't know about it, it doesn't exist, right? 

Expect More

More flooding, that is. 
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/11/24/bc-duncan-cowichan-flood-damage.html

About 300 households in Duncan and North Cowichan were issued evacuation orders last Friday after heavy rains, melting snow and a high tide led two local rivers to overflow their dykes and flood some low-lying neighbourhoods with up to one metre of water.
As the cleanup efforts continued, some residents questioned whether the North Cowichan Regional District could have reacted more quickly to the threat, and want to know what it plans to do to prevent similar disasters.

Sounds quite familiar to anyone who browses the provincial Ministry of Environment website at
http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/climate/about/impacts-bc.htm
The Ministry of Environment for BC suggests that effects of climate change will include:

 increased river flood risks in the spring and coastal flooding associated with storm surges.

The residents of the Cowichan Valley are right to wonder what plans all levels of governmnet are making to prevent similar disasters.   These disasters will become all too familiar if we don't reduce our production of greenhouse gas emissions forthwith.  Please email the Prime Minister and as him to commit to binding, science based targets at the UN Conference in Copenhagen.

Climate Change Rally

I am a member of the Unitarian Universalist Social and Environmental committee. We are planning a small rally at the Farmer's Market on Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009 at 11:00 am in Kamloops in support of
 http://www.350.org/
This site (started by Bill McKibben) encourages people all over the world to demonstrate their support for a safe climate future. Their mission is " to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis—to create a new sense of urgency and of possibility for our planet." Please come to the rally  and help put pressure on Canadian politicians to  work for a "for an ambitious, fair, and binding global climate deal" at the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen.