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Ottawa Climate Strike Interviews – Sept. 27, 2019
Huge climate strikes took place across Canada and around the world this past Friday, Sept. 27, with millions taking part including at least 800,000 here in Canada demanding immediate and strong action on the climate crisis, which is getting worse almost by the day. Over 20,000 people walked out of school and work here in Ottawa and I was there to capture some of the sounds from the march. In the face of so much relentless bad news these days, it was truly empowering to see the energy and determination of young people. They simply won’t back down on this one.
Click the link above to listen to some audio from the Ottawa climate strike including inspiring interviews with two remarkable elementary school climate strikers.
Earthgauge Radio – Sept. 17, 2019
Environmental news podcast featuring stories from across Canada and around the world. Broadcast every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon EST on CKCU radio 93.1 FM in Ottawa or online at www.ckcufm.com. Or download the podcast here.
- CLIMATE, PIPELINE PROTESTS GREET TRUDEAU’S KICK-OFF RALLY AS ELECTION 2019 GETS UNDER WAY
- First Crowdfunded Park in BC Saves 2K Acres From Loggers
- Climate change a top federal election priority for First Nations, says Bellegarde
- REPORT SHOWS CONSTRUCTION DELAYS, SAFETY ISSUES DELAYING TRANS MOUNTAIN, MAKING PIPELINE A FINANCIAL LOSER
- Feds to study using electricity to ‘reduce or eliminate’ fossil fuels
- Trump Moves to Open 1.5 Million Acres of Alaskan Refuge for Oil Drilling By End of the Year
- Alarming Level of Plastic in Children’s Bodies, German Study Shows
- Japan May Dump Radioactive Fukushima Water Into the Pacific in ‘Only Option’ of Disposal
Newfoundland preps for more offshore oil as climate crisis deepens
An advance leak from the forthcoming United Nations (U.N.) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Oceans and Cryosphere confirms that the climate crisis is deepening. According to the leak, the U.N. report concludes that changes to global oceans, glaciers, and melting permafrost will unleash disaster upon the world including drought, floods, hunger and destruction unless dramatic action is taken to reduce global carbon emissions immediately.
It is against this backdrop that the province of Newfoundland and Labrador has announced plans to drill 100 new offshore exploration wells and dramatically increase its oil production by 2030, thereby roughly tripling the oil and gas sector’s carbon emissions. The province is currently carrying out a Regional Strategic Environmental Assessment (RSEA) of its offshore exploration drilling plans, which included a climate change session.
As a participant in this process, I made the simple mathematical point during one of the sessions that the province cannot possibly meet its 2030 greenhouse gas emissions target if it proceeds with its drilling plans in the offshore. What’s more, carbon emissions from the full production of currently operating oil and gas fields and coal mines across the world will already lead to a global temperature rise above the 2 degrees Celsius limit set in Paris in 2017 by the U.N., much less the aspirational 1.5C target.
Newfoundland and Labrador’s emissions target for 2030 is 6.9 million tonnes (megatonnes) of carbon dioxide. If the province triples oil production as it intends to do, this would mean that emissions from this sector alone in 2030 would account for an estimated 4.9 Mt of this target, or 71%, making it virtually impossible for the province to reach its emissions reduction goals.
Representatives of oil companies attending the RSEA session responded by saying that, while this analysis is true, Newfoundland and Labrador’s contribution to Canada’s and the planet’s carbon emissions is small and therefore inconsequential. Moreover, the world will need oil for the foreseeable future so if oil and gas is not produced in the province, it will simply be produced elsewhere. This response is commonly heard in defense of the oil and gas industry in Canada in an effort to stymie efforts to reign in emissions and question the long-term viability of the industry.
Here’s the thing. Either we are serious about our Paris commitments or we are not. We cannot pretend we will meet our global emissions reduction targets while continuing to expand fossil fuel production at the same time. This is what is commonly known as cognitive dissonance, the act of holding two contradictory ideas in one’s head at the same time and believing them both to be true.
It is simply not true that that the world will continue to use oil and gas long at increasing rates into the future *IF* we are serious about our carbon reduction commitments. Asserting the future inevitability of oil and gas is a bet against Canada and the world meeting its Paris targets. If on the other hand, we are serious about meeting the Paris targets, then the demise of oil and gas becomes a mathematical inevitability. We cannot both expand fossil fuel production AND reduce emissions at the same time.
While it is true that some energy projections assert that the world will continue to need fossil fuels for decades to come, this is not the case if the world is to stay within 2C of warming, let alone 1.5 degrees. The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook in 2012 stated that “No more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be burned, leaving up to 80% of assets technically unburnable.” In 2015, the Bank of England warned that policies designed to limit carbon emissions could mean some fossil fuels become “stranded assets”, with the Bank’s governor adding that “the vast majority of reserves are unburnable if global temperature rises are to be limited to below 2 degrees C.” Even the oil giant Shell conceded in 2013 “in a world where the 2C limit is imposed and achieved, most of the future value generation of the companies involved will never be realized.”
The province of Newfoundland and Labrador, as well of the rest of Canada, has come to a moment of reckoning. Why even bother setting targets in the first place if we are not serious about meeting them?
Earthgauge News – August 19, 2019
Environmental news podcast featuring stories from across Canada and around the world. Broadcast every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon EST on CKCU radio 93.1 FM in Ottawa or online at www.ckcufm.com. Or download the podcast here.
On the show this week:
- Climate Change Threatens the World’s Food Supply, United Nations Warn
- Norway Freezes $33.2M Transfer to Brazil’s Amazon Fund Amid Deforestation ‘Surge’
- Royal Bank of Scotland Phases Out Funding for Tar Sands/Oil Sands, Arctic and Antarctic Refuge Drilling
- Koch Brothers Abandon Alberta Tar Sands/Oil Sands
- Alberta Loses 14,300 Jobs in July Despite Corporate Tax Cut, Profitable Fossils
- Climate Deniers Step Up Attacks as Thunberg Sails for North America
- World’s Forest Animal Population Drops 53% Since 1970: WWF Report
- ‘Alarming’ Report Uses NASA Satellite Data to Reveal World’s Toxic Air Pollution Hotspots
Earthgauge News – July 23, 2019
Environmental news podcast featuring stories from across Canada and around the world. Broadcast every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon EST on CKCU radio 93.1 FM in Ottawa or online at www.ckcufm.com. Or download the podcast here.
On the show this week:
- The aviation industry hears clamour for electric planes
- Best way to fight climate change? Plant a trillion trees
- Internal Exxon Documents Show Climate Awareness in 1982, Denial by 1988
- United Nations Says 80 Countries May Ramp Up Climate Pledges
- Big Pharma Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than the Automotive Industry
- Nearly 30,000 Species Face Extinction Because of Human Activity
- ‘Social Breakdown and Outright Chaos’: Civilization Headed for Collapse by 2050, New Climate Report Warns
- The Philippines has put forward a bill that requires all students from elementary school to college to plant trees as a prerequisite to graduate.
Earthgauge News – May 14, 2019
Environmental news podcast featuring stories from across Canada and around the world. Broadcast every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon EST on CKCU radio 93.1 FM in Ottawa or on demand at www.ckcufm.com. Or download the podcast here.
On the show this week:
- Biodiversity crisis is about to put humanity at risk, UN scientists to warn
- Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an ‘Unprecedented’ Pace
- Green candidate Paul Manly wins Nanaimo-Ladysmith by-election
- CO2 Levels Top 415 PPM for First Time in Human History
- Ireland Becomes Second Country to Declare Climate Emergency
- Just One-Third of the World’s Longest Rivers Remain Free-Flowing
- TROVE OF DOCUMENTS SHOWS FOSSIL MANIPULATION OF UN CLIMATE PROCESS FROM 1989 TO 2002
- Global plastic waste pact garners international support
Earthgauge News – April 30, 2019
Environmental news podcast featuring stories from across Canada and around the world. Broadcast every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon EST on CKCU radio 93.1 FM in Ottawa or online at www.ckcufm.com. Or download the podcast here.
On the show this week:
- With communities under water, Ottawa had little choice but to declare a ‘climate emergency’
- Climate Change Blamed as Flooding Forces Thousands to Evacuate in Canada
- Extinction Rebellion arrests pass 1,000 on eighth day of protests
- New York’: City Council Passes Visionary Climate Bill
- Winning Party in Spain’s Election Campaigned on a Green New Deal
- Jeremy Corbyn launches bid to declare a national climate emergency
- CONSERVATIVES, FOSSILS PLOT ‘GROWING COLLABORATION’ TO DEFEAT LIBERALS IN FEDERAL ELECTION
- CANADA ON TRACK TO HIT PARIS TARGET 200 YEARS LATE AS NEB ENDORSES CARBON TAX
Earthgauge News – April 2, 2019
Environmental news podcast featuring stories from across Canada and around the world. Broadcast every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon EST on CKCU radio 93.1 FM in Ottawa or online at www.ckcufm.com. Or download the podcast here.
On the show this week:
- Canada warming at twice the global rate, leaked report finds
- Judge Says Trump’s Plan to Allow Drilling in Arctic Ocean Is ‘Unlawful and Invalid
- FOSSIL ANALYSTS BLAME GLOBAL TRANSITION, NOT FEDERAL POLICIES, FOR CANADIAN INDUSTRY’S WOES
- CO2 EMISSIONS RISE 1.7% IN 2018 AS ENERGY DEMAND SETS RECORD, COAL CONSUMPTION GROWS
- BP SAYS IT HAS ‘DRAMATICALLY’ CUT EXPLORATION, WILL LEAVE SOME OIL AND GAS IN THE GROUND
- Melting Ice Is Exposing More and More Bodies as Mount Everest Warms
- ‘BirthStrike’ Movement Encourages People to Stop Having Children in the Face of Climate Change
- RUSSIAN CLIMATE LEGISLATION HAS ’80-90% CHANCE’ OF PASSING DESPITE PUSHBACK FROM FOSSILS, OLIGARCHS
- New York Becomes Second State to Ban Plastic Bags
- West Papua becomes Indonesia’s first conservation province
- Retail giant to sell clothes made from food scraps
Earthgauge News – March 4, 2019
Environmental news podcast featuring stories from across Canada and around the world. Broadcast every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon EST on CKCU radio 93.1 FM in Ottawa or online at www.ckcufm.com. Or download the podcast here.
On the show this week:
- Costa Rica launches unprecedented plan to fully decarbonize by 2050
- Evidence of Human-Caused Climate Crisis Has Now Reached ‘Gold Standard’-Level Certainty, Scientists Say
- Cost of EVs to Match Internal Combustion Engine Cars by 2022
- INSECT COLLAPSE OVER NEXT CENTURY COULD TRIGGER ‘CATASTROPHIC ECOSYSTEM COLLAPSE’
- A Dutch man has driven from Amsterdam to Adelaide in an effort to prove he viability of electric vehicles.
- ‘SILENT MAJORITY’ OF CANADIANS WANTS FASTER CLIMATE ACTION
Earthgauge News – December 11, 2018
Environmental news podcast featuring stories from across Canada and around the world. Broadcast every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon EST on CKCU radio 93.1 FM in Ottawa or online at www.ckcufm.com. Or download the podcast here.
On the show this week:
- NEWFOUNDLAND REGULATOR SHUTS DOWN OFFSHORE DRILLING AFTER REGION’S WORST-EVER OIL SPILL
- Pakistan hits billion trees goal ahead of schedule
- International community approaching nature refuge goals
- Nations Must Triple Action to Avoid Disastrous Climate Change
- 2018 Emissions on Pace to Hit ‘Record High’
- Greenland Melting Is ‘Off the Charts’
- Brazil Backs Out of Hosting 2019 Climate Change Meeting
- Quebec youth group sues federal government over climate change
- Surge in marine refuges brings world close to protected areas goal
- Amazon Rainforest Deforestation Hits Highest Rate in 10 Years
- ONTARIO OPTS FOR HIGHER CARBON EMISSIONS, OFFERS ‘SCANT DETAILS’ ON NEW CLIMATE PLAN
- Australia Cuts 80% of Plastic Bag Use in 3 Short Months
- In World First, Luxembourg to Make All Public Transportation Free
