I begin with apologies for this sub-standard replacement – me in exchange for your regular correspondent.  I am writing this on Saturday night outside the negotiating room at COP26, where the delegates are just now going back into the final plenary session in hopes of coming to agreement on the next steps in the fight to keep global warming to below 1.5° C above pre-industrial level.  “1.5 to stay alive” is more than a catchy slogan, it is the real hard goal for planet Earth.  There is hope here, along with cynicism – real movement at this meeting, some real but guarded optimism among the delegates.

Right now there is both excitement and suspense – the President’s latest text was released at 8 am today, informal discussions and negotiations went on until 1 when all the high-level delegates were brought together in an “informal plenary” to get the sense of the meeting.  Most countries accepted the text, with the standard disclaimer that it couldn’t possibly be all that they were hoping for, but it was enough to move ahead with.  Then some rebuffs from India and China and supporters – the text was not acceptable, nothing like enough commitments to the developing countries for loss and damage, too much restriction on their ability to determine their own path.  Setback.  Can it get done? After hearing from perhaps 50 countries, a short adjournment for high-pressure country-to-country negotiations, and now they’re preparing to get back to see if a formal agreement is possible.  This is for the highest possible stakes, of course.  I see on the livestream from the meeting room intense discussions among people like John Kerry of the US the European Union “Green Deal” chief Frans Timmermans, Alok Sharma the President of the COP with the chair from Bolivia, and later from India, who gave an impassioned criticism of the deal as now written, and other one-on-ones all around the room.

Just this minute, China and India have presented a “small” revision to the text.  Just one little word – change “phase out” coal to “phase down”.  Now Switzerland objects to the change, but will accept the new text.  The EU echoes the sentiment.  Lichenstein says “for the greater good we must swallow this bitter pill”.  Mexico is very disappointed, but goes along.  Marshall Islands and Fiji reads into the record “profound disappointment” to see the “bright spot of coal phase-out dim”.  The President is now apologizing to the meeting for the way the process has unfolded, but, “hearing no objections, it is so decided”.  So everybody is disappointed, but willing.  Now the meeting is rocking through the unanimous acceptance of various matters to implement a number of terms of the Paris Agreement.  Applause throughout the room with each gavel stroke signifying acceptance.  The Glasgow Agreement will guide the implementation of the Paris Agreement for the next few years.  Hallelujah.  I’ll leave a more detailed exposition to Elizabeth next week.  For now, here are links to her latest pieces for Policy Magazine, “Glasgow Crunch Time”, and “Sharma Rolls the Dice”:

https://www.policymagazine.ca/letter-from-glasgow-crunch-time/

https://www.policymagazine.ca/letter-from-cop26-glasgow-president-sharma-rolls-the-dice/

For my part, I’ve been talking with any number of people here and gathering recent data about the truly astonishing increase in the deployment of solar and wind energy around the world.  I’ve been studying disruption – the wholesale replacement of outdated industries by newer technologies – for years.  I believe this the beginning of the global disruption of energy production –fossil fuels, big hydro and nuclear energy will simply be uncompetitive within 10 years or so.  And that gives the planet a mathematical possibility, perhaps even growing to a likelihood, that we might be able to keep to 1.5.  Huzzah!  It’s happening.  If anyone is interested in the numbers, let me know at kidder@telus.net.

But in Canada, and even more in BC, we continue to bet the farm on continued development and expansion of the existing industries, in the thoroughly misguided hope that export markets will be there when the pipelines and LNG plants and big dams are finally completed.
I think that’s a fool’s errand.  Further, the much talked-about “just transition” of workers and resources from fossil fuels to renewables is a pipe dream – these shifts always happens more rapidly and more massively than incumbent industries can imagine – unless our governments start looking forward, instead of planning by looking in the rear-view mirror, what we are in for will be an unplanned and most unjust disruption of workers and small businesses.  This is a shameful dereliction of duty.

Governments should know better – instead of encouraging the disruption by boosting renewable energy, getting out of the fossil businesses while companies still have at least a little cash to remediate the immense damage they’ve done to land and water and indigenous communities, keeping rivers and the potential for agriculture alive, reducing the potential for  catastrophic leaks and spills, our governments want to delay as long as possible the inevitable transformation, for the commercial benefit of their industrial supporters.  But, once the train of disruption is clearly underway and accelerating, they’ll rush to the station to clamber aboard the caboose, and then try to take credit for building the engine.  Bah.

I hope I don’t bore you with a bit of personal stuff.  But it has been my great pleasure to support Elizabeth at this meeting for a couple of weeks now, and I thought you might enjoy a different sort of observation.  For Elizabeth, this has been just another perfectly ordinary couple of weeks.  Up at 5:45, a taxi and two trains to start at 8 in freezing rooms and tents and pavilions, discussions and meetings and research and writing and discussions until 9 or 10 in the evening, dinner somewhere, two trains and a taxi back to our billet, bed by midnight or so, up and at it again next morning.  In the middle of all this, Elizabeth keeps up with media here and from Canada, Zooms with constituents and youth and other parliamentarians, meets piles of admirers every day for chats and pictures, makes introductions for new Green MP Mike Morrice to his work and to other Greens and activists from around the world, with time out to join 150,000 others for hours last Saturday in the Glasgow wind and rain.

And all this as she hobbles about with a walker to get around as her knee recovers from surgery and her other knee waiting for same – in and out of cars, on and off trains, a million steps a day in this enormous meeting place.  We’re both now keenly aware of the myriad invisible barriers that hamper people with even the mildest accessibility problems.  And we are enormously grateful here in Glasgow of the wonderful generosity and helpfulness of complete strangers.  But Elizabeth, through her continuous discomfort and occasional real pain, is always charming and appreciative, and she has won many more admirers over here.

And I am even more appreciative of the woman I am lucky enough to be married to.

Thanks for reading, thanks for your support for Elizabeth,

Onward and upward,

John

Saanich-Gulf Islands Greens
http://www.sgigreenparty.ca/

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And August already!

Let us celebrate August 1st – Emancipation Day! Marking the passing of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act in the British Parliament. In our Green Party release supporting the official designation of August 1st in Canada as Emancipation Day (as in many countries around the world), we made note of the fact that millions of people are still living as slaves.

Products we think of as “treats” come from industries dependent on slave labour – such as those popular rings of farmed shrimp and any chocolate bar not marked “Fair Trade.”  Marking our colonial legacy and the existence of historic slavery is important; so too is confronting modern slavery.

We are also coming up this week to the very somber 75th Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thanks to work from a grassroots peace movement effort “Bells for Peace,” connecting me through local peace activist William Geimer, I asked the Speaker of the House to approve the engagement of the bells of the House of Commons Peace Tower.  Dominion Carillonneur  Dr. Andrew McCready will rings the bells on August 6th and 9th, with the largest bell, the Bourdon, striking each day 75 times.

In a powerful opinion piece in yesterday’s Globe and Mail, Hiroshima survivor, Setsuko Thurlow, framing her plea around the ringing of the Peace Tower bells, urges our government to acknowledge Canada’s role in the nuclear attack. It was our uranium in the bomb and our National Research Council that played an active role in the Manhattan Project.

She calls for something we Greens have been demanding for years- that Canada sign and ratify the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It’s time.

Meanwhile, much news this week poked holes in oft-repeated pro-oil propaganda.

This one article refutes (without meaning to) a whack of oil lobby lies:

The story in a nutshell is that with the drop in demand for oil, space opened up in existing pipelines and long-term rail contracts created empty rail cars and huge monthly costs:

“Cenovus said last week it was spending as much as C$20 million per month for its suspended rail program, one-quarter of the costs when it is fully active, but now generating no revenue to offset expenses.”

But don’t worry say our friends in the oil patch. When things recover there will be demand to keep all planned pipelines full and keep moving oil by rail.

So if anyone ever says to you, “if you block pipelines, oil will move to rail,” this article proves that even with more pipelines, the industry plans to continue moving oil by rail.

Two other stories this week confirm that if oil is not dead, it is on life support.

The first was the news that global oil giant, Total S.A. of France, is writing off over $9 billion in assets in Canada’s oil sands.  Total has projected that global oil demand will peak by 2030, with the price of Brent crude staying at roughly $50/barrel for the long term. That price is well below break-even for bitumen.

The second bit of oil future news came from the sector that does the drilling for oil across Canada.

“The Petroleum Services Association of Canada is cutting its 2020 Canadian drilling forecast for a third time as the industry remains mired in a slump expected to extend well into the second half of the year.

“The association says it now expects just 2,800 wells will be drilled in Canada this year, down from a nearly 50-year low of 3,100 in its revised forecast in April.”

Projections for demand continue to be revised downward.

And to cap off some good news for a change – two more developments.

Good news that Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson has reversed his earlier decision on environmental review of the Vista coal mine.

The owner, Coalspur Mine operations of Hinton Alberta, plans to massively expand operations, mining thermal coal for export. Searching on-line to determine who owns Coalspur Mine Operations, I find it listed as a sole proprietorship with ten employees.  That’s not a typo. Dun and Bradstreet lists the company as having ten employees.

Much of the coal mined in Canada is metallurgical coal for steel making. Mining coal intended for burning for electricity overseas is an outrage in a climate emergency.

Wilkinson’s decision is good news, but the project could well still be approved. Those who have followed anything I have said about Bill C-69, the Liberal version of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, will know I think it is close to useless.

This review will be a first big test. The fact the decision to review was at the discretion of the minister confirms that C-69 is just too discretionary!

And last bit of good news and a big thank you to BC Green MLAs Adam Olsen and Sonia Furstenau.

BC Greens have established clear lines before they will support the NDP efforts to change BC Hydro rules. Bill 17 would eliminate the potential economic benefits for First Nations in the development of renewable energy.  It would pull the rug right out from under them – with zero consultation. Bill 17 was denounced by First Nations leaders, notably President of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council, Judith Sayers, but not by many environmental groups.  I am grateful that Dogwood sounded the alarm.

So on this Sunday morning when for every year for the last dozen or so I would normally be decked out in feather boas and beads for Vancouver Pride, this year I am blowing kisses to all virtually. Mark Pride events in your heart as COVID keeps us from crowding the streets with our usual exuberant celebration of LGBTQ2s+ rights.

Have a great rest of your three day weekend!!!

Love and Happy Pride!

Elizabeth

This weekly newsletter is published by Elizabeth’s EDA in Saanich-Gulf Islands. You can sign up for it here.

The post Good Sunday Morning – August 2 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands) 2020-02-20 15:11

Mr. Speaker, that is a hard act to follow. Underpinning all the propaganda from Coastal GasLink and other LNG boosters is the claim that shipping our LNG overseas will be good for the climate crisis and will reduce greenhouse gases overall. Unfortunately, that claim is not true. I would ask the minister if he is aware of recent studies that show a dangerous spike in greenhouse gas methane emissions as a result of fracking and that fracked gas has the same carbon footprint as coal.

The post Fracked gas has the same carbon footprint as coal appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Over the last million years, CO2 never exceeded 280 ppm (based on actual readings of atmospheric chemistry from Antarctic ice core data.) Concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG) are a very different measurement than emission rates. Concentrations have a very long lag time and will not be able to be decreased except over centuries, while emission rates can go down overnight. It is critical to start reducing emissions, because existing concentrations mean that we will see warming over the next 100 years from today’s emissions.

Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May and Dr. Andrew Weaver, a BC Green Party candidate running in the upcoming provincial election, believe that this unwanted milestone in the climate saga could be a turning point towards clean technology to reverse this trend.

“We are in a danger zone as we hit 400 ppm.  We must move to immediate reductions in GHG, and shift to new clean technologies,” said Green Leader Elizabeth May, Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.

May recently tabled a private member’s bill to cap the carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired plants.

“It’s clear that emissions from these plants are some of the most dangerous for the planet. Using clean technologies that exist today can help us move into the 21st century,” said May.

There is a consensus in the scientific community that greenhouse gases should be limited to levels that would avoid allowing global average temperatures to rise by 2 degrees Celsius.  Scientists have marked that wide red line in a band from 425-450 ppm.

Climate scientist and Deputy Green Party Leader of British Columbia, Dr. Andrew Weaver, says this moment can bring a new economic reality to BC.

The post 400 ppm: A Dangerous Pollution Milestone Has Been Passed appeared first on Elizabeth May.

“The Conservatives indirectly cut PEARL, the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Canada`s largest, northernmost research laboratory, located on Ellesmere Island just months ago,” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, MP Saanich-Gulf Islands. “Is it a coincidence that one of the most polluting, resource-extraction industries is now ready to exploit the area?”

PEARL had been tracking ozone depletion, climate change, and air quality in the High Arctic, but the Canadian Network for Detection of Atmospheric Change, a network of university researchers who ran it, weren’t able to secure the $1.5 million annual funding required to continue their work.

PEARL had been supported by the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS) which had its funding eliminated and closed in March. PEARL was also supported by the Major Resources Support Program (MRS) which has been negatively affected by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) funding “moratorium” – again due to Conservative budget cuts.

At the time of PEARL’s closure announcement, Jim Drummond of Dalhousie University stated: “We’re losing the ability to know what’s going on up there.”

Also, Conservative budget cuts at Environment Canada have forced it to scale back the monitoring and oversight of a program designed to help the mining industry meet emission standards. Environment Canada personnel have been told that the Environmental Effects Monitoring Program “will prioritize work based on risk” and “not always provide guidance on a facility-by-facility basis.”

On Ellesmere Island, residents are hoping that the Nunavut land-claims agreement and the promises of Canada Coal will protect their hunting grounds. They are also worried about rare, now-extinct animal fossils and the remnants of a 45-million-year-old forest preserved in the soil.

“When most countries are turning their backs on dirty coal, Canada is allowing its extraction in one of the most ecologically fragile and archeologically significant places in the world,” said May. “It is doing this after dismantling the well-placed PEARL monitoring capacities that would have given us some appreciation of the damage being done.

“This is not good news. It’s time to bring back the scientists.”

Government data show that coal plants represent seven of the top ten sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in Canada.

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