The Alberta Energy Regulator reports close to 60,000 litres of crude oil have spilled into muskeg in the province’s north after a mechanical problem at a Canadian Natural Resources Limited pipeline. The pipeline shown is from the Canadian Natural Resources website. (CNR)
By Canadian Press, reposted from CBCNews, Nov 29, 2014
The Alberta Energy Regulator says close to 60,000 litres of crude oil have spilled into muskeg in the province’s north.
An incident report by the regulator states that a mechanical failure was reported Thursday at a Canadian Natural Resources Limited pipeline approximately 27 kilometres north of Red Earth Creek.
The report says there are no reports of impact to wildlife and that a cleanup has begun.
Red Earth Creek is over 350 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
Carrie Rosa, a spokeswoman for the regulator, says officials have been delayed reaching the scene due to poor weather in the last few days.
No one from Canadian Natural Resources could be reached on Saturday for comment. SOURCE
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) proposes to overhaul the four reactors at Darlington starting in 2016, extending their lives to 2055. TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
TORONTO – In a ruling dated November 25, 2014, the Federal Court has decided against overturning an environmental assessment on Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) proposal to extend the life of the four aging Darlington reactors.
The ruling was in response to a legal challenge brought by Greenpeace, Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA), Lake Ontario Waterkeeper and Northwatch. The groups, represented by lawyers from Ecojustice and CELA, had argued that the environmental assessment was not conducted in accordance with federal legislation.
The groups are currently reviewing the Court’s reasons for judgment, and have not yet decided whether an appeal will be pursued.
“We are disappointed that the environmental assessment has been left untouched,” said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, an energy analyst with Greenpeace. “In our respectful view, the environmental assessment did not properly address fisheries impacts, nuclear waste management or the environmental effects of reactor accidents causing large radioactive releases.”
OPG plans to begin rebuilding the four aging Darlington reactors in 2016. It has yet to release a final cost-estimate for the project.
Taking a page out of Stephen Harper’s playbook, Justin Trudeau has also come out as a big supporter of the so-called “P3 model“, a public-private partnership that is rather controversial in that the tax payer maybe on the hook for long durations of “infrastructure projects”.
Harper’s P3 Fund is problematic because it requires a municipality to enter into a P3 agreement with a for-profit company if they want federal funding for infrastructure projects. P3s are more costly and can increase rates, decrease the quality of a service, result in job cuts and eliminate accountability and transparency. P3 contracts are lengthy contracts – often lasting up to 30 years - and are frequently negotiated behind closed doors. They often violate principles of local democracy. Moncton, New Brunswick learned these lessons with its P3 agreement.
And now it looks like Trudeau is going down that road too. In his speech he stated, “The answer is clear: We commit to investing more in badly needed infrastructure projects. We need to set a new standard, and we start by doing more of what we’re here to do today: working together. Working with provinces and cities to make sure we’re getting our priorities straight. Because once we commit to investing, we also need to ensure we are targeting our funding correctly. So private capital will obviously be important because it will enhance – and complement –increased federal investments.”
He adds, “The government needs you to help in identifying new and more innovative mechanisms to finance and build public infrastructure.”
While municipalities are in need of infrastructure, essential services should remain under community control and governance.
Trudeau also points to First Nation communities as an opportunity for P3s: “We can also fix the shameful lack of investment in our First Nations communities, because this isn’t just about laying new roads or putting down tracks; it’s about all of us, the country we want to live in, and the one we want to pass down to our children.”
The Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act, passed last year, sets needed standards but failed to adequately consult indigenous communities and allocate any funding, creating the conditions where some communities will be required to enter into P3 contracts. While thewater situation in First Nation communities is abhorrent, First Nation communities must give free, prior and informed consent on how their water and wastewater services is managed and should not be required to enter into P3 agreements if they want to access federal funding.
P3s can lead to the gradual privatisation of essential public services. With investor-state rules in trade agreements like CETA (the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade agreement), municipalities and indigenous communities will have a hard time ending a P3 agreement - even if the service is poor - without the Canadian government being the target of a free-trade lawsuit. Read more in the new report Trading Away Democracy: How CETA’s investment protection rules threaten the public good in Canada and the EU, recently released by the Council of Canadians and more than a dozen European and Canadian organizations.
What’s also concerning is earlier in his speech he mentioned the budget surplus without noting that that surplus has come from all of Harper’s public servant and program cuts which are roughly $14 billion annually: “A case in point: that fiscal update is expected to herald a surplus for the first time in many years of this Conservative government’s tenure. The question that should be asked is this: What should that surplus be invested in?”
The Conservative government cut billions from protecting the safety of our lakes and rivers, health care, support programs for our veterans, food safety and many other areas critical to Canadians and indigenous people. The Council of Canadians urges Justin Trudeau to take action to bring back these programs and public sector jobs.
P3s are not the solution. If Trudeau continues to go down this path, he will be no different than Harper in this respect. The Council of Canadians is urging Justin Trudeau to reject a P3 Canada Fund. The Council also urges the New Democratic Party and the Green Party to differentiate themselves from Trudeau and Harper by rejecting P3s and commit to funding infrastructure and public services that keeps them under community control.
Send a letter to federal party leaders urging them to develop a national water policy that includes a national public water infrastructure fund and invests in water and wastewater infrastructure, particularly in First Nations communities.
Stay tuned for more blogs on the federal parties’ positions on water issues leading up to the election next year!
Even in a cold northern climate, it’s possible to build a net-zero-energy home. Canada already has several examples of zero-energy buildings (or homes that are nearly net-zero), including the EcoTerra home in Eastman, Quebec.
One year ago British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California signed the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy that included a commitment to “transform the market for energy efficiency and lead the way to ‘net-zero’ buildings.” With the release of a 2014 Annual Progress Summary, it’s a good time to ask how B.C. has fared in keeping this promise.
As noted in the Progress Summary, the B.C. government has taken steps toward establishing an energy efficient building stock, including requiring government buildings to be LEED Gold certified and (most recently) increasing energy performance requirements in the Building Code. But other actions — or lack thereof — make it clear that B.C. needs an overall energy efficiency strategy leading toward increased development of net-zero buildings.
B.C. risks falling behind
For example, earlier this year the B.C. government ended its LiveSmart program. And while energy efficiency requirements in the provincial Building Code have been updated, these changes were six years in the making.
No announcement has been made as to when the next update to the Code might come or what level of performance it might target. Nor do we have a provincial vision or strategy articulating how B.C. will move toward net-zero buildings, long-term targets or a transparent process to get there.
The LEED-platinum Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) building at UBC is an example of what B.C. can achieve on the pathway to high-performance buildings. Click to learn more.
Compare this to California’s commitment to reach net-zero by 2020 for new residential buildings and 2030 for new commercial buildings, with three-year Code revision cycles set to take them there. In Washington, the State Code Council and the Department of Commerce are also moving fastto develop energy standards that will lead to a 70 per cent reduction in building energy use by 2030.
As a signatory to the Pacific Coast Action Plan, B.C. is at risk of falling behind its partners when it comes to moving toward net-zero buildings.
A climate opportunity for B.C.
A strategic approach to increasing energy efficiency in buildings could lead to significant reductions in carbon pollution across the province and play a central role in B.C.’s revised climate strategy — Climate Action Plan 2.0.
B.C. could build on the legacy of the 2008 Energy Efficient Buildings Strategy and should align its approach with the commitments made in the Pacific Coast Action Plan. It should clearly define B.C.’s net-zero building objective, set targets and articulate a pathway including short-term actions. The Province should also address the five buildings resolutions endorsed by local governments at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention this year and consider no-regret actions that could be taken in 2015 to advance them.
With both local governments and Pacific Coast states pushing forward with energy-efficiency policy innovation, the Province has partners with whom it can advance the net-zero commitment, ensuring a lasting legacy in our built housing stock for generations to come. SOURCE
Jones is right about one thing – the minimum wage is not a magic cure for our economic woes. No one has ever suggested it is.
But it is an essential piece of what should be a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy.
Jones claims that past increases in the minimum wage have not reduced poverty. But how could they, when past increases have been too small and too late. At $10.25 an hour, BC’s current minimum wage is too low to reduce the poverty rate. Someone working full time and full year at that wage would still earn less than the poverty line for a single person. A single mom in a minimum wage job brings home 32% less than the poverty line. However, even those inadequate increases have reduced the depth of poverty, meaning they have brought low-wage workers up a little closer to the poverty line.
The claim that minimum wage increases will kill jobs is old and tired, and has been firmly refuted. A recent CCPA study that closely examined the history of minimum wage increases across Canada since the early 1980s found there is no consistent connection between higher minimum wages and employment levels. Instead, the research concludes that, “Employment levels are overwhelmingly determined by larger macroeconomic factors. In the few instances where an empirical connection between minimum wages and employment outcomes is found, it is almost as likely to be positive as negative. In other words, higher minimum wages could just as easily result in stronger employment performance (not weaker).”
Business lobby groups never like increases in the minimum wage. Every time one is contemplated, we hear the same complaints that it would ruin small businesses. But when the minimum wage is finally raised, the sky does not fall. Experience teaches us that the minimum wage is a marginal factor when it comes to employment.
But minimum wages do matter to poverty reduction. Most poor people in British Columbia aren’t on social assistance. Rather, they are working in the low-wage labour market. One third of poor children in BC have a parent working full time in the paid labour market.
When Jones rejects minimum wage increases in favor of alternatives such as housing and food subsidies, she is effectively suggesting that taxpayers should subsidize businesses that pay poverty level wages.
A comprehensive poverty reduction plan needs to have many elements, including some Jones proposes. But we all have to do our part – including employers.
Jones is also wrong when she says, “Most workers who benefit from a minimum-wage increase do not live in poor households.” 6.4% of British Columbian workers earn the current minimum wage (or less). Almost half (47%) of those workers are over 25 years of age. And 43% work full time. 55% of minimum wage workers have been in the same job for over a year, and 46% work for large corporations with over 500 employees.
And of course, many more workers (a majority of them adults) have wages in between the current $10.25 minimum wage and the proposed $15. So the whole “teenagers working part-time” line is a myth.
Finally, Jones’s presumption that unions only support an increase in the minimum wage for their own self interest is deeply cynical, and plain wrong. Notably, since the last rise in the minimum wage, many unionized workers have been held to zero wage increases. But the simple truth is that most of the labour movement subscribes to a social-union orientation that they have a duty to advance the interest of all workers, particularly the most vulnerable such as farm workers and low-wage workers, regardless of whether they have the good fortune to belong to a union. SOURCE
Ontario is moving closer to curbing a class of pesticides blamed for massive bee kills that endanger the pollination of crops and the environment.
The Agriculture Ministry says 58 per cent of the province’s bees died over last winter — a record in what was also an unusually cold season. CARLOS OSORIO / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
Ontario is moving closer to curbing a class of pesticides blamed for massive bee kills that endanger the pollination of crops and the environment.
But farmers are infuriated by the move announced Tuesday by Agriculture Minister Jeff Leal to reduce the number of acres planted with neonicotinoid-coated corn and soybean seeds by 2017.
“A reduction at this level puts our farmers at a competitive disadvantage,” said Barry Senft of the Grain Farmers of Ontario, insisting it “flies in the face” of efforts farmers have made to minimize impacts from the pesticide.
Leal promised 60 days of consultations on the plan, which was applauded by the Ontario Beekeepers Association, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario.
“We will work with farmers, beekeepers and all others impacted by this to implement a plan sensitive to their needs,” Leal pledged in a statement.
“We know, and farmers recognize, there are risks associated with the use of neonicotinoid pesticides,” he added, noting they are an “important tool” in certain circumstances.
The next step is to establish new rules on their use by July so that reduction measures can begin in time for the 2016 planting season, making the environment safer for bees engaged in pollination and making honey.
A manufacturer of neonicotinoids, CropLife Canada, issued a statement calling them “one of the safest insecticides ever developed.”
“We are disappointed that the government of Ontario intends to disadvantage Ontario farmers by informing an ill-informed reduction target.”
Beekeepers have criticized the government for not moving fast enough given what has happened in other jurisdictions, but applauded the announcement.
The Ontario Beekeepers Association credited the government for “moving decisively and measurably to significantly limit the use of these toxic chemicals,” president Tibor Szabo said in a statement.
“The OBA appreciates the government’s recognition that the prophylactic use of neonicotinoid-coated seed on Ontario’s corn and soy crops is unwarranted and unacceptable.”
The European Commission, for example, has restricted the sale and use of the pesticides since 2013, with Japan, France, Germany, Italy and eastern Ontario’s Prince Edward County taking various forms of action already.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath noted many bees have died in the last year waiting for the government to act, despite repeated warnings from the beekeeping industry.
“It’s certainly taken a long time,” she told reporters, accusing the Liberal government of deciding to “drag out the implementation.”
The pesticide disrupts the ability of bees, along with other pollinators such as birds and butterflies, to feed, navigate and reproduce and makes them more susceptible to illness.
Leal’s ministry acknowledged that 58 per cent of the province’s bees died over last winter — a record in what was also an unusually cold season.
Earlier this year, two major beekeeping firms spearheaded the launch of a $450-millionclass-action lawsuit against two pesticide manufacturers, alleging their products have caused widespread deaths in bee colonies.
Health Canada has also blamed chemicals in the pesticides for mass bee kills and an Ontario Agriculture Ministry field crop entomologist has said the pesticide seed treatments should be used “only when necessary” in the 10 to 20 per cent of soils susceptible to wireworm and grubs.
An international panel of 50 scientists working as the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides has called for neonics to be phased out, and is calling on authorities to restrict their use saying they also harm worms and birds.
Neonics, which are also applied through a spray, make up roughly 40 per cent of the insecticide market, with global sales nearing $3 billion in 2011. SOURCE
The UK is comparatively resilient to extreme events - but vulnerable because of high population density
Climate change and population growth will hugely increase the risk to people from extreme weather, a report says.
By Roger Harrabin, BBC environment analyst, reposted from the BBCNews, Oct 26, 2014
The Royal Society warns that the risk of heatwaves to an ageing population will rise about ten-fold by 2090 if greenhouse gases continue to rise.
They estimate the risk to individuals from floods will rise more than four-fold and the drought risk will treble.
The report’s lead author Prof Georgina Mace said: “This problem is not just about to come… it’s here already.”
She told BBC News: “We have to get the mindset that with climate change and population increase we are living in an ever-changing world – and we need much better planning if we hope to cope.”
The report says governments have not grasped the risk of booming populations in coastal cities as sea level rises and extreme events become more severe.
“People are increasingly living in the wrong places, and it’s likely that extreme events will be more common,” Prof Mace says.
“For most hazards, population increase contributes at least as much as climate change - sometimes more. We are making ourselves more vulnerable whilst making the climate more extreme.
“It is impossible for us to avoid the worst and most unexpected events. But it is not impossible to be prepared for an ever-changing world. We must organise ourselves right away.”
The report’s team said the UK was comparatively resilient to extreme events – but still vulnerable because of the high density of people living in areas at risk.
The report says governments have not grasped the risk of booming populations in coastal cities
The report advises all levels of society to prepare – from strategic planning at an international and national level to local schemes by citizens to tackle floods or heatwaves.
Its scenarios are based on the assumption that the world stays on the current trajectory of emissions, which the authors assume will increase temperature by 2.6-4.8C around 2090. It assumes a population of nine billion.
They say they have built upon earlier work by calculating the effects of climate change coupled with population trends. They warn that the effects of extremes will be exacerbated by the increase in elderly people, who are least able to cope with hot weather.
Urbanisation will make the issue worse by creating “heat islands” where roads and buildings absorb heat from the sun. As well as building homes insulated against the cold, we must also ensure they can be properly ventilated in the summer, the report says.
The authors say cutting greenhouse gas emissions is essential. But they argue that governments will also need to adapt to future climatic shifts driven by climate change.
They suggest threats could be tackled through a dual approach. The simplest and cheapest way of tempering heatwaves, they say, is to maintain existing green space. Other low-cost options are planting new trees, encouraging green roofs, or painting roofs white to reflect the sun.
The authors say air conditioners are the most effective way of keeping cool – but they are costly, they dump heat into city streets and their use exacerbates climate change.
Flooding is another priority area, the report says. It finds that large-scale engineering solutions like sea walls offer the most effective protection to coastal flooding - but they are expensive, and when they fail the results can be disastrous.
Urbanisation creates heat islands which can exacerbate the effects of hot weather
The ideal solution, the authors think, may be a combination of “hard” engineering solutions like dykes matched with “soft” solutions like protecting wetlands to hold water and allow it to seep into the ground.
A scheme at Pickering in Yorkshire previously featured by BBC News is held as an example. The report concludes more research is needed to measure the effectiveness of these ecosystem solutions.
It insists that governments should carefully prioritise their spending. They should protect major infrastructure like electricity generation because of its knock-on effect on the broader economy. They should expect some lower-priority defences to fail from time to time, then work to minimise the consequences of that failure .
The authors identify excess heat as another potential threat to economies and agriculture if temperatures climb too high for outdoor workers.
They examine projected rises in the “wet bulb” index used by the US Army and others to measure the temperature felt when the skin is wet and exposed to moving air.
Some areas may experience many weeks when outdoor activity is heavily restricted, they fear – although the trend of agricultural labour loss may be offset through the century as more and more people move to cities.
It puts a figure on those at greatest overall risk: populations in poor countries make up only 11% of those exposed to hazards but account for 53% of the disaster deaths.
Some economists argue this shows that poor nations should increase their economies by burning cheap fossil fuels because that will allow them to spend more later on disaster protection.
The authors also call for reform of the financial system to take into account the exposure of assets to extreme events.
They say: “Unless risks are accurately evaluated and reported, companies will have limited incentives to reduce them. And valuations and investment decisions will continue to be poorly informed.”
One author, Rowan Douglas, from the Willis Research Network, said he suspected this might be the most significant contribution of the report.
The authors want organisations to report their maximum probable losses due to extreme events, based on a 1% chance of the event on any given year.
“The 1% stress test is not as extreme as it might sound – it implies a 10% chance of an organization being affected once a decade,” they say.
They say decisions made over the next few decades as the world builds vast urban areas will be key to the resilience of people by the end of the century. SOURCE
