Impact Assessment of the Canada's Vista Coal Mine Expansion Project: CAN

Vista Coal Mine, Alberta, Canada

"Unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe Territories [OTTAWA], 30 July 2020 – Teika Newton of Climate Action Network – Réseau action climat Canada applauds Minister Wilksinson’s decision to designate the Vista Coal Mine Expansion for a federal assessment in light of its potential adverse impacts to areas under federal jurisdiction and to Aboriginal and Treaty rights, a welcome shift from his December 2019 determination.  

Canada’s domestic and international leadership on phasing-out coal power would be severely undermined by continuing to supply overseas markets with the dirtiest fossil fuel. The Vista expansion must be closely scrutinized, and its climate effects carefully taken into consideration throughout the federal assessment process, as is to be expected under the newly released Strategic Assessment of Climate Change (part of the Impact Assessment Act)."

30 July 2020

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From Climate Action Network Canada

coal mining, Canada, #jailclimatecriminals, greenhouse gases, 100% renewable energy,

Canada's Climate Action Rating by the 'Climate Action Tracker' (Excerpt)

At the Climate Action Tracker site countries are evaluated according to the sufficiency of climate action.
Check out your country at the site.

(Excerpt- Pics by this blog)

"At 2 Dec 2019     Rating: Insufficient"

"Canada continues with the incremental implementation of its Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate, its overarching strategy for reducing emissions, adopted in 2016; often in the face of provincial pushback. The Government is implementing its coal-fired power plant phase-out, but it clearly needs to take more climate action, as emissions are projected to still be above 1990 levels beyond 2030, far from its Paris Agreement target and nowhere near a 1.5˚C-compatible pathway.

Large enough to be seen from
 space, tailings ponds in
 Alberta’s oil sands region
National Geographic

The federal government had been facing strong headwinds against climate action at the provincial level, with four provinces (Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and New Brunswick) challenging the constitutionality of its mandatory federal carbon pricing system. These provinces have no - or insufficient - climate plans and the carbon pricing system applies to them while these court challenges proceed. The first of the cases was recently decided in favour of the federal government and will now be appealed to the highest court in the country, the Supreme Court.

The headwinds reached gale force in April with the election of a conservative government in Alberta. The new government has already begun rolling back the province’s climate policy, while the federal government has stated that it will apply the federal carbon pricing ‘backstop’ to Alberta as well.

The Two Sides to Canada’s Post Pandemic Recovery: by Rolly Montpellier @Below2C

There are two sides to Canada’s post pandemic recovery. On the bright side there’s massive public support for a recovery that puts people before profits and tackles both the climate crisis and the coronavirus crisis simultaneously. Hundreds of organizations all across the land have endorsed these Just Recovery Principles. But there is also a dark side.

Canada's commitment to different energy types since beginning od Covid 19 pandemic

 

1. The Dark Side

“The last time we had a financial meltdown (the 2008-09 recession) it was followed by a record surge in fossil fuel burning,” wrote Barry Saxifrage and Chris Hatch recently in the National Observer. 
 “At the time there was hope that governments would use their huge, future-shaping stimulus to transition to a climate-safe economy.”

Fossil Fuel Burning Annual Totals

Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, the burning of fossils soared in 2010 and continued its upward trajectory every single year since. That is, until the pandemic as the Global Fossil Fuel Burning chart illustrates. The blue dotted line on the chart shows the projection for an 8% decline in CO² for 2020.

Montreal Gazette: 50,000-strong climate march in Montreal targets Legault government

The march, the biggest in Quebec since the Earth Day protest of 2012, saw a kilometre-long wall of people fill Place des Festivals in downtown Montreal.

Catherine Solyom, Montreal Gazette

Updated: November 11, 2018 

 

Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the streets of downtown Montreal on Saturday with hope, desperation and urgency, calling on elected leaders to act now to stop climate change — or they will be held responsible.

Desperation because despite all the previous marches and calls on government to act, the planet is still heading toward catastrophe.

Urgency because the latest United Nations report on climate change released in October says it’s not vague “future generations,” but today’s preteens that will feel the heat and effect as adults.

Hope because, well, without hope, what is there?

Continue Reading

Nature Communications: Warming assessment of the bottom-up Paris Agreement emissions pledges

"Tightening the warming goal of each country’s effort-sharing approach to aspirational levels of 1.1 °C and 1.3 °C could achieve the 1.5 °C and well-below 2 °C-thresholds, respectively. 

This new hybrid allocation reconciles the bottom-up nature of the Paris Agreement with its top-down warming thresholds and provides a temperature metric to assess NDCs. When taken as benchmark by other countries, the NDCs of India, the EU, the USA and China lead to 2.6 °C, 3.2 °C, 4 °C and over 5.1 °C warmings, respectively."

Read the full Nature Communications article

The Guardian: Policies of China, Russia and Canada threaten 5C climate change, study finds

"Ranking of countries’ goals shows even EU on course for more than double safe level of warming."

"China, Russia and Canada’s current climate policies would drive the world above a catastrophic 5C of warming by the end of the century, according to a study that ranks the climate goals of different countries.
The US and Australia are only slightly behind with both pushing the global temperature rise dangerously over 4C above pre-industrial levels says the paper, while even the EU, which is usually seen as a climate leader, is on course to more than double the 1.5C that scientists say is a moderately safe level of heating.

The study, published on Friday in the journal Nature Communications, assesses the relationship between each nation’s ambition to cut emissions and the temperature rise that would result if the world followed their example."

Read the full the Guardian article