United States International Trade Commission began an investigation into renewable electricity imports including Canadian hydroelectricity. The name of the investigation is “Renewable Electricity: Potential Effects of Increased Commitments in Massachusetts.” The investigation is ongoing and NAMRA and others provided key testimony in July and August 2020 about the dark side of Canadian hydroelectricity production.
four topics, including Massachusetts’ plan to use Canadian hydroelectricity to meet “ambitious goals for seeking alternative renewable means of providing energy while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” The U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means requested the investigation in January 2020 letter. Representatives from both sides of the border are participating.
The greenwashing of this hydroelectricity was exposed in the ITC proceedings. NAMRA has asked for an investigation of fraudulent claims by hydropower promoters about the climate and greenhouse gas benefits of this dirty energy.
Mauro Chiesa has worked on project finance around the world for many banks, including the World Bank. Harry Swain chaired the Joint Review Panel on Site C and is a former deputy minister of Industry Canada. Mike Harcourt is a former premier of B.C. and former mayor of Vancouver.
Here’s an ineluctable law of nature: Project costs escalate during construction. But still, there are limits around what people should accept. For B.C.‘s Site C dam, the costs have gone from $3.5-billion, which was the estimate when the project was first touted, to the $6.9-billion quoted when the project underwent public review, to the official $10.7-billion price tag that hung until very recently. Since then, BC Hydro has discovered nasty geotechnical conditions under the powerhouse and spillways, and says their cost and schedule estimates are so broken it will take them until the fall just to produce new ones.
University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Summary:
Bird biodiversity is rapidly declining in the US. The overall bird population decreased by 29% since 1970, while grassland birds declined by an alarming 53%. A new study points to increased use of neonicotinoid insecticides as a major factor in the decline.
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Bird biodiversity is rapidly declining in the U.S. The overall bird population decreased by 29% since 1970, while grassland birds declined by an alarming 53%.
Valuable for so much more than flight and song, birds hold a key place in ecosystems worldwide. When bird numbers and varieties dwindle, pest populations increase and much-needed pollination decreases. Those examples alone negatively impact food production and human health.
Likely reasons for the far-reaching and devastating declines include intensified agricultural production, use of pesticides, conversion of grassland to agricultural land, and climate change. A new study from University of Illinois points to increased use of neonicotinoid insecticides as a major factor in the decline, says Madhu Khanna, distinguished professor in agricultural and consumer economics at U of I and co-author on the paper, published in Nature Sustainability.
Khanna says numerous studies have shown neonicotinoids -- nicotine-based pesticides -- negatively affect wild bees, honey bees, and butterflies, but large-scale studies on the pesticide's impact on birds have been limited. She speaks more about the topic in a podcast from the Center for the Economics of Sustainability at Illinois.
"This represents the first study at a national scale, over a seven-year time period, using data from hundreds of bird species in four different categories -- grassland birds, non-grassland birds, insectivores, and non-insectivores," she says.
"We found robust evidence of the negative impact of neonicotinoids, in particular on grassland birds, and to some extent on insectivore birds after controlling for the effects of changes in land use."
Khanna and co-authors Yijia Li, a graduate student at U of I, and Ruiqing Miao, assistant professor at Auburn University, analyzed bird populations from 2008 to 2014 in relation to changes in pesticide use and agricultural crop acreage.
The authors found that an increase of 100 kilograms in neonicotinoid usage per county-a 12% increase on average-contributed to a 2.2% decline in populations of grassland birds and 1.6% in insectivorous birds. By comparison, the use of 100 kilograms of non-neonicotinoid pesticides was associated with a 0.05% decrease in grassland birds and a 0.03% decline in non-grassland birds, insectivorous birds, and non-insectivorous birds.
Since impacts accumulate, the authors estimate that, for example, 100 kilograms neonicotinoid use per county in 2008 reduced cumulative grassland-bird populations by 9.7% by 2014. These findings suggest that neonicotinoid use has a relatively large effect on population declines of important birds and that these impacts grow over time.
According to the study, the adverse impacts on bird populations were concentrated in the Midwest, Southern California, and Northern Great Plains.
The researchers say the effect of neonicotinoids could result directly from birds consuming treated crop seeds, and indirectly by affecting the insect populations they feed on. Consumption of just a few seeds is enough to cause long-term damage to the birds' reproduction and development.
The study included data on bird population and species diversity from the North American breeding bird survey, a comprehensive database with data from about 3,000 bird routes across the United States. The researchers correlated the bird data with pesticide use, as well as satellite data on agricultural crop acreage and urban land use.
They examined whether intensified agricultural production and conversion of grassland to agricultural land also contributed to the bird decline. Results showed a small negative effect on grassland birds related to cropland expansion, but no significant effect on other types of birds.
While the use of other pesticides has been flat or declining, neonicotinoid usage has grown exponentially over the past two decades. Neonicotinoids are considerably more toxic to insects and persist longer in the environment, the researchers note.
"This research provides compelling support for the re-evaluation of policies permitting the use of neonicotinoids by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by incorporating considerations of the implications of these pesticides for bird habitats," the authors conclude.
The project was supported by Hatch funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).
Several recent reports on the tremors add to concerns about the mega-project’s stability.
Building the Site C dam in northeastern British Columbia is proving more difficult than officials predicted due to unstable ground on the northern bank. Adding to concerns: myriad earthquakes.
For nearly a decade, The Tyee has reported on a rising number of earthquakes caused by the hydraulic fracturing of shale formations in the region. Now, new studies put the number of such tremors in recent years in the many thousands, raising more worries about the future of the mega-project.
Researchers warn the shaking could become strong enough to crumble critical infrastructure such as roads, high-rise buildings — and dams.
B.C.’s regulatory practices try to limit fracking after small earthquakes have been triggered. But that’s “not sufficient to protect critical or vulnerable infrastructure that have unacceptable failure consequences,” noted seismic hazard expert Gail Atkinson in the May 7 issue of Nature Reviews.
No one can yet predict frack-triggered quakes before they happen, and “hazard forecasting” remains a “critical area of research.”
Another study, released this week by researcher Ben Parfitt at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, took data from federal earthquake catalogues to show how many tremors the fracking industry is producing near the Site C dam.
The numbers are staggering. Between 2017 and 2018 alone, the industry triggered 6,551 earthquakes greater than 0.8 magnitude in the region near the troubled mega-project with a price estimate of $12 billion and rising.
Protestors gather outside the White House to demonstrate against torture on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. prison facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Charles Davis/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 2015 (IPS) - The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has criticised member states for ‘cherry-picking’ human rights – advocating some and openly violating others – perhaps to suit their own national or political interests.
Despite ratifying the U.N. charter reaffirming their faith in fundamental human rights, there are some member states who, “with alarming regularity”, are disregarding and violating human rights, “sometimes to a shocking degree,” he said.
A trawler in Johnstone Strait, BC, Canada. Human activities such as pollution, overfishing, mining, geo-engineering and climate change have made an international agreement to protect the high seas more critical than ever. Credit: Winky/cc by 2.0
Jun 8 2020 (IPS) - Oceans cover 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface. But, because many of us spend most of our lives on land, the 362 million square kilometres of blue out there aren’t always top of mind.
While vast, oceans are not empty. They are teeming with life and connected to society through geopolitics and recreation.
The laws, institutions and regulations in place for the oceans are a multi-layered patchwork and always a work in progress.
Common heritage of humankind
Some characterize oceans as the “common heritage of humankind.” As such, the United Nations plays a critical role in ocean governance, and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is a key international agreement. The agreement grants coastal and island states authority over swaths of ocean extending 200 nautical miles (360 kilometres) from the shore. These are called exclusive economic zones (EEZ).
EEZs are domestic spaces. Countries enshrine law and delegate authority to state agencies that lead monitoring, management and enforcement in these zones.
Indigenous peoples also assert jurisdictional authority and coastal peoples hold critical insight about coastal and marine ecosystems. Governance is improved when state agencies share power and collaborate.
For example, during the Newfoundland cod collapse, inshore fishermen had local ecological knowledge about changing cod stock dynamics that might have helped avoid the disaster.
A turtle swims in a Marine Protected Area. Credit: Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Canadian Oil Service Sector supports the Emergence of New Canadian Geothermal Developers
Calgary, Alberta, May 26, 2020 – At the end of April, The Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors (CAODC), Clean Energy Canada and the Petroleum Services Association of Canada (PSAC) joined together to establish an alliance with the existing geothermal industry participants to promote Canadian geothermal development and to create jobs for displaced oil and gas drilling contractors and oilfield service workers.
See the link for details on this Geothermal Alliance here.
Under such an initiative, Eavor believes Alberta could attract up to $4 billion in private and foreign investment capital, to create 400MWe of clean dispatchable power and eliminate 2,000,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year, all the while eventually employing 5,000+ displaced oil service workers. Such a plan could kickstart a geothermal ecosystem in Canada that could lead the world and represent a clean sunrise export industry for the nation.
To rapidly scale a Canadian geothermal industry, however, will require an incentive plan that can attract new developers and participants to the market. Such an incentive plan will need to include Power Purchase Agreements (PPA’s) or their equivalent to provide guaranteed offtake at a reasonable price for the value delivered (no different than for any new power generating asset). The advantage of such incentives are that they are technology agnostic and let the market decide which technologies and developers are involved.
Mexico's state-run oil giant Pemex faces a difficult outlook due to the fall in international oil prices and the crisis resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, which threatens its production and finances, in a situation analysed during the 29th La Jolla Energy Conference, organised online by the Institute of the Americas. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
MEXICO CITY, May 22 2020 (IPS) - While it attempts to cushion the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the Latin American and Caribbean region also faces concerns about the future of the energy transition and state-owned oil companies.
These questions were discussed at the 29th La Jolla Energy Conference, organised by the Institute of the Americas. It was held online May 18-22, rather than bringing together more than 50 speakers at the institute’s headquarters in the coastal district of San Diego, in the U.S. state of California, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alfonso Blanco of Uruguay, executive secretary of the Latin American Energy Organisation (OLADE), said during a session on global trends and the regional energy industry that the changes seen during the pandemic will spread after the crisis and will be long-lasting.
“There will be structural transformations and we are convinced that most consumer behaviors will change after the pandemic. Demand will vary due to changes in the main areas of transportation and other energy areas. The effects on fossil fuel consumption will be strong and there will be a greater impact on renewable energies,” he said.
The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons on May 23 unanimously adopted a statement condemning recent reports of White House discussions to resume nuclear weapons testing. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic Abolition 2000 had to take the unprecedented step of holding its AGM online, allowing participants from some 40 countries to join.
The statement (full text below) warns that resumed US testing of nuclear weapons would inevitably lead to resumption of testing by other nations. Such testing would, in any case, be in contravention of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed by the United Stated in 1996, yet pending entry-into-force.
John Burroughs, Executive Director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, and one of the statement's drafters said, "Testing of nuclear weapons evokes nuclear apocalypse, as in the days of US-Soviet brinksmanship. It must not be resumed. At the same time, we must recognize that the capabilities for apocalypse remain in place, and are being maintained and improved in the absence of nuclear explosive testing. This too must be brought to an end."
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