A worker moves a bin of Dungeness crabs after it was offloaded from a fishing vessel on Nov. 17, 2010 in San Francisco, California. File/Getty Images
The Pacific Ocean is now so acidic that it’s dissolving crab shells.
Lower pH levels in the ocean waters are causing parts of Dungeness crab shells to dissolve, which damages their sensory organs, according to a study published this month in the journal Science of the Total Environment and funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The corrosive effects of the acidity were found in crab larvae, and it’s unclear as yet how it affects adult crabs. The animals’ tiny hair-like structures, which they use to navigate their environments, have been damaged by the low pH levels, too.
“We found dissolution impacts to the crab larvae that were not expected to occur until much later in this century,” said Richard Feely, study co-author and NOAA senior scientist.
According to the study, the crabs’ injuries could impair them from fending off predators. Their shells also regulate their buoyancy in water.
Prince Charles talks about his children and grandchildren in Davos speech
Prince Charles talks about his children and grandchildren in Davos speech
“If the crabs are affected already, we really need to make sure we pay much more attention to various components of the food chain before it is too late,” study lead author Nina Bednarsek, a senior scientist with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, told CNN.
But it’s not just crabs that are at risk, the study suggests. Oysters, clams and plankton that also rely on the same carbonate ions — less abundant in acidic water — to build structures such as shells are in harm’s way, too.
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The Dungeness crab is one of the most important commodities caught and sold in Pacific Northwest commercial fisheries. According to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the commercial Dungeness crab fishery has a value of around US$19.9 million.
The study says the ocean is acidifying because more carbon dioxide is being absorbed from the atmosphere. This lowers pH levels in the water.
The NOAA says in order to deal with this problem, we should reduce our carbon footprint to lessen the amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the ocean, or find ways for wildlife and humans who rely on it to adapt to the changing sea. SOURCE
From top left: FNPA member Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme, FNPA CEO Guy Lonechild and bottom FNPA staff Rebecca Agecoutay, Tanya Grondin, Elizabeth Girard: Photography courtesty FNPA- Cowessess
After hundreds of years of outside governments and industry cashing in on Indigenous lands and resources with few benefits reciprocated, one organization is setting new precedent that could transform the energy industry.
Armed with the backing of dozens of First Nation members and corporate partnerships, an initiative to create renewable energy projects led by Indigenous groups is aiming to make millions of dollars in Alberta and Saskatchewan. With the growing demand for cleaner energy and power, Indigenous groups are open for business and ready to bring it to market.
“For too long, we’ve had major corporations and entities bring First Nation and Indigenous Peoples along for the ride… that’s not what’s happening now,” First Nations Power Authority (FNPA) CEO Guy Lonechild told an audience of stakeholders at Enoch Cree Nation on Wednesday.
Playing on the sidelines is not on the agenda, he continued — this is a game changer, a win-win that reinforces treaty relationships and helps pave the way for Indigenous self-determination.
More than a handshake
First Nations Power Authority is the only North American non-profit Indigenous owned and controlled organization developing power projects. One of its main goals is advancing Indigenous equity ownership and control on renewable energy projects, from start to finish.
An FNPA forum took place at Enoch, a First Nations community near Edmonton — a place dubbed Alberta’s “oil city.” The oilsands industry that’s sustained the province’s growth and wealth creation for decades is facing uncertainty amidst an economic downturn, political barring and environmental scrutiny.
Turning to the prospects of new, greener technology, the FNPA hopes to provide alternative solutions to consumer energy needs. Lonechild says it’s time Indigenous Peoples have the opportunity to benefit through harnessing the resources of their traditional territories.
Partnering with industry and governments is key to launching forward, he said.
“Indigenous engagement (in the energy sector) has to be more than just a handshake. We want to create transformational relationships.”
And that includes owning a majority stake in energy projects, he continued, which will help First Nations get out of the cycle of poverty and take part in the mainstream economy.
FNPA-Cowessess First Nation launch their solar expansion of their current wind battery site. Photograph courtesy of FNPA – Cowessess
Billion dollar fund aims to align Indigenous interests with gas and oil
Meanwhile, another first of its kind is unfolding in Alberta — a billion-dollar fund from the provincial government to advance Indigenous natural-resource developments. It’s an initiative that aligns assistance for Indigenous investment with the interests of the oil and gas industry.
The Alberta government plans to invest the money to support Indigenous participation in natural-resource projects and infrastructure, including pipelines, through the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation (AIOC), announced earlier this year.
The plan isn’t too promising for the FNPA, which focuses on renewables. That’s because the AIOC money isn’t green.
Nevertheless, Rick Wilson, Alberta’s minister of Indigenous relations, was on hand in Enoch to show support for the FNPA and tell attendees they have his moral support.
Wilson became emotional when speaking about the opportunities available to help Indigenous Peoples turn the tide on wealth creation.
“Who were the first people to do business in Canada?” Wilson asked. “Let’s remember the fur trade — it was Indigenous Peoples. Fairness and economic opportunity abounds here, and this comes from taking bold action.”
Even if priority is focused on natural-resource projects right now, once capacity is built to support investment into renewable projects, it will be made available, he explained.
Wilson said Premier Jason Kenney mandated him with achieving “economic reconciliation” and the AIOC fund plays a big role.
“We are trying to heal the (historical) rifts that remain,” Wilson said. “Just trickling in money to them (First Nations) is not good enough. We must move toward economic reconciliation, where Indigenous (Peoples) are not just participants, but partners in prosperity.”
Indigenous Peoples want a “hand up,” not a “handout,” and decisions of previous governments limited them from moving forward economically, he added.
“We’re all in this together”
“When First Nation communities thrive, all Alberta thrives. We’re in this together,” Wilson said.
The oppressive regulations of the federal Indian Act already make it difficult for First Nations to get ahead in business, said Indian Resource Council (IRC) CEO Steven Buffalo, who represents First Nation stakeholders in the oil and gas sector. “Our communities are impoverished with little opportunities around them,” Buffalo said. “So the importance of having equity ownership is profound.”
But the transition from oil and gas to renewables isn’t going to be easy on the Prairies, he continued. Although the IRC agrees that transition is the way of the future, they need to keep working with fossil-fuel industries to help ease the process. Even with the help of established partners and outside investors, switching to green is a monumental task.
Going green is hard everywhere, but especially for First Nations, because, he stressed, Indigenous communities lack the resources to completely transition to greener sources of energy. Most First Nation communities struggle with extensive social and economic woes, he said, and building up capacity to transition takes plenty of extra resources that just aren’t there.
The good and the bad industry brings
Buffalo knows the good and bad that industrial development can bring, through lived experience.
The boom of natural-resource development came with a short-lived monetary blessing of royalties given to band members in Buffalo’s home community of Samson Cree Nation, located in the heart of central Alberta, part of the Four Nations of Maskwacis. Now the oil wells are running dry.
In the 1950s, Samson struck oil. It was one of the largest oil reserves discovered in that part of the province, under Maskwacis. The sudden influx and distribution of wealth came with consequences — a rise in violence and suicides was attributed to the discovery of oil there, according to a 2016 report by the Samson Cree band. It’s a narrative that often plays out during boom times in many mainstream communities, which see spikes in addictions, crime and violence when the money flows.
Much of the oil in Maskwacis was extracted by 2000 and band councils stopped annual royalty payments to members in 1998. Still, there is a reliance on oil that’s ingrained within — from on-reserve housing power and heat deficiencies to the federal purses that fund on-reserve programs, because the width of federal budgets depends on oil revenues that are now fading.
But Lonechild wants First Nations to learn from past mistakes of booms on oil-rich reserves that saw royalties distributed, spent and gone when the oil dried up.
Calling the shots
“These large sums of royalties were not sustained. We want to get it right this time and build knowledge through renewable energy.”
FNPA brings a new approach, flipping the scales. This time, the decisions will be made by Indigenous Peoples from the top of the money trail.
The culture behind the business is transforming, he said. Having majority ownership in energy projects will enable Indigenous stakeholders to call the shots on distribution, re-investment and future planning.
FNPA will face challenges in its ambitious goals. The oil industry still rules the land in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Switching to renewables here will happen at a slower pace than in the rest of the country.
The renewable energy market faces stiff competition from the long-standing fossil-fuel industry that’s fighting to stay in the game, said Peter Tertzakian, an economist and author with the Arc Energy Research Institute.
“When trying to push out an established business, they (industry) don’t sit still,” he warned attendees at the FNPA gathering in Enoch. “They become more efficient to diversify the industry. You have head-to-head competition.”
But it’s not about putting the oil and gas sector out of business, assured Glen Pratt, CEO of George Gordon Developments Ltd. of George Gordon First Nation. Instead, he said, it’s about Indigenous sovereignty and reducing emissions with the goal of healing Mother Earth.
“We don’t want people to lose their jobs,” Pratt said. “Indigenous Peoples want to be a part of reducing emissions, but also be a part of the economy to create self-determination.”
A new solar farm for Saskatchewan
George Gordon Developments — along with the economic development brand of Star Blanket Cree Nation in southern Saskatchewan and Natural Forces, a private independent power producer — is constructing a 10-megawatt solar farm near Weyburn, Sask. The Pesakastew Solar Project is set to be up and running in 2020 and will supply clean energy to the Saskatchewan electrical grid. It will provide electricity to approximately 2,400 homes and displace 18,860 tonnes of CO2 equivalent annually. It’s a project that FNPA helped to facilitate.
George Gordon and Star Blanket own 51 per cent of Pesakastew Solar Project. According to Pratt, the project will bring an approximate $750,000 return for all partners.
He envisions George Gordon eventually building a one-megawatt on-reserve solar facility with the money earned from the Pesakastew project. From there, the community would sell a portion of the power generated back to SaskPower and re-invest in energy-efficient community initiatives and social programming.
In May, the FNPA signed a First Nations Opportunity Agreement with SaskPower for 20 megawatts of new utility-scale solar generation projects. The agreement is estimated to be worth $85 million over the course of 20 years. There are dozens of small- to large-scale projects involving solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, battery and other renewable energy technologies in various stages of development, Lonechild said.
Access to capital is one of the biggest barriers for many Indigenous stakeholders wanting to join the renewable resource economic wave — because, unlike most real estate, reserve lands can’t be put up for collateral. That’s where power companies, public and private, along with governments, are invited to get on board, Lonechild said.
In return, corporate entities and governments reap the benefits of consent for industrial development from partnering with First Nation communities who have the land base.
When industry and governments make deals with FNPA members, it’s a partnership that opens the door to a new way ahead — and this time, Indigenous Peoples are calling the shots.
Mike Martelli, president of renewable power for Ontario Power Generation, believes corporations are waking up to the fact that demographics in society are shifting and more industrial projects are spanning Indigenous territories.
“It starts with leadership within the companies,” Martelli said. “No energy project will move forward without the participation of First Nations.” SOURCE
When it comes to keeping the house warm and toasty, most people rely on furnaces and baseboard heaters.
Probably not many of them have heard about air-source heat pumps, which are electric-powered devices that can either heat or cool a home.
They take heat from outside and pump it inside. In hot weather, they work in reverse, as an air conditioner: hot air inside is taken out and cold air is taken in. They’re energy-efficient and they’re good for the planet, because they produce less carbon emissions than gas-fuelled heaters.
According to a paper presented to Metro Vancouver by the Community Energy Association, heat pumps are “ideally suited” to the mild climate of the region.
However, the nonprofit adviser to local governments has noted that these systems are not widely used in the Lower Mainland.
The CEA was founded in 1995 by the B.C. provincial government and the Union of B.C. Municipalities to help local governments with their energy plans.
The group is embarking on a two-year study to find a new approach to increase the rate of retrofitting existing buildings in the Lower Mainland with heat pumps.
According to the CEA, heat pumps can reduce a typical home’s greenhouse-gas emissions by up to six tonnes per year while providing “significant financial savings”. The group also pointed out that meeting Metro Vancouver’s climate targets would require about three percent of homes to switch from fossil fuels to renewable sources like electricity in home heating every year.
The CEA noted that according to Natural Resources Canada, heat pumps accounted for only about three percent of heating systems in B.C. in 2015.
“This is despite the fact that heat pumps provide significant benefits over natural gas heat,” the CEA stated in its presentation….
Dylan Heerema, an engineer and senior analyst with the Pembina Institute, a think tank that focuses on clean energy, has written that using electricity instead of gas for home and building heating is “one of the cheapest ways” to reduce carbon and air pollution.
People gather to protest the oil industry in Victoria. The B.C. city’s holier-than-thou attitude toward energy companies has to be contrasted with its enthusiasm for more CO2-spouting cruise-ship tourism.JONATHAN HAYWARD / THE CANADIAN PRESS
Recently, an American campaign urging cities to demand money from oil companies because of the cost of climate change mitigation arrived in British Columbia. It had some early success, sort of.
Almost immediately, the mayor of the hydrocarbon-reliant Whistler resort lit up social media in all the wrong ways by putting his signature to a ransom letter directed at one of Canada’s most innovative energy companies, Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. He was just days into the job and had not yet learned the hazards of signing whatever the administrator puts on your desk. Enraged Albertans cancelled their Whistler plans and the mayor quickly back-pedaled.
The city of Victoria was drawn into the same campaign. As one Alberta critic said in response, the scenic capital’s holier-than-thou attitude toward energy companies has to be contrasted with its enthusiasm for more CO2-spouting cruise-ship tourism, an activity persistently trumpeted as a foundation of the city’s green economy.
Cities produce up to 80 per cent of global greenhouse gases, according to a study published in the journal Sustainability. Despite their postcard settings, Whistler and Victoria have all the attributes of major cities, with high-density housing and consumption-intensive lifestyles and access to airports.
Suppose we do pursue an immediate and wholesale rush into non-hydrocarbon energy. What does that look like? Numerous think tanks agree that trillions of dollars of investment are needed to meet Canada’s mid-century climate goals and reduce CO2 emissions by 80 per cent. Yet, what’s unfolding today in Canada is simply chaotic. MORE
Illinois is weighing a 100 percent renewable energy bill that includes jobs, equity, and social justice.
Wind turbines tower over crops near Dwight, Illinois. The state is weighing a bill to get to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. Scott Olson/Getty Images
A recurring criticism of the Green New Deal resolution introduced in February by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) is that it has too much social justice baggage: Why does a statement of goals to limit climate change and decarbonize the economy devote so much ink to affordable housing, universal health care, and jobs for everyone?
“They are right that the entire energy sector must be reshaped,” the Washington Post editorial board wrote in a sharp appraisal. “But the goal is so fundamental that policymakers should focus above all else on quickly and efficiently decarbonizing. They should not muddle this aspiration with other social policy, such as creating a federal jobs guarantee, no matter how desirable that policy might be.”
Yet the reason the Green New Deal does include social programs is that, as Vox’s David Roberts put it, “It is not merely a way to reduce emissions, but also to ameliorate the other symptoms and dysfunctions of a late capitalist economy: growing inequality and concentration of power at the top.”
And given that decarbonizing the economy would mean jettisoning fossil fuel jobs, the resolution asserts that the transition needs to happen in a just way, mindful of the needs of “vulnerable, frontline, and deindustrialized communities.” MORE
The Syncrude oil sands extraction facility is reflected in a tailings pond near the city of Fort McMurray, Alta., on June 1, 2014. Economists are virtually unanimous in the view that carbon pricing reduces greenhouse-gas emissions at the lowest possible cost to the economy. JASON FRANSON/THE CANADIAN PRESS
As a group of economists, we still believe that facts should matter when it comes to making important policy decisions. Unfortunately, not everyone involved in the Canadian climate policy debate appears to agree. Myths and rhetoric are pushing the real facts to the sidelines. The result is a mix of confusion and polarization that is poisoning our public debate, and we are losing patience.
As a case in point, Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently claimed that carbon pricing will be a “total economic disaster” for the country and cause a “carbon-tax recession.” Despite the fact that this claim strongly contradicts almost all of the available empirical evidence on carbon pricing, we’re hearing it repeated more often.
So, let’s start with this fact: Economists are virtually unanimous in the view that carbon pricing reduces greenhouse-gas emissions at the lowest possible cost to the economy. Other policy approaches – such as intrusive and prescriptive regulations, or generous production or consumption subsidies – will cost the economy far more to achieve the same outcome.
In fact, carbon pricing appears to have negligible impacts on economic growth when it is well-designed. British Columbia has had carbon pricing since 2008, and its economy is one of the strongest in Canada. Quebec has had carbon pricing since 2013, and it is now experiencing an economic renaissance. Carbon pricing isn’t causing the growth in either case, but neither is it preventing it. No “economic disaster” in these provinces. Ditto for California, the United Kingdom and, for that matter, Ontario’s carbon-pricing system that lasted from 2015 until its repeal last year. MORE
The battle against climate change has focused on reducing emissions. An “Ideal Plant” could join the war from the other end — by guzzling more carbon dioxide.
Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies are tackling another life-threatening problem: climate change. They are setting out to do something that has never been done before, to create the “Ideal Plant” — one that will help curb global warming….
While the idea of genetically engineering a plant to hold carbon dioxide in the ground may sound strange, Law explains it is just a tweak to what plants already do. “The whole job of plants is to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turn those carbon molecules into sugars, into biomass. They have basically been adapted to take carbon dioxide as their food source,” she explains. “The beauty is that plants are already doing this on such a large global scale, that if we can just tap into that a little bit, we can make a big impact.”
“We all agree in the group that time is of the essence, so we will basically start massively and in parallel working on nine different crop plants,” says professor Wolfgang Busch, one of the project leaders, who studies deep root systems. “We realized from calculations that we ran that the way to achieve the biggest impact for the Ideal Plant is to focus on crop plants, to tap into this global massive agricultural endeavor.”
These include soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton, rice, rapeseed and several non-food cover crops that help soil health. “We have to focus on the ones with the highest acreage,” Busch explains. MORE
NOAA✔@NOAA
From top left: FNPA member Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme, FNPA CEO Guy Lonechild and bottom FNPA staff Rebecca Agecoutay, Tanya Grondin, Elizabeth Girard: Photography courtesty FNPA- Cowessess
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County Sustainability Group 