#Environment and Climate Change Canada

[ravensvalley]

#NorthernRaven

Early morning visit from a friend… maybe too early. Mountainous Parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

@BenAdrienProulx December 12, 2024.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Victory! 🐘

Canada has officially banned the elephant ivory and rhino horn trade, which includes the import of hunting trophies containing these parts!

@HSI_Canada has been at the forefront of the battle to protect these endangered species, working with Environment and Climate Change Canada to ensure these measures pass.

We also want to thank YOU and the tens of thousands of supporters who signed our action alerts to help make this happen.

🩶🎉🩶

[dashofletters]

Severe thunderstorm warning lifted for areas surrounding Calgary - Calgary | Globalnews.ca

Descrease article font size Increase article font size Areas surrounding Calgary are no longer under a severe thunderstorm warning. Just before 6 p.m., Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) announced Rocky View County near Cochrane, Airdrie, Olds and Didsbury could produce strong winds, large hail and heavy rain. “The line of severe thunderstorms is located from near Cochrane to Olds…

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Climate change has sharply increased the number of days where Arctic sea ice is too thin for polar bears to hunt seals. That forces them to spend longer stretches ashore without their main food source. Using models, researchers considered how future rises in global temperatures could hit ice thickness in Hudson Bay and in turn, the fate of its iconic and endangered polar bears. They found that if temperatures rose 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels the resulting ice-free period would simply be too long for many bears to survive. Bear populations in southern Hudson Bay—where it takes longer for winter ice to return—would be the first to go, said the study's lead author Julienne Stroeve.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[wachinyeya]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/27/arctic-horizon-inuit-first-protected-zone-nunatsiavut-canada-photo-essay?ref=futurecrunch.com

[mindblowingscience]

A McGill-led research team has developed the first real-time, on-site technology capable of detecting and deciphering nanoplastics from all other particles in water, a capacity akin to being able to find a needle in a haystack within milliseconds. The work, "Nanoplastics in water: Artificial intelligence-assisted 4D physicochemical characterization and rapid in situ detection," was published in Environmental Science & Technology. Microplastic pieces are between 1 micrometer and 5 millimeters, roughly equivalent to a grain of rice. Nanoplastics are far tinier—a single nanometer is just 0.000001 millimeters. For comparison, a human hair is approximately 80,000–100,000 nanometers wide.

Continue Reading.

[moonsfireflies1993]

Why Panama is on Strike

From afar the Panama protests look like maybe a bunch of hypersensitive eco-fools or maybe like those people who think throwing paint on museums is making any difference instead of going directly to the companies. 

The reality is that Panama is protesting way more than just the “contract”. But, let's start with the contract. 

First, the company can own Panama by owning land property of the Panama state" inside or outside the 17,000 hectares from what was licensed.” This means that the ANATI (the National Authority of Land Administration) HAS to give it to the mining company with no setbacks.

The mine puts danger around 8 countries of Centroamerica with already reported 200 environmental damages

If the company wants to own private lands that are located inside or outside of hectares of the land that was licensed. The company can own the land and pay nothing in exchange, with no questions.

The contract was done with random permits without the proper process of acquisition. 

The contract promises to give Panama a very small quantity of payment to Panama when Panama already spends millions of dollars on the state. This means the company will give Panama less money than what Panama already invests in the country. So we are selling parts of Panama for less than what we already invested. 

Panama's government is allowing a foreign company to NOT pay 70% of their taxes during the first 10 years of copper extraction. 

The community of Donoso (where the mine is located) says they see tons of copper trucks going out every week and at the same time they complain they haven't seen improvements in their community. Ejm: railroads, electricity.

The company threatens with an international lawsuit of millions of dollars if Panama doesn't sign the contract. But if the company fails to comply with the contract, claims it will only pay 70 million dollars (Which is less than what they make extracting copper from the mine).

The contract has a clause that makes an actual law. The contract will reign according to the laws of Panama, except if a law looks inconsistent. In other words, if Panama makes a law that prohibits mining or a law that obliges them to pay taxes, because of their contract it will not apply at all because of that clause. 

The joke was that the president signed the contract in less than 3 hours.

Now, going to the other complaints of the population. Panama already has tons of issues and complaints that are not resolved. These issues have put the whole country on the verge of exploitation.

In September, there were massive protests in several parts of the country because of the sexual assault of the minor Madeleine at the hands of the National Juvenile Assembly. To keep it short. Every year the country makes a national juvenile assembly and this kid was from outside the city representing her district. She ate and drank with each political party and told a classmate to check on her because her water tasted like medicine. The kid hours later was attended by an ambulance with no notification of this to her mom. After this, the kid was behaving erratic and paranoid with a location on her phone that wasn't at the hotel in Panama where all the kids were. The other claims of the event were that all the minors had those dinners with the political parties representatives and on those tables were "Gringos" (foreign European or North American people). Why those kids were sharing tables with gringos in the first place?

When the kid arrived from the trip, she was in a catatonic state and with constant PTSD attacks. There's still no justice or any trace of who were the ones who committed those crimes, and even no accountability by the MEDUCA (The Ministry of Education of Panama).

It is not the first time since such an event happened at the hands of the state. In 2021, we had another state scandal when it was reported that one of the deputies ( Arquesio Arias) of the national assembly raped several women in the indigenous Kuna Yala region. Of course, you can imagine he was dismissed from the charges and when that announcement was published, one of the victims tried to kill herself and got into the ER.

Then there are the deputies who name some of their relatives to the state payroll and don't even work in the state but take tons and tons of money monthly. Meanwhile, the oncologico hospital keeps getting shortages of injections and gloves.

Panama is considered an international hub, one of the richest countries of Latin America and still we struggle with poverty and access to vital things for the population, why? Because people of the state and international companies steal the money, they sometimes build roads and bridges and the costs are higher to the price from the real costs of those constructions, for example, the Odebretch scandal. They charge lots of money, so they can bribe some of the money to both parties (the construction company and the one who is soliciting the construction.

But then again bribing is part of the panamenian culture as we say "juega vivo", bribing the police, the hospital, and the system is all about money and taking advantage of situations as they come even if it is illegal.

Is funny we are all fighting for water, Well my friends here where I am with the famous "Panama Canal" that provides us with most of our income as a nation while having lots of rivers and geographically we are surrounded by both the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean, having all of that I get shortages and cuts of water for more than 6 times a month.

This week, the IDAAN (the company that provides water to the whole nation), has been making shortages all week. My family and I have been saving water tanks each day because of the shortages. I keep joking internally that I have a toxic relationship with the IDAAN since we kind of got used to this and the irony is that while the entire country struggles with the shortages they still sign a contract that will even affect the water flow to the Panama Canal in the long term.

The protests are not just because of the damage to nature is that the government sold us to a foreign Canadian company that has shareholders from the US and China to exploit us leaving us with nothing.

My biggest worry right now is that our current president is sick, the whole country knows he has cancer and during his last speeches, he has been looking like a corpse with now rumours of him leaving the country to intern himself to a hospital in Houston Texas. If he dies then probably the vice president has to take charge, but he has been missing since the protests and people HATE him. So yeah, Panama is on the brink of chaos and if that happens .. well

[newsfromstolenland]

A major environmental group is calling on the federal government to block Ontario's controversial Highway 413, saying the proposed 52-kilometre motorway would be costly to taxpayers and damaging to the environment.

The David Suzuki Foundation is asking the federal minister of environment, Steven Guilbeault, to intervene and stop the project through a petition that's racked up more than 50,000 signatures.

Gideon Forman, a climate change policy analyst with the foundation, says the highway — which would run from Highway 400 in York Region to Highway 401 in Halton Region — would incentivize more fuel-burning vehicles, pave thousands of acres of farmland and hundreds of acres of Greenbelt and threaten endangered species along the route.

Full article

Tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics

[news-buzz]

As COP29 begins, what's Canada’s function in local weather finance negotiations? - Nationwide Information Buzz

This 12 months’s worldwide local weather talks are anticipated to be headlined by fraught negotiations over how Canada and different rich nations, who’ve contributed a disproportionate share of planet-warming emissions, ought to financially compensate different nations of their combat to sort out local weather change. Many urgent questions for negotiators are on the desk: How a lot ought to these…

[ppcbug]

If only we raised the carbon tax a few more cents there would be no more climate change 🤪

[ravensvalley]

#HighPerch

Mountainous Parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

@BenAdrienProulx September 12, 2024.

[burlap-bows]

The apocalypse has come! It's fucking orange outside.

[nando161mando]

Scientists find Canada fires made worse by climate change

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Alberta's oilsands operations produce far more potentially harmful air pollutants than are officially reported, with the daily output on par with those from gridlocked megacities like Los Angeles, new research suggests.

The study, published today in the academic journal Science, measured concentrations of organic carbon emissions in the air by flying overhead and taking samples. Those numbers were compared to estimated amounts, prepared using ground-based data, reported by oilsands operations.

The researchers from Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and Yale University found levels that were between 20 and 64 times higher than those reported by industry, depending on the oilsands facility.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada