Dear Friends,
A reminder that our Community Climate Meeting is this Sunday, Feb 2, at 2pm at St Margaret of Scotland Church, 3751 Robie St. (near Leeds St).
This is an opportunity to get to know one another and discuss some of the environmental issues we want to take up or are already involved in. It would be great to also explore how we might continue meeting on a regular basis so that we can collaborate more in the future.
In the meantime, check out the following if you have time:
This morning, CBC’s The Current had a 20-minute segment on the Teck Frontier oil sands project, which if it gets the go-ahead from the federal government will be half the size of Edmonton, cost 20 billion to construct, last 41 years, and have a devastating impact on the environment and climate. The federal Environment Minister is apparently still weighing the options and will decide by the end of February whether to approve it. We don’t have much time to raise our voices! You can download a podcast of the segment here.
Check out the latest on efforts to stop the NS government from selling Owls Head provincial park to a developer on this Facebook page: Save Little Harbour/Owls Head from becoming a golf course. People are doing a great job of bringing attention to this and they’d love to get more signatures on their letter to Premier McNeil, which you can find here.
From the Council of Canadians: “Earlier this month, the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board approved an extension to British Petroleum Canada’s licence to drill offshore. Just two months after Environment and Climate Change Canada claimed BP’s project was “not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects,” BP spilled 136,000 litres of toxic drilling mud into the ocean. Given BP’s safety record, and the Offshore Petroleum Board’s lack of functional regulatory oversight, this is a lose-lose for our coastal communities and for the renewable resources we depend on.” Please consider signing this petition calling for an end to offshore drilling off Nova Scotia.
I know it’s a lot! That’s why we need each other. Community is key to keeping our sanity and playing the long game. I look forward to having a coffee with you on Sunday.
p.s. Here’s the FB Event page if you’d like to invite others to the meeting on Sunday.
Here is my response to the current after listening to the Current’s 20 minute segment on the Teck Frontier Oil sands project:
Dear Current,
So Alberta is tired of being the bulls eye in the climage change? Let me just get my blood pressure down before I respond. There is no ‘Alberta’ when it comes to extinction. Destruction travels beyond the colonial provincial markers. The use of Chromium 6 in the US water supply has offered this lesson to the 240 million whose water is poisoned in waterways that we share. TECK is willing to trade my grandchildrens survival for pockets full of promises. The podcast was informative but the arguments and pro oil sands, extraction, destroy for profit, add to carbon-emissions-view has brought us to where we are now. Climate crises means doing business in a new, innovative and life sustaining way. Plant a loonie in the ground and see what grows. Every old growth tree that is brought down cannot be brought to life with the billions that are sunk into the womb of the earth. Invest the 20 billion it will take to construct this wasteland into our health care and our children – all children. Let’s leave the environmental racism for another day. Please, we are all targets and we have to change those shooting arrows into a dispersal of seeds of hope. Stop Teck.
all the best
kathrin