CRED-NB is a member of Climate Action Network Canada, an organization representing more than 100 groups across the country advocating for climate action. Several Climate Action Network Canada staffers participate every year in the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings to find global solutions to the climate crisis. Today Climate Action Network Canada issued a media release calling COP 20 “a band-aid on a bullet wound.” The media release HERE, includes a bullet-point summary of the highlights as well as quotes from other members of the network who attended COP 29.
Tag: Fossil
End Canada’s thermal coal exports!
CRED-NB is a signatory with 35 other groups, led by Ecojustice, to a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau asking for a ban on thermal coal exports. Thermal coal is one of the dirtiest fossil fuel contributors to climate change. Coal power generation is the largest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions and one of the first fossil fuels whose use must be phased out.
Ending coal power will also improve the health of millions around the world. Air pollution generated by coal kills more than 800,000 people each year. The extractive origins of thermal coal can also have devastating impacts on lands, waters and local communities, including impacts on Indigenous nations and their inherent rights, including fishing, hunting and gathering.
Read or download the letter HERE.
Climate events in Fredericton and Sackville – July 31 + August 1
“It’s time to discuss the ways to tackle climate change at the grassroots level, the role of local communities in shaping Canada’s energy policies, and strategic actions and innovative solutions to cap emissions and accelerate our transition to cleaner energy.”
That describes events planned in Fredericton and Sackville by Sierra Club Canada and local hosts. The events are open to everyone.
Sierra Club Canada – Atlantic Chapter are good friends of CRED-NB. Stop-SMRs in NB is a Sierra Club Canada campaign. July 31 in Fredericton and August 1 in Sackville you can meet Sierra Club national programs director Gretchen Fitzgerald and local climate advocates and experts.
In Fredericton @6 PM Wednesday, July 31, at the Charlotte St. Arts Centre Gretchen will co-host with Moe Qureshi of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick (CCNB).
In Sackville @11:30 AM Thursday, August 1, at the Sackville Commons at 18 Lorne St., Gretchen will co-host with Tantramar Alliance Against Hydro-fracking (TAAHF) and include speaker Sabine Dietz (CLIMAtlantic).
Pizza will be served in Fredericton • in Sackville there will be “an assortment of light snacks prepared by ‘Ketchup With That’ kitchen.” Organizers asked anyone planning to go to respond to the Facebook event page: Fredericton page HERE • Sackville page HERE
Atlantic environmental groups ask for sustainable, affordable, and healthy energy system
CRED-NB is one of 28 organizations signatory to a letter to the Atlantic premiers and the Prime Minister today (April 10) asking for action to ensure a healthy energy system. The letter says it’s time for Atlantic Canada to halt new LNG, shale, and fossil fuel projects and put the well-being of our people and our region before short-term corporate gains. Read the full letter HERE.
Waste: To burn or not to burn?
CRED-NB is one of 40 groups across Canada signatory to a Call to Action issued today against burning waste. We must stop burning things to produce energy!
From the media release:
While Canada is set to host the next round of the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations April 23-29, Canadian groups are raising an alarm about the expansion of waste incineration across the country. Dubbed “waste-to-energy” (WTE) by industry, burning waste through methods like incineration, gasification and pyrolysis is a practice that would undermine federal climate, plastics, and waste management policies.
“Canada has goals to end plastic pollution and stop climate change. That means we must close the door to polluting and wasteful garbage incineration,” said Karen Wirsig, Plastics Senior Program Manager at Environmental Defence. “Incineration poses real risks to the environment and human health. Plus, garbage is not a clean or ‘renewable’ energy source and incinerators have been found to emit more greenhouse gasses per unit of electricity than fossil fuels.”
Read the full media release with the list of signatories HERE.
Electricity from burning wood pellets is a scam
In its recent Energy Plan, the New Brunswick government proposed that the NB Power Belledune power plant should switch from burning coal to burning wood pellets. The federal government has mandated that all coal-fired electricity plants stop burning coal by 2030.
However generating electricity from forest-based biomass is a false climate solution. Burning wood for heat is one thing but burning it to generate electricity is incredibly inefficient.
Research has shown that burning wood pellets generates more carbon emissions at the smokestack than coal. It also creates many toxic particles harmful for the health of surrounding communities.
Two years ago, more than 500 scientists sent an open letter to world leaders calling on them to not burn forests to make energy.
How can governments get away with claiming that biomass-generated electricity is renewable and carbon neutral? It’s a scam.
International carbon accounting rules state that carbon losses from forest harvesting have to be reported in the land sector section of the carbon audit for the country where the trees were cut.
Every time a hectare of forest is cut, that counts as a reduction of forest carbon uptake. The harvested forest wood, if it’s burned, can’t be reported as a CO2 emission, because that would be counting it twice.
So the country or province that burns trees reports that as zero carbon emissions. That means that producers can treat biomass as being equivalent to zero emissions technologies, like wind and solar. Scam!
Scientists and environmental activists everywhere are lobbying hard for constraints to be put on the use of forest wood as a renewable fuel.
In November, CRED-NB signed a letter to federal Energy and Natural Resources minister Wilkinson, with 26 other climate groups across Canada, calling on the federal government to take immediate action on biomass. These are some of our demands:
• Work with other levels of government to ensure forests are off-limits to wood pellet production for export.
• End all subsidies to the utility-scale wood pellet industry
• Redirect funding to Indigenous land use, stewardship or restoration projects and real climate solutions such as wind and solar power.
• Support value-added jobs that provide more substantial and stable economic opportunities
locally.
• Encourage utilities to take a public stance against burning forest biomass as an energy replacement for burning coal.
• Advocate on the international stage for an update to carbon accounting mechanisms that closes loopholes which falsely represent industrial logging and utility-scale exported biomass as carbon neutral.
A moment of truth for the oil and gas industry
The International Energy Agency (IEA) published a major report, The Oil and Gas Industry in Net-Zero Transition, which states that the sector must slash its GHG emissions by 60% by 2030 to meet the Paris Agreement targets.
The IEA is bringing “5 pillars for action” to the COP28 climate summit in Dubai for “getting the world on track by 2030 for meeting climate goals.” Notably the five priorities do not include ramping up nuclear energy:
- Triple global renewable capacity
- Double the rate of energy efficiency improvements
- Oil and gas companies commit to advancing clean energy transitions and slashing emissions from their operations, including cutting methane by 75%
- Establish large-scale financing mechanisms to support clean energy investments in emerging and developing economies
- Adopt measures to ensure an orderly decline in the use of fossil fuels
The IEA statement with links to the full report is HERE.
June 28: Emergency day of action rally in Moncton
Note: On June 29, The NB Media Co-op published a story and video about this event, HERE.
The Climate Justice Coalition (Moncton) and Extinction Rebellion NB are collaborating with 350.org to organize a Moncton rally for the national day of emergency action:
Wednesday, June 28, 12:00 PM
Outside the office of MP Ginette Petitpas Taylor
272 St-George Street
Moncton, New Brunswick
Please join the rally to to demand that the federal government stop fueling climate chaos!
In recent weeks, major wildfires swept through nearly every Canadian province and territory. These fires have scorched a record-breaking area of land — over 5 million hectares. And it’s only June. This month global surface air temperatures rose to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. To meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of maintaining livable conditions, increases in global surface air temperature to the 1.5 C level will need to be limited to a brief period.
Unfortunately, we are entering an El Niño period, which is expected to warm 2024 to a higher level than 2023. Furthermore, the El Niño phase could last years.
However, if dramatic emission reductions start immediately the world can keep within 1.5 degrees. But instead, the government has just handed over another 3 billion in tax-payer money to fossil fuels knowing that investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is now considered “moral and economic madness” by scientists and experts the world over. In Trudeau’s own words, “Canada is burning” but his government is still failing to do even the bare minimum when it comes to climate action.
Communities across Canada are rising up to demand an immediate end to fossil fuel subsidies and a just transition to 100% renewable energy. Please join us to demand:
1. Stop the fossil fuel industry: no more subsidies, no new projects, and no more industry influence over our politics.
2. Enact a Just Transition: urgently shift us to 100% renewables while
generating millions of unionized jobs, following Indigenous leadership, and aligning with climate science.
As we face unprecedented impacts from climate change, it’s up to us to hold politicians responsible and force them to change course.
On June 28th, while catastrophic fires rage and smoke blankets much of the continent, Moncton will bring the heat to MP Petitpas Taylor to demand that the Federal Government stops fueling climate chaos. Join us at MP Petitpas Taylor’s office to demand action to end fossil fuel subsidies and implement a just transition. Together, we can bring the intensity of the climate crisis to the government’s doorstep. Bring face masks, signs, and friends as we push our representatives to muster up the courage to combat the climate crisis.
CRED joins call to stop trying to bring fracking to New Brunswick
CRED-NB is one of 47 groups that sent a solidarity statement to every MLA in New Brunswick, calling for the government to immediately halt its drive to bring a shale gas industry to the province.
The statement was issued by the Conservation Council of New Brunswick and two CRED core coalition members – the Sierra Club Atlantic Region, and the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA).
In the statement, Gretchen Fitzgerald, National Programs Director of Sierra Club Canada, emphasized that, “trying to persuade First Nations to allow fracking by simply offering them highly speculative economic deals, while withholding other funds, appears to be more akin to bribery than to consultations that are mandated by law to be free, prior and informed.” Read the full statement HERE.
No to shale gas development
Any suggestion to now begin a shale gas industry (designed to last for decades) directly contradicts the data, and constitutes an intellectual, not to mention moral, failure. Read the latest editorial by Jim Emberger from CRED-NB core member the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA). Jim writes: “Fracking pollutes both ground and drinking water. It produces copious air pollution. Ever-longer wells use huge and growing amounts of freshwater, and produce correspondingly more toxic wastewater, for which no safe, affordable method of disposal exists. It causes earthquakes.” Read the editorial HERE.