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England faces ‘serious risk of running out water’ within 20 years, MPs say

It probably won’t bother the rich people. If we don’t stop global warming, to will happen here too. There will be a lot more climate refugees. This article doesn’t mention it, but we also lose a lot of farm land every year and some of what is left is too dry to raise crops.

MPs have issued a stinging rebuke to England’s water authorities, warning the country is at “serious risk” of running out of water within 20 years unless “urgent action” is taken to shore up supplies.

“It is very hard to imagine, in this country, turning the tap and not having enough clean, drinkable water come out – but that is exactly what we now face,” said Public Accounts Committee chair Meg Hillier.

“Empty words on climate commitments and unfunded public information campaigns will get us where we’ve got the last 20 years: nowhere,” Ms Hillier said. “Defra has failed to lead and water companies have failed to act: we look now to the Department to step up, make up for lost time and see we get action before it’s too late.”

July 11, 2020

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Alberta Pouring Billions into Keystone XL an ‘Idiotic Waste’: Financial Analyst | The Tyee

Wagering huge sums of public money to expand the oilsands at a moment when the business case for oil could be entering terminal decline “is an absolutely idiotic waste of capital.

Bond is recent author of the report “Decline and Fall: The Size and Vulnerability of the Fossil Fuel System,” and argues that due to the economic wreckage of coronavirus we may have already passed global peak demand for oil, coal and gas. In an exclusive interview with The Tyee he explains why that is potentially very bad news for oil producers and the governments that support them.

Let me cut to the chase here. Our view would be that expanding the fossil fuel system at the end of the fossil fuels age is an absolutely idiotic waste of capital. That’s throwing good money after bad and it’s like building a canal in 1850 when the railway system is already up and running. It’s like connecting a new city to the gas lighting network in 1920 when someone has already invented electricity or it’s like trying to prop up Nokia after Steve Jobs has put out the iPhone.

July 11, 2020

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Cloudy outlook for pipelines gets even murkier amid court rulings, U.S. election | CBC News

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Key differences between a smart premier like John Horgan in British Columbia compared to an idiotic one like Jason Kenney in Alberta.

The news out of the U.S. courts didn’t shake Kenney’s public confidence in the project as he continued to tout the benefits of the Keystone XL pipeline.

“It immediately creates thousands of jobs,” he said during a news conference on Wednesday.

Wagering huge sums of public money to expand the oilsands at a moment when the business case for oil could be entering terminal decline “is an absolutely idiotic waste of capital.

Meanwhile in BC, the Horgan government introduced Bill 17, the Clean Energy Amendment Act.

The amendment will allow BC Hydro, through its trading arm, Powerex, to buy clean power from U.S. states that have greened their grids. It will exclude Alberta from the power trade, however, because Alberta still gets much of its power from coal or natural gas.

“This means BC Hydro will import power from U.S. states like Washington and California and will no longer buy power from B.C. based Independent Power Producers (IPP),” Clean Energy BC states in a press release.

Source: Cloudy outlook for pipelines gets even murkier amid court rulings, U.S. election | CBC News

This entry was posted in General and tagged alberta, British Columbia, environment, fossil fuels, UCP on July 11, 2020 by Steve.

Alberta Pouring Billions into Keystone XL an ‘Idiotic Waste’: Financial Analyst | The Tyee

Leave a reply

Wagering huge sums of public money to expand the oilsands at a moment when the business case for oil could be entering terminal decline “is an absolutely idiotic waste of capital.

Source: Alberta Pouring Billions into Keystone XL an ‘Idiotic Waste’: Financial Analyst | The Tyee

This entry was posted in General and tagged alberta, fossil fuels, oilsands, UCP on July 11, 2020 by Steve.

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Canada Musn’t Allow Vista Coal Mine Expansion Without Environmental Assessment – The Energy Mix

The Vista mine is located in Treaty 6 territory near Hinton, Alberta. To my knowledge, it’s the first thermal coal mine ever built in Canada for the sole purpose of supplying overseas coal plants.

Almost immediately after the mine opened in 2019, Coalspur Mines Ltd. applied for a massive new expansion. Right now, it’s approved to extract about six million tonnes of coal per year. But the company told the regulator it plans to increase that to upwards of 15 million tonnes, and in one recent publication, Coalspur announced its intention to push that as high as 20 million tonnes in the future.

So this is a massive mine, on a scale that is almost unprecedented—it would be one of the largest if not the largest coal mine in Canadian history. When that 15 million tonnes of thermal coal is burned, it will lead to about 33 megatonnes of carbon dioxide per year, the same as seven million passenger vehicles on the road. For comparison, the largest point source of carbon in Canada right now is a coal plant in Alberta that emits 12.7 megatonnes per year, so this would far surpass it.

July 10, 2020

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