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Carbon

“Carbon Neutral” is Just Forest Fiction

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Atmospheric CO2 is created by combustion.

by Dave Stevens 

Stellar processes excepted, carbon is neither created nor destroyed. As an element it enters readily into combinations with other elements but is not destroyed. Its compounds are sometimes broken down or altered but this does not destroy or create carbon. All ordinary chemical processes are carbon neutral. 

Carbon Capture and Storage

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by Delores Broten

Carbon capture and storage is the latest trendy “solution” to the impacts of burning oil and gas. Poli­ticians and many environmental or­ganizations around the world and in Canada are banking on it. The idea is to capture cabon dioxide (CO2) from refineries and coal burning power plants, and pipe it to geologi­cal deposits where it will be injected underground and stored forever.

Burning Trees to Kill Pine Beetles Worsens CO2 Emissions

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The best thing we can do with a beetle altered forest is to leave it alone. The beetle pandemic is a problem we can’t fix and anything we do to the forest will just make CO2 emissions worse, especially burning the trees.

by Dave Neads

Everyone knows we have a carbon dioxide problem. In recognition of this, suppose you wanted to make some lifestyle changes to help reduce these emis­sions and be part of the solution to the climate change issue. Would you use a fuel that quadrupled your CO2 footprint, destroyed habitat, reduced job opportunities and required large government subsidies to produce? 

Paradoxically, that is exactly what the BC government

Inadequate Paper Recycling Programs in Canada

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by Joyce Nelson

The Environmental Paper Network (EPN) has some sobering figures on paper recycling, including this: “After more than 30 years of recycled-paper market development, recycled content has reached the dizzying height of 6 per cent of the overall fibre that goes into printing and writing papers.” And only 3 per cent of that is post-consumer recycled content. In their article for Resource Recycling (June 2009), Pam Blackledge (of EPN) and Susan Kinsella (of Conservatree) write, “Put another way, more than 90 per cent of the printing and office paper available in North America still has no recycled content at all.”

CCS Geoengineering - Industrialist Decisions, Public Expenses

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by Stephen Leahy

Like a reck­less gambler, the federal govern­ment’s plan to deal with our emissions of climate-altering carbon dioxide is to put most of our money on an unproven, risky and expensive long shot called “carbon capture and sequestration,” CCS for short. In a pair of October an­nouncements, the Alberta and federal governments com­mitted $1.6 billion to use this untested technology to reduce carbon emissions from an Alberta coal plant and a Shell Oil tar sands upgrader. Billions more are promised. 

Canada puts 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. That has to stop. This genera­tion, you and me, must deter­mine what methods and tech­nologies offer permanent CO2 reduction at the scale we need, and do so quickly, safely and at the lowest cost. And we must act on that knowledge as if the future of children’s lives de­pend it because we are shaping the world they will inherit.   

We cannot rely on political and business leaders to make these decisions on their own, as will become evident. What other ways could we reduce our CO2

Starbucks Carbon-Neutral Coffee

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Starbucks carbon neutralby Dawn Paley

The afternoon scene at the Jaime Sabinas sports complex in Jaltenango, a town in southern Mexico, is about the farthest thing imaginable from a bustling Seattle coffee shop. I've come to this mountainous region, hours by gravel road off the tourist track, to get a first hand look at what life is like for the people who grow the coffee we're told is fair trade.

Seedling Scam - Climate Change and Carbon Credits

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by Dave Neads

As Minister Penner stated when commenting on the new carbon credit system the BC government is putting in place, things can get "complicated." Just how complicated becomes readily apparent when you

Carbon Sink or Forest Fraud?

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DO TREE PLANTATIONS OFFSET FOSSIL FUELS?

XYZ Corporation has purchased carbon offsets to compensate for their carbon dioxide releases. Often they will do it for you too- pay to have someone somewhere "plant a tree" or a thousand trees or a hundred thousand trees, in order to go on with business as usual. The internet abounds with web sites that will help you calculate how many trees you need to pay for in order to do penace for your carbon-intensive lifestyle - at up to $5.50 per tree. So is it really that easy? No need to conserve or make radical changes, just pay someone somewhere a hefty sum for planting a few trees? Here's what forest campaigner Jutta Kill of the European environmental group FERN thinks of the concept.

1. Carbon in trees is temporary:

Trees provide temporary carbon storage as part of the normal cycle of carbon exchange between forests and

Carbon: Life Styles of the Rich

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by Barry Saxifrage

Almost all the energy we use to build the "good life" comes from fossil fuels, gas, oil and coal. But now that same fossil fuel use is tearing our good life apart. We can’t have both anymore. Time’s up: we have to choose now. We can promptly and purposefully create a new version of the good life without fossil fuels…or we can continue aimlessly into collective misery.

Fossil fuel emissions drive climate change and ocean acidification. Together they are inflicting thousands of

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"This is it. It's done!" was the message in Alaska in 2008, 19 years after the Exxon Valdes oil spill.  Dave Janka, who runs Auklet Charters in Prince William Sound, ran his boat over to Smith Island to snap this photo.  Dave says, "It's far from done!"

W.L.M. (Bill) Wilson writes: 'Attached is my rewrite of Anne Feeney’s “Have You Been To Jail for Justice”. Anne granted permission to do non-profit performances of this Enbridge version.' Video by Ester Strijbos.