
The Federal Court of Appeals in Canada ruled against its First Nations tribes in a unanimous decision, allowing expansion of the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline to proceed. The expansion will triple the amount of oil flowing from the Alberta tar sands to the Pacific coast in British Columbia, as the AP reported.
In its 3-0 decision, the court rejected the claims of the First Nations, saying that the federal government engaged in "adequate and meaningful" consultations with indigenous peoples, as required by law, according to the BBC. It applauded the government's efforts, saying it was ""was anything but a rubber-stamping exercise," according to Al Jazeera.
"While the parties challenging the cabinet's decision are fully entitled to oppose the project, reconciliation and the duty to consult do not provide them with a veto over projects such as this one," reads Tuesday's court decision, as the BBC reported.
The legal challenge revolved around whether First Nations had been adequately consulted about the expansion of the 715-mile Trans Mountain route, which currently carries 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The government wants it to carry 890,000 barrels per day, according to the BBC. The Canadian government actually bought the pipeline in 2018 to ensure its success and survival.
One of the plaintiffs in the case, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, said it is considering an appeal of the decision. The indigenous tribes have 60 days to appeal to the nation's Supreme Court, according to the AP.
"This is not over," said Tsleil-Waututh Nation spokesperson, Reueben George, to the Global News in Canada. "We are still trudging forward. We have always said we would do everything in our power to stop the pipeline. We have proven it's not in the best interest of our nation's standing here."
The Federal Appeals court heard from four different parties in the case: the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, the Coldwater Indian Band, and a coalition of smaller indigenous nations from the British Columbia interior. The groups claimed the government did not properly consider their concerns about the project's effects on their way of life and the environment, as Al Jazeera reported.
George claimed that the court violated the law because it did not allow the Tsleil-Waututh Nation to submit all the information they had, according to the Global News.
However, while the court acknowledged that the indigenous people will be unhappy with the expansion, it felt the government had accommodated them properly.
"The evidentiary record shows a genuine effort in ascertaining and taking into account the key concerns of the applicants, considering them, engaging in two-way communication, and considering and sometimes agreeing to accommodations," the court said, as Al Jazeera reported. "It is true that the applicants are of the view that their concerns have not been fully met, but to insist on that happening is to impose a standard of perfection, a standard not required by law."
George, and representatives from the other nations, felt the court did not take a proper look at their evidence.
"We have done studies. Economical assessments. Studies on the orcas. These things were ignored today. Reconciliation stopped today," said George, as the Global News reported. "This government is incapable of making sound decisions for our future generations. So we are and we will. Even for their children we will take those steps to make sure Canada stays the way it is."
Chief Lee Spahan of the Coldwater Indian Band, a Nlaka'pamux Nation community in the British Columbia interior spoke of Canada's consultation with his tribe.
"It wasn't meaningful. Canada had their mindset already on this decision," he said, as Al Jazeera reported. "We will continue to stand strong and do everything in our power to ensure our sole source of drinking water is protected."
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By Jessica Corbett
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday was the lone progressive to vote against Tom Vilsack reprising his role as secretary of agriculture, citing concerns that progressive advocacy groups have been raising since even before President Joe Biden officially nominated the former Obama administration appointee.
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<div id="a420d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5369c498a5855fe2143b86fa07e23dff"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1364300806988652548" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">🚨🚨🚨 Bernie Sanders voted against Tom Vilsack's nomination. It's great to see the Senator stick to his principles a… https://t.co/u4XNU4viNC</div> — RootsAction (@RootsAction)<a href="https://twitter.com/Roots_Action/statuses/1364300806988652548">1614109634.0</a></blockquote></div>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Beverly Law and William Moomaw
Protecting forests is an essential strategy in the fight against climate change that has not received the attention it deserves. Trees capture and store massive amounts of carbon. And unlike some strategies for cooling the climate, they don't require costly and complicated technology.
The U.S. has more than 800 million acres of natural and planted forests and woodlands, of which nearly 60% are privately owned. USDA / USFS
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By Matt Casale
There were many lessons to be learned from Texas' prolonged periods of lost power during its cold snap, which saw temperatures drop into the single digits. But one many people may not recognize is that electric vehicles, or EVs, can be part of a smart resiliency plan — not only in the case of outages triggered by the cold but in other scenarios caused by extreme weather events, from fire-related blackouts in California to hurricane-hit power losses in Puerto Rico.
A car driving in the snow in Dallas, Feb. 2021. Matthew Rader / CC BY-SA 4.0
<p>Experts recognize that electric vehicles are a central climate solution for their role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But EVs are also essentially batteries on wheels. You can store energy in those batteries, and if EVs are equipped with something called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid" target="_blank">vehicle-to-grid</a> or vehicle-to-building technology, they can also be used to keep the lights on in emergencies. The technology allows the energy being stored in an EV battery to be pushed back into the grid or into buildings to provide power.</p><p>There are hurdles: The technology is still <a href="https://www.greenbiz.com/article/vehicle-grid-technology-revving" target="_blank">developing</a>, the vast majority of EVs currently on the road do not have this capability, and utilities would need regulatory approval before bringing it to scale. But done right it could be a great opportunity.</p><p>Electric car batteries can hold approximately <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/11/how-california-can-use-electric-vehicles-keep-lights" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">60 kilowatt hours (kWh)</a> of energy, enough to provide back-up power to an average U.S. household for two days. Larger electric vehicles like buses and trucks have even bigger batteries and can provide more power. The American company Proterra produces electric buses that can store <a href="https://www.proterra.com/press-release/proterra-launches-zx5-electric-bus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">up to 660 kWh of energy</a>. Electric <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-trash-trucks-are-coming-quietly-to-your-town-11602098620#:~:text=Electric%20trash%20truck%20love%20is%20in%20the%20air.&text=A's%20program%20to%20reduce%20carbon,being%20primarily%20electric%20by%202023." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">garbage trucks</a> and even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/business/electric-semi-trucks-big-rigs.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">big-rigs</a>, with bigger batteries, are becoming a reality too.</p>MTA New York City Transit / Marc A. Hermann / CC BY 2.0
<p>If equipped with vehicle-to-grid or vehicle-to-building technology, those cars, buses and trucks could prove invaluable during future blackouts. People could rely on their cars to power their houses. Municipalities, transit agencies and school districts could send out their fleets to the areas most in need. We could power homes, shelters and emergency response centers — and could keep people warm, healthy and comfortable until power could be restored.</p><p>But to add this great resiliency tool to our arsenal in times of extreme weather, we must significantly increase the number of EVs on the road. In 2019 electric cars accounted for only about <a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1136-june-1-2020-plug-vehicle-sales-accounted-about-2-all-light-duty" target="_blank">2%</a> of all light-duty vehicle sales in the country. Electric buses and trucks are becoming more common in the United States, but still only represent a tiny fraction of the fleet. As it stands now, the EVs currently on the road, even if equipped with vehicle-to-grid technology, would do little to help a broad swath of the population in need of power.</p>A line of electric cars at charging stations. Andrew Bone / CC BY 2.0
With lockdowns in place and budgets slashed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many environmental protections vanished this past year, leaving some of the world's most vulnerable species and habitats at risk. But conservationists at the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation were faced with an entirely different threat.
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