by Rex Weyler
Deep Green, March 2009

Deforestation contributes to global warming. Rising earth temperatures kill forests. Dying forests release more carbon. Atmospheric carbon increases planet temperatures.

This cycle of forest collapse represents a critical feedback loop that will likely drive warming for centuries, change life cycles on Earth in general, and usher in a sweeping transformation of human civilization.

Worldwide forest destruction – due to logging, human habitat sprawl, and clearing for crops such as soybeans and palm oil – continues at a net loss of about 15 million hectares each year. Many cleared forests are burned on the site. Meanwhile, forests die or grow slower due to global warming. Declining forests absorb less CO2 and release more carbon.

Drought, heat, and fires

Drought and heat are making forests more susceptible to insects and fire. David Gilbert, with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia will publish a study this year that shows forests have less biomass and increased mortality in warmer earth conditions.

Due to warmer temperatures, bark beetles have attacked boreal forests in the US, Canada and Russia, killing mature trees and making forests vulnerable to fire. Carbon, sequestered by forests over centuries, can be released in a few days by wildfires, as experienced in southern Australia in recent years. Fires are increasing worldwide and now contribute about a third as much atmospheric carbon as burning fossil fuels. Read the complete Post.

Campbell River Mirror

January 29, 2009 12:00 PM

I am writing this article to shine some light on what the NDP and their psuedo-enviromentalist bought-and-paid-for associates are doing in their attempts to discredit First Nations involvement in run-of-river development projects.

Real environmentalist organizations should ask for a First Nation perspective on the facts (as they have many times in the past) before embracing the fear-mongering hysteria being perpetuated by the NDP and unions as it tarnishes their credibility as stewards of the land.

I have personally attended several of these NDP so-called “public meetings” (they would not let me speak at one) on run of river issues, two of which were in Campbell River and one was with Rafe Mair in attendance.

It was a “million dollar” experience I would not pay a nickel to do again. I now know these people will say or do anything to get in control of your tax dollars.

Truth and facts do not even enter into their blathering as they are only concerned with promoting their political agenda. Read the complete Post.

VANCOUVER (January 29th, 2009) - A one-minute animated film made by a group of Vancouver filmmakers won the year-end “2008 People’s Choice Award” in the Friends of the Earth One-Minute Film Competition. Winners were announced in London, England by Friends of the Earth, an international organization seeking to inspire solutions to environmental problems.

Viewers from around the world voted for How to Boil a Frog as their favorite 60-second film among the top 10 entries shown online.  This “cheeky animation of a frog incensed by the world hotting up due to climate change” was written and produced by North Vancouver filmmaker, Jon Cooksey.  Cooksey has won a lunch in London with one of the judges, Trainspotting Producer Andrew MacDonald.  In describing the film, MacDonald said, “The animation How to Boil a Frog is professionally made and fun - it pulls viewers in and gets them thinking about climate change through its original entertaining style.”

How To Boil a Frog tells the story of Lou, a South American tree frog, who appears to be enjoying a Jacuzzi, until we see that he is the proverbial boiling frog, and the heat source is a burning Earth. Lou tastes the planet, and discovers the source of this global warming:  oil, factories, and cars. He yanks out the offending fossil-fuelled culprits, and bounces away on a happier planet.

Read the complete Post.

Join us for our monthly Vancouver Peak Oil Meetup.
All are welcome.

When: January 23, 2009 7:00 PM

Where: KAYA Knowledgeable Aboriginal Youth Association
#200 - 2019 Dundas Steet
Vancouver , BC V5L 2B6
(604) 254 - 5513

The Knowledgeable Aboriginal Youth Association (KAYA) presents “Vital Knowledge 2″ the second instalment in a series of film screenings and forums dedicated to educating youth on important world issues. In collaboration with the Vancouver Peak Oil Group, Vital Knowledge 2 will screen a selection from “A Crude Awakening” followed by an open discussion.

A Crude Awakening , produced and directed by award-winning European journalists and filmmakers Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, tells the story of how our civilization’s addiction to oil puts it on a collision course with geology. Compelling, intelligent, and highly entertaining, the film visits with the world’s top experts and comes to a startling, but logical conclusion – our industrial society, built on cheap and readily available oil, must be completely re-imagined and overhauled.

If the changes affect your plans to attend, please take a moment to update your RSVP. (You can RSVP “No” or “Maybe” as well as “Yes”.)

You can always get in touch with Brennan Wauters through the “Contact Organizer” link on Meetup.

Terrific library of free short videos courtesy of the show brought to you by Metro Vancouver - check out their site!

A Talk By Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University, Australia.

Friday, January 9, 2009
5:30 – 7:00 p.m.
Room 1400
SFU Vancouver - 515 West Hastings St.

Peter Newman and Tim Beatley have written two new books, one on Resilient Cities, the other on Green Urbanism Down Under. They are on a North American tour in January beginning in Vancouver as it was here that the gestation of the Resilient Cities book began. Peter will speak about how cities are under threat from the financial crash and especially need to avoid pushing solutions such as road building and urban sprawl that were only responsible for the sub-prime meltdown. A new approach to urban development needs to be forged out of the down-turn that can at the same time enable cities to respond to the deep challenge of peak oil and climate change. Some hopeful directions will be outlined based on cities from around the world, including cities down-under.

Dear Friends and Colleagues

As many of your know, I was among a group of young environmentalists who travelled Alberta by bike in 2007 attempting to wrap their head around one of biggest industrial mega-projects in the world: the Alberta tar sands. We went from one small town to the next, meeting with the locals and asking one question: how has the tar sands boom impacted your life? The 3-week long bike trip was a fact finding mission, a story telling adventure and a life-changing experience for all involved.

The culmination of that trip is the recent release of a book entitled Journey To The Tar Sands (www.tothetarsands.ca) co-authored by 12 of the cyclists, as well as a feature-length documentary (www.tothetarsandsfilm.ca) which was recently featured at the Calgary International Film Festival.

I have been keen to share the stories that we heard and experienced in Alberta with others here at home. So I am particularly excited to say that we have been able to bring a screening of the film and the official BC launch of the book to the North Shore as part of a national tour. Please consider yourself invited to the event, which will take place on Monday Jan 19th, from 7pm to approximately 9pm at the Kay Meek Centre in West Vancouver (http://www.kaymeekcentre.com/). I have attached a poster and I would appreciate your help in inviting others and spreading the word. A similar event is also being planned for Jan 20th at UBC if you know anyone who might be interested in that.

The film is rated PG and recommended for people of all ages who are interested in any of the following: youth activism, cycling, Alberta, the oil industry, journalism, storytelling, First Nation issues, labour issues, food, social justice, grassroots organizing, personal change, group living, climate change, the environment, the economy, and saving the world!

Hope to see you there.

Aftab

Canada’s vast forests, once huge absorbers of greenhouse gases, now add to problem
By Howard Witt | Chicago Tribune correspondent
January 2, 2009
Original article

VPO Note: a perfect example of Overshoot. The only good solution to this symptom of the real problem is reduction of human population and consumption.

VANCOUVER — As relentlessly bad as the news about global warming seems to be, with ice at the poles melting faster than scientists had predicted and world temperatures rising higher than expected, there was at least a reservoir of hope stored here in Canada’s vast forests.

The country’s 1.2 million square miles of trees have been dubbed the “lungs of the planet” by ecologists because they account for more than 7 percent of Earth’s total forest lands. They could always be depended upon to suck in vast quantities of carbon dioxide, naturally cleansing the world of much of the harmful heat-trapping gas.

But not anymore. Read the complete Post.

By Matthew Burrows
Georgia Straight 12/2/7/08
Original Article

VPO NOTE: VPO has been pushing for a peak oil task force for over a year, and now Councilor Andrea Reimer is answering the call. Time is short - please write in to city hall and voice support for this task force. Much of the work has already been done by the proposed members individually and is waiting to be taken off the shelf. We need to move into implementation immediately.

Mayor Gregor Robertson and Coun. Andrea Reimer are promising they will make Vancouver ready for peak oil.

“We have to address peak oil,” Robertson told the Georgia Straight at City Hall. “That’s a hard reality.…I think it could end up compounding the looming challenges we face with oil supply and an economy that’s totally dependent on cheap energy right now.”

Peak oil refers to the point at which the rate of global oil production maxes out, sending the supply of the resource into an inevitable decline.

In October, the U.K. Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security released a 43-page report entitled The Oil Crunch. The report anticipates peak-oil-related problems hitting the U.K. starting in 2011 and says the threat posed by peak oil is greater than that of terrorism.

Robertson and Reimer both say that lower oil prices don’t mean that action on peak oil should wait. Read the complete Post.

by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica and David Hasemyer, The San Diego Union-Tribune - December 21, 2008 11:23 am EST
Dec. 22: This post has been corrected.
Original article

This story was co-published with the San Diego Union-Tribune and also appears in that newspaper’s Dec. 21, 2008 issue.

Lake Powell, the Colorado’s River largest reservoir (David McNew/Getty Images)The Colorado River, the life vein of the Southwestern United States, is in trouble.

The river’s water is hoarded the moment it trickles out of the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado and begins its 1,450-mile journey to Mexico’s border. It runs south through seven states and the Grand Canyon, delivering water to Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego. Along the way, it powers homes for 3 million people, nourishes 15 percent of the nation’s crops and provides drinking water to one in 12 Americans.

Now a rush to develop domestic oil, gas and uranium deposits along the river and its tributaries threatens its future.

The region could contain more oil than Alaska’s National Arctic Wildlife Refuge. It has the richest natural gas fields in the country. And nuclear energy, viewed as a key solution to the nation’s dependence on foreign energy, could use the uranium deposits held there.

But getting those resources would suck up vast quantities of the river’s water and could pollute what is left. That’s why those most concerned are water managers in places like Los Angeles and San Diego. They have the most to lose.

The river is already so beleaguered by drought and climate change that one environmental study called it the nation’s “most endangered” waterway. Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography warn the river’s reservoirs could dry up in 13 years.

The industrial push has already begun. Read the complete Post.