How Indigenous pipeline resistance keeps emissions in the ground

Social Sharin

• Facebook

• Twitter

CBC News · Posted: Dec 02, 2021 

---

How Indigenous pipeline resistance keeps emissions in the ground

Protesters blocked a rail line in support of Wet'suwet'en land defenders who were arrested by the RCMP on Friday in northern British Columbia, in Toronto, Ont., on Sunday, Nov., 21, 2021. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press)

What On Earth27:01How Indigenous pipeline resistance keeps emissions in the ground

From Wet'suwet'en to Mi'kmaw opposition, Indigenous peoples are fighting fossil fuels. A new report adds up the emissions saved from pipeline resistance across North America. 27:01

Since the latest RCMP raid on Wet'suwet'en land defenders and their allies in northern B.C., questions have been swirling about legal rights, excessive police force and the timing of the first round of arrests, which occurred right after B.C. declared a state of emergency for flooding and landslides in southern parts of the province.

But there's another question surfacing from the longstanding Wet'suwet'en conflict with Coastal GasLink as well as broader Indigeous opposition to pipelines across North America: What impact are these actions having on the climate?

According to a new report by the Indigenous Environmental Network, Indigenous resistance to oil and gas projects in North America over the past decade has saved nearly 1.6 billion tonnes of annual greenhouse gas emissions. That's about a quarter of what Canada and the U.S. release together each year, the report states, or the amount of pollution from roughly 345 million cars.

"The most direct way for us to avoid further climate chaos is to keep fossil fuels in the ground," said Dallas Goldtooth, the Dakota and Diné lead author of the report, who some may know from the TV series Reservation Dogs. "It's far past time that we recognize that these movements are making a difference." 

The report looked at avoided emissions from fossil fuel projects that have been cancelled, such as the Keystone XL pipeline, along with struggles still underway, like opposition to the 670-kilometre Coastal GasLink pipeline. If completed, it would transport fracked gas from Dawson Creek to a proposed $40-billion liquified natural gas (LNG) processing facility near Kitimat.

The report estimates that direct action by Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs and their supporters alone has saved roughly 125 million tonnes of planet-warming greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere.

Taking this climate benefit into account makes the violent raid of land defenders — including Sleydo' Molly Wickham, a Gidimt'en clan chief, and Shay Lynn Sampson from the Gitxsan Nation, who were both removed from a cabin at gunpoint — all the more disturbing, Goldtooth said.

"I'm disgusted," he said. "It's absurd but not surprising that we are in the year 2021 and Canada is still asserting colonial violence upon Indigenous peoples and then saying it's doing something good for climate at the same time."

Gordon Christie, a professor at the University of British Columbia's Peter A. Allard School of Law, said what's going on in Wet'suwet'en territory is a clash between legal systems: that of Canada versus the hereditary system of the Wet'suwet'en, which, like nearly all First Nations in B.C., never surrendered their territory or signed a treaty. 

"It's their territory and their law, so it should really trump Canadian law in that context," said Christie, who specializes in Crown-Indigenous relations. 

This idea was acknowledged in the 1997 Supreme Court ruling in Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, which suggests that the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs have authority, or title, over the traditional territory. Band council chiefs — many of whom have signed on to support the Coastal GasLink pipeline — only have jurisdiction over reserves. 

But the Supreme Court stopped short of establishing where exactly the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs have title, opting to send that question to a future trial. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) offers guidance for conflicts like this, but both B.C. and Canada have said they plan to embrace UNDRIP for future decision-making and not apply it to existing projects.

This leaves people like Freda Huson, Chief Howihkat of the Unist'ot'en House Group, no choice but to resist. Huson was arrested in early 2020 alongside two other Wet'suwet'en matriarchs, which sparked solidarity protests across Canada that shut down railways and ports. 

Huson was recently named a winner of the international Right Livelihood Award "for her fearless dedication to reclaiming her people's culture and defending their land." She accepted the award on Dec. 1 in Stockholm.

Huson said she hopes the award will help raise awareness about Indigenous peoples around the globe fighting to preserve lands, waters and the climate — and inspire others to join them.

"It's all of our responsibility to protect future generations … to find alternative energy sources that don't destroy the land," Huson said.

Until then, members of Unist'ot'en and neighbouring clans like the Gidimt'en are standing up against the pipeline and delaying emissions in the process.

"I don't see [the Coastal GasLink] project going," Huson said, citing public opposition and rising tension about cost overruns. "We know these delay tactics are working."

— Serena Renner

What Privilege Means in the Climate Crisis Fight

No longer insulated from the climate crisis, the Global North has the power to lead the charge against the pollution it has long enabled.

Greenpeace activists projected a slogan onto a cooling tower at the Neurath power plant in Germany in 2017.

Credit...Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters


By Carola Rackete
Ms. Rackete is an ecologist and activist.
Dec. 2, 2021


This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.

Turning Point: The United Nations called a report on climate change released in August “code red for humanity.”

The climate crisis has been building for decades, but only since the mid-2000s has it truly come to the attention of the richer countries that comprise the Global North. Wildfires from California to Greece and flash floods from New York City to Germany have opened people’s eyes to the fact that this global crisis is real — and it is in danger of spinning out of our control if something isn’t done to stop it.

This past summer, the world’s climate scientists published the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, highlighting, once again, the need to act now. But rather than finding conviction in the many public reactions to these dire warnings, I instead sense a feeling of helplessness. Many in the Global North seem unable — or unwilling — to connect our growth-based, consumption-driven economy with the intensifying natural disasters around us.

We live in countries that burned through their share of the world’s CO2 budget long ago — if we account for the historic emissions released since 1850. But the effects of that overspending have mostly ravaged the faraway countries that we don’t see, whose citizens face far greater risks to their personal safety when they speak out against this injustice.

Climate Fwd A new administration, an ongoing climate emergency — and a ton of news. Our newsletter will help you stay on top of it. Get it sent to your inbox.

I believe that those of us who can act have a responsibility to do so. Embracing activism to combat polluters — who hurt the whole world — is a way to begin to repay our debt. Indeed, that ability to organize and protest safely is, to me, one of the most powerful symptoms of our privilege. And in my experience, exercising that privilege is the most effective way to help move the entire world toward a safer, more just future for all life on this planet.

My first encounter with the frustration and helplessness many of us face came a decade ago. I had graduated from maritime college and received my commercial navigation license, and in August 2011, I brought the German research icebreaker RV Polarstern to the North Pole. Our scientists cheered and toasted the journey on the frozen deck. But within a few minutes, everyone was back to work, and I saw concerned faces. We couldn’t carry out the ice measurements we had come to take directly at the North Pole, because there was simply not enough old ice. In the end, we had to search for a sizable old ice floe using a helicopter. Frustration reigned among the older scientists, whose decades of reports and warnings about the climate crisis had mostly been ignored.

Today, most people call me an activist. I no longer work as a maritime professional, although people know me publicly as the captain of a refugee rescue vessel who was arrested (and immediately released) after docking in Italy without permission after a 17-day standoff. It was an act of civil disobedience, using my white middle-class privilege (my ability to study for free at university and my confidence in a lower likelihood of being prosecuted for smuggling, in contrast to many migrants in Greece or Italy) to support people violently pushed to the margins by European society.
In August 2021, I returned to Germany, to the remains of a village called Lützerath, just 200 meters away from the vast open lignite mine called Garzweiler that powers the energy company RWE’s coal power station Neurath — one of the 10 biggest polluters in Europe. A single farm is all that’s left. The farmer doesn’t want to sell his land to RWE and may soon be evicted. I am among the nearly 300 people he invited to oppose the action by occupying the land with a permanent camp. In places like Lützerath, I see another chance to protest and use direct action and land occupations to prevent further coal mining, which will ultimately contribute to rising fossil fuel emissions and, if left unchecked, a global climate catastrophe.

Cars and a bus were stuck in flood waters in New York City in September 2021, after the remnants of Hurricane Ida barreled into the region, leading to at least 43 deaths, all but halting subway service and destroying homes.

Credit...Dakota Santiago for The New York Times

Polluting industries won’t abandon their destructive business models without public confrontation. Unlike the people who live thousands of miles away — and whose lives have been disproportionately affected by climate change for far longer than those of us in the Global North — I and many others have been born, or now live, in places where some of the world’s biggest polluters, including Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron and Total, are headquartered. This privilege of location, combined with our responsibility for our historic carbon debt, means a variety of tactics, including acts of civil disobedience, can be used on the home turfs of corporations that pollute, to hold them accountable for their crimes. That privilege also provides direct access to the power structures of those corporations: their finances, their lobby power and their social license to operate.

This won’t be easy. After all, many people, past and present, have struggled for their rights and freedoms in far more difficult circumstances. Abdul Aziz Muhamat, a friend from Sudan, spent years in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centers on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. During that time, the detainees tirelessly organized and confronted the Australian government over its policy of holding asylum seekers there. Eventually, most of them were released. A friend from Kenya, Phyllis Omido, and her community in a slum of Mombasa took up the fight against lead poisoning by a local factory. She was attacked, arrested and even had to hide after her lawsuit against the government brought more threats against her. In the end, she and her community prevailed, and several toxic waste smelters were shut down.

Speaking out for one’s rights can be a death sentence in many countries. Traditionally democratic nations appear to be heading down a similar path by criminalizing items and activities associated with protesting and civil disobedience. Following the 2016 protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, many U.S. states passed laws to criminalize trespassing around oil and gas pipelines. In response to protests against coal mining, Australia passed a law in 2020 criminalizing the lock-on devices activists use to attach themselves to each other, rail tracks or other objects. And over the past summer, police officers in Germany arrested other activists in Lützerath under changes in 2018 to a security law known as “Lex Hambi” in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The law, which allows the police to detain people for up to seven days in order to verify their identity, was made in part as a response to climate activists who had obscured their fingerprints to avoid identification.

This may be the first time that some people are feeling such a lack of control over their personal, and our collective, future. Many, particularly those of us in the white middle class, are not used to fighting uphill battles against unequal power structures. Many of us have not been taught how to build community and collective power in a situation where the odds are stacked against us.

In other words, our privilege is being tested. Luckily, that privilege can also give us the means and determination to rise to that challenge.

I am not looking forward to confronting the police and RWE’s security in Lützerath. In truth, I would prefer to go back to my old life and sail around Antarctica in a science support role. But I know that my privilege gives me responsibilities not only to communities struggling for their survival, but also to the global community of all living beings. The fight for global climate safety is now at our doorstep. To succeed, it will need a culture of resistance and a clear vision of justice and solidarity.

Carola Rackete is an ecologist and social justice activist based in Europe. Her book “The Time to Act Is Now” was published in English in November 2021.

English Teenager Finds Bronze Age Ax Using a Metal Detector

On her third day out with a metal detector, Milly Hardwick, 13, found a hoard of items from more than 3,000 years ago. “We were just laughing our heads off,” she said.

Milly Hardwick, 13, discovered a hoard of Bronze Age items in eastern England. Over the last two decades, museums around Britain have acquired more than 5,000 artifacts that were found by members of the public.

Credit...James Linsell-Clark/South West News Service


By Jenny Gross
Dec. 3, 2021


LONDON — In the United States, when metal detectors hit it big, it’s usually by finding familiar riches: lost engagement rings, expensive jewelry or coins of untold value. In Britain, the biggest successes often involve discoveries of treasures from ancient eras — like the 3,000-year-old ax that a teenager unearthed in eastern England in September.

The 13-year-old, Milly Hardwick, said that she, her father and her grandfather had been out in a field with metal detectors for several hours on a Sunday in Royston, England, and had not found a single item. Then, just after a lunch of sandwiches and cookies, they tried a different part of the field, where an organized dig was taking place. After about 20 minutes of searching, Milly said she heard the high-pitched beeping noise — “a lovely-sounding signal” — that indicates a possible find.

Her father rushed over and started digging. About 10 minutes later, he pulled out an item that resembled part of an ax, he said.

“I was just shocked,” Milly said. “We were just laughing our heads off.”

Milly, her father and her grandfather started dancing out of excitement, she said. They kept digging and found a hoard of other artifacts, including socketed ax heads, winged ax heads, cake ingots and blade fragments made of bronze. Milly’s findings were reported last month by The Searcher, a magazine about metal detecting.


Image
Items from one of two Bronze Age hoards, totaling around 200 artifacts, that were found near Royston, England.Credit...Oxford Archaeology East


Lorna Dupré, the chair of the Cambridgeshire County Council’s environment committee, said the council confirmed that 200 items, believed to be from the Bronze Age, were found. Milly and her father and grandfather found about 65 items in one hoard. Archaeologists later found a second hoard eight feet away.

The Bronze Age in Britain lasted from 2,300 B.C. to 800 B.C., during a period referred to as prehistoric England, before there were written records, according to English Heritage, a charity that manages historic monuments, buildings and places. (The circular earthwork of Stonehenge, for comparison, was built around 3,000 B.C., and its central stone settings were created around 2,500 B.C.) Around the start of the Bronze Age, the first metal weapons and jewelry began to arrive in Britain, and people were buried with these items in individual graves.

Amanda Rose, a spokeswoman for Peterborough City Council, said that little is known about what was happening around Royston during the Bronze Age but that the area was fairly well settled at the time. “It’s good farmland with water, and Bronze Age settlements, usually farmsteads or small clusters of round houses, are fairly frequent,” she said.

Bronze axes, she said, are “common enough that you would expect to find one, but rare enough to be excited when you do.” She added, “What’s unique about this one is the number of finds in one place, making it a hoard.”

She said that if a coroner declares that the Royston find meets the government definition of “treasure” — objects made of at least 10 percent gold or silver that are at least 300 years old — then a committee will set the value of the items. (When treasure is found, the finder does not own it, and it is illegal to try to sell it, according to government guidelines.)

Ms. Dupré said that if a museum wanted to acquire the objects, then the finder and the landowners could claim a reward. “This is of course a very exciting discovery, but we are unable to say anything further until investigations have concluded,” she said in a statement. Milly said that she would wait to see whether she would win any reward before making plans about how to spend it.

Over the last two decades, museums around Britain have acquired more than 5,000 artifacts that were found by members of the public, including Bronze Age axes, Iron Age cauldrons and Roman coin hoards.

Last year, the British government expanded its definition of treasure. The growing popularity of metal detecting as a hobby meant that more historical objects were being found, including some of archaeological significance that did not meet the previous “treasure” definition, which had been in place since the 1990s. In 2019, 1,311 pieces went through the process in which a committee determines whether an item should be considered treasure, the highest number on record. In 1997, 79 pieces were found.

A handful of hobbyists have found extraordinary artifacts. In 2014, a man with a metal detector found a hoard of gold and silver in Scotland that was more than 1,100 years old, a trove that experts called one of the most significant archaeological finds in Britain of this century. A spokesman for National Museums Scotland said the organization paid almost 2 million British pounds, or $2.6 million, for the items, which are on temporary display at the Kirkcudbright Galleries, a museum close to where they were found.

Since her discovery, Milly has gone out on most Sundays with her grandfather and father in search of more items. She says that when she grows up, she wants to be an archaeologist.

“The Romans have been there, everyone has been there — and we’re the ones to find it,” she said, laughing at the absurdity of finding a centuries-old ax in that particular field in Royston. “It’s crazy.”

Jenny Gross is a general assignment reporter. Before joining The Times, she covered British politics for the The Wall Street Journal. @jggross

Congo Ousts Mining Leader in a Cloud of Corruption Claims

The country’s president removed Albert Yuma Mulimbi as chairman of the state mining firm. Cobalt in Congo is a crucial resource in the global clean energy revolution.


Albert Yuma Mulimbi, chairman of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s state mining company, Gécamines, in Kinshasa in April.

Credit...Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times


By Eric Lipton and Dionne Searcey
Dec. 3, 2021

The chairman of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s state mining company was ousted on Friday after longtime allegations that billions of dollars in revenue had gone missing, a move officials said was intended to fight corruption as the country becomes increasingly important in the global clean energy revolution.

Albert Yuma Mulimbi, the chairman of the company since 2010, was replaced by President Felix Tshisekedi of Congo just days after The New York Times published an article revealing new allegations against Mr. Yuma.

The government agency, known as Gécamines, controls production of metals such as cobalt and copper, crucial resources in the push to expand electric vehicles and other renewables. Without his chairmanship, Mr. Yuma will no longer have a significant role in partnering with international companies over major mining deals.

“It is hard to underestimate the importance of this development — it is a significant step in the fight against corruption in Congo,” said J. Peter Pham, who until January served as a senior Central Africa official with the U.S. State Department. “Albert Yuma and the mining sector stand at the nexus of natural resources, political and economic power in the country.”

At least for now, Mr. Yuma will retain his role supervising the reform of small-scale and informal mining in Congo, one industry executive said. His plans include buying cobalt from the informal miners, also known as artisanal miners, and regulating pricing. Cobalt produced by artisanal mining, as opposed to industrial operations, makes up about 30 percent of the nation’s output.

He has also announced plans to increase safety at these sites. Child labor and frequent injuries and deaths associated with such mining have drawn international attention, driven away new U.S. investors and even made some automakers reluctant to buy cobalt from Congo.

The country is responsible for more than two-thirds of the world’s cobalt and is also a major copper producer. Though prices have skyrocketed in recent years, Gécamines was criticized during Mr. Yuma’s tenure for signing deals with foreign mining companies, including entities backed by the Chinese government. The arrangements effectively turned over the country’s extraordinary mineral wealth for foreigners to profit.

Top State Department officials had urged the Biden administration to impose sanctions on Mr. Yuma, who told The Times that he had by his own count been accused of diverting as much as $8.8 billion in mining revenues over the years.

He was separately banned in 2018 from entering the United States, and he has since hired a team of lobbyists and lawyers in Washington to try to fight back and head off any sanctions, which could freeze money he has in international banks.

Mr. Yuma, a longtime power broker in Congo and one of the country’s richest businessmen, did not respond on Friday to a request for comment. But in a series of interviews with The Times in recent months, he called the accusations against him fabrications by outside provocateurs seeking to undermine Congo’s sovereignty.

In one document he provided in October, he called the allegations “veritable smear campaigns,” saying that his critics wanted “to sully his reputation and blur his major role in favor of the country through the reform of its mining policy.”

For decades, Gécamines has been one of Congo’s largest sources of revenue, controlling concessions granted to major international mining companies and collecting royalties from them. Last year, the firm generated $324 million.

Mr. Yuma was placed in his post as chairman by the country’s former president, Joseph Kabila, who American officials believe worked closely with Mr. Yuma to divert agency funds toward political ends, and also possibly to enrich Mr. Kabila’s family.

He was reappointed chairman in 2019, after Mr. Tshisekedi took office. That year, Mr. Yuma had been under consideration to serve as prime minister of Congo, a move the United States opposed because he was planning to serve as Mr. Kabila’s proxy, State Department officials told The Times.

Mr. Yuma will now be replaced by Kaputo Kalubi Alphonse, whom Mr. Tshisekedi had named to Gécamines’ administrative council three years ago. As a sign of the key role that Gécamines plays in Congo, Mr. Tshisekedi’s spokesman announced the new appointment on national television on Friday.

Leon Mwine, who was appointed by Mr. Tshisekedi to a top post at Gécamines in 2019, said executives realized they had to prove to the world that the agency could change course.

“Values — such as honesty and transparency and integrity — these core values are what we need to be competitive on the international market,” Mr. Mwine said.

Eric Lipton is a Washington-based investigative reporter. A three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, he previously worked at The Washington Post and The Hartford Courant. @EricLiptonNYT

Dionne Searcey is part of a team that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and author of the book, "In Pursuit of Disobedient Women." @dionnesearcey • Facebook

'A small step in the fight against fossil fuels': Shell withdraws from Cambo North Sea oilfield


By Marthe de Ferrer & Agencies • Updated: 03/12/2021 - 15:46


Royal Dutch Shell has pulled out of a controversial oil project near Scotland’s Shetland Islands, saying the project no longer makes economic sense for the company.

The company said on Thursday it had scrapped plans to develop the Cambo North Sea oilfield, which became a lightning rod for climate activists seeking to halt Britain's development of new oil and gas resources.

Following a "comprehensive screening" of the Cambo field, Shell "concluded the economic case for investment in this project is not strong enough at this time, as well as having the potential for delays," the company said in a statement.

Shell had a 30 per cent stake in the Cambo project, which is opposed by environmental groups who say Britain should stop developing new oil and gas fields as part of its efforts to combat global warming.

"This is a small step in the right direction in the fight against fossil fuels," says Scottish environmental scientist and campaigner Mara. "Cambo is wholly unnecessary and it's unacceptable that the government are still considering allowing it to continue.

"How can the UK host COP26 and claim to be a green leader, while facilitating projects like this? We know from the IPCC report that extraction simply has to stop. It's a positive move that Shell has withdrawn though, and shows the power of public pressure and grassroots activism."

Shell plans underwater explosions during peak whale mating season
Local activists in long battle to stop oil drilling on Isle of Wight
Cambo oil field and Cumbria coal mine should not be approved if UK is to have credibility at COP26
Still plans for Cambo to move ahead

Private equity-backed Siccar Point, which owns the remaining 70 per cent of the field, confirmed in a separate statement that "Shell has taken the decision to not progress its investment at this stage."

The Cambo project off the Shetland Isles has been at the centre of a political debate on whether Britain should develop new fossil fuel resources as it seeks to sharply reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades.

"Cambo remains critical to the UK's energy security and economy," Siccar Point Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Roger said in a statement.

"Whilst we are disappointed at Shell’s change of position ... we will continue to engage with the UK Government and wider stakeholders on the future development of Cambo," he said.

Roger claims that developing the field 125 kilometres west of the Shetland Islands will create 1,000 jobs and help ease the UK’s transition to a low-carbon economy. However, activists and climate scientists are fiercely opposed to the development - saying it is directly opposed to the UK's climate goals.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has urged the UK government to scrap the project since August when she made her first statement on the controversy.

"I am asking that the UK government agrees to reassess licences already issued but where field development has not yet commenced. That would include the proposed Cambo development," she said at the time.

"Such licences, some of them issued many years ago, should be reassessed in light of the severity of the climate emergency we now face, and against a compatibility checkpoint that is fully aligned with our climate change targets and obligations."

Additional sources • REUTERS, AFP, AP

This Could Mean The End To Cambo Oil Field Development

By Julianne Geiger - Dec 02, 2021

Shell announced on Thursday that it would no longer proceed with its investment in the Cambo oil field.

Shell had a 30% stake in the Cambo oilfield, in the UK’s North Sea, with Siccar Point Energy holding the remaining 70% stake.

Siccar expressed its disappointment in Shell’s exit, and said it would need to review its options for Cambo.

For Shell, the reason to exit the project was the potential for delay as well as a lack of strength of economics.

Cambo was estimated to be capable of producing 175 million barrels of oil in its first phase. Cambo has drawn the attention of environmental groups protesting its development.

“After comprehensive screening of the proposed Cambo development, we have concluded the economic case for investment in this project is not strong enough at this time, as well as having the potential for delays,” a Shell spokesman said on Thrusday.

Nevertheless, Shell said that continued investment in the UK oil and gas sector “remains critical to the country’s energy security”, stressing that it still believes in the UK North Sea.

Anti-Cambo development campaigners have hailed Shell’s move as the “beginning of the end for all new oil and gas projects,” one such campaigner from Friends of the Earth Scotland said.

Oil and Gas regulator OGUK warned that the UK would still rely on new oil and gas projects.

“This is a commercial decision between partners but doesn’t change the facts that the UK will continue to need new oil and gas projects if we are to protect security of supply, avoid increasing reliance on imports and support jobs,” Jenny Stanning, external relations director at OGUK said.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

'Protest Works': Cheers as Shell Signals Pullout of Cambo Oil Field Project

"We have to see the end of North Sea projects as well as all new fossil fuel extraction: There is no future in them."

Activists protest against the Cambo oil field project in the Shetland Islands in Glasgow, Scotland on November 11, 2021. (Photo: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)

JULIA CONLEY

December 2, 2021

Climate campaigners in the United Kingdom applauded Thursday as oil giant Shell signaled it would not drill for oil in the proposed Cambo oil field off the coast of Scotland's Shetland Islands, following a grassroots effort to halt the project.

"Governments and oil and gas companies will—and are—being held accountable by people all over the world who know exactly who is to blame for the climate crisis."

Advocates said Shell's announcement that it had found a weak economic case for the Cambo project should deliver a "deathblow" to the proposal, and demanded the U.K. government end its support for drilling in the oil field, which would lie 78 miles west of the islands in the North Sea.

"With yet another key player turning its back on the scheme the government is cutting an increasingly lonely figure with their continued support for the oil field," Philip Evans, oil campaigner at Greenpeace U.K., told The Guardian.

Climate action group 350.org credited activists who have signed petitions, attended public actions, and pressured policymakers to scrap the project. Last summer, 80,000 people signed a letter that was sent to the U.K. government demanding the Cambo oil field be blocked.

"Protest works!" said 350 Europe.

Shell's decision to pull out of the project comes weeks after its plans to develop the Jackdaw gas field, also in the North Sea, were rejected by regulators due to the project's expected environmental impact.

The U.K. has committed to reaching net-zero fossil fuel emissions by 2050, a goal that advocates say is incompatible with drilling in the North Sea. The oil field contains over 800 million barrels of oil, the extraction of which would have a climate impact equivalent to 10 times Scotland's annual emissions.

Shell Oil would have controlled 30% of the Cambo oil field, with its partner Siccar Point Energy owning 70%. According to Reuters, it was unclear Thursday whether the oil field can be developed without Shell's involvement.

"We have to see the end of North Sea projects as well as all new fossil fuel extraction: There is no future in them," Connor Schwartz of Friends of the Earth told The Guardian. "Carrying on risks more than just balance sheets, it makes the path to 1.5°C even harder."

Tessa Khan, founder and director of climate action group Uplift, called Shell's withdrawal from the project "genuinely huge news" that could spell the end for oil and gas development in the U.K., considering Shell cited economic grounds for its decision.


"Governments and oil and gas companies will—and are—being held accountable by people all over the world who know exactly who is to blame for the climate crisis and the unavoidable implication of all those promises to preserve our climate: We have to keep fossil fuels in the ground," said Khan. "And countries like the U.K.—who are one of the biggest historical emitters of greenhouse gases, who have the resources to shift away from oil and gas, and who owe a huge climate debt to the rest of the world—have to move first."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Shell U-turn on Cambo could mean end for big North Sea oil projects

Industry sources say Siccar Point will struggle to find new partner to take on Shell’s 30% stake in oilfield

Activists protest against the Cambo oilfield project in the Shetland Islands during Cop26 in Glasgow in November.

 Photograph: Andy Buchanan/AFP/Getty

Jillian Ambrose
Fri 3 Dec 2021 

Shell’s decision to back out of plans to develop the Cambo oilfield could sound the “death knell” for new large-scale North Sea projects, industry figures say, as the UK’s tougher climate agenda prompts oil companies to retreat from the ageing oil basin.

Sources said Shell’s project partner, the private equity-backed Siccar Point, would struggle to find another partner to take on Shell’s 30% stake in the new oilfield, which has provoked outrage among green campaigners.

Shell’s retreat has cast doubt over the future of a project that could yield hundreds of millions of barrels of oil, and sources say it raises fresh doubts over the North Sea’s future large-scale oil projects too.

“This is a turning point,” said one industry source, who asked not to be named. “Companies will be thinking: if Shell can’t do it, can we? I just don’t see any truly large-scale projects being sanctioned in the North Sea any more. There will still be small developments around existing fields. But this is a death knell for major new projects in the UK.”

The Guardian understands that Shell scrapped the Cambo project after the government made clear it would need to meet certain “climate concessions” to win its approval. The company said publicly that the “economic case for investment” was not strong.

Shell’s withdrawal comes weeks after the company was left disappointed by a UK regulator’s “unexpected” decision to decline its application to develop a separate North Sea project at the Jackdaw field.

“It’s a bit embarrassing for Shell so soon after announcing it would relocate its headquarters to London from the Netherlands,” the source added.

Most big listed oil companies have reduced their presence in the North Sea in recent years by selling off assets, and the companies that remain are relative minnows that would balk at the scale of the Cambo project or lack the experience to develop the field.

“There are no listed oil companies which would look seriously at this project, and the private companies don’t typically have the track record in project development which Shell brought to the table,” said the source.

There was also “a huge amount of uncertainty” around the government’s support for new oil and gas development in the North Sea, according to the source, which could put off smaller companies which require tighter project timelines than larger ones.

Caroline Rance, a campaigner with Friends of the Earth Scotland, said Shell’s exit from the Cambo field “marks the beginning of the end for all new oil and gas projects” in the North Sea.

Green campaigners have called on the government to take a clear stance against new fossil fuel developments after findings from the International Energy Agency, the global energy watchdog, that no new fossil fuel projects are compatible with the world’s climate targets.

“Both the UK and Scottish governments must now officially reject Cambo, say no to any future oil and gas developments in UK waters and get on with planning a fair and fast transition for people working in this industry,” Rance said.


Shell pulls out of Cambo oilfield project

The questions around the North Sea are likely to reignite tensions between the Treasury, which is understood to be concerned over the flight of investment from the UK post-Brexit, and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which leads the UK’s climate strategy.

Jonathan Roger, the chief executive of Siccar Point, said the company was in consultation with the regulator and stakeholders “on taking Cambo forward and the next steps required to do that”.

He said: “Norway continues to invest in both new oil and gas and renewable developments to deliver a fair and managed transition, but the UK is at risk of damaging its economy and increasing imports with a higher carbon impact if new developments are not brought forward during this time.”

The Guardian view on North Sea oil: keep it in the ground

Editorial
Britain won’t convince anyone else to ditch fossil fuels when it won’t do so itself

Activists at a Stop Cambo protest outside Downing Street in London.

 Photograph: Vuk Valcic/Sops Images/Rex/Shutterstock

Fri 3 Dec 2021 18.27 GMT

Does the decision by oil giant Royal Dutch Shell to pull out of the Cambo oilfield mark the end of oil and gas investment in the North Sea? For the planet’s sake, one would hope so. However, it may be more realistic to see Shell’s act as a first victory in a longer war to keep hydrocarbons in the ground. Campaigners say that there are dozens more offshore oil and gas fields coming up for approval in the next three years. To keep the climate safe and limit global temperature rises to 1.5C, none ought to go ahead. Oil majors have lost the battle for public opinion in Scotland and this has dramatically altered the calculations for the ruling Scottish National party, which for decades ran on oil. Without supportive politics, and with the science against them, oil majors – this time – bowed out.

Despite that, and despite brandishing its credentials as a climate champion at Cop26 in Glasgow last month, the UK government still wants extractive industries to suck the seabed dry. Rather than joining an alliance of nations – led by Denmark and Costa Rica, and including France and Ireland – which have set an end date for oil and gas production and exploration, Boris Johnson will allow companies to keep exploring the North Sea for new reserves.

The counter argument is that abandoning the North Sea will cost the UK jobs. But the appropriate policy response is to raise investment aimed at the transition to net zero. Last year a poll suggested that four-fifths of oil workers would consider leaving the industry. This is a pool of labour willing – provided there was a measure of security and reasonable pay – to transfer skill sets to the offshore wind and renewable energy sector. What has been lacking is the government drive to tap such desires.

One has to recognise that while fossil fuels fade, the geopolitics of energy will not. If the world achieves net zero emissions, it will not mean the end of oil and gas. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projected that if the world reached the goal of net zero by 2050, it would still be using nearly half as much natural gas as today and about one-quarter as much oil.

This would mean that as the UK constrains its domestic fossil fuel output, wealthy Gulf states that can produce oil cheaply will increase their market share. It would also see Moscow’s significance to Europe’s energy security rise before it falls. Adopting cleaner technologies will also, as the US academics Jason Bordoff and Meghan L O’Sullivan write in Foreign Affairs, give rise to new energy powers: half of the global supply of cobalt is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; half of lithium in Australia; and half of rare earths in China. Trade may be used to pressurise countries considered too slow in greening their economies to pursue stronger climate policies.

This will be tricky to navigate for the most sure-footed of governments, let alone one that clomps around the world in shoes of concrete. The UK government must foster new technologies and use them to curb climate change, while lowering the geopolitical risks that such changes create. But Mr Johnson is prepared to sacrifice green targets to strengthen alliances; just ask Canberra. He also has a reputation as an unreliable ally, ripping up agreements within months of signing them. The essence of diplomacy is persuading others to do things you want. It is hard to see how Britain will convince anyone else to ditch fossil fuels when it won’t do so itself.

UCP CLAW BACK

Alberta subsidies slashed ahead of affordable child-care program

By Breanna Karstens-Smith Global News
Posted December 3, 2021 


WATCH ABOVE: Ottawa has pledged billions of dollars to slash child-care costs in Alberta starting next month. While that is happening, the provincial government is also slashing subsidies for low-income families. Breanna Karstens-Smith explains.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated since it was first published to clarify the minister’s statement that low-income families currently pay about $13 per day per child.

Weeks before Alberta introduces the first phase of the federal affordable child-care program, child-care operators across the province are being told subsidies to low-income families are being cut.

Families receiving the maximum amount of provincial funding were getting $644 dollars per month to help them pay for child care. In 2022, that will fall to $266 per month.

“The subsidy wasn’t decreased, it’s just different,” Children’s Services Minister Rebecca Schulz told Global News Friday.

“Instead of only having a subsidy, we have to reduce child-care fees in every single licensed space across the province and so that requires an operating grant.”

READ MORE: Trudeau, Kenney promise $10-a-day child care across Alberta within next 5 years

Come January, child-care fees will be reduced in licensed facilities across Alberta. That is being done as part of a federal deal Alberta signed in November.

Families argue they weren’t aware that would mean they would receive less funding.

Single mom of one Jessica Hawkins currently receives the full provincial subsidy. While her fees will be cut in half come January, her subsidy will drop to $266.

After splitting the cost of daycare with her child’s father, Hawkins will save $32 per month. She was expecting to save more than $100.

“So many parents I know are struggling and freaking out,” said Hawkins.

“Just before Christmas, too. Like, I used the portion that I thought I was going to get to help get Christmas presents.”

1:58 Alberta inks affordable child care deal with Ottawa – Nov 15, 2021

The executive director of Glengarry Child Care Society in Edmonton said he received the subsidy details from the province this week.

Brad West said it was heartbreaking to have to tell low-income families they will receive a lower subsidy.

“It angers me because the families that need that the most are not getting the support that they need. Not that the full fee-paying parents don’t deserve that, they absolutely do. But our most vulnerable are not receiving the support,” West explained.

Schulz pointed out low-income families currently pay about $13 per day per child on average. Many of them will drop to the $10 per day average first starting in January.

The federal government is investing $3.8 billion over the next five years to pay for the reduction in fees.

Schulz said the province is maintaining its investment of about $380 million in child care each year.

READ MORE: How much parents across Canada could save per year with the national child-care plan

One operator questioned whether Alberta is pocketing the money it is saving by cutting subsidies and wants to know whether Ottawa was told help for low-income families would be reduced when making the funding commitment.

“I would be disappointed if the federal government knew that this was the plan and that it was going to leave out fully subsidized parents,” said West.

Global News has reached out to the federal minister for comment.

West also pointed out an infant care incentive has been removed.

Child-care facilities were given $150 per month for each child between 0 and 18 months.

For West, that will decrease his operating revenue by about $12,000 in 2022.

Schulz said that funding was also being rolled into the new operating grants but admitted she has heard concerns about the incentive and is looking into whether a change could be made.

Ex-president Yahya Jammeh's victims still waiting for justice ahead of Gambia polls

Gambians go to the polls to pick a president on Saturday, in the first election in the poor West African country since ex-dictator Yahya Jammeh fled into exile. 

Issued on: 02/12/2021 - 
Text by: FRANCE 24Follow|
Video by :Sarah SAKHO

Ahead of Gambia’s December 3 presidential elections, the country's Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations Commission (TRRC) wrapped up a sweeping three-year public inquiry on Thursday, recommending prosecutions for abuses committed during former President Yahya Jammeh's 22-year rule. FRANCE 24’s Sarah Sakho and Elimane Ndao report.

Gambians go to the polls to pick a president on Saturday, in the first election in the poor West African country since ex-dictator Yahya Jammeh fled into exile.

But the shadow of Jammeh, who seized power in Gambia in 1994 and ruled with an iron fist for 22 years, still hangs over the tiny nation – the smallest in mainland Africa, surrounded by Senegal. Voters in the Gambia are concerned about improving living conditions.

Jammeh was forced into exile in Equatorial Guinea in 2017, after President Adama Barrow, who was then a relative unknown, defeated him at the polls.

But the former dictator retains significant political support in Gambia, where his advocates have pushed for his return.

Consequently, his possible return from exile, and how to respond to the litany of alleged crimes under his rule – including rape, torture, the use of death squads and state-sanctioned witch hunts – have been central themes in the election campaign.

One Gambian who had testified to the TRRC about her husband’s assassination 27 years ago said it was impossible for her to mourn because none of the Jammeh regime’s officials have been charged: “It’s only justice that can make us forget them,” she said.

"The TRRC’s report is now in Barrow’s hands; he has 6 months to take action. It must lead to a trial", said Gambian human rights activist Mariama Jobarteh: “Of course, Yahya Jammeh was the head of everything; he must face justice. So, whoever is coming in, we want to see a government that dries the people’s tears.”

Barrow has been under fire since making an alliance with members of Jammeh’s party. But the government is keen to assure that the case is moving forward.

“The victims don't need to be worried. President Barrow established the TRRC out of his own volition, in order to fight for the truth,” said government spokesman Ibrima Sankareh.

Click on the video player  to watch FRANCE 24's report.

Antarctica breakthrough as experts set to uncover 1.5 million-year-old discovery

RESEARCHERS are about to travel more than one million years back in time by drilling into East Antarctica to collect the world's oldest ice core.

By SEBASTIAN KETTLE
Wed, Dec 1, 2021

Six teams of scientists have set up camp on Antarctica and will soon begin their quest to drill into a 1.8 mile-thick (3km) layer of ice. Until now, deep cores collected from the continent have allowed scientists to study the Earth's prehistoric climate from trapped air bubbles dating up to 800,000 years ago. But the Beyond EPICA mission is on track to go nearly twice as far back in time by collecting ice cores dating some 1.5 million years back.

Project coordinator Carlo Barbante of the Ca' Foscari University of Venice said: "During our previous EPICA project, which ended in 2008, we managed to extract and analyse an 800,000-year-old ice core.

"Now we are trying to travel back further in time: because if we are to gain a correct perspective on what the world is currently experiencing with climate change, and adopt suitable mitigating strategies, we must look back even further — which is what we are trying to do in Antarctica with Beyond EPICA."

The mission's goal is to investigate the prehistoric Antarctic climate and greenhouse gasses during the so-called Middle Pleistocene Transition (MPT), which occurred between 900,000 and 1.2 million years ago.

The MPT saw a period of "climatic periodicity" that transition from 41,000 to 100,000 between ice ages.


Scientists will soon begin to drill for the world's oldest ice core (Image: Barbante©PNRA/IPEV/L. AUGUSTIN/LABORATOIRE DE GLACIOLOGIE ET GEOPHYSIQUE DE L’ENVIRONMENT (LGGE))


The drill site is about 25 miles from the Concordia research station (Image: Barbante©PNRA/IPEV)

Professor Barbante and his colleagues want to understand why this change happened.

The ambitious £8.5million (€11million) project is being funded by the European Commission and is a follow-up to the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA), which originally drilled into an area known as Little Dome C.

Beyond EPICA will drill at a site near where the first cores were collected, about 25 miles (40km) from the French-Italian Concordia research station.

And it's not going to be an easy task for the researchers.

Situated more than 10,000ft (3,233ft) above sea level, Little Dome C sees temperatures drop as low as -35C in the summer and -80C in the winter.

Beyond EPICA said: "It may seem absurd whilst sitting on three kilometres of water, but Dome C is as dry as the Sahara Desert, so snow accumulates slowly, gradually trapping in the ice the precious air bubbles we hope to analyse to find the atmospheric composition of the deep past of our planet.

"Careful analysis of the isotopic ratios of this ancient ice will be our deep time thermometer."

The drill site was prepared ahead of time between 2019 and 2020, and was selected after more than 2,400 miles (4,000km) of aerial and ground-based surveys.

This was carried out using a wide variety of techniques, including basal temperature assessments and age modelling frameworks.

Olaf Eisen of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) said: "It is the first time that a site for deep drilling has been selected with such a high precision and effort.

Antarctica's various territorial claims mapped out (Image: EXPRESS)


Ice cores drilled from Antarctica can shed light on Earth's prehistoric climates (Image: GETTY)

"The new radar measurement showed more clearly than before, that the ice there is well stratified and most probably very old."

The original EPICA endeavour only drilled to a depth of about 9,100ft (2,774m), which stopped short of the bedrock just 9,186ft (2,800m) down.

This was enough to recover records of the climate dating back 800,000 years.

The researchers believe the remaining feet of ice and snow will reveal an additional 700,000 years of trapped air.

Robert Mulvaney from the British Antarctic Survey told BBC News: "We already have the 800,000 years of ice, so much of the first few years of drilling will simply be a repeat of ice we already have.

"In practice, with many new PhD students coming online, and new groups getting involved, and new analytical techniques always being developed, we will make good use of the ice younger than 800,000 years.

"We will also use the younger ice to ensure our techniques are working well by the time we get to the deep ice, where we only get one chance to get all the analyses right."

Despite this being an EU-funded initiative, UK scientists will have access to the project because the funding was secured before the UK left the bloc.

US out of step with much of the world on abortion
AFP - Yesterday 

While many countries around the world have eased restrictions on abortion, the United States is going in the other direction.

The conservative-dominated Supreme Court appears all but certain to uphold a 2018 Mississippi law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

- China and North Korea -

In the absence of any federal laws, it is the US Supreme Court that has, since 1973, guaranteed a woman's right to an abortion until "viability," when the fetus can survive outside the womb, typically between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy.

But the nation's highest court appears poised, following oral arguments on Wednesday, to roll back abortion rights and uphold Mississippi's 15-week ban.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, expressed concern that the United States shared its viability standard with the People's Republic of China and North Korea while the rest of the world is more restrictive.

Former vice president Mike Pence, speaking a day earlier, made the same comparison and said he hoped the court "can move America away from the radical fringe squarely back into the mainstream of Western thought."

The United States does, in fact, permit abortions later than many other countries but it is not alone with China and North Korea.

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 67 countries allow abortion on request, with most of them setting the limit at 12 weeks.

The United States is among a dozen nations that allow abortions to be carried out later along with China but also Britain (24 weeks), Canada (until term) and parts of Australia.

And the 12-weeks standard can be misleading because a number of countries permit legal access to abortion later for "social reasons, health reasons (and) socio-economic reasons," said attorney Julie Rikelman, arguing in favor of maintaining the status quo in front of the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

- Barriers -

Few countries present such a patchwork of differing access to abortion within their borders, and most do not have the "same barriers in place" as does the United States, Rikelman told the Supreme Court.

Conservative US states, mostly in the South, have erected a number of obstacles in recent years restricting access to abortion, forcing many clinics to close.

Six US states have only a single abortion clinic each, including Mississippi.

A Texas law banning abortions after six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant, took effect on September 1 and the Supreme Court is yet to act on an emergency petition to stop it.

On the other hand, access to abortion is freely available in progressive states such as California and New York.

Nancy Northup, CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the United States is an outlier "in terms of progression on abortion rights."

"The trend in the last 25 years has been liberalization of abortion laws," Northup said, citing recent developments in Mexico, Argentina and Benin.

Although the Supreme Court's decision in the Mississippi case will not be known until June, Northup said the United States is already in an "incredible regressive phase" with more than 100 abortion restrictions passed this year alone.

- Bitter debate -

The United States also sets itself apart from the rest of the world with the ferocity of the domestic debate over abortion.

Just 42 percent of Americans believe abortion should be permitted on demand compared with 75 percent in Sweden, 65 percent in Britain, 64 percent in France and 61 percent in Italy and Spain, according to a 2021 Ipsos poll.

In those other countries, the abortion debate has cooled since legalization.

Not so in the United States, where the Republican Party has used the emotional issue to mobilize voters, particularly those on the religious right.

Donald Trump, for example, was pro-choice in 1999 but ran for president in 2016 on a promise to nominate justices to the Supreme Court who were opposed to abortion.

He kept his pledge and the three justices nominated during his presidential term are expected to vote to roll back abortion rights.

chp/cl/bgs