Canada joins U.S. in creating Net-Zero Producers Forum to reduce GHG emissions

CALGARY — Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan says Canada will join the U.S. in establishing a platform for oil and gas producing countries to figure out how the sector can support implementing the Paris agreement on climate change and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

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Dubbed the Net-Zero Producers Forum, it is intended to develop emission reduction strategies and would include Canada, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States, collectively accounting for about 40 per cent of global oil and gas production.

It is to discuss ways to reduce methane emissions, advance the circular carbon economy, develop and deploy clean-energy and carbon capture, use and storage technologies and diversify economies from reliance on hydrocarbon revenues.

The forum is being developed in parallel to the Leaders’ Summit on Climate hosted virtually by U.S. President Joe Biden this week.

Biden announced Thursday that the U.S. would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 per cent compared with 2005 levels by 2030 and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed Canada would slash its GHGs by 40 to 45 per cent over the same period. The targets were called "extremely aggressive" by Precision Drilling Corp. CEO Kevin Neveu.

Video: Canada pledges at least 40% reduction in emissions by 2030 (cbc.ca)


On Friday, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland defended Canada's higher target in a presentation to the Canadian Club in Toronto, saying that while the energy sector is very important to Canada, it has to be part of the climate change solution because "that's where the emissions are."

O'Regan said the world is increasing climate ambitions and Canada will lead the way.

"We have hundreds of thousands of workers who know how to build energy infrastructure, and they’ll be the ones to lower emissions and build our clean energy future," O'Regan said in a statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 23, 2021.

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Powwows across US adapt to pandemic for a second year

The coronavirus pandemic brought powwow season largely to a screeching halt last year

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Some powwows cancelled their annual events; others went online only. Some held virtual competitions and cultural events from afar, but left most of the food and art vendors and daily workers sitting on the sidelines.

And powwow season this year will not return to normal either, even with vaccines rolling out and restrictions being lifted in some states.

The Gathering of Nations – one of the largest powwows in North America set for April 23-24 – and a number of other events in Indian Country will be virtual once again this year, some free and some for a fee. Other events opted for in-person but socially distanced gatherings.

Several powwows have been cancelled for a second year, or are still up in the air. The Shoshone-Bannock Indian Festival — the largest cultural festival in Idaho — was cancelled this week for a second year, as was the Coeur d’Alene’s Julyamsh powwow, also in Idaho. The Denver March Powwow — another large event — was also cancelled but left uncertain whether it could be rescheduled for later in the year.

It’s been costly for everyone involved – the organizations that sponsor the events, participants, vendors, and the local communities that look forward to the economic boost they bring.

“As an Indigenous artist, most of my venues are powwows and other tribal-sponsored events such as conferences and sports tournaments,” bead and shell artist Jennifer DeHoyos, Payómkawichum/Cahuilla/Kumeyaay, told Indian Country Today.

“The impact was great.”

The message is: Check ahead before you go, and let’s hope next year is back to normal.

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A BEACON OF HOPE

Gathering of Nations will host its second virtual powwow the weekend of April 23-24 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Friday events will be free online but the Saturday events will be a pay-per-view showing of $9.99.

Since 1983, the event has attracted more than 750 tribes from all over the country and Canada, hosting more than 75,000 attendees. Known as the “Super Bowl of Powwows,” the event drew about 91,000 people to its last in-person powwow in 2019.

For Gathering of Nations Founder Derek Mathews, the decision to go virtual rather than cancel was the best option. He considers the Gathering of Nations a beacon of hope for Indigenous communities of the world.

“We needed to keep the bright light on because if it shuts down here, we’ve turned it off, maybe for a lot of people. Keep a light on and keep looking to the future,” Mathews told Indian Country Today in a recent interview. Mathews is of Native descent but is not affiliated with a tribe.

Additionally, it has provided an opportunity for Gathering of Nations to be a leader in health and safety for the community by using its large platform to spread information throughout the past year on the coronavirus, preventative measures and established nonprofits that can assist Natives during the pandemic, he said.

Central Michigan University’s Celebrating Life Pow Wow also opted for a virtual event for a second year on March 20-21. The student-run event is one of the first powwows of the season within the state, and draws a crowd of about 2,000 annually to see more than 200 competitors.

Students were devastated in 2020 when the annual powwow was cancelled at the beginning of the pandemic. But they proposed a virtual powwow instead, said Native American Programs Director Colleen Green, a citizen of the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians.

Though some COVID restrictions were lifted in Michigan before this year’s event, local government guidelines prevented an in-person powwow, Green said.

“We are close to the reservation here, and there’s a lot of Indigenous communities within Michigan and we just didn’t want to make anyone get sick,” said Onyleen Zapata, a citizen of the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi, a Central Michigan University undergraduate and co-chair for the powwow.

The National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development recently announced that its Reservation Economic Summit, RES2021, will be held both in-person and virtually this year. The event – which includes an artisan market, trade show and business networking – will be held July 19-21 in Las Vegas.

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LOST REVENUES

The financial losses have spread throughout the communities.

For the city of Albuquerque and the state of New Mexico, the Gathering of Nations Powwow is a huge source of revenue. With an economic impact of $22 million for Albuquerque annually, the pandemic planted a blow on the tourist, hotel and restaurant businesses that profit from the event.

Mathews said last year’s loss was “100 per cent.” Tickets to the event and participation fees were on sale beginning in the fall of 2019, with a cost of $19 for a one-day admission, $42 for a two-day pass and $85 for a two-day VIP pass. But when the pandemic hit, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan-Grisham ordered a pause on large events on state properties.

The Gathering of Nations team decided to put together the 2020 powwow on their website in collaboration with Powwows.com, streaming an enhanced replay of the 2019 powwow on one website and musical performances on another.

“There was no revenue. We lost it all in a sense because we use vendor fees, advanced tickets, sponsorships … to put the production together,” Mathews said. “The week going into it, you’d see tractor-trailers bringing the stage and lighting, flooring, fencing. It’s major. But people don’t understand, you can’t go into a gym, turn on the lights, get a folding table, set up a microphone and go. It’s a big, big, big production, indoors and outdoors.”

Unlike Gathering of Nations, a non-profit organization that relies on ticket sales and funding from local governments and sponsors, the Celebrating Life Pow Wow is fully funded by Central Michigan University. Admission is regularly $7, but the virtual events were free both years.

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‘POWWOW SHOPPING NETWORK’

Vendors have also taken a financial hit.

Many virtual powwows are trying to include vendors by setting up dedicated webpages for powwow merchandise and goods. Vendors send in photos of their products to be featured on the page in a typical online shopping format.

After the 2020 in-person powwow was cancelled, Gathering of Nations did not offer refunds because of pre-paid production costs, but invited the vendors to attend the virtual market and offered a free spot to the next in-person trader’s market, currently scheduled for 2022.

The Gathering of Nations’ Virtual Traders’ Market this year will live on a separate page on the website, in a classic online shopping format. Products will also be featured and promoted during the event.

Last year, the Celebrating Life Pow Wow did the same thing. But this year they decided to go with a “QVC-style,” traders’ market they coined the “Powwow Shopping Network,” Green said.

Green said vendors were enthusiastic about taking cues from the QVC Network, showing close-ups of their products and going into great detail about their offerings.

“The vendors were just amazing to work with. When I said QVC, they’re like, ‘OK, I got you,’” Green said.

The vendor videos were played from noon to 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 21, during the virtual powwow, drawing an audience of about 1,500. When it was their turn, vendors were directed to hop onto the Facebook Live chat to interact with customers and answer any questions.

“It was definitely a brand-new idea,” Zapata said. “Our committee members wanted to get the vendors more involved. This year was more interactive. So that worked out pretty well.”

The Celebrating Life Pow Wow issued refunds last year, while allowing vendors to sell their products without paying a fee. Green said the group waived the vendor fee for this year, too.

“The day we were told we’re shutting the university down we literally refunded everybody by 5 o’clock,” Green said. “We want to make sure that you get some recognition as well.”

But virtual powwows and trader’s markets haven’t been successful for everybody.

“With no events I had to re-evaluate and evolve my way of doing business very quickly,” said DeHoyos, the bead and shell artist. “It really was a sink-or-swim type of situation as I rely on my sales to help make ends meet and put food on the table for my five kids.”

Before the pandemic, DeHoyos would do at least four powwows a year along with other tribal events. She has participated in two West Coast virtual powwows and two online marketplaces, but found them confusing, difficult to navigate, and felt alone after giving the co-ordinators her information.

“The ones I participated in, to me, seemed like a list of resources posted to their main pages,” she said. “So, I’m certain that my social media following did increase because of the exposure, but I’m not completely convinced that I got new customers from those venues.”

Social media, rather than powwows, has been the main source of income for many Native vendors during the pandemic, DeHoyos said.

“I hate to say it but right now my social media following is everything,” she said.




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WHERE'S THE BEEF?

The smell of powwow food is missing from the virtual events, however, and so, largely, are the food vendors.

Even socially distanced powwows pose problems. Poor availability of crews and wary customers are difficult to overcome, vendors said.

“People are easily grossed out by food, even though we would be wearing masks, gloves and are clean,” said food vendor Jolene Mangilinan, Cahuilla/Luiseno/Paiute.

Mangilinan, who regularly cooks food at funerals, had planned to get more into the powwow scene last year but the pandemic stopped her plans.

“Me and my crew thought about a food truck or a trailer, but since COVID we’ve all split up,” she said. “I’ve got kids in online school. My friend has to work the graveyard shift. My crew is not a crew anymore. We’ve had to move on. We can’t wait for jobs.”

Now that food vendors who relied on the powwow circuit and other tribal events have had to find other opportunities, Mangilinan is worried there will be no one left to do the job.

“This isn’t just stuff you learn in a day, it’s something you need to learn all of your life,” she said. “There’s a lot that goes into cooking and it’s not for everybody.”

With the overhead costs, licensing fees, vendor fees and sheer competition, it’s a difficult business to break into, she said.

Working in-person events like powwows during the pandemic can have additional costs, including increased sanitation, to-go boxes and individually wrapped condiments and utensils.

Even many large, well-attended virtual powwows like Gathering of Nations have yet to perfect a way to bring food back to the powwow experience. Mathews said their team looked into partnerships with food delivery apps, but creating these partnerships and a network of local vendors across the nation proved to be too difficult.

But the Celebrating Life Pow Wow has defied the odds. After reaching out to food vendors, Green said the local Jackson Food Stand was up for the challenge. Owner Julia Jackson sold out both days of the event, with orders coming in over the phone, online and in-person. Orders were delivered and some customers came to her home, where she and her crew cooked Indian tacos, nachos, fry dogs, fry bread, soup and desserts.

“People were understanding when they would call to place an order and we said, ‘We’ll work you in when we can.’ And everyone was respectful of my home, wearing masks, and they asked before they came in,” Jackson said.

People drove from other cities, some more than two hours away, for Jackson’s food, Green said. Jackson’s team was so busy that she pulled her husband, Delmar, Saginaw Chippewa, out of retirement to aid with the cooking.

“My grandkids asked me, ‘How many … did you cook for today?’ And I said, ‘Grandma couldn’t tell you. I just know it was a lot,’’” Jackson said.

The powwow organizers were happy to give back to local Native businesses by offering free publicity for any food vendors, Green said.

“Last year, we didn’t contact the vendors for food at all, because of course, we were on complete lockdown back then. And this year, we wanted to open it up to our vendors, especially the food vendors,” Green said. “As long as we’re not held liable, you have all of your health certificates and safe-serve certifications and all of that, you can do this from your house. We’ll just publicize this for you. No cost at all.”

For Jackson, the event was well worth it. She said it was her big break back into the powwow scene, as she plans to attend two local Michigan powwows in July and August in person.

“I’m looking forward for the powwows to start back up, but there’s going to be a lot of changes,” she said. “My son is on a powwow committee. He said we can’t have bottled ketchup and mustard; it has to be individual packets. Silverware wrapped. And that’s the safest thing we can do. Respect what our committee is asking of all the traders and it will turn out OK.”

Jackson is hopeful that her 40-year-old business will succeed after the pandemic is over. Before, Jackson’s crew usually included 16 workers in shifts. But for her first pandemic powwow, she had a crew of five. With more in-person powwows coming, she is anxious to get more of her family involved again.

“It’s a family business and I want it to continue after Delmar and I are gone so we can look down and see how it continues to grow and go on,” Jackson said.





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ZOOM COMPETITIONS

For Gathering of Nations, the Celebrating Life Pow Wow and other virtual powwows, the fees to compete in dancing, singing and drumming competitions are often waived or minimal, but prizes are still awarded.

Gathering of Nations is hosting competitions over Zoom, while others, such as the Celebrating Life Pow Wow, have asked contestants to send in pre-recorded videos.

One contestant, Cruz Perez, Saginaw Chippewa, regularly competes in the Celebrating Life Pow Wow as one of 10 he attends each year. Perez – a dancer who won $400 for second place in the Adult Men’s Traditional category this year – enjoys the healing energy and cultural connection of attending powwows over the monetary compensation for winning, though there are some who rely on powwow winnings to help make ends meet.

“I miss being able to see other people dance and to talk with them, and virtual just isn’t the same because it’s just a lot of technological use,” he said. “It’s still good, though, being able to see all my people on Facebook pages submitting their videos for competitions.”

In a normal year, the Celebrating Life Pow Wow has about 200 people competing. This year, they received 79 uploaded dance videos and five hand drum uploads. Some categories had up to eight contestants; others had one or none competing.

The number of contestants isn’t too far off the norm, Green said. What was shocking was the reach of the virtual competitions this year and last year.

“We were able to see championship dancers all across the United States and Canada the last two years as opposed to half of the United States and part of Canada,” Green said. “Prior to that, we typically get people from Oklahoma, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, parts of Canada, in Ontario, sometimes New York – pretty regional for our university powwow. This year, we had people out in British Columbia, Saskatchewan; we had people in California, New Mexico and Idaho.”

Similarly, the Gathering of Nations powwow, which normally draws close to 3,000 contestants, will have about 300 contestants from across the country and Canada, with one dancer from Europe and one from Nigeria.

A benefit to livestreaming the powwows on social media is the everlasting quality of the posts, Green and Mathews said.

“It has allowed us to reach more people and embrace their lives in some manner or another, whether it’s the music, whether it’s the phenomenal dancing. We were able to reach over 24,000 people this year. Last year, I think it was around 34,000. We’re still getting hits on our Facebook videos and pages,” Green said.

When the Gathering of Nations went virtual for the first time last year, it had nearly 400,000 views – a 10 per cent increase from their previously live-streamed powwows, Mathews said.

But the virtual powwows and competitions don’t fully replace the live events.

“I miss being there in the moment,” said Zapata, the co-chair of the Celebrating Life Pow Wow. “I was raised around the drum. Being a dancer, being there is what I miss. It’s all about community for me, being able to walk around, see family and friends, engaging and having a great time all around.”

Some contests, including some of the Native royalty pageants, are cancelled until further notice. The Miss Indian World – the largest of its kind – was cancelled in 2020, with titleholder Cheyenne Kippenberger agreeing to serve a second term.

Kippenberger will step down April 24, however, on the final day of the event, without passing on the crown; for the first time since 1983, Miss Indian World will remain unfilled until 2022.

“I really had to find a new way to be Miss Indian World essentially,” said Kippenberger, a former Miss Florida Seminole.

For Gathering of Nations, a team of 50 people will work behind-the scenes from the fairgrounds in Albuquerque and elsewhere to make the event run smoothly online. They will host the Zoom meetings, making sure all speakers and performers are ready when it’s their turn – a difficult task for people calling in from different time zones.

The team has also produced a sort of time capsule by combing through decades of footage of performances, to edit together the best performances and contest specials from previous years to play throughout the weekend, Mathews said.

“The people that have started out as tiny tots are now parents, and some of them are grandparents,” Mathews said. “And then there’s those that aren’t with us anymore, and those that we’ve lost during the Coronavirus. We saw them in these videos; they came back one more time. And so that was very, very special.”




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MISSED CONNECTIONS

For organizers, dancers, vendors and attendees, virtual powwows are still missing one key element, however: the feeling of community. They’re not a replacement for the real thing.

“Someone asked me, ‘What do you miss by not going to powwows?’” said Mathews. “I said, ‘Seeing it. Feeling it. Smelling it.’ If nothing else, those are elements. As soon as you arrive, they’re there, and you can smell leather, food; hear bells, drums, the people talking and laughing.”

DeHoyos, the vendor, misses making lifelong friends and connecting with her customers.

“There is something to be said for seeing the look on people’s faces when they are admiring my jewelry,” she said. “That really is an amazing feeling and I really miss seeing the smile on people’s faces when they get what they want and walk away wearing it.”

Jackson said powwows were always family time. Long ago, she and her husband cooked as the children danced. Now her children make regalia for their own children to participate. She recalled their first powwow after her husband had multiple bypass surgery.

“Everyone surrounded us to ask if we were OK, to tell us they prayed for us,” she said. “We were so thankful. Every day is a blessing. And every day that I can feed people is another blessing for me.”

Since the pandemic hit, many have learned not to take the experience for granted.

“I miss grand entries,” Kippenberger said. “I know I probably complained so much while we were doing them, because you’re sweating and it’s hot. But I really miss it. Here in Florida, we don’t have a very heavy Native population. When you go to a powwow in Oklahoma, you end up running into everybody that you possibly have known since you were a child.

“We’re a very tight-knit, communal people,” she said. “So it’s very difficult to be away from each other. We just miss each other. We miss hugging each other and hearing each other in person and just being able to sit and laugh and, and share stories.”



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WANT TO GO?

Here is a sampling of upcoming powwows and how their events will be handled. The list is not complete, and plans can change. A number of powwow organizations — including some of the country’s largest — are still finalizing plans; some events have already been cancelled. For more information on powwows held in person or virtually, visit Powwows.com or check out “social distance powwows” on Facebook, in addition to checking the individual websites. Bottom line? Check before you go.

— Gathering of Nations, April 23-24 (virtual, Albuquerque)

On Friday, April 23, the Gathering of Nations powwow will host a full day of free entertainment and activities. Zoom attendees can experience the Best Contest Specials from past Gathering of Nations powwows, interviews and music. From Stage 49, bands such as The Nth Power, NRG Rising and more will perform. Later, DJ Logic will host an interactive Zoom dance party. On Saturday, April 24, the event will become a $9.99 pay-per-view live stream from noon to 9 p.m. The day’s events will include a live contest, powwow and dance party where viewers can see dancers and singers Zoom in to compete from around the world. Excerpts from the Gathering of Nations Horse Parade will be played and the event’s emcees will host. Then there will be an outgoing presentation by Miss Indian World Cheyenne Kippenberger, a musical presentation from Stage 49, and another interactive Zoom party with DJ Logic. For more information, visit the Gathering of Nations website.

— Choctaw Apache Tribe of Ebarb 28th Annual Pow Wow, April 23-24 (In-person, Louisiana)

On Friday and Saturday, April 23-24, the Choctaw Apache Tribe of Ebarb will hold demonstrations, gourd dancing and a grand entry at the Choctaw Apache Tribal Grounds near Noble in southwestern Louisiana at the Texas border. The event will feature men’s and women’s dance competitions and arts, crafts and jewelry vendors. For more information, visit the tribe’s Facebook page at Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb.

— Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe of South Carolina’s 44th Annual Pow Wow, April 23-24 (In-person, South Carolina)

On Friday and Saturday, April 23-24, the Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe of South Carolina will host its 44th Annual Pow Wow with food and craft vendors. The event will include luck-of-the-draw dancers and a drum competition if enough contestants enter, and the Princess pageant. Entry fee is $8 for ages 18-64 and $5 for 65 and over, ages 6-17 and enrolled tribal members with ID. Children under 5 are free. For more information, visit the powwow’s Facebook event page.

— 31st Annual Spring Honor Dance & Powwow Celebration, April 30-May 1 (In-person, North Dakota)

On Friday and Saturday, April 30-May 1, Minot State University’s Native American Cultural Center and Native American Cultural Awareness Club will host its annual powwow with dance contests, raffles and vendors. For more information, visit the MSU - Native American Cultural Awareness Club and Center page or event on Facebook.

— Annual KBIC Maawanj’iding Pow Wow, July 23-25 (In-person, Michigan)

The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community will host its Annual KBIC Maawanj’iding Pow Wow, a three-day event on July 23-25 with dancing and drumming contests and vendors. Admission is free. For more information, visit the tribe’s website at www.kbic-nsn.gov

— Annual Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community Wacipi (Pow Wow), Aug. 20-22 (In-person, Minnesota)

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community Wacipi (Pow Wow) is set to be held in person at the Wacipi Grounds on the reservation in Shakopee, Minnesota. For more information, visit

STILL TO BE DETERMINED

— Thunderbird Intertribal Powwow (New York)

One of the largest powwows in the country, the Thunderbird Intertribal Powwow is set to be held in person during the summer and in the fall at Queens County Farms Museum, although details are being finalized.

— Red Earth Festival (Oklahoma)

The Red Earth Festival’s annual parade and powwow in Oklahoma has been postponed until fall, according to the organization’s website. But an art market and competition is set to be held June 12-13 at the tribal-owned Grand Casino Hotel and Resort near Oklahoma City.

— Denver March Powwow (Colorado)

Organizers announced that the Denver March Powwow would not be held as scheduled in March because the Denver Coliseum was not holding events through perhaps May. It’s not clear if a date later in the year would be selected. “As soon as the state mandates are lifted, we will be able to solidify plans for 2021,” according to the powwow website.

Cancelled FOR 2021

— Shoshone-Bannock Indian Festival (Idaho)

The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes announced that the annual powwow, set for Aug. 12-15, would be cancelled for a second year because of the pandemic. “Hosting the powwow doesn’t fit within the Tribes Safety Protocols and we must keep our community safe,” Chairman Devon Boyer said in a statement. “Our community has not yet reached the vaccination rate we were hoping for and encourage tribal membership to get vaccinated.” The Indian Relay Association and Fort Hall Tour Rodeo are expected to continue as planned.

— Coeur d’Alene Casino Powwow (Idaho)

The Coeur d’Alene Casino announced recently it would cancel the powwow, originally set for July 24-26, for the second year in a row because of the pandemic. This would have been the first year the powwow was hosted on property near the casino.

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Information from: Indian Country Today, https://indiancountrytoday.com/
Natasha Brennan, The Associated Press

4/23/2021

SASKATCHEWAN
'Our own grey areas:' First Nations navigate hazy cannabis retail jurisdictions


More than two years after Ottawa legalized weed, Saskatchewan’s green industry has grown into a jurisdictional grey zone.


First Nations in the province's southeast are growing into the retail end of the market — running four pot shops on their reserve lands — but are foregoing the provincially-mandated permitting process.

And the feds keep leaving the ball in the province’s court, saying it’s up to Saskatchewan to regulate, while seemingly not touching the on-reserve pot shop issues.

Yet the issue is black and white for two chiefs who spoke about their communities’ recently opened stores: As signatories to Treaty 4, Pheasant Rump Nakota Nation and Zagime (Sakimay) Anishinabeck have the sovereign right to do as they wish with business on their own lands.

Now that they’re hearing interest from other First Nations about opening stores, the two chiefs — Pheasant Rump’s Ira McArthur and Zagime’s Lynn Acoose — spoke about recent development plans for a safety association, while explaining what the federal government's gap-filled weed law means for First Nations sovereignty.

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McArthur views the provincial government as a “partner” and a “neighbour,” but says its authority has a clear endpoint.

“Once you enter Pheasant Rump, Saskatchewan no longer exists. I don’t think their jurisdiction applies to our First Nation in any regard,” he said.

He and Acoose agree that Ottawa and the province are leaving the issue in a kind of political no-man’s land, each government referencing the other when it comes to dealing with First Nations’ jurisdictional sovereignty.

Acoose believes it forces Zagime into an economic position of finding "our own grey areas” to make a livelihood. It’s a repeat, she says, of a historical pattern that began with European settlers introducing western-style economic trade.

But those poorly outlined areas also mean gaps to grow into the market.

Legislative holes have left "a niche there that needed to be filled and First Nations took advantage of that — we’re able to develop on-reserve dispensaries,” McArthur said.

Along with Pheasant Rump and Zagime, Muscowpetung Saulteaux Nation and Peepeekisis Cree Nation have opened pot shops on their lands. They remain, for now, the only bands to do so.

All of them are operating without a permit from the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA), which the province mandated when it created its Cannabis Control Act after the federal Liberals legalized pot in October 2018.

Former justice minister Don Morgan previously told the Leader-Post that Ottawa ought to “control" Indigenous-run pot shops or send in the RCMP “to deal with it.”

The Ministry of Justice declined to provide comments from Morgan’s successor, Gord Wyant. Ministry spokesman Noel Busse said in an email the province’s position is "the federal Cannabis Act and the provincial Cannabis Control (Saskatchewan) Act apply across Saskatchewan.”

Enforcement questions about unlicensed dispensaries are best answered by local police services or Health Canada, Busse added.

The Saskatchewan RCMP’s media team said Mounties here are taking a “measured approach,” including consultation and education “with stakeholders and communities, to address the unlicensed sale of cannabis while respecting the rights of First Nations communities.”

The Mounties declined to say if the province or the federal government have asked them to enforce current laws for unlicensed shops on reserve, because “we do not wish to discourage members of the public from contacting the police.”

Canadian legal and constitutional scholar Dwight Newman says Ottawa bungled up the cannabis law from the start, because they “just didn't deal with how they saw things developing with Indigenous involvement.”

Newman, a Canada Research Chair at the University of Saskatchewan, said federal legislators could have simply added a provision to the Cannabis Act to “give clarity” on two points: First Nations’ choices to open pot shops on their own lands; and the degree to which, if at all, First Nations are subject to provincial regulations, like the SLGA’s permit requirement.

He said the Liberal government also looks to be stuck in the past — in light of current duty to consult expectations — by not hearing from band leaders how the looming weed law would have affected their communities “to know they needed the clarity on these issues.”

Newman suggested Section 88 of the Indian Act, which pertains to provincial laws applicable to Indigenous people, as one place to start.

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Looking to the past for some guidance, especially in Saskatchewan, wouldn’t have been particularly hard, either.

The provincial government and the RCMP grappled with a driven and persistent White Bear First Nation, led by former chief Bernie Shepherd, as it went all in to make Indigenous-owned casinos a thing in the 1990s.

Shepherd and White Bear thumbed their collective nose at spotty provincial gambling laws: In 1993 the band opened the Bear Claw Casino in its golf course clubhouse without a licence from the province.

University of Lethbridge Indigenous Studies scholar Yale Belanger says it's similar to today's pot problem.

In 1985, he explained, Ottawa said “the provinces can run with the (casino) licensing piece. Then First Nations showed up and said ‘we want to put casinos in.’ ”

One of his main research areas is Indigenous gaming in Canada.

Now, with federal and provincial cannabis laws established, “First Nations are ultimately going to enter in the dialogue and say ‘we would like to, not unlike casinos, establish cultivation and dispensaries within reserves,' ” Belanger said.

“The provinces are going to push back and say, 'no, that's our responsibility in terms of licensing and oversight; you must deal with us.’ ”

He suspects Pheasant Rump, Zagime, Muscowpetung and Peepeekisis will “start to face a lot of pressure from provincial authorities about licensing and demands that they come to the table so they can further clarify how a very unique jurisdictional environment, as it relates to First Nations, will develop.”

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Zagime Chief Lynn Acoose says White Bear’s work on casinos are inspirations for her community’s foray into pot shops.

“We invoked the White Bear experience, just because that was a demonstration to us of the injustice that has been inflicted on First Nations through federal and provincial legislation,” she said.

The Indigenous-owned casino example and current cannabis laws show how, Acoose says, governments “legislate us out of participating in the larger economy on our own terms. That's a form of oppression.”

Those legislative practices have roots in Canada’s settler-colonial past, she says.

She cites promises made in Treaty 4 that sought to allow First Nations people full participation in and benefits from settlers’ newly-introduced economic activity, particularly farming.

The clause in question is often referred to as the “cows and ploughs benefit,” Acoose said, contending First Nations people aren’t allowed that full participation.

“Take it forward to today's generation. We can't all farm. Our land base is not sufficient for everyone on reserve to enjoy the benefits of those promises made in treaty.”

Like what White Bear did in 1993, her community has always had to find its own, often unclear pathways "in terms of new economies,” she says.

Thus far Zagime’s shop — called Omagakii, sitting on the band’s land just west of Regina at Pinkie Road and Dewdney Avenue — is providing some of that livelihood after opening in September 2019.

The First Nation has opened a restaurant, Moose and Bannock, next to the shop. Zagime also uses revenue from Omagakii to build its road network at the intersection, called Saulteaux Crossing.

The band owns a building in Yorkton, too, which it has since repaired, thanks to cannabis revenues.

At Pheasant Rump, McArthur said its shop employs 17 band members, still working there through the pandemic.

After Buds and Blossoms opened on Canada Day in 2019, it took about four months of operation to be “in the black,” he said. At six months, there were enough profits to fund community programs, especially for elders.

“Through the winter months, October to March this year, we paid for all of our elders' utility bills on and off the reserve. We provide quarterly allowances to our elders,” he said. “We also do provide support to our school-aged children for their lunch programs,” using the pot shop revenue.

****

The two chiefs are now starting to draft documents and provisions for a safety standards association, which would apply to all four First Nations currently running stores.

Acoose says they hope the end result is standards for testing: “How often do we test? What's the sample frequency? What can we test for? What are the standards in those tests that we can establish?”

When the pandemic subsides, Zagime wants to meet with leaders from the other three communities to work out the details.

She’s also hoping for a “legislative relationship with the federal government, through maybe an exemption in the Criminal Code for cannabis operations on reserve … Without federal legislation that recognizes our own First Nation laws, that makes it quite difficult to operate.”

Referencing White Bear and Indigenous-owned casinos, Newman, the legal scholar at the U of S, says any lack of clarity could lead to “conflict down the road … The provincial government is also going to need to think about the implications of those past lessons (from the 1990s).”

At the University of Lethbridge, Belanger predicts Ottawa will push First Nations to “negotiate with the provinces.”

“First Nations will argue they're the equivalent of provinces, jurisdictionally, and that the provinces don't have any over-arching authority within that setting, that they're relationship is with the Crown, with the feds.”

Though the current cannabis conundrum is challenging and interesting, it’s not really new, he added. “It's a very simple circus act that Canada has been performing since confederation in 1867. It will be a consistent First Nations-ask of the government to articulate clarity,” hopefully yielding sober clarity.

— with files from Arthur White-Crummey, Regina Leader-Post

eradford@postmedia.com

Evan Radford, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Regina Leader-Post, The Leader-Post

Saugeen Ojibway Nation members hold ceremony to remind people of their responsibility to Earth and water

TEESWATER – Members from Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) held a Mother Earth Water Walk, beginning on the shores of Lake Huron and finishing at the site where the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) will begin borehole drilling in Teeswater.

The SON also came with a message for all people.

“The Saugeen Ojibway Nation was recognized to have free, prior, and informed consent on this project,” the organizers said in an announcement, referring to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

The organizers cited Articles 18 and 19 of UNDRIP:

- Article 18: Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights through representatives chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures, as well as to maintain and develop their own Indigenous decision-making institutions.

- Article 19: States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the Indigenous Peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior, and informed consent before adopting legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.

“We are in ceremony for all of humanity and creation. We have a place in this forever decision being made on behalf of future generations,” the group said in a statement on social media.

“As Anishinaabek we are governed to act from a spirit-led, heart-driven place while understanding that COVID-19 is a teacher. So, we pray also for the protection from this virus, while also receive the important lessons this moment in time offers us. We are deliberating on the risks and our fullest intention, while also being deliberate in our actions as sovereign Anishinaabek Bimaadzijig - Bzauniibiikwe, Grandmother and Ogichidaakwe.”

Mikwendaagozi Mama Aki: Remembering Mother Earth Water Walk is a grassroots response to the proposed storage of high-level nuclear waste in Teeswater, which is within the Saugeen Ojibway Nation Territory, their Facebook page said.

Organizer, Grandmother Bzaunibiikwe, whose English name is Helena (Joanne) Keeshig, spoke to the walkers after arriving in Teeswater.

"What is happening over there is not OK,” she said, pointing towards the proposed site, “but we are not going to achieve anything by being angry or upset.”

“Mother Earth loves us, no matter what. She continues to give to us, no matter what we do to her,” Keeshig said, choking back emotion.

Biidaabinokwe Jessica Keeshig Martin, one of the organizers of the water walk, wrote her thoughts and shared her knowledge on their Facebook page, asking friends and allies to join the growing movement.

“What we need is a plan to address legacy issues before looking at any long-term nuclear waste storage projects. Legacy issues are the historical and ongoing impacts of nuclear power generation in our Territory,” she wrote.

“We said no to the burial of low and intermediate level nuclear waste in our Territory in 2019,” adding, “I imagine we are going to say no to the burial of high-level nuclear waste in our Territory as well. I just don’t see this being a yes based on our previous decision.”

Martin provided some background, talking about the legacy issues and the lack of consultation historically.

“We were never consulted when the nuclear power industry came into our territory. Since the 1960s this massive industry has had impacts on our lands, waters, the animals and on our communities,” she wrote.

The Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has committed to working with SON on the legacy issues. Still, when the SON voted no to the proposed low-intermediate deep geological repository (DGR) on their territory, Martin said, "where is that process now? When we said no to the DGR did they walk away from this most important obligation?”

The walkers finished the water walk on April 14 with one final walk to the site where NWMO will begin borehole drilling soon to offer prayers and hold ceremony for the land and the rock.

The group offered sacred tobacco ties (one of the sacred medicines Indigenous people use for various reasons).

“Tobacco offerings taught the people from early childhood to always be respectful and to always show their gratitude to the Creator, to the spirit of the animal, to the spirit of the tree, to the spirit of the rock,” according to sgibnl.ca. This website shares the traditional teachings of Mide People. (Mide, short for Midewin, is a culturally rich way of life shared by the Anishinabek People)

“Through the people's shared belief that everything in creation has a spirit, a life force and is not to be taken for granted or exploited in any way, this teaches an appreciation for all these things. Tobacco offerings are a sign of respect and genuine appreciation for everything in creation.”

NWMO Regional Communications Manager – Indigenous Salima Virani told Midwestern Newspapers in an email, in response to the water walk, “it is important to note, we are on a journey of learning which is reciprocal. We are learning how the community wants to include ceremony and oral teachings with us, so we can co-create elements of the project that are built on the reciprocity of learning.”

The organization repeated its statement, saying, "they are currently engaging with Indigenous People, but we are working closely with the SON communities, keeping them informed on all aspects of our work in the area. Formal consultation is not required at this point in our work.”

Elder Verne Roote, a member of Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation Council, explained that the SON receives "education consultation" from NWMO, which is heard by a committee first, then reported to the SON council.

“A key component of Canada's plan is willingness – this project will only proceed in an area with informed and willing hosts working in partnership to implement the project; this includes Indigenous communities like SON,” Virani said.

“NWMO has made a commitment to SON that we would not select a site for the high-level waste deep geological repository without the consent of the SON Communities. This is a commitment that respects their right to free, prior, and informed consent. They are both engaging and consulting with us on the project.”

The NWMO released a story in March dedicated to water and Indigenous knowledge.

“Water is the most life sustaining gift on Mother Earth and is the interconnection among all living beings. Water sustains us, flows between us, within us, and replenishes us. Water comes in many forms and is the well-being of all creation. Water shapes the land and gives us the great gifts of the rivers, lakes, oceans, and the life water of women that we all come from," Elder Donna Augustine, chair of the Council of Elders and Youth, an independent advisory body for the NWMO, said.

"It is important that the NWMO understands and considers these teachings as it implements a project that may have an impact on that water that we all rely on for life.”

Mahrez Ben Belfadhel, outgoing vice-president of site selection at the NWMO, said, “We are fortunate because now we have a deeper understanding of the special spiritual relationship that Indigenous communities have with the land,”

He added, “We also understand that this rock is not just a piece of rock like we used to think, like I used to think. This rock represents the Grandfathers. The Grandfathers have a story to tell. It is our responsibility to listen carefully, respectfully, to understand that story.”

Elder Roote told people in a video posted on the water walk Facebook page that this was an awareness walk, not just for the people of SON, but for all people in the area affected by this decision.

Speaking about the waters of Lake Huron, he said, "this is the location where our people chose to live, centuries ago. One has to understand that this land was given by Creator, to us, the Anishinabek race of people.”

"The issue at hand is nuclear development in the Territory," he said. Roote spoke about the recent vote by SON, declining permission to build a low-intermediate level nuclear waste DGR.

The exact process needs to happen in Teeswater, he said, referring to the fact that the NWMO needs to have permission from SON.

The SON (Saukiing Anishnaabekiing) Territory spans from the northern point of the Bruce Peninsula, south to the Maitland River near Goderich, and east to Nottawasaga River near Collingwood.

The NWMO is tasked by the Canadian government to find a location to build a DGR to house Canada’s used nuclear fuel.

Their website says the NWMO is responsible for designing and implementing Canada's plan for the safe, long-term management of used nuclear fuel. The plan, known as Adaptive Phased Management, requires used fuel to be contained and isolated in a deep geological repository.

It also calls for a comprehensive process to select a site with informed and willing hosts for the project.

Cory Bilyea, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Wingham Advance Times

4/22/2021

Fighting the feedback loop: why scientists are sounding the alarm on Canada’s melting permafrost

River banks have slumped, forests have been lost and buildings have shifted and cracked on soft ground. Lakes and ponds have drained in some places and formed in others where once-solid land has collapsed.

Permafrost, which underlies 40 per cent of Canada’s landmass, is continuously frozen earth beneath the surface layers that freeze and thaw with the seasons.

But with northern Canada warming about three times as fast as the rest of the world, climate change threatens the permanence of vast stretches of this frozen ground — and the ecosystems and communities it supports.

For the people living in the subarctic Dehcho region of the Northwest Territories, the changes have been stark.

“Our Elders definitely noticed a real change in how things look,” Dehcho First Nations Grand Chief Gladys Norwegian told The Narwhal in an interview. “They don’t have to be scientists to know, they just feel it and see it.”

While the impacts are felt most acutely in the North, permafrost thaw has implications for the global climate as well.

Scientists are now investigating how increased warming of the North could be part of a vicious feedback cycle known as the permafrost carbon feedback loop — the more the climate warms, the more permafrost thaws and potentially emits more greenhouse gasses, which further warms the climate and thaws more permafrost.

Permafrost holds twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, and roughly 15 per cent of that stored carbon is vulnerable to being released, Merritt Turetsky, director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder, told The Narwhal in an interview.

While Turetsky said emissions from permafrost are small relative to human-caused carbon pollution, they are an added burden on a climate already in crisis.

“It is a threat to climate; it will create additional warming on top of anthropogenic emissions,” she said.

The risks to infrastructure in Dehcho communities loom in the future — potentially amplified by the permafrost carbon feedback loop — but permafrost thaw has already taken a toll in the region, Norwegian said.

“Our winters are getting shorter and warmer, snow is melting earlier in the year, and the permafrost is thawing,” she said. “These changes are seen in the flow of the streams, the thickness of the ice on the lake.”

“Many of our forests are dying off and being replaced by wetlands,” she said.

For traditional land users, who harvest food by hunting and fishing, these are worrying shifts that have made travel more dangerous, Norwegian added.

“It’s very unpredictable and it puts a lot of strain on all of us that still really depend on the land.”

And now, with even more emissions potentially being released as part of the permafrost carbon feedback loop, permafrost melt threatens to accelerate further. And with it, the effects on the already altered region could accelerate as well.

Whether greenhouse gases are emitted as a result of permafrost thaw depends on what’s frozen underground.

If the permafrost consists of sand, which contains very little carbon, then it may destabilize the ground when it thaws, but it won’t result in high emissions, Turetsky explained.

It’s a different story when the permafrost consists of peat and contains stores of carbon — the remnants of ancient plants and animals

As permafrost thaws, microbial communities wake up from a frozen slumber and begin to metabolize the carbon that’s stored in the soil, Lisa Stein, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Alberta, explained in an interview.

A diverse array of microbes breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, as humans do, Stein said.

Specialized microorganisms called methanogens, meanwhile, generate methane, a greenhouse gas more powerful than carbon dioxide, as a by-product of metabolism.

The rich organic and waterlogged soils left behind as permafrost thaws in certain areas “are the perfect conditions for methanogens,” Stein explained.

“They survive and grow and divide because they’re making methane,” she said. “That’s actually how they make a living.”

In response, some scientists are now investigating the potential to use another set of specialized microbes that consume methane, called methanotrophs, to help counteract the methane-generating methanogens awoken by permafrost thaw.

Peat moss, for instance, has a microbiome that’s rich in microbes that consume methane, Stein said.

“The idea would be that if you can encourage the growth of peat moss, then you’re also encouraging the activity of methane-consuming microbes,” she explained. “It’s a carbon sponge, essentially.”

Growing more peat moss was just one of the potential responses to the permafrost carbon feedback loop discussed during a March dialogue series hosted by the Permafrost Carbon Feedback Action Group.

Mike Brown, a Vancouver venture capitalist focused on climate change, established the group in partnership with the Permafrost Association of Canada to help address the challenge of greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost.

The group plans to draft an “intervention roadmap” to guide policy responses to permafrost thaw in support of global efforts to slash carbon pollution.

“Emissions from permafrost can constitute a major global climate problem, one that’s potentially serious enough to make it much more difficult for us humans to achieve our net-zero carbon goals,” Brown said during his introductory comments to the dialogue series.

Over the course of the next century, permafrost thaw could emit as many greenhouse gases as deforestation and other land use change, Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at Northern Arizona University, said during the first webinar.

“When we think about climate change mitigation, which is keeping carbon out of the atmosphere, Arctic carbon emissions just makes that mitigation problem that much harder,” Schuur said.

The basic premise of solutions to the permafrost carbon feedback loop is simple: reduce permafrost thaw to reduce the emissions it releases. How to prevent permafrost thaw is where things get complicated.

In subsequent webinars, experts discussed ideas to help keep the Arctic cool and prevent further permafrost thaw, including land-use changes and the more controversial stratospheric aerosol injection.

One example of a land-use change came from northern Siberia, where Russian scientists have introduced Yakutian horses, reindeer, musk ox and other herbivores to Pleistocene Park to re-establish the grasslands of the mammoth steppe biome that was widespread during that last ice age.

The grasslands, which reflect more sunlight than the shrubs and forests they replaced, help keep permafrost cooler, John Moore, chief scientist at the College of Global Change and Earth System Science at Beijing Normal University, explained during the second webinar in the series.

While this type of landscape change could be included as part of a portfolio of options to help preserve permafrost in certain areas, Moore said it may not be a feasible solution on a broad scale.

Stratospheric aerosol injection, meanwhile, may offer broader cooling of Arctic and subarctic areas — but carries substantial risks.

Stratospheric aerosol injection is a type of solar geoengineering that involves spraying sulphate particles into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, mimicking the effect of particles released during volcanic eruptions.

While experts say stratospheric aerosol injection could conceivably cool surface temperatures in the Arctic, it risks acid rain, which is detrimental to ecosystems, and depletion of the ozone layer, which offers protection from dangerous UV radiation exposure.

“Every now and then we get a really large volcanic eruption that dumps aerosols into the stratosphere, so high up in the atmosphere. Those [aerosols] persist for a while and cool the planet,” Douglas MacMartin, a senior research associate at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University, explained during the second webinar. “In principle, you could do the same thing by flying airplanes into the stratosphere.”

“Whether or not we should do it is, again, a more complicated question,” he added.

In an interview, Turetsky said she’s skeptical of geoengineering as a way to prevent permafrost thaw and questions whether these ideas would address or perpetuate the climate and environmental injustices that northern communities are grappling with already.

While Turetsky said she’s not opposed to more “brainstorming” on potential geoengineering solutions, the main focus should be on decarbonizing the economy.

“We cannot lose sight that anthropogenic emissions are the driver, by far, of climate change,” she said.

Brown, the chair and founder of the Permafrost Carbon Feedback Action Group, said the team will compile a final report on the dialogue series. But the group’s work won’t stop there.

They plan to meet with officials in the federal government, engage with partners in other Arctic countries and push to ensure the challenge of permafrost carbon is on the agenda at international climate meetings in the fall.

“The permafrost carbon feedback is a legitimate issue of concern and is an active area of scientific inquiry,” Cecelia Parsons, a spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change Canada, said in an emailed statement in response to questions from The Narwhal.

The department “continues to work on advancing the incorporation of permafrost carbon feedback in our earth-system modelling to further our understanding of its influence on climate change,” she added.

One message that came through clearly during the discussions is the need for Indigenous and northern communities to be actively involved in the work to address both climate change broadly, and permafrost thaw in particular.

During the final dialogue, Natan Obed, president of the national Inuit organization Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said he’s “talked about not wanting to be the canary singing in the coal mine alone.”

He wants to do more than ring the alarm bells.

“I also want to be part of the way in which we solve this challenge,” he said.

“We need to work together,” he said.

For the North, the challenge of permafrost thaw is about more than emissions: it also raises substantial concerns for infrastructure built on increasingly unstable land.

“Permafrost thaw is at the heart of the challenges that we are going to face in our communities and also in our homelands outside of our communities for the next generation — not only because of the risk of further elevated emissions,” Obed said.

Vital community infrastructure is under threat from permafrost thaw in Inuit Nungangat, the Inuit homeland in Canada. Adapting to these challenges is a key priority in the National Inuit Climate Change Strategy, which calls for investments in widespread hazard mapping, vulnerability assessments and infrastructure that can withstand the changing climate.

The Northwest Territories is facing similar challenges, with more than $1 billion worth of infrastructure at risk from permafrost thaw, according to Canada’s latest climate plan.

In the Dehcho region, First Nations have partnered with researchers, combining Dehcho knowledge with western science, to better understand and adapt to the impacts of climate change in the region.

Dehcho First Nations are working to develop a climate change strategy of their own and through the Dehcho Collaborative on Permafrost, a partnership with the Scotty Creek Research Station run by Wilfrid Laurier University, they are working with scientists to develop a regional permafrost map and monitor permafrost changes.

This work is critical: even if the world were able to wrestle the greenhouse gas emissions generated by people to zero tomorrow, more permafrost would thaw because of emissions that have already been emitted.

“Understanding what that change is going to look like is what occupies most of my effort,” Steve Kokelj, head of permafrost science at the Northwest Territories Geological Survey, told The Narwhal.

It’s a complex task.

“Permafrost thaw means very, very different things for different environments and consequently, it also means very different things for the people that live in the North, depending on where you are,” Kokelj said, noting some areas may experience landslides while others see conversion of forests to wetlands.

Either way, it’s an impact. “Understanding that variability is super important for society to be able to adapt,” he said.

Ultimately, if the goal is to save as much permafrost from extinction as possible, the best chance may lie in the drastic reduction of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

“Decarbonization might save some permafrost,” Turetsky said. And saving permafrost could reduce the impacts of the permafrost carbon feedback loop.

One thing is certain, continued growth of global emissions will result in the loss of biodiversity and ecosystems, with arctic and subarctic regions at particularly high risk for irreversible changes.

“Our Elders kept telling us that there’s something that’s going to come to warn us,” Norwegian said. “COVID is just a warning for us that there is more to come — and I think we all know that — if we don’t do anything for climate change.”

“We need to need to do things differently; we need to treat Mother Earth differently,” she said.

Ainslie Cruickshank, The Narwhal

WTF IS A CHRONOBIOLOGIST?!

Out of the cave: French isolation study ends after 40 days

LOMBRIVES CAVE, France — Ever wonder what it would feel like to unplug from a hyperconnected world and hide away in a cave for a few weeks? Fifteen people in France found out.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

After 40 days in voluntary isolation in a dark, damp and vast cave, eight men and seven women who took part in a scientific experiment emerged Saturday from their self-segregation in the Pyrenees.

With big smiles on their pale faces, the 15 participants exited the Lombrives cave to a round of applause and basked in the light of day while wearing special glasses to protect their eyes after so long in the dark.

“It’s really warm!” said one.

For 40 days and 40 nights, the group lived in and explored the cave without a sense of time. There were no clocks and no sunlight inside, where the temperature was 10 degrees Celsius (50 F) and the relative humidity stood at 100%. The cave dwellers had no contact with the outside world, no updates on the pandemic or any communication with friends and family above ground.

Scientists at the Human Adaption Institute leading the 1.2 million-euro $1.5 million) “Deep Time” project say the experiment will help them better understand how people adapt to drastic changes in living conditions and environments, something much of the world can relate to because of coronavirus pandemic.

In partnership with labs in France and Switzerland, scientists monitored the 15-member group's sleep patterns, social interactions and behavioural reactions via sensors. One of the sensors was a tiny thermometer inside a capsule that participants swallowed like a pill. The capsules measure body temperature and transmit data to a portable computer until they are expelled naturally.

The team members followed their biological clocks to know when to wake up, go to sleep and eat. They counted their days not in hours but in sleep cycles.

On Friday, scientists monitoring the participants entered the cave to let the research subjects know they would be coming out soon. They said many of the people in the group miscalculated how long they had been in the cave and thought they had another week to 10 days to go.

“It’s really interesting to observe how this group synchronizes themselves,” project director Christian Clot said in a recording done from inside the cave. Working together on projects and organizing tasks without being able to set a time to meet was especially challenging, he said.

Although the participants looked visibly tired, two-thirds of them expressed a desire to remain underground a bit longer in order to finish group projects started during the expedition, Benoit Mauvieux, a chronobiologist involved in the research, told The Associated Press.

Renata Brito, The Associated Press

RIP

Indonesia navy declares lost sub sunk, all 53 aboard 

BANYUWANGI, Indonesia — Indonesia’s navy on Saturday declared its missing submarine had sunk and cracked open, killing 53 crew members aboard, after finding items from the vessel over the past two days.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Military chief Hadi Tjahjanto said the presence of an oil slick as well as debris near the site where the submarine's last dive on Wednesday off the island of Bali were clear proof the KRI Nanggala 402 sank. Indonesia earlier considered the vessel to be only missing.

Navy Chief Yudo Margono told a press conference in Bali, “If it's an explosion, it will be in pieces. The cracks happened gradually in some parts when it went down from 300 metres to 400 metres to 500 metres ... If there was an explosion, it would be heard by the sonar."

The navy previously said it believes the submarine sank to a depth of 600-700 metres (2,000-2,300 feet), much deeper than its collapse depth of 200 metres (655 feet), at which point water pressure would be greater than the hull could withstand.

The cause of the disappearance was still uncertain. The navy had previously said an electrical failure could have left the submarine unable to execute emergency procedures to resurface.

Margono said that in the past two days, searchers found parts of a torpedo straightener, a grease bottle believed to be used to oil the periscope, debris from prayer rugs and a broken piece from a coolant pipe that was refitted on the submarine in South Korea in 2012.

“With the authentic evidence we found believed to be from the submarine, we have now moved from the ‘sub miss’ phase to ‘sub sunk,’” Margono said at the press conference, in which the found items were displayed.

Margono said rescue teams from Indonesia and other countries will evaluate the findings. He said no bodies have been found so far. Officials previously said the submarine’s oxygen supply would have run out early Saturday.

An American reconnaissance plane, a P-8 Poseidon, landed early Saturday and had been set to join the search, along with 20 Indonesian ships, a sonar-equipped Australian warship and four Indonesian aircraft.

Singaporean rescue ships were also expected Saturday, while Malaysian rescue vessels were due to arrive Sunday, bolstering the underwater hunt, officials said earlier Saturday.

Family members had held out hopes for survivors but there were no sign of life from the vessel. Indonesian President Joko Widodo had ordered all-out efforts to locate the submarine and asked Indonesians to pray for the crew’s safe return.

The German-built diesel-powered KRI Nanggala 402 has been in service in Indonesia since 1981 and was carrying 49 crew members and three gunners as well as its commander, the Indonesian Defence Ministry said.

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago nation with more than 17,000 islands, has faced growing challenges to its maritime claims in recent years, including numerous incidents involving Chinese vessels near the Natuna islands.

___

Tarigan reported from Jakarta, Indonesia. Associated Press writer Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.

Edna Tarigan And Fadlan Syam, The Associated Press

NOT CLEAN NOR GREEN
Big Oil is just one industry hoping carbon capture will help it survive the new green economy

IT WILL BE USED TO FRACK OLD WELLS & HARD TO GET AT SHALE OIL



NBC SPECIAL NEWS SERIES CLIMATE IN CRISIS

Big Oil is just one industry hoping carbon capture will help it survive the new green economy
“There’s the thought that we should spend whatever it takes to keep global warming below 2 degrees C," one environmental expert said.

Carbon capture is a new kind of business many companies believe will help their industry survive in the net-zero economy.J. David Ake / AP file

April 23, 2021, 
By Leticia Miranda and Denise Chow

From Big Oil to Big Tech, companies are rushing in to a new kind of business they believe will keep their industry surviving in the new net-zero economy: carbon capture.

So-called carbon capture initiatives typically involve actively drawing carbon dioxide out of the air or scrubbing the heat-trapping greenhouse gas out of the emissions from factories and power plants. While the technology has been used for decades by oil manufacturers to pump more oil, only in the last several years have other industries started to embrace the technology as a way of combating climate change.

With the oil market still fragile after inventories reached historic highs early in the pandemic, carbon capture has become a major draw for fossil fuel titans as they scramble to stay afloat in a new green economy.

Darren Woods, chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, told investors in March the company expects the market for carbon capture to grow by 35 percent each year, reaching $2 trillion by 2040. The company this week proposed a $100 billion carbon capture hub in Houston that it estimates would capture and store about 50 million metric tons of carbon a year by 2030 and possibly 100 million metric tons by 2040.

ExxonMobil is urging President Joe Biden to introduce tax breaks and a price on carbon that will help create a market for the company's new carbon capture business.

BP plans to capture up to 10 million tons of carbon each year through its carbon capture project in North East England called Net Zero Teesside.

“CCUS technology (carbon capture, utilization and storage) is ready to deploy now,” Joshua Hicks, a spokesperson for BP, told NBC News in an emailed statement. “We will continue to work with governments and corporations to create the business models essential for scaling up carbon capture deployment.”

Microsoft is exploring carbon capture through a negative emission project at a biomass plant in Denmark, the company announced last month. Tide, owned by Procter & Gamble, is studying carbon capture technology as part of its commitment to halve greenhouse gases at its plants by 2030.

LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton director Antoine Arnault told investors last week that it will reduce its carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2026 through using 100 percent renewable energy and helping to “improve the soil's ability to capture carbon.”

“This is an ambitious project, but we need to have a holistic approach,” Arnault said.

The demand for carbon capture technology has boomed since 2018, when the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report that said the world would need to take “unprecedented” steps to avert the most catastrophic effects of climate change. The report warned that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 will require “large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal measures.”


It may be necessary to remove up to 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year by 2050 to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Climate models have suggested that even after transitioning to renewable energy and adopting other mitigation measures, it may be necessary to remove up to 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year by 2050 to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

That stark realization has fueled something of a paradigm shift, said Peter Kelemen, a professor of Earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. f

“People’s thinking has evolved in terms of assessing the value of mitigation,” he said. “It comes from a clear-eyed assessment of what it takes to get global warming below 2 degrees C. There’s the thought that we should spend whatever it takes to keep warming below that level.”

But some scientists and industry watchers say that without carbon pricing, capturing carbon can become too costly and difficult to scale up. By one measure, an estimated 2,000-plus large-scale carbon capture facilities must be deployed by 2050, requiring hundreds of billions of dollars in investment and a hundredfold increase in the number of carbon capture and storage facilities in operation, according to Guloren Turan, general manager of advocacy with the Global CCS Institute, a climate change think tank.


To capture carbon from flue gas, a liquid solvent is used to absorb the carbon dioxide. Then the mixture is heated to remove the carbon dioxide for storage, which requires staggering levels of energy, said Joan Brennecke, a professor of chemical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin.

“We need to have cap-and-trade or a carbon tax,” she said. “There needs to be incentives for companies to invest money in this.”

At the federal level, Biden aims to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in half, compared to 2005 levels, by 2030. To reach that goal, the administration announced a new international climate finance plan on Thursday that would spur the private sector to contribute to climate solutions across the country and developing nations.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday the agency has requested $1.2 billion from the administration for the green climate fund to spur private investment and $485 million to fund multilateral climate initiatives.

"We need to ensure that the financing will be there, both public and private, to meet the moment on climate change, and to help us seize the opportunity for good jobs, strong economies and a more secure world," Biden said Thursday.

Whether more clean energy policy at the state and federal levels will be enough to decarbonize the grid by 2035 remains to be seen, said Adam Wilson, U.S. renewable energy analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“Current market forces will take the industry a long way on the path of a clean energy sector,” he said. “But it will likely take breakthroughs in emerging technologies to get to the finish line.

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS

THE CONTINUING DISTRACTION OF CCS

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment (plawiuk.blogspot.com)

EV Charging Infrastructure in NORTH America Still Sucks

Mack Hogan 

ROAD & DRIVER

4/23/2021

Bombing down a winding road in the 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E, it's easy to feel like the EV revolution is settled business. For all the hand-wringing about the bastardization of the Mustang name, the Mach-E is on its own merits exciting, fantastic to drive, and charming. Its tail-happy nature and brutal acceleration egg you on, lulling you into dreams of an EV wonderland that are instantly shattered once you see your state of charge. Too low to get home, you now must enter the hellscape of public EV charging in the United States

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© Mack Hogan EVs are great to drive, easy to charge at home, and important for sustainability. But using one away from home is still a nightmare.

California, for its part, has this largely sorted. The fawning EV reviews coming out of the Golden State press understandably treat this as a solved issue. By the way they talk you'd expect to find a plug on every corner. Yet if that's even true in California it sure isn't worth a damn for the rest of us. Because 90 minutes outside of America's largest city, a quick search on the FordPass app shows that I'll immediately have to head 20 minutes in the wrong direction. It's a single-stall charger, which means if anyone arrives before me I'll be out of luck until they complete their prolonged top-off. Yet I arrive to an empty lot, with one ChargePoint charger seemingly installed as an afterthought alongside an array of a dozen Tesla Superchargers.

© Mack Hogan 2021 ford mustang mach e charging

Tesla's network of fast chargers is robust. The FordPass Charging Network claims to be the largest public charging network in America, with 16,000 stations, but it's a patchwork of multiple separate charging networks strung together in a single app. Its number of total stations is impressive, but even networks that beat Tesla on the basis of a sheer number can't compete with that company's network of conveniently placed and extremely fast chargers. Plus, as I learned, in some cases ChargePoint will tap into the inverter of an already-installed Supercharger station to save development costs. So even my Mach-E's charging station was built on Tesla's back, with charge pricing set by the suits in Silicon Valley.

You might assume that charge pricing is effectively irrelevant when it comes to EVs. After all, the ubiquity and affordability of electricity are core EV strengths. In practice, though, I was charged $13.29 to go from 44 percent to just above 80 percent. Total indicated maximum range went from 83 miles to 166 miles, meaning I paid $13.29 for 83 miles of range. Assuming you get 25 mpg and pay $3.00 a gallon for gas, you'd get 112 miles of range for the same price. And you'd be out the door in five minutes

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© Mack Hogan 2021 ford mustang mach e charging

Back in my EV, though, I had to kill 55 minutes in a movie theater parking lot in a pandemic. Anyone briefed on the official Mach-E literature should be surprised here. Ford claims that a 150-kW FordPass charger should jolt the base Mach-E from 10 percent to 80 percent in just 45 minutes. But that's only the standard-range car. The figure for an extended-range model like my tester is less impressive. Per Ford, it should be able to get 61 miles of range in 10 minutes from a DC fast charger. Yet even that bar proved impossible to clear since the battery charges slower as it approaches full charge. Plus, the Electrify America charger stubbornly refused to provide its full 150 kW payload despite 0 other vehicles charging at any linked station.

This experience alone isn't a dealbreaker. We know charging takes time and we know that coverage is worse when you get outside of major cities. But it confirms the stories I had already heard. Busted chargers, inexplicably long charge times, publicly listed chargers that are actually behind locked gates—the variety and severity of problems associated with public charging in America are staggering. Just a few weeks before, Road & Track editor-in-chief Mike Guy was nearly stranded by a Mach-E that directed him to a broken charger on his way back from the ski slopes.

Neither his journey nor mine is outside the realm of a New York day trip. A 100-mile run there and back is par for the course here, necessary to get to any good roads, campgrounds, or anything else that requires non-suburbanized land. Confine yourself to city streets and you'd expect to be living the charmed life. Every EV ad shows 20-somethings cruising through the urban expanses, laughing hysterically under illuminated street lights. The city is usually unnamed, but I can tell you with confidence that it isn't New York

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 Mack Hogan 2021 ford mustang mach e charging

Check the FordPass Charging Network—again, America's largest EV charging network—and you'll find that the borough of Manhattan contains two fast chargers. One is at a BMW dealership and the other is at Icahn Stadium on Randalls Island, far from anywhere you'd actually be heading. The one at the BMW dealership has one stall and, per reviews, is frequently broken. I opted instead to work from our office for a day. The building is open, though no one on staff is required to go and no one really does. The underground garage has a level 2 charger, perfect for a workday charge.

It was inoperable. The garage has used the coronavirus-related slowdown to do some long-needed work, making the section with the single L2 charger inaccessible. Searching online for nearby slow chargers yielded nothing. The only ones listed are Tesla destination chargers, which I'd need an adapter to use. Many garages have L2 chargers, but the only way to confirm that is by calling around until you stumble onto one. Instead, I opted to build in a 45-minute detour to Queens Center mall on my way to my photoshoot with the Mach-E. A 30-minute top-off would give me enough range to make it out to the outskirts of Brooklyn for photos and back home with mileage leftover for the Ford fleet representative to drive the Mach-E back to its home base in Northern New Jersey.

Mack Hogan 2021 ford mustang mach e charging

Factor in the parking garage fee and the money I blew at Uniqlo and this charge was even pricier. But the Electrify America charger there at least reached its rated 150-kW speed, getting me in and out in as much time as it took to grab two new t-shirts and a pair of pants. The mall had a captive audience. In much the same way that the attached convenience stores are the real moneymakers for gas stations, the stores, movie theaters, and restaurants surrounding EV chargers will be the real winners.

The losers, at least for now, are the rest of us. Public charging infrastructure in the U.S. is too sparse, slow, and unreliable. I can't, in good conscience, recommend setting sail on a cross-country journey relying purely on any brand-agnostic charging network. Those with a sense of improv and an open schedule could surely make an adventure out of it, but anyone looking simply to arrive without hassle is best served by a plug-in hybrid for now. EVs are, at present, best left to their home territory and owned by people with at-home charging.

That doesn't make them unworkable for everyone else. If you care deeply about their many broad benefits—smooth torque, silent motoring, brain-scattering acceleration, new-school charm, cheap home charging, and lack of world-warming carbon emissions—you can make it work. The network is big and getting bigger, the kinks on their way to being ironed. These flaws in experience, big as they may be, will be solved. Make no mistake that this is the future. Just accept, too, that it's a challenge in the present.