Listen Now

This week,Terry Moore speaks with Elizabeth Fournier author of f The Green Burial Guidebook: Everything You Need to Plan an Affordable, Environmentally Friendly Burial. In many respects the only real certainty in life is death. All living things die and human beings are not exceptional in that regard. That hasn’t stopped many humans, however, from thinking and behaving as if we are somehow outside of the rules governing the larger “natural world” - in particular, that we’re fully capable of indefinitely living beyond the biogeophysical limits all other species face. With the increased awareness of human-caused ecological crises since the 1960’s and the parallel growth of environmental movements over the same period, the notion of human exceptionality has come under increasing pressure. A reassessment of our relationship to the larger natural world has in more recent times focused on not only the larger existential crises such as climate change but has also broadened into taking a critical look at conventional high impact, end-of-life practices such as conventional burial and fire cremation. To discuss the Ecological impacts of those conventional practices as well as the efforts being made to create more environmentally-friendly alternatives, I’m pleased to welcome Elizabeth Fournier to Planet Haliburton. Elizabeth is the owner/operator of the Cornerstone Funeral Service in Boring, Oregon, the author of “The Green Burial Guidebook” and an Advisory Committee member with the largely-US based, Green Burial Council. Link to resources for this program. https://canoefm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/PH-Resource-List-Why-Green-Burial-with-Elizabeth-Fournier-April-28-2022.pdf This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

This episode of Planet Haliburton, features a conversation about “energy poverty” with Tina Jackson, the Executive Director of the Central Food Hub and co-founder of Heat Bank Haliburton County. It’s no secret that Haliburton County has one of the highest rates of poverty in Ontario, if not the country, as well as serious levels of food insecurity, precarious employment and a crisis in the supply of affordable housing. Less recognized and discussed is the level of “energy poverty” being experienced throughout the county, which has been estimated to be an astounding level 65% of households by the NGO CUSP, the Canadian Urban Sustainability Practitioners. Report after report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), reiterates the growing urgency of driving down GHG gas emissions and breaking our dependency on fossil fuels, while making as fast as possible a transition to a low-carbon energy system, at the same time. Addressing both energy poverty and the climate emergency, without leaving anyone behind, will require Just Transition programs designed to address not only the displacement of oil and gas workers but precarious employment and housing affordability crises as inter-related challenges. The conversation concludes with some initial thoughts on how to create the political will for urgent action at the provincial and municipal levels as we head into a June 2nd provincial election and October 24th municipal elections.

Overshadowed by the February 24th Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the release of latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report on Monday February 28th, came with renewed calls for urgent climate action. UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, says that the evidence contained in the “Climate Change impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” Report is unlike anything he has ever seen, calling it an “atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” To help understand what’s contained in the second of three Reports in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Review (AR6) series since 1988, as well as its potential impact on climate policy, politics, and action, I’m joined by Mitchell Beer, the founder and editor of The Energy Mix. The Energy Mix (https://www.theenergymix.com) is an essential climate and energy news site and digest that tracks everything and anything having to do with the climate emergency. Follow this link to the resouce list for this episode. https://canoefm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/PH-Resource-List-for-Adaptation-and-Climate-Change-with-Mitchell-Beer-March-10-2022.pdf This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

This episode of Planet Haliburton takes stock of Premier Doug Ford’s climate change record with David Robertson from “Seniors for Climate Action Now” (SCAN) in February 2022 - less than four months before the June 2nd Ontario Provincial Election. Premier Ford has, from the day he was elected, proven to be an implacable opponent of anything having to do with serious climate action. While Ontario is not a significant oil and gas producer it is a major source of carbon emissions, second only to Alberta, the Tar Sands juggernaut. After winning the 2018 election, Ford dismantled the previous Wynne government’s entire climate plan and joined forces with Alberta and Saskatchewan in a legal attack on the Federal carbon tax. They lost that battle when the Supreme Court found the tax to be “critical to our response to an existential threat to human life in Canada and around the world.” While the Federal government continues to set national GHG emission reduction targets, without Canada’s most populous province pulling in the same direction, there’s no possibility of Canada achieving its fair share of the emission cuts required to reign in the climate emergency.

“Posing As Canadian – How Big Foreign Oil Captures Canadian Energy and Climate Policy” with Professor Gordon Laxer, January 27/29 2022 After winning the 2018 provincial election, Premier Jason Kenney set up a 3-year, $3.5 million “Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns”, AKA the “Allen Inquiry”. Allen handed in his final report on October 21, 2021 having found only a dibble of so-called foreign “anti-Alberta” money where Kenney had alleged gushers. In fact, the amount of foreign money directed to anti-fossil fuel campaigns turned out to be less than the cost of the Public Inquiry itself. While Allen came up dry on the issue of foreign anti-fossil fuel financing, his Inquiry sparked renewed interest in foreign influence over Canadian energy and climate policy. This episode of Planet Haliburton features an interview with Professor Gordon Laxer, the author of a December 2021 report entitled “Posing As Canadian: How Big Foreign Oil Captures Canadian Energy and Climate Policy”.

This week's episode features an update on the status of the County’s Climate Change Planning initiatives with Korey McKay, the County of Haliburton’s Climate Change Co-Ordinator. Climate scientists, UN Climate Reports and Summits, like the recently concluded 26th Conference of the Parties or COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021, continue to remind us of the urgency of the climate challenge we face, the need for immediate and deep cuts to carbon emissions and a rapid transition off fossil fuels. In the face of the failure of senior levels of governments to stop, let alone reverse, the rise of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, pressure has been increasing on municipal governments to take a greater role in cutting emissions and putting adaptive measures in place to address current and future impacts of warming already in the pipeline. Haliburton County is warming at greater then twice the global average. Will the Haliburton’s climate planning process make difference? Will it take a fair share of responsibility to address the climate emergency at the scale of the crisis we face?

This episode features a conversation about the “Highlands Corridor Project” for reducing carbon emissions at the root of the climate emergency as well as enhancing the local ecological resiliency essential to adapting to the warming already in the pipeline. Canada has committed to increasing the amount of protected spaces and intact ecosystems from its current level of 12% to 30% by 2030. Currently, only about 11% of Ontario’s land mass is protected so we have a very long way to go. Guests Shelley Hunt, the Chairperson of the Haliburton Highlands Land Trust and Paul Heaven, a wildlife biologist with Glenside Ecological Services discuss how the Highlands Corridor Project, can help make a significant contribution to climate resilience by protecting key species and spaces within the County and beyond. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

This episode of Planet Haliburton features an interview with Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist and communicator extraordinaire as well as author of a recent book entitled “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World” By the time this interview first aired on November 11, 2021, the 26th UN Climate Summit, running from October 31st to November 12th in Glasgow, Scotland was down to the closing media conferences. Unfortunately, the size of pre-COP 26 national greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitments by the 190 plus countries attending the summit fell far short of what’s required to avert turning a relatively human-friendly climate system into our worst nightmare. A process that, as the growing incidence of extreme weather events illustrates, is well underway. Despite the urgent calls to action from the world’s climate scientists going all the way back to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, earth warming gases like carbon dioxide and methane continue to rise year after year taking an ever-increasing toll on people and all other life on the planet. Given the lack of progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting continuous rise in C02 concentration in the atmosphere it is easy to be skeptical about the prospects for an organized stepping back from the brink of climate chaos and all the increased suffering that will cause. Despite her deep understanding of just how serious a threat the climate crisis poses to humanity, Canadian climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe, insists it is not too late to avoid the most serious and dangerous impacts and that our future choices will determine what happens. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

This episode features a conversation about the Woodland and Waterways EcoWatch project co-ordinated by Haliburton’s own Ulinks Community-Based Research group. Provincial government environmental research has been in decline for many years as the Ministries of Natural Resources and the Environment had been reduced by successive provincial governments to mere shadows of their former selves. Lake associations and other local voluntary organizations with ecological mandates have attempted as best they can to fill the resulting research void through citizen science and other forms of community-based research. Ulinks’ Woodlands and Waterways EcoWatch project aims to increase the support for local research to enhance the ecological sustainability of our lakes and forests and the ecosystems that keep them healthy. Ulinks reps, Andy Gordon, Sadia Fischer, and Jim Prince describe the history behind the creation of this new collaboration and its implications for enhancing our knowledge of local lake and terrestrial health.

“Dangerous Distractions and Canada’s “Net Zero” Emission Targets” with Marc Lee This week this program looks at the “Net Zero” greenhouse gas emissions reduction pledges that have come to occupy a central place in Canada’s federal climate action plans as well as international discussions taking place under the leadership of the United Nations. While many view the widespread adoption of Net Zero emission pledges as a significant step forward, others are concerned that the Net Zero framework has the potential to reduce the political pressure to achieve real emission reductions in favour of unproven future technologies and so-called “nature-based solutions”. To helps us sort out some of the confusion around what Net Zero means as well as the pros and cons associated with its wide-spread adoption, I’m joined by Marc Lee, a senior economist with the BC Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the author of a recent Net Zero Report entitled “Dangerous Distractions: Canada’s carbon emissions and the pathway to net zero”.

This week, William Rees, on “Ecological Overshoot: The Existential Issue of Our Time?, September 2021 There’s been much discussion in recent years about the climate emergency being the existential issue of our time. And, to be sure, there’s no scientific doubt that human extraction and burning of fossil fuel is the principle cause of the climate emergency that poses an existential threat to all life on the planet. At the same time, a growing number of earth-system scientists view the climate emergency as but one of a series of symptoms of a much larger problem in the relationship between humans and earth’s life-sustaining biosphere – ecological overshoot. This episode of Planet Haliburton features an interview with Professor William Rees, the co-inventor of the “Ecological Footprint” index of human impact on the earth’s carrying capacity, about the root causes of human-caused ecological overshoot and what we can do about it.

Join Terry Moore, for a discussion with Eddy Pérez, the Climate Action Network’s International Climate Diplomacy Manager, about what climate science tells us needs to be done as the UN and world leaders prepare for the next big Climate Summit, COP 26, this fall in Scotland. Eddy Pérez Biographical Information CAN-Rac International Climate Diplomacy Manager Eddy Pérez joined Climate Action Network Canada in January 2018 after working in Geneva with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and as a Climate Action Network International consultant. He is the International Climate Diplomacy Manager at Climate Action Network Canada. Eddy is a lecturer at the University of Montreal and teaches Climate justice and international cooperation. Eddy is an expert on climate diplomacy, analyzing and monitoring international climate negotiations from a Canadian and North American perspective. He chairs the G7 Climate and Energy WG within the G7 Global Taskforce. He sits on the Canadian Domestic Advisory Group (CEDAG) for the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). Eddy holds a Master of Science degree from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique du Québec (INRS). Eddy loves poetry and attributes part of his passion for climate justice to the work of Eduardo Galeano. One of his favourite quotes from this author is: “Recordar, from the Latin records, to pass back through the heart.” Information on CAN-Rac – Climate Action Network Canada: https://climateactionnetwork.ca/about-can-rac/ Information on COP 26: https://ukcop26.org Information on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): https://www.ipcc.ch Information on IPCC Working Group 1 ”The Physical Basis for Climate Change”: https://www.ipcc.ch/working-group/wg1/

“Regime of Obstruction: How Corporate Power Blocks Energy Democracy”, July 29, 2021 In this episode of Planet Haliburton, we examine the power of fossil capital in Canada, its role in creating the climate emergency and blocking effective action to address it, as well as what can be done to overcome that resistance. While critical comment and action directed at specific large-scale, carbon-intensive fossil fuel developments, such as the tar sands and related infrastructure projects like the TMX or Keystone pipelines is commonplace, critical analysis of the role of fossil capitalism, or capitalism more generally in creating the climate emergency, does not occupy a central place within the public pronouncements, programs or campaigns of mainstream climate action groups. To help us understand how fossil capital has created and maintains such a powerful influence over energy and climate policy and action in Canada, as well as what can be done to overcome it, I’m joined by Professor William Carroll, co-director of The Corporate Mapping Project and the editor of the 2021 book entitled “Regime of Obstruction: How Corporate Power Blocks Energy Democracy”, published by Athabasca University Press. Paste this link into your browser for the resource list. https://canoefm.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/PH-Resource-List-for-for-Regime-of-Obstruction-How-Corporate-Power-Blocks-Energy-Democracy-with-Professor-William-Carroll-July-29-2021.pdf

In this episode we look at the not so intense battle between gas-powered SUVs and battery-powered electric vehicles in the fight against global heating. The greenhouse gas emissions from this country’s transportation sector are no small matter amounting to about 25% of our total emissions. We pump more carbon out of our vehicle tailpipes per capita than any other country in the world. Listening to Canadian Auto Executive climate pronouncements leaves the impression that they’ve become climate champions leading the charge to decarbonize passenger vehicle and small truck production in this country and around the world. But their production plans and advertising messages tell a very different story. To help us cut through Auto company climate virtue-signalling and get a clearer picture of what’s really going on, I’m joined by Keith Brooks, the Program Director for Environmental Defence, and the publisher of a new report entitled “Car Wars: SUVs vs EVs and the Battle for a Cleaner Future”. Keith Brooks Biographical Information: Keith Brooks has been working in the environment field for over 20 years in a variety of different roles. Keith is a frequent commentator in the media and has been published in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Hamilton Spectator, the Hill Times, and the Huffington Post. He sits on the Board of Directors for Blue Green Canada, an alliance between Canadian labour unions and environmental organizations, and has been the Programs Director at Environmental Defence since 2014 where he oversees the organization’s climate, energy, water and plastics programs. Keith holds a Bachelor of Environmental Science from the University of Guelph and a Masters in Environmental Studies from York University. He's an avid cyclist and canoeist, and lives in Toronto. About: https://environmentaldefence.ca/about-us/ Full Report “Car Wars: SUVs versus EVs and the Battle for a Cleaner Future” https://environmentaldefence.ca/report/car_wars/

**“The Liberal Climate Action Formula: The Missing Renewables and Fatal Fission Attraction” with Paul McKay, June 10, 2021 In this episode we take a look at the absence of renewable energy in the federal Liberal Climate Action Formula as well as the government’s continuing attraction to nuclear power. Despite the Trudeau government’s carefully cultivated “climate champion” image, and the promise to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies during the 2019 federal election, the Liberals have since expanded fossil subsidies and are busy enabling Canada’s future as a fossil-fuelled hydrogen energy superpower.** Load this link in your browser for the resource list for this podacast. https://canoefm.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/PH-Resource-List-Final-for-%E2%80%9CThe-Liberal-Climate-Plan-Missing-Renewables-and-Canada%E2%80%99s-Fatal-Fissile-Attraction%E2%80%9D-June-10-2021-with-Paul-McKay.pdf This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

“More Powerful Together: Conversation with Climate Activists and Land Defenders” Jen Gobby. On this episode we discuss Settler Climate Activist Support for Indigenous Climate Action with Jen Gobby, a white settler climate justice activist with a PHD from McGill. Dr. Gobby is the author of the new book entitled “More Powerful Together: Conversations with Climate Activists and Indigenous Land Defenders”. Indigenous resistance to ecologically destructive resource extraction projects, ranging from the Ring of Fire mining development in northern Ontario to the oil and gas driven industrialization of Alberta’s Tar Sands, has been intense and unrelenting. Indigenous opposition to fossil fuel mega projects has inspired a growing climate justice movement in this country and around the world demanding real action to eliminate climate-killing fossil fuel emissions after decades of political lip-service. This interview examines some of the powerful possibilities and well as the complexities involved in building solidarity between Settler-based Climate Action groups and Indigenous communities.

This episode of Planet Haliburton features a conversation with local Haliburton family physician, Dr. Nell Thomas, about Covid-19 vaccines and how their record-breaking development and widespread use might influence our future “new normal”. Covid-19 has taken the lives of 3.2 million people around the world to date while inalterably changing the lives of tens of millions more at the same time. Withing the Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge District Health Unit, over 1700 people have been infected with 71 losing their lives since the pandemic was declared some 15 moths ago. Dr. Thomas shares her pandemic memories and describes the key fault lines in our infectious disease detection, prevention and response systems that the virus has exposed. From her views on wearing masks to the stress on frontline health care workers, to vaccines and how the covid-19 risk far surpasses that of any influenza outbreak in living memory, Dr. Thomas tells it like she sees it.

“The Federal Liberal Climate Action Formula: A Recipe for Failure”, Thursday March 25, 2021, with David Robertson from “Seniors for Climate Action Now” (SCAN!) On this episode we take a look at the recent flurry of activity by the federal Liberal government on the climate change policy front. In late 2020 and early 2021, the federal government announced a whole raft of climate-related initiatives including the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, A Hydrogen Strategy and a Nuclear Action Plan. To mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris Climate Accord, it also released an updated Climate Plan called “A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy”, on December 11, 2020. The Liberal Climate Plan is not a satisfying read, nor a very convincing one. To take stock what the Federal Liberals are up to on the climate change and energy policy fronts, I’m joined by David Roberson, chair of the Education Committee of Seniors for Climate Action Now (SCAN!) for a conversation about the March 2021 research paper we co-authored entitled “The Federal Liberal Climate Action Formula: A Recipe for Failure”. Link to resource list, copy and paste to your browser. https://canoefm.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/PH-Resource-List-for-%E2%80%9CThe-Federal-Liberal-Climate-Action-Formula-A-Recipe-for-Failure%E2%80%9D-airing-Thursday-March-25-2021.pdf This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

On this episode of Planet Haliburton we take a look at the challenges, possibilities and limitations of protecting Cottage Country lake water quality and shoreline health via municipal by-laws and other planning tools with Dr. Neil Hutchinson, of Hutchinson Environmental Sciences Ltd. in Bracebridge. Development pressure on Haliburton and other cottages country shorelines has been increasing in recent years and the Covid-19 pandemic and related restrictions on vacation travel has turned that trend into a virtual feeding frenzy. All this is happening coincident with rising concerns over lake water quality, declining levels of natural shoreline vegetation and climate change with its associated increase in air and water temperatures, blue -green algal blooms, extreme weather events, insect and disease infestations and biodiversity loss. These tensions have increased the pressure on local municipalities to assume a large and more aggressive regulatory presence on the shoreline at the same time as decades of austerity-driven budgets and downloading of responsibility from senior levels of government have severely stretched their capacity to do so. The Lakeshore Capacity Assessment (LCA) model is a planning tool developed by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE) to predict the impacts of shoreline development on water quality of inland lakes on the Canadian Shield Dr. Neil Hutchinson, the owner of Hutchinson Environmental Sciences Ltd, an environmental consultancy firm in Bracebridge, worked on the Lakeshore Capacity project policy development for the Ontario Ministry of the Environment from 1988 – 1998 and since that time for various municipalities as a consultant. Copy this link into your browser for a resource list for this program. https://canoefm.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/PH-Resource-List-for-March-11-2021.pdf This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

This episode of Planet Haliburton features a conversation about Eco-Socialism, the Covid-19 and Climate Emergencies and the Green Party of Canada. Two of the eight candidates to replace Elizabeth May as Green Party leader in the fall of 2020 campaigned as “Eco-Socialists”. One of those candidates, Dimitri Lascaris, finished a close second to the winner, Annamie Paul, on the eighth and final ballot, with 42% of the vote. In this conversation Terry Moore and Dimitri Lascarus discuss what “EcoSocialism” is, how it factored into the leadership campaign, as well as what it may mean for the future of the Green Party of Canada. Resource List Link: https://canoefm.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/PH-Resource-List-for-Planet-Haliburton-Februarya-25-2021.pdf This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm