Launch of the ECOreport

January 31, 2014 (Cortes Island, BC)–A new website is dedicated to exploring how lifestyle choices and technologies impact the environment.  The ECOreport[1] is an environmental news website covering the West Coast, from San Diego in California to British Columbia.

The site’s owner/editor, Roy L Hales, lives on Cortes Island in British Columbia. He was the editor of the environmental news website “San Diego Loves Green,” via the internet, in 2013 and frequently wrote about net-metering, the biofuel industry and the industrialization of San Diego’s East County. Some of these articles are reprinted by East County magazine. Hales also wrote about renewable technologies and is now a staff writer with Clean Technica.

Coal train derailment in Burnaby, BC, on January 12, 2014 – photo courtesy – courtesy Voters Taking Action on Climate Change (British Columbia)

One of the ECOreport’s current topics is the proposed transformation of British Columbia into “a Climate Change Superhighway.” There is already a pipeline carrying oil from the Tar Sands to terminals in BC’s Lower Mainland. Kinder Morgan has applied to have it extended, so that the number of tankers leaving the West Coast can be increased from 80 to over 400. Another pipeline is proposed for Northern BC. There are a dozen new proposed coal mines and, given the lack of “progress” on coal terminals in Washington and Oregon, a marked increase in the amount of coal coming into BC by rail. BC’s existing coal terminals are being enlarged and there is a new terminal planned in the Lower Mainland. The industry that really gets Premier Christie Clark excited, however, is the potential for developing the province’s natural gas deposits. 

“What oil has been to Alberta since the 1970s-80s is what LNG is going to be for British Columbia, nothing less than that. Energy output from LNG will likely be as big as the total energy output today from the oil sands,” said Clark.    

Kathi Camileri looking out from Klahoose New Relationship Building on Cortes Island – Roy L Hales photo
Kathi Camileri looking out from Klahoose New Relationship Building during a break from the “Village Workshop” (Cortes Island, BC) – Roy L Hales photo

“It is incredible to look at how events are unfolding along the West Coast,” Hales said. “There have been days where the ECOreport has carried stories about fracking, or the development of solar energy in British Columbia alongside a very similar story from California.” 

The ECOreport carries stories on a vast range of “green” topics. Three of the most popular recent articles have been: “Driving on 100% Sunshine,” “EV’s Are Just Better Vehicles, In Almost Every Way” and Ocotillo: A Wind Project Without Wind.

Roughly half of the site’s content is original and the remainder is collected from a variety of writers, websites and university news departments.

Top photo credit:  Taiyo Gibson and his dog, Freeway, in the back of the family’s Nissan Leaf (Washington state) – Courtesy Brad Gibson

Footnote

[1] The ECOreport was initially launched under the name Reviving Gaia, in mid December, 2013, and subsequently registered as the ECOreport in British Columbia on January 31, 2014.

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