If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund makes no bones about what it is colluding with environmental groups to do. It's a well-funded plan, at that: The New York strategists would spend tens of millions of dollars to fund their attack on Canadian industry.
There's nothing that the Chinese government likes more than Western leaders dropping all that human rights stuff and instead coming around to kowtow before them, as Steven Harper will do with President Hu Jintao this week. And what has brought about this change? In a word: Oil.
One of the issues in the Northern Gateway pipeline hearing is the threat that oil tankers will pose in the dangerous channels and sensitive ocean environments near the proposed port, Kitimat. Enbridge soothingly predicts that major spills will be inconceivably rare. I remain a sceptic.
The likelihood of a spill along the route is high enough that it can be considered inevitable. A spill along any of the many rivers and streams the pipeline crosses, or along the coast, would contaminate fish and aquatic life. The contamination would then work its way up the food chain affecting the whole ecosystem.
Striving to alert more people about Enbridge's desire to impose tar sands pipelines and super tankers on British Columbia's central and north coast via their proposed Northern Gateway project, how could we inform the people of California, for instance, as they are expected to be one of the primary recipients of the "world's dirtiest oil"?
The hearings into Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline and tanker project kicked off with a diversion tactic to avoid talking about the danger the proposed pipeline poses for our climate, water and land. Now it's time to get back to why Canadians will continue to voice our objection to the project.
The ongoing pipeline debates have become mired in conspiracy theories, distractions, and misinformation. We Canadians have to remember that oil corporations -- whether they're from China, the U.S., Canada, or wherever -- are tenants on our land, not landlords. We should be calling the shots.
Note to Occupiers: If there was a week when populist movements managed to scare the beejezus out of elected officials, this was it. In a surprise move, President Obama on Wednesday rejected the permit to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, upon recommendations from the State Department. And the growing peoples' movement also managed to beat back the hugely contested SOPA and PIPA bills, aimed at curbing illegal music, movie and software sharing.
Meanwhile, in home news, a number of our contributors were experimenting with inhalants -- legal and illegal...
Everyone sees Obama's decision to stop the Keystone XL pipeline exactly for what it is: an attempt to save his own career. Having failed to impress swing voters with his economic performance, the president has been forced to capitulate to the extreme environmentalist lobby to fund and redeem his re-election bid.
The tar sands industry now faces legal challenges from First Nations, low carbon fuel initiatives in California and the EU, opposition to its pipelines in the U.S., in British Columbia, and in Eastern provinces and states. Are all these people crazy? Is it still you, not me?
If the Enbridge review hearings rubber-stamp the pipeline, or Prime Minister Stephen Harper pushes it through, expect a First Nations lawsuit to kill it. The First Nations are the loudest and strongest in protest, and those who most deserve backing.
Because of the powerful coalition of community, environmental, labour and justice groups that came together the Gateway will never be built. Under the leadership of the First Nations people along the pipeline's proposed path, this growing peoples' movement will take great heart from this victory.
Our government's position on this latest pipeline should thus come as no surprise. They are not simply neutral parties in this, but a close ally of the fossil fuel industry taking on roles from defending and promoting the industry around the globe to acting as its bankroll.
This just in! I've got a yet-to-be authenticated advance copy of Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver's "streamlining" plan for hearings on things like Enbridge's proposed tar sands pipeline that would bring supertankers to B.C.'s coastline to take bitumen to China.
My community that lives in the Kitimat Village's decision to support natural gas development and oppose a tar sands pipeline is a considered and informed. It is consistent with our ancestral responsibilities as First Nations who have never surrendered title to these lands.
Not only have hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs been lost over the past few years, Canada has also been missing out on opportunities to join the boom in production of renewable-energy technology.
