ECOLOGY CANADIAN POLITICS:

OPPOSITION TO THE NORTHERN GATEWAY PIPELINE:

The oil company Enbridge has recently joined BP on the "most unwanted list" of corporate vandals because of its pipeline spill in Michigan. Not content with playing second fiddle to the head capo of corporate crime, however, Enbridge has for some time been preparing a made in Canada potential disaster to put it up with the big boys. I refer to the planned 'Northern Gateway Pipeline' from the Alberta Oil Sands to the Pacific coast in British Columbia. This project has attracted a wide variety of opposition from environmental groups to first nations whose lands will be threatened by the development. It has even been opposed by the BC Central Coast Chamber of Commerce because of the dangers that it hazards. The Pembina Institute, a Canadian think tank concerned with energy policy, has produced a very critical report outlining the problems with this project as well as with another proposed northern pipelines. Consult that website for further details.

Canadian labour, in the person of the BC section of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE BC) has also come out in opposition to Northern Gateway. Here's their statement from the website of CUPE BC.

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CUPE BC opposes Enbridge tanker plans to navigate off coast
BURNABY—Citing this week’s Enbridge oil spill that has threatened a Michigan river and the earlier disaster by British Petroleum that devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast, the B.C. division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees today joined First Nations and environmental groups in voicing opposition to the Enbridge Northern Gateway project.

The project would involve super tankers carrying bitumen from the Alberta tar sands and navigating the coast of British Columbia, including the fragile Great Bear Rainforest.

CUPE BC says that any potential benefits of the Enbridge plan are outweighed by the high risk of another disaster like the BP oil spill. Enbridge itself has lost credibility in recent days with a pipeline leak that resulted in more than 3 million litres of oil flowing into the Kalamazoo River in southern Michigan, coating birds and fish.

“As we’ve seen in Michigan and the Gulf coast, any kind of oil spill on our coast would have a tremendous impact on the natural environment and would impact wildlife, including salmon and the Kermode bear which is unique to the Great Bear Rainforest,” says CUPE BC diversity vice-president (aboriginal workers) Leanne Louie. “With the BP oil spill, the damage is irreversible. We can’t let that happen here.”

Penetration of the B.C. coastline by oil tankers is only part of a massive plan to build a 1,150-kilometre underground pipeline that will result in the transportation of 525,000 barrels of oil each day across Alberta and B.C. The federal government and its joint review panel are currently reviewing Enbridge’s application for the project despite the B.C. government’s 2006 promise to protect the Great Bear Rainforest.

“Enbridge claims there is minimal risk of an oil spill. In reality, it’s not if but when an oil spill will occur,” says Sheryl Burns, co-chair of the CUPE BC environment committee. “The Campbell government says it wants to fight climate change. But by supporting the Enbridge application it’s doing precisely the opposite, since the pipeline will be a major incentive for increased production of climate-damaging oil from the tar sands. We should be creating green jobs instead that will employ British Columbians while also protecting our environment.”

In a letter to Premier Gordon Campbell, CUPE BC president Barry O’Neill reminds the premier of B.C.’s promise in 2006 to protect the Great Bear Rainforest. “We urge the provincial government to oppose the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Project altogether and honour the Great Bear Rainforest agreement it signed,” writes O’Neill.

ENVIRONMENT:

STOP THE TARSANDS PIPELINE:

The following story and petition comes originally from the Friends of the Earth via the Care2 site. I have to admit that I am somewhat uneasy about this item. It is all well and good to be against a pipeline that is intimately tied to bringing oil from the Alberta tarsands to its major market, the USA. Still, it's a simple fact that of the USA continues with its present economic system that they plainly need such oil, as in necessity. This sort of project will go ahead because there is no alternative for the USA in the way it presently operates. I don't think that such projects can be realistically opposed unless a lot of other things are opposed simultaneously. Be that as it may here's the article and appeal.

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Public Comment Needed To Prevent New Oil Pipeline
posted by: Beth Buczynski


Canada, and more specifically the province of Alberta, is ground zero for tar sands extraction.

As North America’s number one source of foreign oil, the tar sands produce the world's most harmful type of oil for the atmosphere, emitting high volumes of greenhouse gases during development, which contribute to global warming.

To access these underground stores, Big Oil companies must strip mine huge tracts of forest, causing cancer hot spots in indigenous communities living downstream from the toxic byproducts.

As if these characteristics weren't horrifying enough, these same companies are now pressuring the Obama administration to allow construction of a pipeline that would pump oil from the Canadian tar sands to refineries in the Gulf Coast that supply our country's gasoline.

Known as the "Keystone XL," oil companies are counting on this massive pipeline to make the expansion of tar sands operations profitable profitable, but they've failed to take into account (at least publicly) the "extra-large" effects this will have on environment, wildlife, and human health.

Consider these points from DirtyOilSands.org:

Oil sands production harms human health in at least two ways: when extracted, and when processed and refined from bitumen into gasoline. As described above extraction pollutes water resources. Communities downstream, in some cases hundreds of kilometers downstream, have been impacted: directly, with elevated cancer rates; and indirectly, with their subsistence economy endangered by polluted fisheries.

The spread of refineries processing tar sands oil is a problem because the synthetic heavy crude produced from tar sands is laden with more toxins than conventional oil. Communities adjacent to tar sands oil refineries face increased carbon dioxide emissions, and increased exposure to heavy metals, and sulfurs.

The communities along the Keystone XL pipeline's proposed path, would face increased risk of spills, and, at the pipeline's end, the health of people living near Texas refineries would suffer, as tar sands oil spews higher levels of dangerous pollutants into the air when processed.

Thankfully, President Obama has the power to halt this plan because Big Oil needs his permission, in the form of a presidential permit, to begin construction.

On April 9, the State Department released a draft analysis of the project, called an Environmental Impact Statement, which kicked off a 45-day public comment period.

Submitting official comments is a key opportunity for members of the public to pressure the Obama administration to reject this pipeline. The State Department is required by law to listen to your concerns and take them into account before making a final determination as to whether this project is in the public interest.

Click here to make your voice heard. Urge the Obama administration to reject new pipelines for the world's dirtiest oil.

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THE LETTER:

Please go to the link above to send the following letter to the Obama Administration.

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I am writing to submit my concerns about the impacts the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would have on the climate and communities -- and to urge you to deny a permit for this pipeline.

Tar sands oil is dirtier than conventional oil, causing three times more greenhouse gas emissions than regular gasoline. The 900,000 barrels of dirty oil that would be pumped through this pipeline every day would add 38 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere annually, which is equal to adding six million new cars to the road. Your draft environmental impact statement ignores how this pipeline would make global warming worse, a serious oversight that must be amended.