. . . the recent spate of rail accidents and pipeline leaks and spills doesn't provide arguments for one or the other; instead, it indicates that rapidly increasing oil and gas development and shipping ever greater amounts, by any method, will mean more accidents, spills, environmental damage — even death. The answer is to step back from this reckless plunder and consider ways to reduce our fossil fuel use.
Back in the olden days of 2011, when America was young and LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” was a song that not everyone had gotten sick of yet, one of the most compelling criticisms leveled against the Keystone XL pipeline protesters went like this: There is oil in the Alberta tar sands. Pretty cheap stuff – about $30 less a barrel than what you can buy overseas.
My community is largely based in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, 200 km downstream from current tar sands development. It's a place of great beauty and history, but we are now at risk from irreversible impacts that will permanently change our lands and our lives forever. In July of 2010, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) Elders Council issued a declaration on our rights under agreements made over a century ago.
Five environmental groups, including the David Suzuki Foundation and the Wilderness Committee, are taking the federal government to court, claiming it has failed to meet its responsibilities under the Species at Risk Act to protect endangered wildlife threatened by the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. The case will be heard by the Federal Court in Vancouver Jan.
With the announcement of the National Energy Board’s ruling in favour of Enbridge’s Northern pipeline, and the fall of yet another government environmental safeguard, the organizers of the anti-pipeline blockade camp in Northern BC are more committed than ever to holding their ground. Along with partner Forest Action Network (FAN), they’ve put out a call for more volunteers, and FAN director Zoe Blunt says they’ve received a flood of applications in the past week from people eager to travel to the camp and help out.
Chuck Strahl, Chairman of the federal body which oversees Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), has registered to lobby on behalf of Enbridge’s ‘Northern Gateway Pipelines Limited Partnership’. Two weeks before the December 19, 2013 decision of the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel on the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Project, Strahl and his firm –
“Thank God no one got killed,” said Olivia Chow, the New Democratic Party’s transportation critic. The parallels with the Quebec tragedy are clear, she said. “It’s the same kind of oil, same kind of train.”
The NDP MP argues that governments on both sides of the border ought to force the railway industry to upgrade such container cars urgently – given how they pass through many towns and cities, including her own riding in Trinity-Spadina.
The derailment happened amid heightened concerns about the United States' increased reliance on rail to carry crude oil. Fears of catastrophic derailments were particularly stoked after last summer's crash in Quebec of a train carrying crude from North Dakota's Bakken oil patch. Forty-seven people died in the ensuing fire.
The tracks that the train was on Monday pass through the middle of Casselton, and Cass County Sheriff's Sgt. Tara Morris said it was "a blessing it didn't happen within the city."
(Reuters) - More than 50 top European and U.S. scientists have written to the European Commission president urging him to press ahead with a plan to label tar sands as more polluting than other forms of oil, in defiance of intensive lobbying from Canada. The draft law was kept on ice during trade talks between the European Union and Canada, the world's biggest producer of oil from tar sands, which culminated in a multi-million-dollar pact signed earlier this year.
Vancouver: The Joint Review Panel (the Panel) for the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Project today recommended that the federal government approve the project, subject to 209 required conditions. Based on a scientific and precautionary approach to this complex review, the Panel found that the project, if built and operated in compliance with the conditions set out in its report, would be in the public interest.
