As powerful countries keep sinking climate goals, activists likely to escalate tactics rather than accept an increasingly unlivable world
1.5, barely alive
Shortly before the close of this year’s United Nations climate negotiations in Glasgow, UN Secretary General António Guterres offered a sobering summary of the global efforts to address the climate emergency.
Workers at Cargill’s High River, Alberta meatpacking facility have overwhelmingly rejected the company’s latest contract offer and management has escalated tensions by serving a lockout notice.
[Editor: Note that the expansion is not slated to supply local refineries.]
Nov. 24, 2021
OTTAWA—NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is not pushing to cancel the government-owned Trans Mountain expansion, even though a veteran MP in his caucus is calling for an immediate halt to construction of the controversial oil pipeline project.
Trans Mountain continues to monitor the impacts of a spill of clay-based drilling fluid in a water course near the Mary Hill bypass in Coquitlam last week.
In a statement, the company reported that approximately one cubic meter of bentonite was “inadvertently released” into a watercourse during horizontal directional drilling (HDD) procedures on Friday (Nov. 19).
The drilling is to install a section of pipe from Surrey to Coquitlam for the construction of the pipeline to Burnaby.
Romilly Cavanaugh stood at the edge of the Coquihalla River north of Hope, watching big trees snap off the bank like blades of grass in a lawn mower. Some of those not swept away held dead fish in their branches three metres off the ground — a reminder of what came before.
Cavanaugh and her fellow engineers had been sent into the chaos for a sole purpose: to watch the Trans Mountain pipeline through the flood of 1995.
For decades, the fossil fuel industry ran a wildly successful and well-funded campaign to muddy the waters when it came to climate change. It denied the science, created false equivalencies and dumped billions upon billions of dollars into projects designed to protect profits. Then, a few years ago, this lie was exposed just as the impacts of climate change began to be felt widely around the world.
Extreme weather fuelled by climate breakdown is exposing the vulnerability of key infrastructure in British Columbia and is reviving questions among environmentalists and residents about building the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline.
Beyond the ‘blah blah blah’ of climate summits lies the real solution our leaders refuse to acknowledge. First of two parts.
Since 1995 there have been 25 global conferences on climate change. At every one our so-called political leaders have kicked the can down the road and sung from a bright green hymnbook.
Greta Thunberg has disparaged the refrain as nothing more than “blah, blah, blah.”
She is right of course. Blah, blah blah has kept emissions rising, along with energy spending and its twin sibling unbridled economic growth.
Glasgow, Scotland – Today Prime Minister Justin Trudeau identified the biggest climate challenge for Canada but failed to come up with the right solution. Focusing on emissions from oil and gas production but not production itself will allow oil and gas companies to keep putting forward false solutions, such as carbon capture and storage, fossil-based hydrogen, and far-off net zero plans, all while pumping out more and more atmosphere-destroying fossil fuels.
