The fresh new face Canada showed the world at the Paris COP21 climate meetings held out hope for many Canadian climate activists that a national course change was in the works.
In its less than a decade in power, the Harper government extinguished multiple important Canadian environmental laws, muzzled climate scientists, harassed environmental NGOs, created "anti-terrorism" legislation that targets First Nations and other pipeline activists, and generally introduced regressive and reactionary social policy while promoting Canada as the world's new petro-state.
Trudeau spent the last campaign talking about righting the environment/energy balance. Based on the LNG decision, equilibrium between Canada's contribution to the mitigation of climate change and its energy ambitions remains as elusive as ever.
PUBLISHED : Monday, Oct. 3, 2016 12:00 AM
MONTREAL—As Liberal leader and subsequently as prime minister, Justin Trudeau has talked in the abstract of the need to secure a social licence prior to undertaking any major energy project. Until this week, no one was sure what he actually meant by that.
We speak with 350.org’s Bill McKibben about how the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and members of hundreds of other tribes from across the U.S., Canada and Latin America have resisted construction of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, even as police carrying assault rifles responded to them with armored vehicles, tear gas and helicopters. "We cannot pump more oil," McKibben says.
Meanwhile, a Reuters investigation finds pipeline spill detection system severely flawed
Close to 100 scientists have signed onto a letter decrying "inadequate environmental and cultural impact assessments" for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), and calling for a halt to construction until such tests have been carried out as requested by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
It’s a simple choice: stop all fossil fuel prospecting, or break the Paris agreement on climate change.
published in the Guardian 28th Sepetmeber 2016
Do they understand what they have signed? Plainly they do not. Governments like ours, now ratifying the Paris agreement on climate change, haven’t the faintest idea what it means. Either that, or they have no intention of honouring it.
Imminent decisions on giant energy projects are sure to anger some parts of the electorate that swept him to power.
September 25, 2016
Photographs by Ben Nelms/Bloomberg [See original article for photos]
Along Canada’s evergreen-draped west coast, the fate of a multi-billion-dollar energy project and a nation’s reconciliation with its dark, colonial past hang in the balance.
The federal government’s decision on expanding the TransMountain pipeline, expected no later than Dec. 19, will be an early Christmas present for an as yet unknown recipient.
As opponents hope for a resounding “no” on the $6.8-billion expansion project, all but a few of the communities along the pipeline route — from Strathcona County in Alberta to Burnaby, B.C. — have signed agreements ensuring they get more than a lump of coal if the project goes ahead, whether they endorse it, or not.
