Oil - Pipelines

Activists protest against Fidelity Investments, one of Chevron’s largest institutional shareholder, outside its office building in downtown Seattle. (Photo by Goorish Wibneh)

A diverse group of Seattle activists and students gathered Tuesday at Westlake Park to demand the Canadian government respect sovereignty of the Unist’ot’en First Nation, as well as its own national and international laws.

Economists, an irrational tribe of short-sighted mathematicians, are now calling Canada's declining economic fortunes "a perfect storm."

It seems to be the only weather that complex market economies generate these days, or maybe such things are just another face of globalization.

A new book of aerial photographs, Beautiful Destruction, captures the awesome scale and devastating impact of Alberta’s oil sands with stunning colours, contrasts and patterns. The book also includes 15 essays by prominent individuals from environment and industry, sharing their insights, ideas and opinions.

[Introductory note: Very reassuring, the "world class" spill response we have been assured of by the corporate and government proponents of exporting Alberta bitumen by tanker! Among other points, consider the excuse offered by the Coast Guard for the delay  -  that the guity ship did not admit it was the source of the oil. ] 

VANCOUVER - Misunderstandings, uncertainty and technical difficulties slowed the emergency response to a toxic fuel spill in Vancouver's English Bay by nearly two hours, a review has found.

‘First the verdict, then the evidence.’ That was the gist of the Crown Solicitor’s response to Chippewas of the Thames First Nation’s complaint that it had not been consulted about Enbridge’s dangerous Line 9 pipeline project.

As summarized in the Piperisks blog, the Crown lawyer at a June 16 hearing in Toronto claimed that ‘it is pointless to allow Crown Consultation [with First Nations] until after [regulatory] approvals are given.’

Alice in Wonderland

If one were to search for an example of the utterly and inherently life, climate, and economy destroying impacts of fossil fuel burning, they wouldn’t have to look too far. They could look to the rapidly destabilizing glaciers now putting our coastal cities, our island nations in dire peril.

Garth Lenz's 2011 TED talk (17.4 minutes), illustrated by striking photographs of the tar sands and northern boreal forest.

In a July 23 webinar, members of North Dakota’s environmental community spoke about the impacts of the second-largest fracking oil field in the United States, the Bakken Shale.

Earthworks, a non-profit American environmental agency, presented the webinar entitled "Inside the Bakken: National Impacts and How You Can Help."

The battle for Kinder Morgan Inc.’s Trans Mountain pipeline is bleeding into lobbying over another major infrastructure project in British Columbia – a proposal for a new shipping terminal near Vancouver’s Fraser River Estuary.

Advocacy groups campaigning against the proposed marine terminal, called Roberts Bank Terminal 2, have said they are concerned it could serve as a contingency port for the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline, even as the port authority and Kinder Morgan say using the expanded port for shipping oil is not in the cards.