Protest - Revolt

Four years ago, if you had asked Stephanie Merrill of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick(CCNB) and Jennifer West of the Ecology Action Centre (EAC) in Nova Scotia the odds of success in their respective efforts to enact fracking bans in their provinces, they would have likely replied: pretty low. After all, they were going up against a powerful industry, lax government oversight, and a largely uninformed public.

Yet last fall, the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick joined Quebec in halting the practice of hydraulic fracturing for shale gas.

The Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) is the latest to speak out against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's proposed Anti-Terrorism Act.

Harper's Bill C-51 is meant to increase the power of RCMP and other bodies to combat terrorism and includes giving more power to security personnel, letting authorities detain possible terrorists for longer periods, and allowing authorities to remove terrorist propaganda from any Canadian-based website. However, critics have said that the bill will restrict Canadians' freedom.

The Mounties always get their man.

But a newly disclosed intelligence assessment from the RCMP looking at the "anti-Canada petroleum movement" suggests the same might not always be true about their facts.

First reported in La Presse, and again Monday in the Globe and Mail, the RCMP report dated January 2014 warns of "a growing, highly organized and well-financed anti-Canada petroleum movement that consists of peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society's reliance on fossil fuels."

Lawyers for Harvard University will appear in court on Friday to fight off attempts to force the world’s richest university to dump coal, oil and gas companies from its $36bn (£23bn) endowment.

A lawsuit filed late last year by seven law students and undergraduates argues the university has a duty to fight climate change by pulling out of fossil fuel companies.

The university and the state of Massachusetts, which is also named in the lawsuit, are asking the judge to dismiss the case.

The RCMP has labelled the “anti-petroleum” movement as a growing and violent threat to Canada’s security, raising fears among environmentalists that they face increased surveillance, and possibly worse, under the Harper government’s new terrorism legislation.

In highly charged language that reflects the government’s hostility toward environmental activists, an RCMP intelligence assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are bent on blocking oil sands expansion and pipeline construction, and that the extremists in the movement are willing to resort to violence.

A rally was held Feb 5 outside Ft. Langley on unceded Kwantlen Territory in response to Kinder Morgan drilling near the Salmon River @ 22926 Rawlison Crescent, home to endangered species, in preparation to build the proposed Trans Mountain Dilbit (Tar/Oil Sands Heavy Crude) Export Pipeline through the area.
A further march and rally is planned for Fort Langley, details TBA.

About 80 people took part in a roadside rally against the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion on Glover Road near the intersection with Rawlison Crescent in Fort Langley.

They carried signs that bore messages like "no Kinder Morgan surprises," "clean energy now" and "save the salmon."

The protest was near a test drilling site on Rawlison, where Kinder Morgan was doing geotechnical testing he week before.

One resident, who asked not to be named, told The Times that several large vehicles blocked off access to a community mailbox for five days.

The Guardian recently reported that Harvard University has increased its investments in fossil fuels by almost seven fold over the last few months.

Canada’s energy sector is more at risk from domestic environmental extremists than from religiously inspired terrorist organizations like Al Qaida, warns an RCMP report recently obtained via an Access of Information request.

“The Canadian law enforcement and security intelligence community have noted a growing radicalized faction of environmentalists who advocate the use of criminal activity to promote the protection of the natural environment,” alerts the document written by the RCMP’s infrastructure intelligence team. The 22-page report from 2011 was only recently released.

. . Drastic action needs to be taken to reduce human caused greenhouse gas emissions, which are the primary driver of increased global temperatures. An article in Nature, published Jan. 8, stated: “ ... globally, a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80 per cent of current coal reserves should remain unused from 2010-50 to meet the target of two degrees C”, a target identified by scientists to avoid the worst ravages of global warming.