THE AMERICAN FUEL & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a powerful lobbying group that represents major chemical plants and oil refineries, including Valero Energy, Koch Industries, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Marathon Petroleum, has flexed its muscle over environmental and energy policy for decades. Despite its reach, AFPM channels dark money and influence with little scrutiny.
The group is now leveraging its political power to criminalize protests of oil and gas infrastructure.
On August 16, climate activists Rita Wong and Will Offley were sentenced to jail for blocking the TransMountain site on Burnaby Mountain. Will was sentenced to 14 days in prison, and Rita to a shocking 28 days, the longest sentence yet in the more than 220 arrests of water and land protectors.
The federal cabinet’s re-approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline and Tanker Expansion Project (“TMX” or “the Project”) on June 18, 2019 was hardly shocking news. After all, federal cabinet ministers have been saying for years that ‘the pipeline will be built.’ They even spent $4.5 billion of public money to bail out the project when pipeline company Kinder Morgan decided to abandon it.
The Trudeau government and the petrobloc (the fossil fuel industries and their political, financial and media allies) would like you to believe that the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline (TMX), intended to triple the flow of diluted bitumen from the Athabasca Sands to the port of Vancouver, is a done deal.
But the latest approval of TMX by the Trudeau government and the industry-friendly National Energy Board does not settle the issue.
Last night, I was curious to learn more about Extinction Rebellion, a global climate-justice movement with chapters in British Columbia.
Founded last year, it's been the talk of the U.K. and, more recently, Australia, for its peaceful, direct actions that disrupt the establishment.
In many respects, the Extinction Rebellion protests are reminiscent of the U.S. civil rights movement or Mahatma Gandhi's efforts to get the British to leave India.
"Good news in the link below, but the name and nature of the union are not very clear in the article. It refers to Verdi, also referred to as "ver.di," short-form nicknames for Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft (United Services Union) which represents public and private service workers in a huge variety of jobs. More Canadian unions have to get involved in this youth-led fight!" Gene McGuckin
"This is leadership. Who will follow? The world is watching," said 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg
On July 11, 2019, Quebec's Superior Court rejected a class action lawsuit seeking federal action relating to climate change. The Court found that the questions raised by the plaintiff, Environnement Jeunesse, were justiciable but that a class action was not the right vehicle.
