Canada’s filthy tar sands are the world’s most carbon-intensive petroleum source, and in the boom years, they flooded the country with so much filthy money that the country spent a decade making war on science and trashing democratic fundamentals in a bid to sustain the tar-sands bubble.
The tar-sands era continues today, thanks to the ardent support of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who has vowed to burn every drop of oil in the tar sands, and whose appetite for greenlighting pipelines that aid this process is bottomless, and undeterred by the fact that these pipelines can only be built by running roughshod over First Nations treaty land-claims.
But reality’s well-known left-wing bias keeps asserting itself, and the pipelines that Trudeau is so committed to are drying up.
The latest casualty is the death of Transcanada’s Energy East and Eastern Mainline pipelines, cancelled due to “changing circumstances” (being made to pay for the carbon carried in the pipeline).
Next up is the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain expansion pipeline, which will carry tar sands oil from Alberta to BC.
As Energy East supporters lamented the loss of jobs and revenue, Indigenous opponents, environmental activists and a number of Quebec politicians celebrated. Its abandonment, they argued, means fewer climate-polluting greenhouse gas emissions in the air, reduced risk for sensitive land and water ecosystems, and respect for Indigenous sovereignty.“It’s a good day for the planet really,” said Regional Chief Ghislain Picard of the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec-Labrador. “As far as we’re concerned, the whole criteria around social acceptability of major projects has become more and more important in terms of how we evaluate projects like Energy East and others.”
Picard is a signatory to the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion, a coalition of 150 tribes in Canada and the United States fighting against any and all oilsands pipeline projects. While the coalition treated Thursday’s news as a victory, Picard said there remains three more pipelines to defeat: Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion, TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, and Enbridge’s Line 3 project.
“The fight goes on,” he told National Observer. “We can’t certainly let our guard down at this point, because the search for new energies and fossil fuels will continue because the industry is there. We have to remain vigilant, look at what happens around us and react whenever called on.”
Disappointment and delight mark the death of Energy East pipeline
[Elizabeth McSheffrey/National Observer]