Energy/Industry Fossil Fuels Oil and Gas Environment Climate Change Science Politics and Technology Nations

In the Absence of Governments Agreeing to Carbon Reductions What Can the Rest of Us Do?

November 24, 2014

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November 24, 2014 – I ask the above question in light of a headline that appeared in the Sunday edition of the Toronto Sun, “Girl, 11, nabbed in B.C. Kinder Morgan pipeline protest.”

Kinder Morgan is one of a number of companies who have applied to build additional pipeline capacity to allow Alberta bitumin to get to market. Northern Gateway, an Enbridge proposal, would cross northern British Columbia. Keystone XL would go through Alberta to the United States connecting to a hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, and a southern pipeline already approved and under construction bearing the same name. And then there is Kinder Morgan, a proposed twinning of an existing pipeline, through an existing right of way paralleling the Fraser River Valley and ending up at a terminal in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Of all three, Kinder Morgan has met with the least resistance until recently. The expansion of its Trans Mountain pipeline, which will triple its oil capacity, requires the company to survey and drill bore holes on Burnaby Mountain, close to the city, all part of mandated federal environmental approval process.

The drilling and surveying has brought out the protestors. One of them, an 11-year-old child managed to cross a line of Royal Canadian Mounted Police on picket duty and along with her mother (the two are pictured together below prior to their arrest) and 58 others get arrested. That line the little girl crossed was being guarded by Canada’s federal police on issue of a court-enforced injunction allowing the company to do its work without protestor interference. What’s interesting is that the presence of protestors has done little to stop Kinder Morgan in carrying out its tasks on Burnaby Mountain. But that didn’t stop the police from enforcing the court injunction three days after its issue.

It seems the protestors had encamped on the mountain near the site where Kinder Morgan crews were working. They had done nothing to stop or impede any employee of the company. They even announced their intention of crossing the line of enforcement to the police officers. The police let them and then arrested them. So along with 59 other protestors, including the grandson of Canada’s preeminent environmentalist, David Suzuki, an 11-year-old child was taken into custody by Canada’s federal police.

The work under protest involves Kinder Morgan working on two Burnaby Mountain sites and includes drilling two bore holes. Burnaby Mountain is also the site of Simon Fraser University. A section of the proposed pipeline requires tunneling through the mountain to get to the oil terminal in Burnaby.

Why are protestors in opposition to this Kinder Morgan pipeline? For one thing, in its application to the National Energy Board, Kinder Morgan has promoted oil spills as a source of jobs. The following is a direct quote:

“spills can have both positive and negative effects on local and regional economies over the short and long-term…spill response and clean-up creates business and employment opportunities for affected communities,regions, and clean-up service providers, particularly in those communities where spill response equipment is, or would be, staged.”

Of course the company stated upon reflection it didn’t mean that spills were a good thing.

The company is also seen as a carbon emissions enabler. In tripling the capacity of its pipeline it is providing an outlet for Canada’s biggest contributor to carbon pollution, the oil sands of northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.

It is seen as an instrument of the government of Canada which has failed to create any form of carbon regulation regarding the oil sands.

It is therefore lumped together with the oil producers who despite their claims to be reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from oil sands production are far from achieving anything close to lower emissions. Rather the opposite because in increasing production the emissions are going up.

David Suzuki, who was with his grandson, on the site of the protests, thanked the protestors for their opposition to the pipeline stating, “If we continue to look at the world and the land around …. in terms of dollars and cents, we are going to destroy the very things that make that land so precious to us, the very things that keep us alive and healthy.”

And it seems the municipality that would be most impacted by Kinder Morgan’s tripling of capacity also objects. Burnaby has filed a lawsuit against the company with good reason. Kinder Morgan’s track record is not that good. Here are a few events from its recent past.

In July of 2007 an oil spill from the existing Kinder Morgan pipeline forced the evacuation of 50 homes in Burnaby. And in 2009, 200,000 liters of oil spilled from Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby Mountain tank farm. These are two incidents in the city. In fact the Trans Mountain pipeline under Kinder Morgan has seen seven spills since 2005, some occurring in neighboring communities or along the Fraser River valley. That’s seven in nine years. Now imagine tripling the capacity of the pipeline with a past safety track record such as the one described above. It does not bode well for the citizens of Burnaby and the Fraser River valley.

So to achieve a low carbon economic outcome and the benefits all humanity will derive from this we need lots of 11-year-olds leading us. I’m six times older than Kate Fink-Jensen, the young girl arrested by my country’s federal police. I understand the science and data that validates global warming. I’m not sure Kate does as of yet but I am certain of one thing. It is her generation that will be far more impacted by my government as well as others around the world who have been unwilling to tackle the problem of rising carbon emissions responsibly. It will be Kate’s generation and those that follow her who will feel the impact of an increasing disruptive climate, of rising sea levels, of an increasingly acidified ocean, of extreme weather events such as prolonged droughts, and both extreme heat and polar vortices. Kate, the 11-year old, will witness a very different Canada by the time she reaches my age, with mountain glaciers, the water sources for so many of our rivers vanishing. Kate will see massive permafrost melt with climate warming methane release. She will bear witness to the serious disruption in Canada’s northern people and biodiversity. Kate will witness it all if we do not face the problem of carbon now.

A child may lead but even the World Bank concurs with its release of a report today entitled, “Turn down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal.” The World Bank is the epitome of staid and conservative fiscal probity and it in this report is stating unequivocally that rising global temperatures threaten the health and livelihood of all on the planet. Doesn’t this make you wonder why the police didn’t join the protestors rather than arrest them to help put a stop to projects in this country that further increase carbon emissions and compromise their children’s future?