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Green

‘Spoil’: The Disaster Of The Northern Gateway Tar Sands Pipeline

By Brad Johnson on Feb 6, 2012 at 12:15 pm

“Spoil,” a 45-minute documentary by the International League of Conservation Photographers, highlights the potential environmental and social disaster that could result from the construction of the Enbridge Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline, through the eyes of some of the world’s top nature photographers. That pipeline would go from Alberta’s tar sands, over the Canadian Rockies, and through a fragile rainforest ecosystem in British Columbia to feed the energy-hungry Asian markets. The entire documentary is free to watch online:

Although Keystone XL advocates like to portray the flowing of tar sands crude to China as inevitable, the dangerous Northern Gateway pipeline is just as controversial.

NEWS FLASH

Canada Will Change Law ‘To Ensure’ All Foreign Marriages Are Recognized | Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson is trying to spray water over the firestorm that erupted following yesterday’s reports that the country could potentially invalidate the marriages of 5,000 foreign same-sex couples whose unions are not recognized in their home states. Nicholson said that the country’s marriage law “will be changed to ensure that any marriages performed in Canada that aren’t recognized in the couple’s home jurisdiction will be recognized in Canada nonetheless.” “This will apply to all marriages performed in Canada,” Mr. Nicholson said. “We have been clear that we have no desire to reopen this issue – both myself and the Prime Minister consider this debate to be closed.”

NEWS FLASH

Canadian Government Won’t Revisit Decision To Invalidate Foreign Same-Sex Marriages | Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is telling reporters that his government will not reconsider a controversial decision that could potentially invalidate the marriages of 5,000 foreign same-sex couples who wed in the country following the enactment of marriage equality in 2004. “When we first came to office we had a vote on this issue. We have no intention of further reopening or opening this issue,” Harper said. The new policy was revealed just recently when the government argued in a Toronto court case “that non-Canadians gays and lesbians who have been married here since 2004 are only considered married under this country’s laws if gay marriage is also recognized in their home country or state.”

Green

Canada Minister: Opponents To Tar Sands Are Foes Of Canada

By Rebecca Leber on Jan 10, 2012 at 10:35 am

Joe Oliver, Canada's environment minister

Ahead of today’s hearings on the controversial Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline, Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver called opponents to tar sands development foes of Canada who undermine national interest.

Oliver’s unexpectedly frank open letter charged that environmental groups attract “funding from foreign special interest groups” and draw “jet-setting celebrities,” referring to donations from U.S. charitable foundations. His flippant treatment of tar sands opponents highlight the divide between national self-interest and environmental concern on the issue:

These [environmental] groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda. They seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects. They use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources. Finally, if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further.

Now, the pro-oil sands group Ethical Oil is seeking to ban all foreigners from the discussion. An Ethical Oil spokesperson bluntly said, “Foreigners and their foreign hired hands should butt out.” However, many foreign companies are involved in the tar sands and the issue reaches far beyond Canada. NASA climatologist James Hansen has said if they are developed as planned, it’s “essentially game over” for the climate.

NEWS FLASH

Teachers In Ontario, Canada To Receive Mandatory LGBT Diversity Training | New teachers in Ontario, Canada will “soon graduate from college with an improved understanding of gender and sexuality,” Xtra! reports. In 2013, teachers will be required to “complete two years of training instead of one” with an “increased focus on equity and diversity…as a way for new teachers to better understand the gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans community.” Catholic and secular teachers will receive the inclusive education.

Climate Progress

Canadian Officials Privately Admit “an Absence of Credible Scientific Evidence” That Tar Sands Are Getting Cleaner

By Stephen Lacey on Dec 20, 2011 at 12:40 pm

Photos: Peter Essick, National Geographic. Edited by Treehugger.

Canada was once seen as a progressive leader on environmental issues. Today, the country is becoming an international pariah when it comes to climate change — facing fierce criticism from environmental groups and world leaders over its decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol and push dirty tar sands around the world.

It’s not just verbal criticism. The Europeans are currently considering a law that would label the carbon content of tar sands crude in the EU as 22% higher than conventional crude. That would discourage refiners, who have to meet 20% carbon reduction requirements by 2020, from importing the fuel.

And back in the U.S., the fierce opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline rages on, spurring a strong movement within the country against the resource.

Canadian officials are doing their best damage control, claiming that the environmental footprint of digging up tar sands is getting smaller. According to the Postmedia Network, Canada’s environment minister Peter Kent claimed at the Durban climate talks that tar sands are “a responsibly and sustainably developed resource, of which we are proud.”

But internal government briefing documents released earlier this month and reported on by Postmedia show a different kind of messaging behind the scenes. In a background memo, send to Canada’s Deputy Environment Minister Paul Boothe, officials admitted the lack of “credible information on [tar sands'] environmental performance.”

“Environment Canada also advised that the absence of scientific evidence supporting their claims was affecting the industry’s ability to raise capital from and sell into (the) foreign market,” reads the memo.

PostMedia obtained the documents through a freedom of information request:

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NEWS FLASH

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper Claims He Was Told This Month That Keystone XL Would Be Approved | Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a conservative advocate of his nation’s tar sands boom, told CTV National News that U.S. officials said the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would still be approved when he visited the United States earlier this month, but now he believes it will never get built. “When I was down in the United States recently it was interesting. I ran into several senior Americans who all said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get Keystone done. You can sell all of your oil to us.’ I said, ‘Yeah we’d love to,’ but I think the problem is now that we’re on a different track,” Harper said.

Stephen Harper

NEWS FLASH

Canada’s Conservatives May Repeal Marriage Equality | Jean Chrétien, the former prime minister of Canada, is warning Liberals that the country’s Conservative government, led by current prime minister Stephen Harper, is undermining progressive policies and may soon target same-sex marriage and abortion rights. “Unless we are bold. Unless we seize the moment. Everything we built will start being chipped away,” the former prime minister wrote in a fundraising letter. “The Conservatives have already ended gun control and Kyoto. Next may be a woman’s right to choose, or gay marriage. Then might come capital punishment. And one by one, the values we cherish as Canadians will be gone.” Canada legalized marriage equality in July 2005.

NEWS FLASH

After Disbanding, Occupy Windsor Helps House Homeless | Facing pressure from the city, Canada’s Occupy Windsor disbanded last week. Yet while the protesters have disbanded, they have not quit working on behalf of the public. When the camp was disbanding, Ron Pritchard, who was homeless, reached out for help. Three days later, Pritchard was re-settled into social housing nearby. “Friends did it for me through Occupy Windsor,” Pritchard said. “It’s a new start. I can better my life.” Pritchard joins at least one other homeless man housed thanks to the help of Occupy Windsor.

By Zaid Jilani on Dec 12, 2011 at 3:15 pm

Green

Top Eight Climate Disasters During The Durban Climate Talks

By Brad Johnson on Dec 9, 2011 at 2:05 pm

During the two weeks of the international climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, millions of people have been affected by extreme weather disasters. Our poisoned climate is fueling more extreme and dangerous weather, as the super-heated atmosphere brings heavier rains, harder droughts, and fiercer storms. These eight climate disasters that took place while the world’s governments debate whether to address climate pollution have killed dozens of people, displaced tens of thousands of people, and disrupted the lives of millions, and yet are far from the most damaging of 2011:

8. Canada Weather Bomb

On December 8: Hurricane-force winds in a fast-moving “weather bomb” system, including 92 mph gusts, knocked out power for 68,000 people in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Heavy snowfall blanketed north New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, forcing schools to close.

7. Scotland Weather Bomb

December 8: Severe winds of up to 165 mph from another weather bomb battered Scotland and northern England, forcing hundreds of schools to close, destroying a giant wind turbine, and leaving more than 56,000 people without power. “The storm’s winds were so strong as its pressure dropped by 44mb, almost double the qualifying amount for a weather bomb, in the 24 hours to 6am this morning. The winds today were stronger than the 80mph gusts seen when Hurricane Katia hit in September.”

6. Los Angeles Santa Ana Windstorm

November 30: A powerful, late-season Santa Ana windstorm with gale-force gusts “left much of the Los Angeles area strewn with toppled trees and downed power lines on Thursday, slowing rush-hour traffic,” canceling hundreds of flights, and knocking out electricity to over 430,000 residents. “Public schools in Pasadena and 11 other districts in San Gabriel Valley, northeast of Los Angeles, were closed for the day.” Thousands are still without power.

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