climate change policy, science, and activism; photography; cartography and mapmaking
Pipeline politics remain exceptionally contentious in Canada, with one faction seeing them as a path to future prosperity through further bitumen sands development and another seeing them as part of a global suicide pact to permanently wreck the climate and the prospects of all humans for thousands of years. The replacement of British Columbia’s pro-fossil-fuel … Continue reading “Open thread: pipelines under B.C.’s NDP-Green government”
Sometimes paired with the fallacious argument that only people who use no fossil fuels can legitimately oppose fossil fuel development is the statement: “We won’t stop using fossil fuels tomorrow”. The logical error associated with using this statement to defend new fossil fuel infrastructure like fracking wells and bitumen sands pipelines (as well as new … Continue reading ““We won’t stop using fossil fuels tomorrow””
Tonight Toronto350.org organized a vigil to resist the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, which took place along with 44 others across Canada. Justin Trudeau is going to find that his promises about indigenous reconciliation and restoring Canada’s environmental reputation require him to stop further bitumen sands extraction and export. If not, he will end up as … Continue reading “Climate leaders don’t build pipelines”
Some people who favour the construction of new bitumen sands pipelines have been deploying a particularly weak argument, which echoes a couple of the points that have long been made by people who don’t want to take adequate action to avoid catastrophic climate change. They point out that — in one way or another — … Continue reading “The hypocrisy argument for pipelines”
CBC’s The Current recently ran a segment on whether Canada’s climate change goals can be reconciled with new pipeline construction. Tzeporah Berman effectively made the case that Energy East, Kinder Morgan, and the Northern Gateway would be means of increasing bitumen sands production, even beyond the unacceptably high cap chosen by the Alberta government, and … Continue reading “Berman and Findlay on pipelines”
From today’s announcement from Barack Obama: Today, we’re continuing to lead by example. Because ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous … Continue reading “Keystone XL rejected”
Justin Trudeau apparently dislikes being reminded about the science of climate change and the implications for Canada’s bitumen sands: The environmentalist advised Trudeau about accepting the internationally agreed target for a two-degree rise in global temperature means that 80 per cent of the oil sands would have to stay in the ground. Suzuki said Trudeau … Continue reading “Trudeau and Suzuki”
Rather, it is the endpoint of joined-up thinking about climate science and energy policy. On Twitter the other day, Suzy Waldman said: “Trying to envision middle ground between idea coalsands ought 2b shuttered and idea Canada’s economic fate depends on them”. I think this perspective risks perpetuating one of the big problems in Canadian climate … Continue reading “‘Shut down the oil sands’ is not an extreme position”
We are quite busy this summer. We are working on finalizing our brief to the University of Toronto, making the case for why they should divest from fossil fuels. We could definitely use some expert assistance for some of the legal and financial sections, so if you know any lawyers or financial professionals who would … Continue reading “What Toronto350.org is up to”
If you want to get approval for a huge project with many risks and serious associated problems, one strategy is to get decision-makers to split up the question into tiny pieces. Forbid the people on one team from considering the issues another team is looking at. That way, you can prevent the consideration of interactions … Continue reading “Line 9 and the National Energy Board”