Forum Index > Public Lands Stewardship > Professor in a tree to stop BC TransMountain Pipeline vows not to come down
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altasnob
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PostSat Aug 08, 2020 8:54 am 
I assume this will get locked because it has to do with the forbidden topic of climate change. But if NWhikers are not already aware of the pipeline, they should be. It directly threatens the Puget Sound, Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Olympic National Park. Unfortunately, despite the professor's efforts, it seems inevitable that this project will be completed. A 63 year old Simon Fraser professor has set up camp in trees that are scheduled to be cut for construction of the oil pipeline between Alberta and BC. He seems pretty determined and confident he can shut the project down. If completed, the pipeline would lead to 400 oil tankers a year sailing through the Salish Sea and Strait of Juan de Fuca and then out in the ocean next to both Olympic National Park and Canada's Pacific Rim National Park. Both BC and Washington State oppose the pipeline (even though they would both benefit financially from it) but charity scamming Trudeau and Alberta are shoving it down our throats: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/professor-in-a-tree-over-transmountain-pipeline-vows-not-to-come-down/

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Anne Elk
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PostSat Aug 08, 2020 10:02 am 
Where were all the protesters and debate when the oil companies were pushing big to create the tar sands extraction areas in northern Alberta? There's the source of the problem. If I'm correct, the oil companies have been fooling around up there since the 80's or earlier. Obviously a big FAIL when it comes to stopping a bad idea. I'd hoped the plunging oil prices would shut down most of the tar sands operation b/c the extraction process is so much more expensive that conventional drilling that it wouldn't pay. The bottom line is that Alberta tar sands oil is going to get to a refinery or a shipping port somewhere, one way or another. There have been protests around every single one. What makes the most sense is to pick the route that does the least harm. I was very involved in activities to stop the Enbridge pipline which would have terminated in Kitimat, BC, and brought tankers into the difficult navigational waters of the northern BC archipelago. It would have meant huge tankers literally trying to thread a needle through narrow island passages; with a disastrous grounding pretty much guaranteed. Having done some sailing up the whole BC coast and over to Haida Gwaii, I understood the dangers. Enbridge was so determined, they'd even falsified charts they used in their presentations, conveniently "erasing" whole islands out of the proposed shipping route. Hard to believe, but true. I recall seeing a map of the extent of the Exxon Valdez spill overlaid on the BC Coast - it extended from northern BC all the way to Vancouver. That's how bad the risk was. The Enbridge project was stopped largely through the clout of the northern BC First Nations People. who had never executed a treaty with Canada re their land, but also through the efforts of Trudeau, who also understood the threats to the Great Bear Rainforest. I approve of his support of this pipeline as the one which does least harm. Remember that Keystone XL in the midwest was shut down, also. Is twinning the pipline to Burnaby a great thing? No. But the pipline route is already there. The navigational risks of the southern port are much, much less. It would be better to keep the tankers in more navigable waters in an urban area than to put a new pipeline across northern BC and have an industrial port in the (relative) wilderness of northern BC.

"There are yahoos out there. It’s why we can’t have nice things." - Tom Mahood
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treeswarper
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PostSat Aug 08, 2020 10:37 am 
Switch the project to parking lot construction and it'll be OK.

What's especially fun about sock puppets is that you can make each one unique and individual, so that they each have special characters. And they don't have to be human––animals and aliens are great possibilities
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altasnob
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PostSat Aug 08, 2020 11:27 am 
I don't pretend to be an expert in this subject. But wouldn't BC, Washington, First Nations, and Native American's in the PNW all lack standing to stop oil fracking in Alberta? They only acquire standing when Canada tries to put a pipeline through land they have legal standing to oppose. It seems to me all of the above did spout up at first opportunity, but lost in court. Trudeau is in a damned if you do, or damned if you don't position. But to me, seems there are tremendously more pipelines that already exist east of the Rockies to get oil from Alberta to ports. And I don't have facts on hand to support, but a pipe through BC seems to pass through much more environmental sensitive lands that provide greater wildlife habitat than one from Alberta to Texas, or back East. The new Keystone XL seems to be just temporarily halted. So in the end, we will have a shiny new Keystone XL pipe and this through BC. At least Texas wants a new pipe from Alberta to them. BC and WA don't. So why force us to accept it?

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Tom
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PostSat Aug 08, 2020 12:32 pm 
Not sure why this was posted in the saloon instead of stewardship. It seems like it would be more appropriate there and it's not really a climate change piece. The saloon is for off topic discussion. Moving to stewardship.

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Anne Elk
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PostSat Aug 08, 2020 4:24 pm 
altasnob wrote:
... wouldn't BC, Washington, First Nations, and Native American's in the PNW all lack standing to stop oil fracking in Alberta? They only acquire standing when Canada tries to put a pipeline through land they have legal standing to oppose. It seems to me all of the above did spout up at first opportunity, but lost in court ... And I don't have facts on hand to support, but a pipe through BC seems to pass through much more environmental sensitive lands that provide greater wildlife habitat than one from Alberta to Texas, or back East. The new Keystone XL seems to be just temporarily halted. So in the end, we will have a shiny new Keystone XL pipe and this through BC. At least Texas wants a new pipe from Alberta to them. BC and WA don't. So why force us to accept it?
In re standing, yes; the main opposition should have come from Albertans and any affected First Nations people. Don't know if the actual tar sands area included any native lands, but it's sure affected some of the waters downstream they depend on. I was there in the mid 70's and I don't recollect ever hearing about tar sands environmental issues; wasn't on the national or interational radar. Many entities (communities) were likely "bought off"and saw the oil biz as a good thing; Alberta was just awash in oil money for every conceivable purpose. Even I was an indirect beneficiary. I suspect no one really understood the implications. There's likely fracking in various parts of Alberta but the tar sands operation is more akin to strip mining:
You can search tar sands on youtube for more videos re what's involved. I don't know the history of the tar sands development, although I have Andrew Nikiforuk's tar sands book in my library. Maybe I'll finally read it now; it's the missing link to understanding the pipeline issues. In re you comment, "seems there are tremendously more pipelines that already exist east of the Rockies to get oil from Alberta to ports...": BC pipeline = oil to China, et al. Texas may want a new pipe, but don't tell the midwest states they don't have environmentally sensitive land (rivers, aquifers, etc.) But it's true a land spill is more containable and able to be remediated than a spill into coastal waters.

"There are yahoos out there. It’s why we can’t have nice things." - Tom Mahood
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altasnob
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PostSun Aug 09, 2020 8:25 am 
The new pipeline will triple the oil capacity. Per wiki, right now there are approximately 5 oil tankers leaving Burnaby, BC a month. This will increase to 34. I assume all or nearly all of these will take the southern route around Vancouver Island. Article below (get around pay wall by using private view) indicates two of the most likely places for a tanker to crash and spill are Haro Strait/Boundary Pass (between San Juan Islands and Vancouver and Gulf Islands) and when tankers enter Strait of Juan de Fuca near Victoria. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/kinder-morgan-trans-mountain-pipeline-bc-coast/article35043172/ At least Victoria is very close to finally stop dumping their raw sewage directly in the Strait of Juan de Fuca so now all we have to worry about is Canadian tankers dumping oil.

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Anne Elk
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PostSun Aug 09, 2020 9:48 am 
altasnob wrote:
two of the most likely places for a tanker to crash and spill are Haro Strait/Boundary Pass (between San Juan Islands and Vancouver and Gulf Islands) and when tankers enter Strait of Juan de Fuca near Victoria.
This can be significantly lessened if there is a mandate for (1) local pilotage (as the NOAA ship I was on had to have a local pilot onboard to assist our transit of tricky areas in the Chilean inside passage) and/or (2) escort tugs meeting tankers at the mouth of the Strait of JdF. This is why we're so fortunate to have Fred Felleman as one of our port commissioners now. Fred had been bird-dogging the tug issue for years before he ran for PC. There are jurisdictional issues, of course, and I don't know what the current status of marine laws are for tanker traffic either here or in Canada, but it would be great if he could do some liason work/consulting with the Canadians, and hopefully the activists in Canada will lobby hard for serious escort coverage. Of course that costs a fortune and the tanker companies would fight it. I suspect that at this point the only way the tar sands extractors can make the operation pay is by selling to China. The amt of anticipated daily tanker traffic is outrageous.

"There are yahoos out there. It’s why we can’t have nice things." - Tom Mahood
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mb
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PostSun Aug 09, 2020 12:35 pm 
altasnob wrote:
Per wiki
This is a digression, but in the interest of accuracy... what does this mean? A wiki is a type of easily editable web page sytem. You may have noticed nwhikers contains wiki pages. Examples include the annual calendar photo posts, e.g. https://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8030779 Here's a definition on the most popular wiki site, wikipedia. It's an quickly editable encyclopedia, thus the name combines the two words. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki Is there a nwhikers wiki page which lists the current shipping traffic? Or maybe a specific (but referenced) wikipedia page? Or something else, maybe there's an altasnob wiki somewhere we can look at?

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altasnob
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PostSun Aug 09, 2020 1:22 pm 
Sorry, when I say per wiki I mean per wikipedia. I'm not a computer dork so I didn't know what "wiki" meant, and I am not Hawaiian, so I didn't know that "wiki" meant "quick." I assumed people would assume that I meant wikipedia. And I figure people can then go to Trans Mountain pipeline wikipedia page and read what it says and follow the links to decide for themselves if they think something is credible or not. I generally trust what I read on wikipedia, particularly because there are cites given for whatever it says. In the case above where I cited wikipedia, it comes directly from the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal Decision Tsleil-Waututh Nation v. Canada.

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