Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/12/22/justin-trudeau-looks-forward-t.html
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[quote]The Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain project will increase the capacity of a 53-year-old pipeline[/quote]Look, irony.
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Um…I’m perturbed; I can’t understate this any further.
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Trudeau and the Liberals are caught between a rock and a hard place on this file. The country is very divided on this issue and the federal government has to strike some balance. Yes some of the pipeline projects will get the green light, but a national carbon tax will go in too. Not that I am a huge fan of Trudeau or his party but the fact of the matter was that it didn’t matter who would have won power in Ottawa they were not going to ignore what had happened in the Western Oil Patch.
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I’m super-excited for the carbon tax, hopefully, Canada can lead the way in promoting renewables this way.
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My guess is Exxon’s research showed the Arctic Ocean wouldn’t be melted soon enough for them to refine their oil and ship it direct from Canada so they’re still pushing for the pipeline. I’m waiting for Tillerson to convince Trump they need to make a pipeline under the North Pole from Exxon’s Russian oil fields. Obviously you can’t make it over the ice because they don’t know how long that will last
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On the one hand, yeah, it kind of sucks. But on the other hand, I cannot understate the relief I feel when I see a headline about Trudeau and Trump and remember I live in Canada now.
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Does trudeau look a little coked out there in that photo? It’s that slightly damp sheen on his skin, the slightly too intense gaze.
Far be it from me to stand up for more pollution in a heating up world, but… I just can’t let “Canada’s planet-busting tar sands oil” slide.
You could take every drop of tar sands oil, burn it all up in one big fucking inferno and it would do less damage to the environment than the pollution that the 572 American coal power plants produce every year, not to mention the pollution caused by extracting the coal they consume.
So, while I have a lot of reservations about the tar sands oils and the damage that’s caused from extracting and shipping it, I don’t think the U.S. has any right to sing “Blame Canada” about this until they take care of their extremely damaging coal power plants as a critical first step because it’s a far bigger problem that doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
Second, this oil is going to ship whether there’s a pipeline or not, and it’s currently being sent by rail. This is far more prone to danger as we’ve seen in the disaster that befell Lac Megantic:
A pipeline has the virtue of being a safer alternative (though by no means disaster-proof) which is why it makes sense to use them. But again, they wouldn’t build this Keystone XL pipeline if the U.S. didn’t want the oil, which is yet another reason why blaming Canada seems a bit hypocritical to me.
Third, as others have pointed out, Trudeau is poised to implement a nation-wide carbon tax by 2018. Already several provinces have developed their own system with British Columbia taking the lead in 2008. So far this has led to a significant reduction in Canada’s carbon emissions even without the national program in place.
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