Press Release http://savethefraser.ca/fraser_declaration_PR.pdf
Save The Frasier Declaration: http://savethefraser.ca/fraser_declaration.pdf
“I have news for you Mr. Harper: you’re never going to achieve your dream of pushing pipelines through our rivers and lands. We will be the wall that Enbridge cannot break through.”
— Chief Jackie Thomas, Saik’uz First Nation.
The following article is re-posted from the “Council of Canadians”
The Canadian government and western provinces are pushing plans for new or expanded pipelines that will move tar sands bitumen and fracked natural gas from where they are mined to where they can be exported.
These massive projects include the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which would cross British Columbia to bring tar sands crude to western ports where it would be shipped to international markets. The Transpacific Trails pipeline would transport fracked unconventional natural gas extracted from the Horn River Basin to Kitimat port for export. These pipelines pose significant threats to the ecologically sensitive lands and waters, as well as to people’s health and livelihoods. As we face a global climate crisis, these massive pipelines represent the wrong way forward.
These pipelines threaten to:
- Increase the unsustainable expansion in the tar sands and fracking for shale gas.
- Undermine local communities’ right to say “no.”
- Wreak massive environmental damage by crossing hundreds of salmon-bearing rivers and streams, the Great Bear Rainforest and mountainous and landslide-prone land where spills could spell ecological disaster and affect the livelihoods of those living nearby.
- Increase tanker traffic and the risk of a spill in B.C.’s ecologically sensitive coastal waters.
The Council of Canadians’ “No Pipelines! No Tankers!” campaign aims to stop these pipelines.
Our campaign is an extension of our ongoing Energy and Climate Justice work. We continue to call on governments to ensure Canadians’ energy security and work to transition off fossil fuels, including the unsustainable development of the tar sands. Limiting additional pipeline capacity will force a slowdown of the current relentless pace of tar sands development. We approach the climate change crisis from a justice perspective, seeking to address its root causes, which include unsustainable production, consumption and trade that are driven by corporate-led globalization. Real solutions to the climate crisis must be based on democratic accountability, ecological sustainability and social justice.
