Twelve Canadian Scientists weigh in on Climate Change

 Read CBC News article here: Government should 'grow up' on climate change

Letter to Joe Oliver:

Stop Line 9 Reversal

Here are reasons why we have to stop the reversal of Line 9 pipeline from Sarnia to Montreal.

I am not going to discuss the inevitable environmental destruction when Line 9 ruptures and spills its toxic contents into the Green Belt of Southern Ontario. I am not going to delve into the facts as to why the condition of the 40-year old pipeline will be incapable of safely transporting the more corrosive tar sands bitumen.

Here is what is the real push behind the Line 9 reversal.

The Harper government and its constituents, Big Oil companies, are in a panic. Expansion plans for tar sands development are on hold. Big Oil cannot deliver its product to its customers. TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline through the U.S.A. to Texas, while temporarily suspended by U.S. President Barack Obama, has divided citizens south of the border. It has received fierce opposition in Nabraska and other states.

Big Oil's Plan B is Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline with hopes to bring tar sands oil to tanker terminals in Kitimat, B.C., to be shipped to China. Harper and his oil men are so desparate that they have sold out to China, and given CNOOC (Chinese National Offshore Oil Company) the right to sue for damages at any level, federal, provincial or municipal, if decisions are made that damage CNOOC's expected return on investment.

The Northern Gateway pipeline will never see the light of day. Our First Nations brothers and sisters will make certain of that.

Which brings us to Plan C, to reverse the flow of Line 9 in order to move tar sands oil as diluted bitumen (dilbit) from Alberta through Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Ontario, Quebec, Vermont, New Hamshire, to Portland, Maine.

Why is the Harper goverment and Big Oil so desparate and in such a hurry to sell tar sands oil?

Because of global warming and climate change.

The rest of the world, particularly European countries, are able to see the potential devastation caused by escalating carbon emissions. European countries are light years ahead of U.S.A. and Canada "we'll do what big brother does" in developing renewable energy. The Alberta tar sands deposits are the second largest deposits of carbon on the planet, next to the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. If the carbon from the Alberta tar sands were to be released, it would be game over for humanity. European nations know this. The rest of the world knows this. It is only a matter of time when the global community boycotts Canada for its role in poisoning the global atmosphere.

Here is the ultimate irony. Harper and Big Oil needs to get tar sands bitumen out of the Alberta fast because of global warming and climate change. It is only a matter of time when the global community suffers irreversibly from the release of too much carbon into the atmosphere. And time is running out!

The tar sands is cash in the ground as Harper and Big Oil see it. Liquidating the tar sands is not about the well-being of Canadians or protection of the environment. It is about Big Oil stuffing their pockets with money. Harper and Big Oil is desperate and determined to cash in on this bounty before the door closes.

This is not just about pipelines. This is about tar sands.

This is a Call for Action!

Hamilton Line 9
Council of Canadians
http://canadians.org/blog/?p=17878
Council of Canadians Line 9 blog
Stop Line 9 - Toronto
Environmental Defence
The dilbit disaster in Kalamazoo
http://rabble.ca/news/2012/09/enbridge-line-9-other-other-pipeline
http://rabble.ca/news/2012/11/toronto-conference-lays-basis-mass-challenge-tar-sands-pipeline
http://www.watershedsentinel.ca/content/line-9-shipping-tar-sands-crude-east


Hamilton 350 Blog

Council should challenge dangerous Hamilton pipeline application

An environmental disaster is waiting to happen in Hamilton: the rupture of Enbridge’s Hamilton-to-Sarnia pipeline, pouring diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands into the Beverley Swamp or one of the many creeks and rivers along the way that flow into lakes Ontario and Erie. The pipeline hub is at Westover in Flamborough.

 

Enbridge applied last month to the National Energy Board (NEB) to reverse the flow of its 37-year-old Pipeline 9 through Hamilton and ship diluted bitumen from west to east, rather than crude oil from east to west. Pipeline 9 uses the same type of steel pipe that ruptured last year in Kalamazoo, Michigan, causing a $750-million spill that’s still not fully cleaned up. It took Enbridge 17 hours even to turn off the flow of that pipeline after the rupture.

 

Crude oil isn’t corrosive but diluted bitumen is. Crude oil requires less pressure to move through a pipeline than diluted bitumen. And diluted bitumen, when bursting from a break in an outdated pipe that is under greater pressure than it was built for, does not float on water. Rather, it sinks to the bottom where it’s hard to remove, and releases toxic solvents into the atmosphere that could cause respiratory problems and even deaths among residents, first responders, livestock, and wildlife nearby. Six hundred people became ill during the Kalamazoo spill. Two later died.

 

Enbridge Pipeline 10 from Hamilton to Buffalo spilled once in Binbrook in 2001 and, according to Binbrook resident John McGreal, it took 12 hours for the company to shut off that 29-year-old pipe.

 

On Oct. 17, 2012, Enbridge was supposed to address Hamilton council regarding its proposal. For the third time, it failed to show up. Instead, Enbridge representatives privately lobbied councillors but apparently failed to tell them diluted bitumen was to be shipped. Hamilton, incidentally, does not have a compulsory lobbyist registry.

 

In Enbridge’s place, a number of citizen delegates addressed council. I argued that, because the Stephen Harper government recklessly cancelled the environmental assessment of the Enbridge proposal (along with 3,000 others in its omnibus budget bill), council should direct its legal staff to initiate a legal challenge forcing the project to undergo one. Until then, I recommended the city amend its building code to idle oil pipelines over 30 years of age within city limits. At the very minimum, I urged that Hamilton’s idle blast furnaces should be churning out steel for a brand new pipeline.

 

Harper, I pointed out, is the voice of the oil industry in Canada. Line 9 through Hamilton represents the last hope of the oilsands consortium to ship out its environmentally unfriendly product to world markets. The proposed Keystone pipeline for oilsands bitumen through the United States for refinement in Texas has been nixed for now by Barack Obama. The proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to transfer bitumen to the West Coast for shipment to Asian markets by supertanker (shades of the Exxon Valdiz) has been stopped by British Columbia. So, Enbridge wants to ship diluted bitumen through Hamilton to be refined in Maine.

I also explained why the oilsands development should be shut down. That mining operation is environmentally unsustainable and represents an obsolete 1950s paradigm of the use of fossil fuels to power a completely outdated system of private transportation using cars and trucks. It is the world’s largest single polluter producing CO2, a greenhouse gas that promotes climate change.

 

Other presenters called for council to demand a $1 billion performance bond from Enbridge, to be apprised of the results of 84 recent “integrity digs” on pipelines near Hamilton, to intervene in Enbridge’s NEB application, to approach other municipalities for joint action, and to force Enbridge to appear at public informational meetings, among other initiatives. On Oct. 17, with Brian McHattie in the chair, city councillors listened attentively and asked many questions of presenters and city staff. Hopefully, council will act promptly on these suggestions.

 

Hamiltonians wanting to learn more about this issue would be well advised to hear Andrew Nikiforuk deliver the annual Spirit of Red Hill Lecture on Wednesday, Nov. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church, 170 Dundurn South. The topic of this award-winning journalist will be Bitumen, Pipelines and the Petro-State. Admission is free.

 

Ken Stone is a member of Environment Hamilton and Hamilton 350 Committee.

Tribute to Maggie Hughes

Maggie Hughes has died after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis. Maggie was an independent journalist and a tireless advocate for social justice, citizen activism and environmental sustainability. For 12 years she produced a weekly radio program on CFMU 93.3 FM called The Other Side that reported and examined news and events from a grassroots rather than an institutional perspective.

Her topics of interest included the Alberta Oilsands, global warming, pollution, corporate globalization, justice for First Nations communities, sustainability, civil rights, the concentration of wealth, environmental destruction, and government accountability. She published interviews with scientists, activists and advocates to present more detailed information and background that could not be found in the sound-bite media.

Just before her death, Maggie focused on the Enbridge plan to run diluted bitumen through a 37 year old pipeline that passes through Hamilton on its way east. On October 30, she published audio recordings of the citizen delegations to the City's General Issues Committee on the plan.

Maggie suffered from multiple sclerosis, a degenerative inflammatory disease that attacks the nervous system and leads to progressive physical and cognitive disability.

Despite her disease and its unpredictable but increasingly debilitating symptoms, Maggie continued single-handedly to publish detailed reports on important issues, producing thousands of hours of audio and video recordings from public meetings, protests, lectures and other events.

James Tennant, program director at CFMU, writes about her dedication. "We remember a woman who needed a motorized chair, yet hitched a ride on the back of a motorcycle to gather news from Caledonia in 2006."

In her last email to me, Maggie expressed her deep frustration dealing with MS:

"I can tell you it is like living in a circus of constant change. Very difficult. ... Be nice if I made some people understand that MS isn't just about going lame, or having speech struggles. It is far more."

Maggie's relentless dedication to social justice in Hamilton has long been a major inspiration for me, not only through her willingness to get involved but also as an example of what a difference one person can make with determination and skill.

She will be deeply missed.

Ryan McGreal

Published November 09, 2012 on RaiseTheHammer.org

What are we leaving for future generations?

On the issue of climate change, Canada is failing our global community.  Canadians are failing future generations.  We are also failing ourselves.

Public figures as diverse as Prince Charles and Stephen Hawking have declared climate change the biggest threat to human kind.  A report published earlier this year estimates that even early, relatively subtle, climatic changes cause as many as 400,000 deaths a year, mostly as a result of associated hunger and communicable diseases. 

It should not be surprising that climate change could be responsible for so much death and destruction.  Hurricane Sandy is just the most recent reminder of exactly the type of the damage we can expect.  Hamiltonians and local farmers are sure to remember the strange, early, warm spring followed by a cold snap which devastated so many local fruit tree crops.  Images of dead corn stalks as a result of this hot dry summer should also be fresh in our memory.  Climate change has the ability to diminish our most basic necessities: food, water and shelter.

Many prominent figures in the military industrial complex refer to climate change as a threat multiplier.  Gwynne Dyer, in his book Climate Wars often repeats the chilling mantra that “people always raid before they starve”.  It is no wonder that the United Kingdom’s Climate and Energy Security Envoy has officially made the same declaration we heard from Charles and Hawking. 

More alarming still, Jared Diamond popularized the idea that our unsustainable practices could lead to a collapse of civilization as we know it.  The casualties of such a serious event would be unprecedented.  The truth is that it is impossible to know how climate change will impact human civilization and our biosphere.  All we know is that the risks we are exposing ourselves to are immense.

Our Prime Minister is focused on removing oil from Alberta as quickly as we possibly can at the expense of significant action on climate change.  Canada is repeatedly been given Colossal Fossil awards for being the most obstructionist nation at climate change conferences, like the most recent one in Durban.  We also recently made headlines for lobbying against an international ban on oil subsidies, which tax paying Canadians still provide to the tune of $1.4 billion a year.

Canadians are some of the highest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet per populace, emitting more than a hundred times more emissions than people in undeveloped nations like Bangladesh, who will probably suffer most as a result of climate change. 

As a 29 year old, my generation has often been referred to as the new lost generation.  I wonder how all Canadians, young and old, will be remembered if we continue to contribute so heavily to the problem of climate change.  Surely, our behavior is an insulting tribute to the great generation that won World War II.  Many died for the democracy and freedom we have today and we have the responsibility to put these gifts to good use.  Canadian citizens have a moral duty to confront a problem as immense as climate change.

Please join Hamilton 350 as we fast for 24 hours starting November 23^rd at 8am in an effort to highlight the relationship between climate change and food security.  This is just one small part of the response we, as Canadians, owe our global community.  Visit Hamilton350.org for more information.

Hamilton 350 Blog

Rally October 17th urging Council to Oppose the Line 9 Reversal

Wednesday October 17th, 9:00am
Hamilton City Hall (Main St, between Bay and McNab)
Join us for a half-hour rally before your workday starts

On Wednesday October 17, the General Issues Committee (GIC) of the
Hamilton city council will be receiving a report from their staff about
Enbridge's reversal of their Line 9 pipeline. Line 9 runs through Hamilton
and is being reversed to move Tar Sands oil to eastern Canada, ports on
the Atlantic, and the United States. After the Conservative federal
government cancelled the environmental assessment of this plan (along with
thousands of other EAs), Hamilton city council decided to commission their
own study of the issue.

We are optimistic about the council's decision to study the Line 9
reversal, and we are gathering on the 17th at 9am to ask council to do
everything in their power to oppose the Line 9 reversal and any attempt to
move Tar Sands oil through the Hamilton area. We will rally until about
9:30, then attend the meeting of the GIC to support the speakers calling
on council to oppose the Line 9 reversal. A representative from Enbridge
had been scheduled to address council as well, but after twice changing
the date, they have now backed out all together. This is a continuation of
Enbridge's plan of secrecy and dishonesty, as they refuse to reveal their
full plan for Line 9.

The Tar Sands produces the dirtiest oil in the world – its extraction has
devastated the Athabaska river, and accidents in transporting the toxic
goop have lead to more than a dozen deaths in Michigan, following a
pipeline burst into Michigan's Kalamazoo river. All pipelines spill. If
Tar Sands oil travels down Line 9, this thirty-five year-old pipeline will
experience more frequent leaks of more toxic oil directly into the Beverly
Swamp in the headwaters of the Spencer Creek, Hamilton's largest
watershed.

This dirty inefficient oil also drives the catastrophic climate change,
of which Hamilton got a taste this past summer with the record-breaking
heat and drought. We also call for the Federal government to respect the
sovereignty and treaty rights of Indigenous nations, both in Alberta and
locally. Line 9 crosses the territory of the Haudenosaunee, and in the
spirit of the Two Row wampum treaty, we call on the municipal government
to help see these treaties upheld.

We organize in Hamilton as part of a broader movement to stop the flows of
Tar Sands oil, of the natural gas that fuels its extraction, and the money
that props the industry up. This movement did not begin with Hamilton's
council and it will not end with it. But this is a chance for Hamilton's
government to be on the right side of this issue and to lend their support
to the grassroots struggles that will keep stopping the Line 9 reversal
and the Tar Sands – with or without them.

For updates about this and other events, get on the Hamilton Line 9 mailing
list by writing to hamiltonline9@ecologyfund.net or visit
hamiltonline9.wordpress.com   

Hamilton 350 Blog

Enbridge bails as opposition grows

Canada’s largest pipeline company has withdrawn its request to speak to councillors about planned flow reversal for its 37-year-old Line 9 running across rural Hamilton. But local opposition is growing, fed by the expectation that the pipe will carry diluted bitumen from the Alberta tar sands to foreign markets. Opponents have called a rally at city hall on Wednesday morning and a protest next Sunday at Enbridge Inc’s pipeline hub in rural Flamborough.

A staff report going to the general issues committee on Wednesday says there are dozens of residential wells within a kilometre of the site where Enbridge will be carrying out construction activities near the village of Westover, as well as a Provincially Significant Wetland (PSW), and four city-designated Environmentally Significant Areas (ESAs). The construction activity is expected to employ 30 people for about four months and includes “installation of a short section of pipe”, but the report concludes that the city has no jurisdictional authority over federally-regulated pipelines and that no action is required by councillors.

“Based on the above, staff is satisfied that the National Energy Board has addressed the issues surrounding pipeline safety and emergency response protocol through their approvals process. Since there are no planned impacts to Hamilton’s Environmentally Significant Areas and/or to existing land uses, residents and water supplies as a result of Enbridge’s proposal to reverse the direction of flow within the existing section of pipeline between Sarnia and Westover, it is concluded that there are no foreseeable impacts to the City of Hamilton.”

While Enbridge has been unwilling to reveal what it plans to put through the pipeline, the Globe and Mail and other media have reported that it will carry diluted bitumen (also known as dilbit), an unrefined composite of materials extracted from the Alberta tar sands mixed with chemical solvents to make the heavy viscous material flow. The company is also considering expanding the capacity of Line 9 once it has approval to reverse the flows all the way to Montreal.

The eastern plan is apparently an option to the company’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline across hundreds of lakes and streams in northern British Columbia that is mired in controversy. Moving the unrefined tar sands material in that direction would also involve supertankers traveling through the Great Bear rainforest and other treacherous BC coastal waters.

Opposition to the Ontario flow reversal by Environmental Defence and others has focused on the shift from oil to the much more corrosive dilbit that also requires increases in both temperature and pressure in the pipeline. The staff report, however, makes no mention of dilbit, tar sands or bitumen, referring only to “crude oil” which it notes was transported easterly through the pipeline for many years after it was first constructed in the mid-1970s.

“However, in the 1990s, when off-shore oil from areas such as the North Sea, West Africa and the Middle East was more affordable, Line 9 was reversed to westbound to carry crude oil from the Montreal terminal to Sarnia.”

It was dilbit from the Enbridge pipe that feeds into Line 9 at Sarnia that contaminated over 60 kilometers of Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in July 2010, and sickened dozens of residents when the solvents spread into the local community. The company’s response to the spill has been lambasted by US regulatory authorities and last week the Environmental Protection Agency ordered it to expand a cleanup that has already cost the company over $800 million.

Huffington Post reported that “on the same day that Enbridge told its investors that its tar sands spill and cleanup had made the Kalamazoo River cleaner, EPA ordered the Canadian tar sands pipeline company to resume its cleanup of the Kalamazoo River after finding that submerged oil ‘exists throughout approximately 38 miles of the Kalamazoo’.”

Eight delegations have been approved to speak on the Enbridge report at Wednesday’s general issues committee that begins at 9:30 am in council chambers. They include representatives of the Six Nations Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

Opponents of shipping tar sands through Hamilton have called a rally prior to the meeting. They point to the cancellation of a federal environmental assessment of the Line 9 flow reversal and ask councillors to oppose the Enbridge project and to help uphold the treaties with indigenous peoples.

“This movement did not begin with Hamilton's council and it will not end with it,” their statement notes. “But this is a chance for Hamilton's government to be on the right side of this issue and to lend their support to the grassroots struggles that will keep stopping the Line 9 reversal and the Tar Sands – with or without them.”

The Hamilton 350 Committee on climate change is also inviting the public to a protest potluck picnic at Enbridge’s Westover hub at noon on Sunday, October 21. Cyclists are invited to ride there from Westdale, leaving at 10 am from My Dog Joe’s Café.

Hamilton 350 Blog