EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING 2013 website all information is now up at http://efgathering.weebly.com.
Gathering Dates 7th-11th August,
Location – SE England (nearest station Bexhill)
EARTH FIRST! SUMMER GATHERING 2013 website all information is now up at http://efgathering.weebly.com.
Gathering Dates 7th-11th August,
Location – SE England (nearest station Bexhill)
The Unist’ot’en People (a.k.a C’ilhts’ekhyu) of the Wet’suwet’en Nation maintain a “Soft Blockade” keeping pipeline workers and subcontractors out of their territories. The blockade is located 66km on the Morice West Forest Service Road south of the town of Houston BC.
Hundreds of supporters, volunteers, recreationalists, and mushroom pickers have been able to cross into the guarded territory by showing respect to the territory owners and answering some simple questions. The questions were as follows:
There were some people who have chosen not to answer any of the questions and were not permitted into the lands. Some of the people rejected were outright racist and belligerent; some people refused to recognize the authority of the territory owners; and some were simply unable to truthfully answer any of the questions until they could develop a relationship with the Unist’ot’en.
The decision to control territory traffic came when workers for the proposed Apache/Chevron Fracking Gas Pipelines were caught in the territory last November after being previously warned for trespassing. The Unist’ot’en have been leading a movement among the larger Wet’suwet’en population to stop ALL proposed Pipelines (including Fracking and Tar Sands) from crossing their territories.
In 2008, the Unist’ot’en alongside the other four Clans of the Wet’suwet’en walked away from the BC Treaty Commission negotiation process. They found that since the 1997 Supreme Court of Canada’s Delgamuukw v. Queeen Court decision, government and industry have only escalated their activities on their lands at an alarming rate without meaningful consultation.
Freda Huson, the Spokeswoman for the Unist’ot’en states, “The plaintiffs in the landmark Delgamuukw Supreme Court of Canada case are the Hereditary Chiefs and their members. Government and Industry are breaking their own laws when they choose to only consult with Indian Act band councils. The propaganda writers for the Pacific Trails Pipeline like to say that they have 15 First Nation People’s support, when in fact they have only been talking to Indian Act communities. That has to stop. This struggle to protect our lands is not about holding out for financial gain. It is about protecting our lands from destructive practices from industry. Our actions will not only benefit our future generations but everyone’s future generations.”
The logging road leading into the territory is managed by the CANFOR logging company and CANFOR is taking the lead to begin a meaningful process of consultation. The Unist’ot’en are welcoming this new relationship with CANFOR and are hopeful that other industry projects will choose to begin asking permission rather than implementing projects without meaningful consultation.
As the business case for tar sands extraction falters, Arctic drilling is suspended, and the company is investigated for price fixing, Shell’s board will be under pressure to defend the direction it is taking at its AGM in The Hague on Tuesday 21 May.
Eriel and Mae in the Netherlands, preparing to take on Shell tomorrow!
Two Indigenous women, representing communities impacted by Shell’s operations abroad, will attend the AGM to confront the Chairman and Board over the massive human and ecological rights violations and economic devastation that the company’s operations bring to Indigenous communities. They will argue that Shell’s decision to pursue highly risky ‘extreme energy’ projects, like Arctic drilling and Canadian tar sands, will have little long term benefit for the company, and expose it to both reputational damage and political risk, including litigation.
One of the communities represented, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN), which resides downstream from tar sands operations, is currently suing Shell for violating past agreements that have threatened their treaty rights. The community is also actively opposing two new tar sands mines Shell is proposing to develop on their land. For more details, watch the powerful film above. Legal challenges by other First Nations against tar sands extraction on their traditional territories is also increasing.
Eriel Deranger, community member and spokesperson for ACFN, states:
“Shell’s current and proposed tar sands projects violate terms of our treaty, destroy our land and contaminate waters critical to our survival. The ACFN leadership has made a commitment to protect our lands, rights and people currently being threatened by tar sands development. We have tried exploring amenable agreements and options with Shell only to be disappointed by their inability to compromise and adjust proposed plans to adequately work with us which has led and continues to lead toward litigation. Our culture, lands and rights can no longer stand for unabated and irresponsible development of tar sands in the region by Shell or any operator.”
Shell is also under fire for its Arctic operations. The company has spent $4.5bn securing permits to drill in Arctic waters. However it has been proven incapable of operating in the area and has had to suspend its plans for drilling this summer.
Mae R Hank, tribal member of the Native Village of Point Hope, Alaska, said:
“The Beaufort and Chukchi Seas are critical to the Inupiaq culture and traditions, and provide a vital habitat for the endangered bowhead whales, beluga whales, polar bears, walruses, seals and migratory birds. If an oil spill were to occur in the Arctic’s extreme conditions, there is no proven method to clean it up during Winter. Shell is taking a deadly risk with Inupiat and other Arctic Indigenous peoples’ cultures and food security for shortsighted profit, while the community faces long term consequences to their survival.”
Shell wants to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, which provide a vital habitat for polar bears as well as many other endangered species. Photo by Martha de Jong-Lantink.
In addition, the UK Tar Sands Network is bringing concerns to Shell’s shareholders over other long-term risks to the company’s investments in tar sands.
The tar sands are landlocked, making them difficult and expensive to get to market. The pipelines that present the industry’s only viable solution to this problem – such as Keystone XL and Enbridge Northern Gateway – are facing massive public opposition, and look unlikely to be built soon. The price of tar sands crude has dropped as a result. Meanwhile, in Europe, the Fuel Quality Directive (FQD) is likely to strongly discourage future tar sands imports into Europe. Lax standards and lack of adequate environmental regulation have led to several high-profile leaks and spills in recent weeks, including the flooding of an Arkansas suburb with tar sands oil. Meanwhile, a recent report by the Carbon Tracker initiative identified an alarming ‘carbon bubble’, arguing that 80% of oil companies’ current fossil fuel reserves are ‘unburnable carbon’, and anticipating a crash in prices as climate regulations kick in.
In March, French oil giant Total pulled out of one of its three Canadian tar sands projects, citing the high costs and fragile profit margins that are besetting the whole industry. Total was willing to take a $1.65 billion loss rather than press ahead with what has become a bad investment.
Shell will also be criticised by UK campaigners for heavily lobbying the UK government against the labelling of tar sands as highly polluting in the Fuel Quality Directive. Shell was revealed to have a close relationship with its former Chief Economist, now Secretary of State for Business and Industry and official ‘Minister for Shell’ Vince Cable, in a letter published last year. The letter urged him to harden the government’s line against the FQD, a move which was revealed to have happened in leaked documents published last week.
Representatives from Indigenous communities in Canada and the Arctic attended Shell’s AGM last year, but did not feel their concerns were taken seriously. Photo by Ben Powless.
Suzanne Dhaliwal, from the UK Tar Sands Network, commented:
“The risk factors that recently led Total to ditch a major tar sands project are increasing. The tar sands are landlocked and expensive, and opposition to new pipelines has led the price of tar sands crude to drop. Meanwhile, the industry’s high emissions mean that Canada’s oil is increasingly looking like ‘unburnable carbon’. Despite Shell’s frenzied lobbying, upcoming EU legislation on transport emissions could close off this key future market and set a precedent that other countries will follow. Shell should ditch its expansion plans before the carbon bubble bursts, exposing its shareholders to financial disaster.”
The protest begins!
9th May 2013
Today Oxford University launched a new research partnership with Shell, and opened the Shell Geoscience Laboratory. The ceremony was attended by Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Andrew Hamilton, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University and Alison Goligher, Shell’s Executive Vice-President for Unconventionals.
The partnership with the Earth Sciences Department has drawn criticism from alumni, staff and students in a letter published in today’s Guardian. There are over 75 signatories (with more continuing to come in) including prominent environmentalists Jonathon Porritt, George Monbiot and Jeremy Leggett, Emeritus Fellow of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute Brenda Boardman, and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Rachel Stancliffe. Last night, Oxford University Students’ Union passed an emergency motion to ‘formally oppose’ the partnership.
Paula bear listening to the apology from “Shell representative” Photo by Zoe Broughton
About 50 Oxford students, alumni, staff and residents protested outside the opening ceremony (see video), supported by several national human rights and environmental groups (see below). They held their own futuristic ‘closing ceremony’ – a tongue-in-cheek piece of street theatre set in 2018 which celebrated the closure of the ill-fated and unpopular Shell-funded geosciences laboratory after 5 years of criticism. The crowd heard pologetic speeches from ‘the Vice-Chancellor’, ‘Shell’ (including a direct apology to Paula the polar bear who was among the protesters) and ‘ex-Secretary of State Ed Davey’. This was followed by various creative chants such “We’re united in defiance, get the Shell out of our science”, “Oxford Uni funding fail, Shell’s just in it for the shale” and “Oxford Uni, please dump Shell. If you don’t we’ll raise hell!”
Later today two people were dragged out of Oxford’s St Edmund Hall, where the Earth Sciences department members were having dinner with Shell and the Vice-Chancellor, to celebrate their controversial new partnership. One of them started to calmly and politely explain why the partnership is receiving so much criticism, but was dragged out by the college porters. Film below.
The concerns about this partnership are wide-ranging. Shell is seen by many as an inappropriate choice of partner for Oxford University due to its enormous contribution to climate change. The new partnership includes research on, amongst other things, the location and properties of black shale – a type of rock rich in oil and gas. Whatever the scientific merits of this work, it will be of great assistance to Shell in locating and extracting more fossil fuels at a time of climate emergency.
Shell’s research money is also being criticised as an attempt to buy legitimacy for its controversial activities globally. These include human rights abuses in the Niger Delta, highly-destructive tar sands extraction which is undermining Indigenous rights in Canada, reckless drilling plans in the Arctic, and controversial gas fracking in South Africa.
Today’s action also marked the beginning of a movement for ‘Fossil Free‘ universities, spearheaded by student network, People & Planet, calling on the higher education sector to sever ties with the fossil fuel industry. Its petition calling on Oxford University to go ‘fossil free’ was signed by nearly 500 students, alumni and others, in less than 24 hours.
It’s as if the universe is trying to tell us something, isn’t it?
It’s as if the universe is trying to tell us something, isn’t it?
First, a disastrous month that saw at least 15 separate oil spills worldwide, nearly all of them in North America. That month also saw an oil barge catch fire after a collision, and the publication of a study implicating fracking as a cause of earthquakes.
Now at least 600 gallons have spilled from an Enbridge oil pumping station near Viking, Minnesota.Two fuel barges carrying a natural gas derivative have exploded and are still burning on the Alabama River. And new reports strongly suggest that tar sands from Exxon’s Pegasus Pipeline in Mayflower, Arkansas have seeped into Lake Conway and are heading toward the Arkansas River.
Disasters like these bring the real costs of fossil fuels into sharp focus, because we can imagine ourselves affected by them. But the truth is, disasters like these are part of everyday life for the people and other beings living in areas where fossil fuels are extracted—or any other industrial materials, from copper for solar panels to coltan for cell phones.
If you wouldn’t want oil spilling into your back yard, if you wouldn’t want a strip mine ripping open a hole behind your house and poisoning your water, then it’s time to admit that the economic system founded on consuming these materials has got to go. We’ll never have justice or sustainability if we base one group’s “high standard of living” on the dislocation and destruction of others.
Spaulding, OK- Monday, April 29th, 6:15 AM– Earlier this morning two Texas residents locked themselves to machinery being used to construct TransCanada’s dangerous and controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in Spaulding, OK through Muscogee Creek Nation land by treaty. Benjamin Butler and Eamon Treadaway Danzig took action today to prevent the Cross Timbers bioregion from being poisoned by this inherently dangerous tar sands pipeline, just as the surrounding wetlands and residential areas have been poisoned as a result of Exxon’s Pegasus pipeline rupture near Mayflower, Arkansas. Recent Tar Sands spills in Minnesota and Arkansas, as well as an explosion at a Tar Sands refinery in Detroit have highlighted the urgency in stopping Tar Sands extraction and transportation.
Butler and Danzig are acting as a part of Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, a growing coalition of groups and individuals dedicated to stopping the expansion of Tar Sands infrastructure throughout the Great Plains. Their actions follow the escalating number of work-stopping actions that have occurred in Oklahoma this past month. Both anti-extraction activists cite concern of the effect a spill will have in the Cross Timbers bio-region that they call home. Their action comes in the wake of the rupture of Exxon-Mobile’s Pegasus pipeline which spilled Tar Sands bitumen in neighboring Mayflower, Arkansas. In addition to the high rates of sickness that the surrounding community displayed, the spill in Arkansas has polluted Lake Conway and has had devastating effects on local wildlife. The permanent effect on people’s livelihoods and the health of affected ecosystems remains to be seen.
“This pipeline is essential for continued tar sands exploitation which poses an imminent threat to the health of indigenous communities near the point of extraction, fence-line communities around the toxic refineries, and ultimately the health of every living being along the route,” said Benjamin Butler, who was born at Tinker Air force Base in Oklahoma. “I believe in a more beautiful world, one where the profits of a corporation don’t outweigh the health of the people and the planet.”
“These companies come through with false promises and leave sickness and devastation in their wake,” said Eamon Danzig of Denton, TX. “People in Mayflower experienced fainting, nausea, and nosebleeds from the benzene gas which separates from the diluted bitumen in a spill and hovers above the ground. Leaks, ruptures, and other accidents on tar sands pipelines are so commonplace and inevitable that I can’t let this pipeline be built through the Cross Timbers.”
The Tar Sands megaproject is the largest industrial project in the history of humankind, destroying an area of pristine boreal forest which, if fully realized, will leave behind a toxic wasteland the size of Florida. The Tar Sands megaproject continues to endanger the health and way of life of the First Nations communities that live nearby by poisoning the waterways which life in the area depends on. This pipeline promises to deliver toxic diluted bitumen to the noxious Valero Refinery at the front door of the fence-line community of Manchester in Houston.
Currently, there is staunch resistance to the expansion of Tar Sands infrastructure—Lakota and Dakota peoples in “South Dakota” have sworn to protect their land and people from the Keystone XL, lifelong Oklahomans and Texans are consistently halting construction of the inherently dangerous Keystone XL, and the Unis’tot’en Camp has entered the third year of their blockade of the Pacific Trails Pipeline.
UPDATE: 11:27AM : Eamon and Ben are both being charged with trespassing. We need $500 to get them out of jail.
UPDATE: Eamon has been charged with trespassing and is being held on a $250 bail in the Hughes County Jail. We are still waiting to find out Ben’s charges.
&
UPDATE: 9:18 AM: Lock box has been cut in half with jaws of life. Ben and Eamon have been taken into custody by the police.
UPDATE: 9:12 AM: Using jaws of life on the lock box
UPDATE: 9:08 AM: More police and firetruck has arrived
UPDATE: 8:12AM: Another sheriff has arrived. Failed at sawing
UPDATE: 8:05AM: Private security has given the sheriff a hacksaw. The sheriff is sawing at the lock box
UPDATE: 8:02: Sheriff talking to Ben and Eamon. The sheriff is inspecting the lock box
UPDATE 7:51AM: Hughes County Sheriff has arrived
UPDATE: 7:43 AM: Private security trying to convince Ben and Eamon to unlock
UPDATE: 7:36 AM: More workers arriving on site
UPDATE: 7:30 AM: Private security has arrived on site. Head of security has informed us that he is a retired sheriff of Hughes County.
UPDATE: 6:20 AM: Workers on site
Earlier this month, 350.org founder Bill McKibben, wrote about the new movement of fossil fuel resistance that was spreading around the world.
This resistance is needed now more than ever, as global temperatures edge towards the 400 parts per million (ppm) mark for the first time in millions of years, something that is seriously worrying scientists. “It looks like the world is going to blow through the 400 ppm level without losing a beat,” argues Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientist, Ralph Keeling.
One person who is part of this resistance is a young American activist Brian Eister, who has worked with John Kerry’s presidential campaign, League of Conservation Voters, Green Party, Public Citizen and was involved in the Occupy Movement.
But now he has put his body on the line for climate change. He is on day 29 of a planned 30 day hunger strike. For nearly the last month, all he has consumed is water, salt and potassium.
Eister is currently camped outside the American Petroleum Institute (API) in Washington, DC, the oil industry’s most powerful lobby group.
He is trying to raise awareness about climate change. “I am on hunger strike,” Eister writes, “because I can think of no action which could adequately express the urgency of humanity’s present situation. There are more than a few trends which, left unchecked, are likely to make life impossibly difficult for future generations.”
He argues that, “Given the urgency of what is coming, every one of our lives should, first and foremost, be dedicated to preventing this coming catastrophe.”
Over the weekend, Eister gave an interview as to why he is taking what many would argue is radical action. His anger is channeled towards those in power: politicians, the press and of course the oil industry itself.
“There are the policymakers, who treat this issue as though we had all the time in the world to fix it. They already know better,” he argues. “There are members of the press, who bury stories about the impending ruination of the world’s economy by global warming on page 13 of the newspaper, while consistently placing stories about members of congress wrangling over budgets on front page. They already know better.”
Perhaps saddest of all, he says: “there are educated, intelligent people who surely love their children working for groups like the American Petroleum Institute and Americans for Clean Coal Electricity. They already know better.”
The lobbyists at the API do know better, but like the tobacco barons before them, they are trying to still spin a web of denial and deception over the science and urgency of climate change.
As the world hurtles towards 400 ppm, the window for meaningful action on climate is rapidly closing. But, as Eister says, politicians, the press and the oil industry, all know better but carry on as if nothing is the problem.
If President Obama is to start listening to people like Eister, one first small step would be to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. But that would only be the first small step of true meaningful action.
Eister argues, “In our minds, we imagine that somehow, someway, this problem will be solved: how, after all, could a world full of responsible adults allow all of our children’s lives, and their children’s lives, to be ruined?”
A protester with the group Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance has stopped construction of the Keystone XL pipeline by locking his arm into a concrete capsule buried directly in the pipeline’s proposed path. Fitzgerald Scott, 42, is the first African American to risk arrest while physically blockading TransCanada’s dangerous tar sands pipeline, and the second person to take action this week. On Monday a 61 year old man locked himself to a piece of construction equipment effectively shutting down another Oklahoma pipeline construction site. This week of action, called the “Red River Showdown,” is intended to protect the Red River, which marks the border between Oklahoma and Texas and is a major tributary of the Mississippi.
The site Scott has blockaded is a wetland area where crews are attempting to lay sections of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline directly into the marshy waters. An undetected pinhole leak at this location would cause cancer causing chemicals to mix directly into the local community water table.
Scott, who has a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Illinois, Chicago, is a longtime activist for social and environmental justice. While organizing against Keystone over the past five months, Scott has met many people struggling to protect their homes from TransCanada’s abuse of eminent domain.
“I am doing this for the people who don’t have the financial resources to protect themselves from a bully like TransCanada,” explained Scott. “Imagine how much worse it is for them – like the mostly African American neighborhood in Winona, TX, where protesters with the Tar Sands Blockade found holes in welds of the pipeline section that runs right behind a children’s playground, and neither TransCanada nor the government will do anything about it!”
As construction on the southern portion of Keystone XL nears two thirds completion, no regulators or politicians show any willingness to halt the project or even inspect those faulty welds. According to George Daniel, spokesperson for Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, “Scott’s action sends a clear message: because every other avenue has failed to stop this deadly project, we will blockade – all summer and on into the fall, if that’s what it takes.”
Today’s action comes just a few weeks after the devastating tar sands spill in Mayflower, Arkansas, which has left communities across Oklahoma and Texas terrified that they may be the next victims of reckless industry practices. Survivors of the spill in Mayflower have reported nausea, blurred vision, vomiting, and black outs caused by the same blend of raw tar and poisonous chemical solvents that will be transported through Keystone XL.
UPDATE 9:30 AM Work is still stopped on the easement due to the large amount of police and emergency equipment needed for extraction! Show your support for Fitzgerald here!
UPDATE 9:10 AM: Firefighters have extracted Fitzgerald and he’s now in police custody. Please show your support with a generous donation to his legal fund.
UPDATE 8:49 AM: Another fire rescue vehicle on scene, officer just commanded “everyone not involved in emergency services, back off now!” and workers retreated slightly.
UPDATE 8:30 AM: Half a dozen work trucks, four police cars (3 sheriffs and 1 state trooper), four cops, four firefighters, 2 EMTs, one fire truck and a fire rescue truck on scene. Special fire department equipment truck just arrived; large group of officials crowded around Fitzgerald.
UPDATE 7:42 AM: Sheriff on scene.
On Earth Day 2013, to mark the close of the State Department’s public comment period for TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL Northern Segment (KXL North) pipeline’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), an activist with the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance has locked himself to a piece of Keystone XL heavy machinery in Oklahoma, temporarily halting work site construction. Alec Johnson, a 61-year old climate justice organizer from Ames, Iowa took direct action to defend the Red River in solidarity with the Mayflower, Arkansas community, which is currently reeling from last month’s massive tar sands spill. The disaster, due to a 22-foot long gash in ExxonMobil’s ruptured Pegasus tar sands pipeline, has resulted in chronic health problems for nearby residents and has left Lake Conway dangerous polluted.
“This is our environmental impact statement,” stated artist/activist and Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance spokesperson Richard Ray Whitman. “TransCanada claims its technology will prevent spills, but that same technology was used on the Pegasus line, too. That didn’t work, now, did it? We are taking a stand to protect our access to clean water. KXL South is already being constructed with or without the North, and the destruction of our waterways in its path is not a question of if, but when. No toxic pipeline is worth the gamble and no communities in Texas or Oklahoma deserve the fate of Mayflower, Arkansas.”
While the current fate of KXL North rests upon U.S. Presidential approval, KXL South’s now lies in the broad-spectrum opposition it has garnered in the form of legal cases as well as the grassroots civil disobedience campaigns by groups like Great Plain Tar Sands Resistance and Tar Sands Blockade. Should KXL North be permitted to start construction, these groups along with grassroots indigenous organizations, several Lakota Nation tribal councils, and over 60,000 others have pledged resistance in the form of non-violent direct action to halt pipeline construction.
International treaties like the Treaty to Protect the Sacred and strongly-worded tribal council resolutions like those recently passed by the Oglala and Ihanktonwan Oyate/Yankton Sioux General Councils pledging resistance to KXL North “by all means necessary” indicate a tremendous unity amongst Great Plains indigenous nations. The strong reactions come after years of inadequate consultation on the part of TransCanada with regards to impacts on the Lakota Nation communities by its toxic tar sands pipeline. In recognizing the dire threat to their first medicine, sacred water, the communities are also embracing the spirit of international solidarity with First Nation communities downstream from tar sands mining sites. After years decrying the chemical pollution and resulting destruction of traditional life ways from tar sands exploitation in what some affected indigenous peoples refer to as a “slow industrial genocide,” Cree and Dene Nations are experiencing an upsurge in sympathy and solidarity with their plight.
“I am personally amazed at how resistance to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and education as to what tar sands exploitation looks like continues to grow every day,” Johnson wrote in a statement prior to his action. “Because it would be irresponsible, we’re not stopping until the industry stops poisoning our futures with lies, unnecessary risks, and death for their profit. As long as the tar sands industry promises it will kill, we will blockade.”
UPDATE 7:30PM – Correction – Friends are being held on a combined $9,000 bail and will be spending the night in jail.
Sorry for the confusion, as charges and associated bail change. Our friends are in high spirits and would like to be bailed out together. Hopefully tomorrow!
Donations have been pouring in and we really appreciate the support! However, we still need some help to get our friends out of jail together…
Help GPTSR get our friends out of jail here!
UPDATE 5:30PM – Four activists are currently being held on a combined $14,000 bail
Alec has been charged with criminal trespass for shutting down the KXL construction site today and is being held on a $3,000 bail. The charges for the 3 other activists also include criminal trespass.
UPDATE 1:00PM – Rally at the Atoka County Courthouse – Celebrate Earth Day and support our brave activists
Dozens are gathering after the KXL construction site shutdown. Come join a rally happening right now with local indigenous leaders and KXL pipeline activists @200 E Court St. Atoka on this beautiful Earth Day.
See more photos from today’s action here.
UPDATE 11:30AM – Alec has been extracted and arrested for shutting down a KXL construction site – 4 arrests on Earth Day so far
UPDATE 11:00AM – Fire Department trying to remove Alec from KXL machinery – Construction shut down on both sides of road
UPDATE 10:30AM – Two arrests so far at site of Keystone XL construction shut down – Alec still locked to heavy machinery
Activists with Idle No More Southern Oklahoma rally in solidarity with Alec and Mayflower residents living with the health affects of toxic tar sands.
UPDATE 10:00AM – LIVE VIDEO: Alec locks himself to Keystone XL heavy machinery
Watch this live footage shot by live streamer @jak_nlauren of Alec locking himself to Keystone XL heavy machinery. 10 minutes into the video local police show up and arrest Jak for his coverage of the story.
In the latest step toward opposing oil pipelines at every port in Canada, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation of Burrard Inlet signed on to the International Treaty to Protect the Sacred yesterday. The nation held a press conference at the Sheraton Wall Centre where newly elected Chief Maureen Thomas signed the document, witnessed by the president of the BC Union of Indian Chiefs Stewart Phillip and national chief of the Assembly of First Nations Shawn Atleo.
The West Coast Oil Pipeline Summit followed the signing. The theme of the event was urgency, with several leaders touching on the need to oppose development at a grassroots level.
Stewart Phillip told reporters and community members assembled that the First Nations of BC are committed to using the legal system to defend their constitutional rights, but that’s not the only strategy they’re using.
“More importantly, we have committed to standing shoulder to shoulder on the land itself.”
Atleo echoed Phillip’s fatigue with the justice system and spoke to the urgent nature of the struggle not just for Aboriginal land rights, but also for environmental protection for everyone.
“This is not just a North American moment you’re witnessing,” he said. “The tipping point we have reached is global.” He also spoke to the inadequacy of the legal avenues available to First Nations to settle land claims and hold the government accountable. He said he doesn’t want to see the courts clogged with cases.
“We don’t need to be pulled down into the weeds of whether consultation has happened.”
Tsleil-Waututh is the first nation whose territories are directly in the path of one of the proposed pipeline projects to sign the treaty. Phil Lane Jr., hereditary chief of the Yankton Sioux nation from South Dakota, said one of the key goals of the treaty is get signatures from all of the nations whose territories are directly affected.
The West Coast Oil Pipeline Summit brought together First Nations leaders from across the province as well as activists and business people from a handful of different alternative energy sectors.
The event was hosted by 2G Group of Companies, a consulting firm whose mandate is to help develop equitable relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal business ventures.
Economist Robyn Allan gave a keynote speech highlighting the Harper government’s extreme shifts in energy policy from the Kyoto Protocol and plans to limit bitumen exports to the current push to expand tar sands development. She criticized the message that the economy and the environment are on opposite sides of the debate.
“This is a fabricated trade-off designed to put ordinary Canadians against ordinary Canadians,” she said.
A panelist of five speakers discussed different facets of the tar sands debate from the economics of renewable energy development to the effects of climate change around the world.
Ben West, director of the tar sands campaign for Forest Ethics Advocacy, discussed the viability of alternative energy sources and the ways in which conventional methods of development—such as the construction of the Port Mann Bridge to relieve congestion—are often counter intuitive.
“If we could build our way out of congestions, LA would be the best city in the world to drive in,” he quipped. For the cost of the $3 billion bridge, he said, Vancouver could build streetcar infrastructure to serve the better part of the city.
“We’re talking about very real technology, very real solutions.”
Also in attendance was Green Party leader Elizabeth May, who stood up to talk about Monday’s vote in the House of Commons that will determine whether the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Act (FIPA) will go through.
She said she was impressed by the breadth of information presented throughout the evening particularly fact about how Canada imports the condensate required to transport bitumen.
“I don’t think we’re hearing about it nearly enough that we’re creating dependency on Middle Eastern fossil fuels rather than upgrade it in Alberta and refine it in Alberta,” she said, adding that she’s not seeing the response she’d like from BC politicians.
“Where is Adrian Dix on this project? It does not seem that provincial NDP is opposed to this project and that’s a big problem.”
