GreenWatch

By B. McPherson Around the world, the ordinary people are starting to realize the huge potential for environmental damage that our addiction to fossil fuels has created. A group in Ireland under the banner of Shell to Sea is using peaceful civil disobedience to protest the Royal Dutch Shell natural gas pipeline route. They have three stated aims in this regard: to ensure the safety of the people and environment, to renegotiate the terms of royalties for the offshore gas deposits, and to address what they claim are human rights abuses. The protesters have been interfering in the movement of materials used to build the pipeline. Two of the latest actions involved occupying a quarry that was supplying stone for the project and a woman locked herself to a tree cutting piece of machinery in an attempt to prevent cutting through a local forest. “Protests last Thursday led to a stand-off at a local quarry where the owner ultimately used a high-powered water hose in an ...

By B. McPherson In the high publicity forum of hearings about the proposed Northern Gateway Oil Pipelines and the Keystone Pipeline in the American Midwest, plans are quietly being made to fully twin the Trans-Mountain Oil Pipeline that runs from Edmonton Alberta to Burnaby British Columbia. The appetite for oil and natural gas is such that the Kinder Morgan Corporation wishes to increase the pipeline capacity from its current 500 000 barrels of product per day to 700 000 per day. Some of the oil is shipped to the Puget Sound area in Washington State. Other product is sent to California and to the US Gulf Coast in a network of pipes. Some product is sent overseas. The terminal of the Trans-Mountain pipeline ends at Burrard Inlet, Westridge Terminal. The pipeline has had a stellar safety record, but a small oil spill four years ago underlined the danger of the thick black goo to the environment. About 1500 barrels were released when a construction crew accidentally ru...

By B. McPherson The decision to delay the building of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline until after the US presidential elections next year may doom the project. Opposition to the building of the oil pipeline which would connect the oil fields of Alberta to refineries in Texas has been loud and growing. The proposed route of the Keystone pipeline would take it across the Nebraska Sandhills, an environmentally sensitive treasure. Any breaches in the pipeline could easily contaminate the Ogllala aquifer. This aquifer is the supplier of water to much of the Midwest, both cities and aqriculture. Those that support the building of the $7 billion project point out the economic benefits of the pipeline. Many people would be employed in good paying jobs; oil from Canada is a stable source; there could be a reduction in oil tankers plying the Gulf of Mexico. At first glance, this looks like a victory for environmentalists. It is not. It puts the focus on a different environmental treasu...