Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Published on Friday, February 10, 2012 by EcoWatch
British Columbia's Huge Gamble: Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline
Filmmaker Corey Ogilvie has produced a great new short film on the risks versus benefits of Enbridge’s proposed new pipeline that would take raw bitumen from the tar sands to the coast of British Columbia.
This film focuses on the impacts of the inevitable spills from the pipeline. There are, of course, also impacts from the pipeline when it doesn’t spill—upstream impacts on Alberta’s land, air and water from digging up the tar sands, and downstream impacts from the climate change caused by burning the oil.
© 2012 Corey Ogilvie
Comments are closed
4 Comments so far
Show AllWe have managed to preserve our beautiful province in pristeen condition to date. Yes there are pockets of less than suitable conditions but they are few and far between. We don't need potential environmental problems here but we do need to get our petroleum products from where they are produced to where they are required so how best to do that? This is the discussion we should be having, not no pipeline or not, only that pipeline.
Actually, considering the massive environmental damage caused by extracting the tar sands in the first place, the idea that moving oil from where it's "produced" to where it's needed is the only discussion we need to be having is seriously debatable. And while you may have "managed to preserve [y]our beautiful province in pristeen condition," your neighboring province, Alberta, has been raped and pillaged on a massive scale for this project. It's a disgrace, that is, a disintegration of grace, to treat our mother Pachamama this way. This is one case where the best course of action is to leave the oil where it is. Forever.
The question isn't IF, but WHEN and WHERE the taroil will be spilled.
The area where they want to send "supertankers" through claimed the pride of BC Ferries fleet, in the same waters. Not to mention the pipeline itself and the difficult terrain.
Civil disobedience will bankrupt the Gateway project.
British Columbia has a long, proud history of protests, demonstrations, and strikes. I live near Vancouver and I was floored when news said the oil terminus would be Hartley Bay. We haven't forgotten the Exxon Valdez. Prince Edward Sound has not recovered and the clean-up workers died of cancer. Hello??? Hello?? Renewable energy anyone? BC's Inside Passage coast is one of the top international tourist destinations. Oil spills will put an end to that, along with most of the fish and wildlife. Civil disobedience is the only way to get big gov/corp. to listen. We're not taking this sitting down...ring...ring... Hello Occupy? We have a situation here....