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Canadians Rip Carney for 'Pouring Fuel on the Flames of the Climate Emergency' With Pipeline Push
"This country needs an alternative to the Liberal-Conservative consensus that is doubling down on a future of climate-wrecking corporate welfare," said New Democratic Party Leader Avi Lewis.
Jul 03, 2026
On the heels of young Canadians suing over Prime Minister Mark Carney’s climate "failure" and people across the country mobilizing to urge the government to "stop fast-tracking destruction," the Liberal leader on Thursday made a pair of fossil fuel-related announcements that sparked fresh anger.
Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith of the United Conservative Party announced that the province is partnering with the federally owned Trans Mountain Corporation and Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Corporation for a proposed tar sands pipeline that would bring more oil to British Columbia's west coast.
"The proposed pipeline would generally follow the existing footprint of the federally owned Trans Mountain pipeline, running from Bruderheim, northeast of Edmonton, to the Roberts Bank export terminal in Delta, BC, south of Vancouver," the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported. "Smith said the project would send more than 1 million barrels to Asian markets every day, reducing Canada's reliance on the US."
"The Alberta government's submission to the federal government's Major Projects Office said the project would cost between $35.2 billion and $43.7 billion, including contingencies. Construction would start as early as 2027 and finish by 2034," CBC noted. "As for who foots the bill, Smith said detailed funding and the cost for taxpayers 'remains to be negotiated.'"
Sounding the alarm about the plans with a Friday blog post, 350 Canada country manager Atiya Jaffar wrote, "In other words, we can get ready to expect $35-100 billion of our taxpayer dollars wasted on building this dangerous pipe dream."
"Canada is headed in a dangerous direction. Expanding tar sands and the fracked gas industry is like pouring fuel on the flames of the climate emergency," she argued, urging Canadians to pressure their members of Parliament to sign what the advocacy group is calling a "People's MOU," a jab at the memorandum of understanding the federal and Alberta governments signed last year.
This week, heatwaves gripped communities across the country as we marked the 5 year anniversary of the 2021 Heat Dome. And yet, this is the week that Carney, Eby, and Danielle Smith teamed up to announce their plans to burn away our future! 350.org/west-coast-p...
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— 350 Canada (@350canada.bsky.social) July 3, 2026 at 2:44 PM
Smith and Carney's pipeline press conference came after shortly after the PM and BC Premier David Eby announced a "cooperative prosperity agreement" that the Wilderness Committee condemned as "an abandonment of both governments' efforts to fight climate change and protect the environment," given its provisions on the province's liquefied natural gas (LNG) and mining endeavors.
Although Eby, a member of the New Democratic Party (NDP), "has been a prominent critic of the Carney government's work with Alberta on pipeline plans," Politico reported Thursday, the provincial leader cut short a trip to Beijing, where he traveled to meet with PetroChina executives about LNG production, "to be at the prime minister's side" for the announcement.
Eby tried to stress that "this agreement doesn't require us to support any pipeline proposal from Alberta. However, as I've said before, we recognize our constitutional position, and we do not have the authority to stop a new pipeline. We will not be going to court to fight a pipeline project. Instead, we will ensure we fulfill our constitutional obligations in good faith."
"Pipelines are federal jurisdiction," he continued. "That's why this agreement matters. It ensures that the northern tanker ban stays in place, and it ensures that if a pipeline goes ahead, that British Columbians are fairly compensated for the environmental risks we would take on any new pipeline project."
Mark Carney, Danielle Smith and David Eby chose this record shattering #heatwave (which extends into Ontario & Quebec) as the backdrop for their plans to spend billions of dollars of our public $ to extract & export more fossil fuels. How do you feel about that? #cdnpoli #bcpoli #onpoli
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— Climate Justice Victoria (@climatejusticeyyj.bsky.social) July 3, 2026 at 12:01 PM
The Wilderness Committee's conservation and policy campaigner Lucero González responded, "Eby said he will ensure British Columbians are compensated for the environmental damage of another pipeline, but there is no compensation for the extinction of the southern resident orcas."
"How do you compensate for the unimaginable pain of an endangered orca like Tahlequah who has shown us her dead calves throughout the Salish Sea while each new megaproject continues to destroy their habitat?" González inquired.
Pointing to not only the potential increase in tanker traffic and oil spill risk but also the federal government's "proposed evisceration" of the Species at Risk Act, González declared that "Carney is showing us his enthusiastic willingness to accept and fund the extinction of endangered species and a future where oil and private profit are more valuable than the entire Salish Sea ecosystem.
As Politico highlighted, the prime minister's motivations for pushing the new pipeline include combating a separatist movement in one of the involved provinces:
The project is also aimed at easing separatist tensions in Alberta, where voters will decide in October if they want to hold a referendum to separate from Canada. Smith has blamed "10 years of bad Liberal policy" under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for fueling western alienation, pointing to climate rules and energy regulations she says hurt Alberta’s economy.
In a 17-minute video posted to his YouTube channel earlier this week, Carney acknowledged that his government’s energy policies will increase emissions. He argued that the climate policies championed by Trudeau had become a political wedge—and fodder for Alberta separatists.
Even before the video, advocacy organizations had partnered with a trio of young citizens in June to take legal action over the prime minister failing to bring Canada's 2030 emissions reduction plan into compliance with a key federal law.
Julia Levin of Environmental Defence, one of the groups behind the case, said last month that "PM Carney is betraying Canadians by taking a wrecking ball to our hard-fought climate progress. It is Canadians who are paying the price through wildfires, heat domes, rising food insecurity and high costs of living."
The pipeline announcement begins with Carney acknowledging, without a hint of irony, the “biblical weather” in Ottawa yesterday.Extreme weather huh? Like the kind exacerbated by climate change? You don’t say! Hm!!!!
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— Rachel Gilmore (@rachelgilmore.bsky.social) July 2, 2026 at 8:43 PM
The Wilderness Committee's associate director, Torrance Coste, similarly said Friday that "at a time when people across the country are suffering in extreme heat, wildfire evacuations, and devastating floods, pursuing the expansion of Canada's most polluting industry is utterly despicable."
"In the fight against climate change, Prime Minister Carney and Premier Eby are issuing their surrender, and resigning us to a future of ecological and economic decline," Coste added.
Stephen Harper's dream can finally be realized! And all it took was to screw over the next generations by destroying our climate and the livability of the planet.
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— Charles Latimer (@ch4rlie.bsky.social) July 3, 2026 at 2:52 PM
While Eby flew home to be by the prime minister's side for Thursday's first announcement, the NDP's recently elected national leader, Avi Lewis, delivered a scathing rebuke of a federal government that he said "will protect above all else: the profits of Big Oil."
"As we mark the five-year anniversary of a heat dome that killed 619 people in British Columbia—and as many communities across the country are facing extreme weather right now—Canadians deserve leadership that protects us," Lewis argued on social media. "Instead, this government is doubling down on yesterday's failed solutions and dragging us into further danger, risk, and insecurity."
The pipeline's "opaque and confusing public-private partnership ownership structure means it's very likely that we, the public, will not only bear the risks and the damages, but also the lion's share of the costs," he warned. "Canada's New Democrats unequivocally oppose this pipeline proposal. If anything, this is a pipeline to the courts. It ignores the federal government's legal responsibility to meaningfully consult Indigenous nations, including Treaty 8 nations in Alberta, threatens endangered species, and accelerates climate change. It will sow the very divisions the prime minister claims he wants to avoid."
"We do not achieve unity or prosperity from projects that pit communities against one another, all while a handful of oil and gas CEOs walk away with enormous profits," he continued. "While we're stuck fighting yesterday's battles over pipelines, and the prime minister openly admits that our emissions will rise, the rest of the world is racing ahead on renewables. We cannot afford to fall behind while other countries build the industries of the future. "
According to the NDP leader: "Canadians deserve better than being told our only choice is another fight over another pipeline. This country needs an alternative to the Liberal-Conservative consensus that is doubling down on a future of climate-wrecking corporate welfare."
"New Democrats are ready to build something bigger, safer, and better—a Canada that is a renewable energy superpower, with an east-west clean electricity grid and good green jobs in every region," he concluded. "Lower costs for families with home retrofits and heat pumps for all. Investing in the care economy as a nation-building project. That's what it looks like to build big things that actually unite this country."
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Israel OKs 13 New Settlements to 'Fracture' West Bank and Create 'Irreversible Status Quo'
One group called the move "yet another example of the abhorrent and utter disregard of the international rules-based order by Israel."
Jul 03, 2026
Israel's Security Cabinet on Thursday approved the construction of 13 new settlements in the central West Bank, a move critics slammed as the latest effort to "fracture" Palestine and cement Israeli control over the illegally occupied territory with the goal of annexation.
Israeli media reported that the Security Cabinet, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, gave the green light to the new settler colonies in the Binyamin area, with the first phase of construction expected to start in the coming months.
The Binyamin Regional Council has argued that now is the time for building the strategically located settlements due to political and security conditions, which present an opportunity to establish facts on the ground that will make Israeli control a fait accompli.
Condemning the approval as a “dangerous escalation,” the Jerusalem Governorate—a nominally administrative division of the Palestinian Authority—asserted that Israel’s settlement plan “seeks to create new geographical realities on the ground,” and would “undermine the prospects of establishing a geographically contiguous Palestinian state.”
That, say critics—and some Israeli officials—is the point. Netanyahu last year promised that “there will be no Palestinian state," while Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and other officials have also vowed to annex some or all of the West Bank.
"Israel’s continued expansion of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory is not an isolated policy decision but part of a long-standing strategy to entrench permanent Israeli control over occupied land, further Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory, and prevent any prospects of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state," the UK-based International Center of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) said in response to the Security Cabinet vote. "The Binyamin plan represents a significant escalation of that policy, accelerating changes to the occupied territory that would create an irreversible status quo."
ICJP called the move "yet another example of the abhorrent and utter disregard of the international rules-based order by Israel" and "yet another attempt to further fragment Palestinian territory and isolate East Jerusalem from its surrounding Palestinian communities."
Madar, the Palestinian Center for Israeli Studies, said Wednesday that construction of illegal Israeli settler outposts has soared from an average of 8 per year between 2012-22 to 32 in 2023, 62 in 2024, and 86 last year.
Palestinian officials and international human rights groups have long warned that Israeli settlement expansion is destroying the possibility of a two‑state solution.
United Nations resolutions and the UN's International Court of Justice have affirmed the illegality of Israel's settlements and occupation of Palestine, the latter of which the ICJ found in 2024 is an illegal form of apartheid that must end as soon as possible. The ICJ also ruled that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law.
Efforts by the Israeli government, military, and settlers to expand West Bank settlement activity have accelerated dramatically since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. With the world’s attention focused on Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have ramped up the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the occupied territory.
Attacks on West Bank Palestinians, including pogroms carried out by mobs of settlers protected and sometimes joined by Israeli troops, have killed at least 1,105 Palestinians—at least 242 of them children—since October 2023, according to the latest report published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
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As Millions Endure Extreme Heat, Climate Group Tells Congress: 'Protect People, Not Data Centers'
"The reason the grid has so little headroom is that data centers are consuming electricity at a scale it wasn't built for, around the clock, every day of the year," said a 350.org campaigner.
Jul 03, 2026
With at least 250 million people across the Midwest and Eastern United States facing high temperatures on Friday due to what the National Weather Service dubbed a "prolonged, dangerous heatwave" that's expected to last through Fourth of July weekend, a leading climate group called on Congress to "protect people, not data centers."
Specifically, 350.org—an international movement for climate action founded nearly two decades ago—wants US lawmakers "to establish a moratorium on new data centers and ban utility companies from cutting off electricity access of American households who can't afford to pay their bills, as an emergency measure to protect lives."
The group on Friday shared an online tool that allows Americans to send an editable letter to Congress with the latter demand. It stresses that deadly summer heatwaves are "fueled by climate change," and "in 27 states, it's perfectly legal for utility companies to shut off your electricity if you fall behind on your bills, even on the hottest days of summer."
Candice Fortin, 350's energy affordability campaigns manager, said in a Friday statement that "no American should lose their life over an electric bill. Losing air conditioning in this heat isn't an inconvenience—it's life-threatening. Air conditioning in a dangerous heatwave is what keeps elderly people, pregnant women, and young children out of the emergency room, and higher use during summer heatwaves is something every utility plans for."
"Yet ordinary households are once again paying the highest price for a crisis they didn't cause," Fortin explained. "The reason the grid has so little headroom is that data centers are consuming electricity at a scale it wasn't built for, around the clock, every day of the year. And worse: fed by fossil-fueled energy sources that make heatwaves more frequent and more deadly."
As data centers contributed to the strain on US power grids on Thursday, Data for Progress released poll results showing that—along with billionaires, many of whom have made their fortunes from Big Tech—Americans see the artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency companies that are driving the surge in data center construction as top villains to US society and the economy.
To reduce grid strain and the risk of blackouts, the US Department of Energy this week granted permission to PJM Interconnection, which serves 67 million people across 13 states, to force data centers to temporarily use backup generators if necessary. However, such systems generally run on diesel or gas, which means more air pollution for surrounding communities.
Fortin said Friday that "350.org is calling for a moratorium on new data center construction, to give citizens and their elected representatives time to put democratic rules in place to manage their impact on our energy, water, and land."
Two progressive firebrands, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), recently introduced a bill to do just that. Their proposed Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act is endorsed by Food & Water Watch (FWW), which last year became the country's first national organization to call for halting approval of new AI data centers and, ultimately, in December, led a related letter to Congress backed by hundreds of other advocacy organizations, including multiple 350 chapters.
Since that letter, Big Tech has continued to make billions. Fortin noted that "Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta raked in net profits of over $80 billion in the first three months of 2026 alone. In fact, investor-owned utilities kept, on average, a profit of 14.6 cents on every dollar they collected from ratepayers. They can afford to wait while communities catch up."
The current heatwave "is a preview of every summer to come," she warned. "Our leaders must choose who they will protect: tech companies and investor-owned utilities, or people. Access to clean, affordable energy is a right, not a privilege. Real independence means no American is ever again forced to choose between a power bill they can't afford and heat they can't survive."
Over the past few years, calls for state and national bans on utility shutoffs have mounted, particularly during hot and cold spells. During another period of high temperatures last summer, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) led a pair of letters to Democratic congressional leaders as well as governors and mayors arguing that Republican US President Donald Trump "has put millions of lives at risk by dismantling federal agencies and lifesaving programs that help working families keep their homes cool and survive deadly heatwaves like the one this week."
The coalition—which also included FWW and 350—urged the New York Democrats who serve as minority leaders in the US Senate and House of Representatives, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, to fight for legislation that includes "a robust nationwide moratorium on electricity, water, and broadband shutoffs during months of extreme heat, and mandate that utilities reinstate disconnected services, waive late-payment fees, and forgive all utility debt for low-wealth households."
Months later, this past April, the US Energy Information Administration released a report showing that utility companies disconnected American households from electricity more than 13.4 million times in 2024—which, as CBD pointed out, came as "electric utilities raked in record profits of more than $54 billion and dividend payments of $34 billion," and "investor-owned utility executives were paid $530 million."
Jean Su, director of the CBD's energy justice program, said at the time that "this federal data is the most sobering portrait we have of the country's brutal energy affordability crisis... It's inexcusable for utility executives and shareholders to make record profits while families suffer climate extremes and get punished for being poor."
"We're grateful to Congress and the Energy Information Administration for establishing the first-ever study of how many millions of people are having their power shut off because they can't afford to pay," she added. "The only sure way out of this mess is to replace the price gouging of fossil fuel utilities with affordable, renewable community energy."
As Friday reporting from The Washington Post highlighted, it's not just potential utility shutoffs endangering Americans in the 23 states under an "extreme heat warning" from NWS. The newspaper found that although "about 93% of homes have air conditioning nationwide, as do 96% of households in the areas with high heat risk this week," around 3 million households currently impacted by soaring temperatures lack AC.
"Access and use of air conditioning is extremely important," Jaime Madrigano, associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Post. "We know that air conditioning is probably one of the only really proven effective strategies that we know actually does save lives when it comes to heat-related mortality."
Madrigano also recognized those who have AC units or systems at home, but are struggling to pay for them amid rising costs across the economy: "We know a lot of people are dealing with high utility bills. That's a very pressing crisis in this country right now," she said. "You may have to choose between food and medications or air conditioning, and the more pressing concern may be feeding your family."
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