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oil tankers
Unlike Trump, Trudeau will announce with great fanfare he takes climate change seriously. But just as suddenly, he does exactly what Trump would do -- all the while pointing at Trump backing out of the Paris Summit and getting the media to shame him.
British Columbia signed off on Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain oil sands pipeline and supertanker project in the Salish Sea. The announcement confirmed that Premier Christy Clark's posturing with her "five conditions con" over the past four and a half years has essentially been political Kabuki theatre.
The enduring threat of loud tankers and the additional possibility of an oil spill place killer whales in untenable and unacceptable peril. Even if the probability of a large oil spill is low, the consequence of such an event is potentially catastrophic.
Canadian and U.S. oil spill experts recognize that predicted increases in vessel traffic in the Salish Sea increase the probability of an oil spill and intensify vessel disturbance in an ecosystem already confronting myriad pressures.
Stranded shipworkers are passing the time watching movies and playing music.
The business of piracy is no longer that profitable.
The Salish Sea is seen as a desirable place by fossil fuel exporters to ship non-renewable, and typically dangerous, hydrocarbons to foreign markets. The proposed tanker route overlays much of the critical habitat of the Salish Sea's endangered southern resident killer whales.
The recent English Bay spill in Vancouver and the current oil spill disaster in Santa Barbara, California have given a heightened sense of urgency to Raincoast's 500 hundred pages of scientific evidence on the threats Trans Mountain poses to the Salish Sea and its wildlife.
What do you love about B.C.'s Fraser River, the Gulf Islands, and the Salish Sea? What are your concerns for the future of the Salish Sea region, the health of the B.C. economy and the impacts of climate change? The answers to these personal questions are fundamental to informing decisions about Kinder Morgan's proposed Trans Mountain expansion and are at the heart of "Directly Affected," a new documentary film produced by Vancouver filmmaker Zack Embree and Raincoast Conservation Foundation.
So long as all of that good work in the U.S. can be undone by backward Canadian decision-making, we'll never make true progress. That's exactly why it is so critical for Americans, Canadians, First Nations and Tribes to come together to stop fossil fuel exports from the west coast of North America -- particularly through the waters of Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, collectively known as the Salish Sea.
