First Nations confident courts will stop Kinder Morgan pipeline
As anyone knows who has followed all the pipelines spills the last few years, pipelines are ticking time bombs: the three companies (Kinder Morgan, TransCanada and Enbridge) looking to build the four tarsands pipelines have been responsible for one spill a week on average in the United States since 2010. And if you still buy the oil industry line that tankers are now safe after the Exxon Valdez catastrophe, try googling “tanker spill” and Greece or South Korea.
What’s more, at a time when we need to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions, we can’t allow these pipelines to further expand the tarsands, an industry whose skyrocketing emissions have been the main driver of Canada’s rising emissions over the last few decades.
I’m confident the courts will once again side with First Nations and reverse the federal approval of the Kinder Morgan project, just like they did in the Enbridge Northern Gateway case. Courts have historically dragged government kicking and screaming to the reconciliation table, forcing them to minimally recognize and respect Indigenous rights.
It is worth noting as well that the case of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs against Trudeau’s approval of Enbridge’s Line 3 tarsands pipeline is also currently making its way through the courts.
Indigenous people in Canada and the United States, as we witnessed in Standing Rock, are not backing down. We will win this fight. And we now know that another way is possible: 100 per cent renewable energy can — and must — be achieved in the near future. Many of the First Nations and tribes of the Treaty Alliance are themselves leading by example.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/com...-courts-will-stop-kinder-morgan-pipeline.html
As anyone knows who has followed all the pipelines spills the last few years, pipelines are ticking time bombs: the three companies (Kinder Morgan, TransCanada and Enbridge) looking to build the four tarsands pipelines have been responsible for one spill a week on average in the United States since 2010. And if you still buy the oil industry line that tankers are now safe after the Exxon Valdez catastrophe, try googling “tanker spill” and Greece or South Korea.
What’s more, at a time when we need to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions, we can’t allow these pipelines to further expand the tarsands, an industry whose skyrocketing emissions have been the main driver of Canada’s rising emissions over the last few decades.
I’m confident the courts will once again side with First Nations and reverse the federal approval of the Kinder Morgan project, just like they did in the Enbridge Northern Gateway case. Courts have historically dragged government kicking and screaming to the reconciliation table, forcing them to minimally recognize and respect Indigenous rights.
It is worth noting as well that the case of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs against Trudeau’s approval of Enbridge’s Line 3 tarsands pipeline is also currently making its way through the courts.
Indigenous people in Canada and the United States, as we witnessed in Standing Rock, are not backing down. We will win this fight. And we now know that another way is possible: 100 per cent renewable energy can — and must — be achieved in the near future. Many of the First Nations and tribes of the Treaty Alliance are themselves leading by example.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/com...-courts-will-stop-kinder-morgan-pipeline.html
