An account of the feds new rail safety improvements can be found here. From it: The federal government wants a three-year phase-out or retrofit of older tank cars that are used to transport crude oil by rail, but will not implement a key TSB recommendation that rail companies conduct route
Continue readingTag: Keystone XL Pipeline
BigCityLib Strikes Back: Jonathon Chait On Keystone XL
I’ve said it before, environmentalists aren’t focused on Obama regulations re existing power plants because their role in that fight is largely over. They did their bit. They won. Chait acknowledges this vaguely. He writes: I’ve argued that the EPA regulations on existing power plants due to come out this
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Keystone Delayed!!!
…until after the November U.S. mid-terms. So probably into 2015! Although I don’t see this as much of a Cdn election issue. It doesn’t really matter what your position is on a decision that’s up to the yanks to make. Which is why I am willing to cut Justin Trudeau
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Ex-US president Jimmy Carter urges Obama to reject Keystone XL Pipeline
“History will reflect on this moment and it will be clear to our children and grandchildren if you made the right choice,” laureates remind President Obama as the world awaits his decision on the Keystone XL pipeline by: Obert Madondo | April 17, 2014 To show leadership on climate change and leave
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Meet two ambassadors from Canada’s indigenous tar sands resistance
by Kristin Moe | First published by YES! Magazine on March 5, 2014 In 1885, a revolutionary leader wrote, “My people will sleep for one hundred years” and then wake up. In the “genocidal” wilderness of Canada’s tar sands, that renaissance has begun. The debate over the tar sands has heated up once again
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: A Timely Reminder
In light of the National Energy Board’s rubber stamping of the Enbridge Line 9 reversal with very few safeguards, here is a timely reminder of the inherent dangers of pipelines: Post by West Coast Native News. Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Not Everyone Has Drunk The Kool-Aid: A Doctor Speaks Out On The Health Effects Of Tarsands’ Development
As reported in The Vancouver Observer, grave health risks from the Alberta tarsands are both statistically significant and deeply disturbing. A northern Alberta doctor, John O’Connor, was invited to Washington to brief two U.S. Senators who are against the proposed TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline that would carry bitumen from Alberta
Continue readingSupporting Keystone is supporting the Kochs
Criticism of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline focuses, understandably, on the threat it poses to the environment, both in its construction and in its enabling more production from the tar sands. Too often overlooked is the political mischief that approval will contribute to. According to an article in the CCPA
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Justin Trudeau On Pipelines
From his interview with Calgary Metro News:“Because of that I have been a strong promoter of the Keystone XL pipeline and also a harsh critic on the way the prime minister has approached pushing the Keystone XL pipeline. To my mind, the only thing that has prevented Keystone XL from
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Alberta’s 13 most under-reported political news stories of 2013
Another aircraft takes off from Fort McMurray International Aerodrome loaded with CO2 captured from Alberta’s Athabasca bitumen sands. The gas will be stored in the basements of Russian buildings as part of a deal worked out through the province’s $2-billion “carbon capture” program. Actual Alberta carbon capture boondoggles may not
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: A Couple Of Polls On CDN Pipelines
From Forum, so FWIW: A bit surprising, or at least other polls in B.C. have shown support for NG drifting upward. And, nterestingly enough, opposition to the Keystone XL line is and remains much higher in Canada than in The United States.
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Dents, Sags, Structural Flaws Plague Keystone XL: Report
A new report by Public Citizen says the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is riddled with structural flaws that could spark dangerous leaks and spills. The post Dents, Sags, Structural Flaws Plague Keystone XL: Report appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Halloween 2013: a meditation on power
Prime Minister Stephen Harper just one year ago. Actual Canadian prime ministers may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: Senator Mike Duffy and former Harper cabinet member Jim Prentice. Last Halloween, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper went trick ’n’ treating, he was monarch of all he surveyed. This year, he’s
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Jonathan Chait’s Puzzling Defense Of Keystone XL
He writes: Keystone is at best marginally relevant to the cause of stopping global warming. The whole crusade increasingly looks like a bizarre misallocation of political attention. My view, which I laid out in a long feature story last spring, is that the central environmental issue of Obama’s presidency is
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Some NDP hypocrisy on oil pipelines
I want to remark on an online/social media phenomenon I’ve seen, (mostly on Twitter) the past couple of days, where NDP activists, particularly ones who are active in the Toronto Centre by-election, are going after Justin Trudeau on his spoken support at a US conference (attended by ex-Australian PM Julia
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Justin On Keystone
People may have been surprised, but shouldn’t have been. Justin’s position on Keystone XL has been on record for awhile know. And though I personally oppose Keystone and all other pipelines coming out of Mordor, that is not a tenable stance for a politician looking to win a few seats in
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Canadians Are "Concerned" About A Lotta Stuff
If “a majority of Canadians say they are “concerned” about potential negative financial impacts on their families if proposed pipeline projects fail to get the go-ahead” is the best they can suck out of the results of the latest Ipsos-Reid poll, then I imagine the details are even worse news for
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: A Note On A Poll Re Keystone XL
For the most part, its the same old. More Americans than Canadians support the building of Keystone XL to pipe tar-sands bitumen down to the Gulf . Actually, I’m cheating a bit. The new poll doesn’t measure Canadian views, but other recent polls show from about a 50/50 split up
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Come Get Some, Bituman Cowboy
If Harper says that he will not take no for an answer from the U.S. on Keystone — a project over its future he ultimately has no real control — should one not conclude that he will also not accept that provinces such as British Columbia, Quebec or Ontario throw
Continue readingAmericans support Keystone
Prime Minister Harper was talking tough about the Keystone XL pipeline this week. On a visit to New York, he told the Canadian American Business Council that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. His bravado may have been bolstered by a recent Pew Research Center survey that showed two-thirds
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