Isn’t it ironic? A little too ironic?
On the very same day the UN climate summit kicked off in Paris, Vancouver’s port authority approved a cost-saving amendment allowing for the proposed Fraser Surrey Docks terminal to export massive amounts of thermal coal to Southeast Asia on ships rather than barges. The irony hasn’t been lost on environmental activists.
“It was just such a stark contradiction in the timing around this most recent approval where the port authority is improving a new thermal coal port on day one of global climate talks,” says Laura Benson, Dogwood Institute’s Beyond Coal campaign director. “One foot’s going backwards into the 19th century and one foot’s trying to move ahead into a brighter future where we can fight climate change.”
Fraser Surrey Docks, owned by a Macquarie Group-managed investment company, currently exports lumber, steel and containers. Since 2012, the company has pushed for permission to construct a new $50-million coal-loading terminal to export up to eight million tonnes of thermal coal — which is burned to generate electricity, unlike metallurgical coal which is required to smelt steel — to Asia from mines in Montana and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.