The World's Biggest Carbon Bomb and the Fuses to Set It Off

A definitive and key global showdown is clearly unfolding, on the near horizon, between the Petroleum Industry and a rapidly growing Global Movement of Indigenous Peoples, Environmentalists, Inter-Faith Coalitions and Globally Minded Citizens committed to Protecting and Restoring the Sacred.

 This Global Movement is beginning to focus its full, unified attention and force on ending current Tar Sands Oil Tanker traffic in the Burrard Inlet.  This unified spiritual action to end Oil Tanker traffic in the Burrard Inlet is founded in Canadian Aboriginal Law and the UN Declaration of Indigenous People, including the legal principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent. This fundamental Legal Principle was clearly violated by the Government of Canada in allowing 700,000 Barrel Tar Sands Oil Tankers to traverse the Burrard Inlet in 2007. This unilateral action was taken by the Government of Canada without public consultation, of any form, let alone what is required in Canadian Aboriginal Law.   

 The Burrard Inlet runs through the middle of First Nations unceded Territory and the Cities of Vancouver and North Vancouver, British, Columbia. From Kinder Morgan’s Pipeline Loading Docks in Burnaby, BC , the Oil Tankers , after passing through the Burrard Inlet, pass on to Chinese and US refineries via the Strait of Juan De Fuca.

The World’s Biggest Carbon Bomb

And the fuses that threaten to set it off.

Three long fuses lead back to the world’s biggest carbon bomb: The Canadian Tar Sands. The fuses are pipelines – existing and proposed – that run from the black sludge lakes and devastated landscape of northern Alberta, Canada to marine ports where oil producers hope to ship tar sands crude oil to world energy markets.

Releasing the ancient tar sands carbon into Earth’s atmosphere threatens every man, woman, and child on Earth as well as every other creature. NASA climatologist Dr. James Hansen has warned that if the tar sands is fully exploited, “it is game-over for Earth’s climate.” The carbon contained in the tar sands is enough to send Earth’s atmosphere into runaway heating, releasing ancient methane and killing sea life and forests, so that humanity could not reverse the heating regardless of what we do.

The fuses to this carbon bomb, the pipelines and tankers, include:

1. Keystone XL: An expansion of the existing Keystone pipeline from Canada, through the central US to Port Arthur, Texas, where the crude oil can be refined or loaded onto oil tankers for the global market.

2. Enbridge pipeline: A proposed route over the Rocky Mountains, across Canadian boreal forests, wild watersheds, and indigenous territory to the marine port at Kitimat, British Columbia for export. And:

3. Kinder-Morgan TMX Trans-Mountain pipeline: Also over the Rocky Mountains, into the port of Vancouver, British Columbia. This pipeline/tanker route is already operating and Kinder Morgan has applied for an expansion. In 2010, 71 large oil tankers shipped tar sands crude oil through the Port of Vancouver and the Georgia Strait to global markets.

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Don't let this happen to the B.C. Coast!

We will protect this sacred land and water

No Pipeline, No Oil Tankers, No Tar Sands!

Tanker Free BC

Wilderness Committee

Video: Rally Against Oil Tankers and Tar Sands

Council of Canadians, Tar Sands Action

Greenpeace Canada: pipelines and tankers in B.C.

Four Worlds International

Indigenous Environmental Network

Fraser River Declaration

Rueben George Speaks to Vancouver City Council

Squamish elder Robert Nahanee, pipeline/tanker protest

Tar Sands Action, US

Tar Sands Action, International

Help us protect and restore the sacred land and water that gives us life.

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