Climate and Energy

Anyone can provide the Enbridge Joint Review Panel with their knowledge, opinion, or concerns in a letter of comment.

INTRODUCTION

Since 1974, the West Coast Environmental Law Association (WCELA) has provided legal services to members of the public who are concerned about threats to the environment. WCELA and the West Coast Environmental Law Research Foundation provide legal representation, promote law reform, provide legal education, conduct research and maintain a library of environmental legal materials.

Energy and Sustainability

Not only is the current "business as usual" approach not sustainable, it is drastically deficient in responding to the threats to ecological stability posed by climate change.

Public Involvement

The British Columbia Greenhouse Gas Action Plan was published in November 1995 by the British Columbia Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources and the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks. It reflects British Columbia's contribution to Canada's international commitment to stabilize emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000. This is a goal shared by British Columbia; however, the authors of the Greenhouse Gas admit that it will not achieve stabilization of British Columbia's emissions.

In the past, I have expressed less concern with international emissions trading than the clean development mechanism or joint implementation with developing countries. A number of reasons underlie my and other's distinction between trading and joint implementation:

This is a map of combined traditional territories of First Nations who have banned tar sands pipelines and tankers using their indigenous laws.

This is a list of First Nations and First Nations political organizations that have publicly declared their opposition to the Enbridge tankers and pipelines project. In some cases different levels of government representing the same First Nation may have signed a declaration or otherwise publically communicated their opposition. All of these are listed below, however, counting individual First Nations who are part of larger tribal groups only once yields a total of over 130 ‘opposed First Nations’.

The Canadian government is presently considering approval of a 1,172 km pipeline that would carry 525,000 barrels per day of crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to the BC coast and load it onto supertankers bound for China and the west coast of the US. Enbridge’s oil tanker and pipeline plan is all about exporting massive quantities of Canadian oil just so tar sands oil companies can get a better price than they already get for their crude in Canada.

The Canadian government is considering a proposal to build a pipeline under mountains and across rivers that could carry more than half a million barrels of raw tar sands crude oil (known as bitumen) daily across important salmon rivers, coastal rainforests, and sensitive marine waters. The Northern Gateway pipeline, proposed by energy company Enbridge, would stretch over 1,000 kilometres to connect the tar sands of Alberta with the Pacific coast of British Columbia. From that point, the extracted bitumen would be transported by tanker to refineries in Asia, California, or elsewhere.

We appreciate the invitation to comment on the Ministry’s Environmental Mitigation and Offsets discussion paper and ideas for a proposed policy (the “Policy”), as well as your willingness toanswer various questions we raised in previous correspondence. It is our understanding that further public consultations will be held regarding the  proposed Policy in the Spring or Summer, as the Policy is drafted. However, we did want to make some general comments on the current Discussion Paper and on our  hopes and concerns regarding the Policy as currently envisaged.