Vancouver, BC / Coast Salish Territories - This morning two people directly intervened in a high security question and answer session with Prime Minister Stephen Harper regarding Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline. The group managed to make their way past police undetected and into the secured Vancouver Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel. Once inside they stood in front of the Prime Minister silently holding signs that read “Climate justice now“ and “The Conservatives take climate change seriously.” The latter was a condemnation of the Harper Government’s failing climate policies and a reference to the recent revelation that Conservative minister of Environment removed a comment about taking climate change seriously from a speech, despite it being recommended by Environment Canada.
"Climate change is killing thousands of people every year, primarily in developing countries and Indigenous communities that are the least responsible for creating this problem. Despite this fact, the Harper government is forcing through publicly opposed pipelines and spending millions of tax dollars to promote them. This is a shockingly irresponsible move considering Canada’s tar sands contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. New fossil fuel pipelines are an irresponsible step in the wrong direction,” said Sean Devlin.
The costs of climate change have become all too real for Canadians this year, with millions of dollars in damage from this month’s Ontario ice storm and the six billion dollars in damage caused by the tragic Calgary floods. Since the 1950s, the cost of natural disasters has risen 14-fold, according to the Centre for Research in the Epidemiology of Disasters. Before 1990, only three Canadian disasters exceeded $500 million in damages. In the past decade alone, nine surpassed that amount.
“There is a moral as well as an economic cost to the Conservative government's inaction on climate change. In addition to the billions of dollars in damages from climate-induced natural disasters, thousands of people's lives were lost in the Philippines just this year, and over 100,000 people were displaced in the recent Calgary floods.”, said Anjali Appadurai, climate justice advocate.
American Secretary of State recently called the Philippines record breaking typhoon Haiyan a warning of climate change. The disaster has displaced more than 4 million people.
“Not only is Harper's government refusing to take action to reduce climate change, but they are supporting the oil and mining corporations that pollute the air, water and land across the globe. As a result, countless individuals are displaced due to climate-induced extreme weather events in their countries, and yet Canada is further restricting its immigration and refugee policies and rejecting those who have lost their homes, health and livelihoods at the hands of Canada's corporations and neglect,” said Shireen Soofi, an activist with No One is Illegal.
These actions are taking place as part of a global movement of groups of who are directly confronting the fossil fuel industry, from First Nations legal challenges and blockading projects on their territories, to other forms of non-violent direct action.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/davidakin/posts/796262290400116
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