Tonight, the NDP is hosting an online Q+A session on climate change with federal Environment Critic Megan Leslie. In their emails promoting this event, they say that “Climate change is a key issue of our generation” and that party leader “Tom Mulcair knows this.” Yet in a press release published last week on Energy East, the NDP failed to connect this pipeline with climate change, despite the pipeline’s climate impact being on par with adding 7 million cars, to climate change. In fact, they didn’t mention climate once.
This morning I wrote a new piece in the Huffington Post laying out the climate test that Energy East is slated to become for Canada’s politicians. Already, Elizabeth May and the Green Party of Canada have clarified their position to oppose Energy East. So tonight I pulled together 10 questions that I’d like to see the NDP answer on climate change and Energy East. Join us tonight to help ask them.
- Will the NDP call for a full climate review of the Energy East pipeline?
- You have called for a “meaningful process to examine this proposal that focuses on evaluating environmental sustainability” don’t we need to include climate change for any review of environmental impacts and sustainability to be complete?
- You have committed to participate in the NEB review of Energy East, will you be joining the over 50,000 people across Canada calling for climate change to included in that conversation?
- Yesterday a new IPCC report calling for a rapid start to phase out of fossil fuels was published. Energy East would ensure fossil fuel expansion in Canada. How do you rationalize building new fossil fuel infrastructure like Energy East when climate science is calling for the opposite?
- Barack Obama has called for a climate review of the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States, Energy East is even bigger, don’t you think we should be giving it the same?
- With oil projected to fall to $70 a barrel and the rising risk of the carbon bubble, how can we have economic confidence in Energy East without a full consideration of the impacts of climate action on new fossil fuel development?
- Energy East would lock in polluting infrastructure instead of building clean and just energy, is the NDP’s climate policy to build fossil fuel infrastructure or back a just and rapid transition to clean energy?
- You’re planning to re-introduce Jack Layton’s Climate Change Accountability Act, how can we reach the ambitious 80% emissions reduction targets in this bill without considering the climate impact of Energy East?
- Energy East is estimate to facilitate a 40% increase in tar sands production, expediting the growth of Canada’s fastest growing source of GHG’s, wont this undermine any climate policy you propose?
- Investing in renewable energy has been proven to create substantially more jobs than investing in fossil fuel projects. Given that Energy East will cost over $12 billion and produce few long term jobs, wouldn’t we be better suited to reject this pipeline and invest in expediting the transition away from dangerous, dirty energy and towards just, clean energy?
Help us ask the NDP to get serious about climate change and the Energy East pipeline by joining the Q+A tonight at 8:30 ET. Click here for the link.