For Immediate Release

August 24, 2014

 

Community Action Slams Justin Trudeau on Climate Change and Energy East Pipeline

Demands for strong action mark the end of “free ride” on climate for opposition parties in Canada

 

Photos Available At Bottom

 

Halifax, NS – Yesterday, over a dozen held banners and confronted Justing Trudeau outside of a high profile Liberal Party event in Chester, Nova Scotia to demand that Justin Trudeau take climate seriously and demand that the Energy East tar sands project get a full climate change review.

 

“Justin Trudeau needs to know that you can’t deal with climate change and build more tar sands pipelines, especially when those pipelines don’t get any sort of climate review” says Cameron Fenton, Canadian Tar Sands Organizer with 350.org. “It’s not enough to say that you have a climate plan, politicians need to prove it.”

 

When a representative of the group asked Trudeau directly if he would push the National Energy Board to include a climate review, he avoided the question and walked into the event. Organizers point out that Justin Trudeau has stated that Energy East “won’t go ahead if it will cost us on pollution, in degradation and in inefficiencies in the coming years”. He has also promised a national climate strategy, two points which should add up to a position against the Energy East project, which would have a the same carbon footprint as adding 7 million cars to Canada’s roads.

 

“Politicians of all stripes need to recognize that if they want to address climate change, they have to put a stop to unchecked tar sands expansion and that means not building pipelines that will lock us into decades of dirty oil dependency,” says Emma Norton, an organizer with Stop Energy East Halifax.

 

The Energy East pipeline is the largest tar sands pipeline ever proposed, and could carry over 1.1 million barrels of oil per day from the Alberta to New Brunswick, the vast majority for export. Energy East would facilitate the expansion of the tar sands, increasing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 32 million tonnes, a larger carbon footprint than all of Nova Scotia.

 

“Energy East is the latest desperate bid to do something every climate scientist in the world has warned against: pump the massive concentrations of carbon in Alberta’s tar sands out into the atmosphere,” says Bill McKibben, author and founder of 350.org. “People along its route have plenty of local reasons to fight it, but they’re also standing up for the future of the planet.”

 

Organizers also pointed out that Energy East won’t receive any kind of climate review as the National Energy Board does not take climate change into consideration as they review proposed pipelines, nor is there any other regulating body in Canada that would.

 

“At a bare minimum, Trudeau and other politicians need to be calling for a full, fair and scientific review of this pipeline, one that takes climate change and other risks to communities and the climate into account,” Norton explained.
Organizers are planning to stage another demonstration outside of another Justin Trudeau event in Halifax today.

 

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Cameron Fenton

604-369-2155

[email protected]