The protests on Burnaby Mountain received a lot of attention, and raised many questions.
The issue of exporting bitumen from the Alberta oil sands is controversial, and it should be. There are concerns about how oil is extracted from the oilsands; about the environmental impact of extraction; about the type of oil produced and about the fact that the plan is to ship raw product to China and other Asian markets, and not refine any of it in B.C.
In addition, there are concerns about climate change. It seems pretty obvious that putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is likely to lead to some significant negative effects down the road.
However, it is not up to Kinder Morgan or oil companies to solve climate change issues on their own. That ultimately is the job of national governments, and Canada’s government has been hesitant to make any moves towards reducing oilsands activity. Protests against one company doing geological testing on Burnaby Mountain are more than a little displaced.
As of Wednesday, more than 100 people had been arrested for violating a court injunction. However, at another court hearing Thursday, those people had their charges dropped, at least in part because the initial court order wasn’t clear.
Kinder Morgan has now finished its testing. The protesters have gone home, because they don’t have anything to protest.
Court injunctions are a part of our law and order system, although they must be clear if they are to mean anything. Violating court injunctions carries a fair bit of risk, something some people are quite prepared to take.
A number of statements about native land claims have been made by protesters. There is no active claim on any part of Burnaby Mountain, most of which is owned by either Simon Fraser University or the City of Burnaby.
In terms of Burrard Inlet and plans for oil tankers to traverse it, that is most certainly a legitimate concern of First Nation groups, as well as citizens of adjacent municipalities.
Where this issue of shipping Alberta oil overseas will end is very uncertain. Kinder Morgan is not backing down on plans to twin its Trans Mountain pipeline. Meanwhile, declining oil prices and the increasing self-sufficiency of oil supply in North America could have a profound effect on the market for Alberta oil. It may well be, if oil prices continue to decline, that Alberta oilsands projects are no longer economically viable. That could lead to a withdrawal of plans to ship oil via pipeline to the West Coast.
All of the attention paid to this issue will hopefully cause people to think about the place of fossil fuels in our society, the benefits we derive from them, and the risks that are entailed in relying on them. There is no clear answer to that question either.
