We left off our saga of Justin and the Beanstalk with the young wunderkind’s triumph over the giant ogre (Prime Minister Harper), as he swept away the broken democratic shards littering his kingdom in the sky, to the cries of joy from the Canadian peasants. Justin began energetically fulfilling at least some of his many promises. He rejoined the Paris Agreement on Climate.
Indigenous peoples and climate campaigners scored a major victory in Canada on Thursday as the Federal Court of Appeals ruled that the government’s review of the controversial Trans Mountain Pipeline, a project of Kinder Morgan, did not adequately consult with First Nations before greenlighting the project.
An oil spill from the Belle Fourche Pipeline that was discovered Dec. 5, 2016 in Ash Coulee Creek, a tributary of the Little Missouri River, near Belfield, N.D. (Scott Stockdill/North Dakota Department of Health)
The companies behind four proposed pipelines that would transport oil from Canada’s tar sands have spilled 63,000 barrels of hazardous liquids – including crude oil – from their existing US pipeline network since 2010, according to government data.
Although TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline has received the lion’s share of media attention, another key border-crossing pipeline benefitting tar sands producers was approved on November 19 by the U.S. State Department.
