Climate Change / Emissions

Alberta First Nations and Allies Deliver Message To Investment Symposium in Calgary:
Dirty Tar Sands Oil Is A Risky Investment
Groups Dare Investors to Drink Community Water

CALGARY - July 16 - Members of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Mikisew Cree First Nation and environmental and social justice advocates traveled to Calgary today to the Oil and Gas Investment Symposium hosted by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers with a message for the hundreds of investors from the United States and around the world that Canada’s Tar Sands are a risky investment.

Oil sands boom swamps the Canadian wilderness
Environmentalists want tougher laws to halt the damage, writes Tim Webb
* Sunday July 20, 2008

Todd Dahlman scoops up a handful of oily sand and smiles. 'This is the
money - it even smells like money,' says the manager of Shell's Muskeg
River oil sands mine in the Athabasca region of North Alberta in Canada.

We are standing in the middle of a pit 50m deep that giant diggers
have hollowed out of the earth. Some 150m beneath our feet lie almost
a billion barrels of oil.

2010 Organizing and the Tar Sands: Inspiring the SPP and Helping the Olympics
By Macdonald Stainsby; July 14, 2008 - Znet
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18182

For much of the last year, many of the anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian forces across Canada have started to work towards converging many of the bigger issues to take place in 2010 into a larger whole.

Forging a Politics Worthy of the Landscape
The Origins of the Western Greens

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
July 12 / 13, 2008

This essay is excerpted from Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance From the Heartland edited by Joshua Frank and Jeffrey St. Clair (AK Press, 2008).

For thirty-five years the Democratic Party has enjoyed a nearly unquestioned hegemony over environmental politics, even though the greatest gains for the Earth were made during the Nixon administration.

B.C. oil could ease crisis
Offshore exploration should be considered, agency says

Peter O'Neil with files from Kelly Sinoski
Canwest News Service

Monday, July 14, 2008

PARIS -- Canada could play a crucial role in helping alleviate the international energy crisis if it continues to expand Alberta oilsands production and considers allowing exploration off B.C.'s pristine coastline, says a senior official with the International Energy Agency.

Oilpatch stares at boots amid record prices
Deborah Yedlin, Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, July 12, 2008

With oil and natural gas trading at more than double where they were during Stampede Week last year, you'd think there would be a feeling of ebullience around town for this year's festivities.

Wrong.

For some reason, there's an unmistakably muted feeling. Sure, there are always the Stampede curmudgeons who opt to leave town or refuse to don their jeans and cowboy boots, but this year it's different.

Kinder Morgan ramping up pipeline plans
Dormant northern leg being revived
Jon Harding, Canwest News Service
Published: Wednesday, July 02, 2008

CALGARY -- A second large shipper of oil from Canada to the United States has confirmed interest is heating up between Canadian producers and refining customers in Asia and along the United States' West Coast.

CLIMATE CHANGE WILL HAVE MAJOR IMPACT ON FISHING INDUSTRY, SAYS UN AGENCY
New York, Jul 10 2008 11:00AM

Climate change is already impacting the world's oceans and will have serious consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on fishing for their livelihoods, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Oil sands: Canada's dirty secret

As oil prices continue to reach record highs, the search for new sources of energy has led the world to Alberta, Canada, and its vast oil sands. Now, John Vidal finds, the country famed for its wilderness and clean living finds itself caught between fuelling the world's oil-hungry economy and the ecological devastation and soaring greenhouse gas emissions that exploiting the tar sands produces

* John Vidal, environment editor, in Fort McMurray
* guardian.co.uk,
* Friday July 11, 2008

Ecuador Constitutional Assembly Votes to Approve Rights of Nature In New
Constitution

Legal Defense Fund: Ecuador First Nation in the World to Shift to
Rights-Based Environmental Protection Using Legal Defense Fund Support

Ecuadorians Follow Lead of U.S. Communities Partnering With Legal Defense
Fund

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

On July 7, 2008, the Ecuador Constitutional Assembly - composed of one
hundred and thirty (130) delegates elected countrywide to rewrite the
country's Constitution - voted to approve articles for the new constitution