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Sorry Jim
2013-04-25  |  John Bennett

I, like most Canadians, don't like it when a member of the family misbehaves in public and I feel it’s necessary to apologize on their behalf (for the good of the family name).

Well this is one of those occasions. So here goes:

On behalf of Canadians, I would like to extend a full and sincere apology to Dr. James Hansen (or “Jim” as his friends call him). He is owed an apology for recent derogatory remarks by Joe Oliver, the Federal Minister of Natural Resources.

So what’s this all about? Oliver, Canada’s Oil Minister (as the UK Guardian recently dubbed him), was in Washington last Tuesday flogging the Keystone XL pipeline yet again. While speaking, he dropped the veneer of sober economic pragmatist and diplomat, and the real Joe emerged.

Clueless Joe Oliver

You may recall he’s the same minister who calls...

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Letter to Redford: We Want Climate Leadership Now!
2013-04-18  |  Chelsea Flook

Twenty two organizations, representing a broad cross section of society from environmental and landowner groups to First Nations, called on Alberta to be a true climate leader today in an open letter to Premier Redford.

We made this call in response to the Premier’s recent visits to the United States and the ads published by the Alberta government there claiming that Alberta already is a climate leader.

We also want to have our voices heard in the discussions currently going on behind closed doors between the Alberta government and the oil industry over how to "renew" the province’s climate policy (the policy that the Alberta government has acknowledged won't come close to achieving the government's own climate targets). 

 

Here's what we sent. Hope we get a reply!

 

Dear Premier Redford,

As a major fossil fuel...

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Pipeline Snakes & Ladders
2013-04-15  |  John Bennett

By John Bennett

I want to alert you to the most recent attack on environmental protection and democracy in this country and share with you a letter I wrote to Gaetain Caron, Chair and CEO, National Energy Board of Canada (NEB). I was spurred to write after a frustrating experience last week.

The NEB is now operating under NEW rules created by last June’s omnibus bill and, as predicted, democratic participation has suffered – in this case regarding the environmental review process concerning Enbridge’s proposal to reverse its old “Line 9” pipeline (that has been transporting light oil from Montreal to Sarnia for decades). Enbridge wants to use Line 9 in reverse to pump corrosive Tar Sands bitumen from Sarnia to Montreal and beyond eastward (exactly where we don’t know).

Line 9 passes through some of the most populated areas in Canada. Remember the oil spill we witnessed earlier this month, running through the middle of...

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Open Letter to AB Environment Minister on Suncor spill
2013-03-27  |  Chelsea Flook

Well, once again, the unimaginable has happened and Albertans are left with more questions than answers 24 hours after a pipe spilled into the Athabasca River. Sierra Club Prairie Chapter, alongside our friends and allies, has sent the following open letter to the Minister of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development with respect to the recent spill at the Suncor site. It is upsetting to think that still, we do not know what was in that pipe, how much leaked into the Athabasca River, and how this kind of incident could have happened in the first place. Alberta is still waiting, after 45 years of oilsands development, for a monitoring system to be put in place, so the extent to which we can survey the impacts of this leak are questionable. 

 

 

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(ICE) BREAKING NEWS...
2013-03-23  |  John Bennett

By John Bennett

I'm often asked to explain why people should support Sierra Club Canada? “Because we provide one of the best, most up-to-date sources of information on issues impacting the Canadian environment,” I often reply.

For example, late last night I received a high-priority email from our in-house climate expert Paul Beckwith (Paul is a climatologist, physicist and part-time professor with the University of Ottawa). In his email Paul wrote: “John, it’s urgent you see the new NASA satellite visualization of the cracking sea ice between February 17th and March 18th…this has never happened before! Normally the ice just melts at the outer edges but in this case almost the entire ice sheet is on the move and breaking up (which is indicative of the extreme thinness, and slushiness, and weakness of the ice). March is always the time of year when the ice should be strongest ... this is REALLY bad news!

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