Podcast for June 2018: Trans Mountain Q&A
Do you have questions about the government’s buyout of Kinder Morgan’s pipeline and tanker expansion project? We hosted a live Trans Mountain Q&A on Facebook to address Dogwood supporters’ most pressing Trans Mountain questions.
This episode was recorded on unceded Coast Salish territory.
Take Action
Because the Trans Mountain deal was negotiated behind closed doors, we don’t have all the answers. But the ministers and MPs have more access to behind-the-scenes information than we do. Send your MP a message. (You can also tell them what you think of the federal government’s purchase.)
Bill Morneau is in charge of this nation’s purse strings — that’s your tax payer dollars being spent. Let him know what you think of his fiscal management. Call Minister Morneau.
Want to do more to stop Kinder Morgan? Volunteer with Dogwood.
Deeper Reading
Classic 1953 pipeline for sale. Some rust, Kai Nagata, Dogwood
Five things you should know about Morneau’s Trans Mountain buyout, Sophie Harrison, Dogwood
The tip of an iceberg, Kai Nagata, Dogwood
National Observer releases its Trans Mountain files, Mike De Souza, National Observer
Subscribe to the Dogwood Podcast
And Jonathan Wilkinson MP says that the 65 year old pipeline will appreciate. Oh yeah, so did the British subs. And will fossil fuel use go on releasing carbon sequestered over 100s of millions of years in a decade or two?
“I would argue that what little ethical and moral foundation the country has is deeply threatened by the crumbling discipline of a fossil fuel based economy and the politics it spawns. Nothing requires government supervision in so many areas (and nothing has anything like the influence on government) as this industry. It follows that no other industry remotely requires the amount and kind of honest, wary media surveillance this one does,” the late Rafe Mair aptly wrote in his newly released book Politically Incorrect, in which he forensically dissects democracy’s decline in Canada and suggests how it may be helped. “What has the media, especially but hardly exclusively the print media, done in response to this immense challenge? It’s joined fortunes with the petroleum industry. And a very large part of it has done so in print and in public. The facts are that the rest of the media have not raised a peep of protest at this unholiest of alliances and that governments contentedly and smugly pretend all that favourable coverage they get proves their efficiency—not that the fix is in and they’re part of that fix. Let me just comment that the difference from 1972 to 2017 in the media’s dealing with governments and politics takes the breath away!”
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/11/14/mair-media-unholiest-alliances AND https://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/postmedia-prezi-reveals-intimate-relationship-oil-industry-lays-de-souza AND https://commonground.ca/tell-me-lies-lies-crude-little-lies/ AND https://commonground.ca/how-trudeaus-lies-differ-from-trumps-lies/
When the former Canadian lawyer, political commentator, radio personality and politician in B.C. (who passed away last October) makes reference to “the rest of the media”, I believe that includes the otherwise overtly progressive Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Toronto Star and Star Metro newspaper chain.
While the public broadcaster has, and likely always will, zealously involve itself in the politics of race (and that of the respective race’s relevantly related religion), gender and gender-bending—the three major social issues most intensely covered by the overtly socially progressive CBC—I’ve found that it’s been complicitly negligent in its coverage of the petroleum industry’s iron grip on our nation’s oil resource and by extension the negative impacts on the health of our natural environment and ecosystems.
http://jspp.psychopen.eu/article/view/96/37 AND https://commonground.ca/vancouver-the-day-the-media-died
Although conservative mainstream news-media in North America (and perhaps even Britain) might generally be expected to behave implicitly apologetic towards big environmental polluters, such as the corporate crude-oil sector, the relatively few yet equally mainstream outlets of an outwardly liberal slant, conversely, might be expected to vastly voice the alarm on all ecological threats, both potentially and in ongoing practice.
However, from what I’ve observed over the last half-dozen years or so, the latter fail to do so, even though basic common sense, at least to me, would dictate that genuine ecological threats and disasters would be given the highest priority.
Meanwhile, those progressive-reputation newspapers are very zealous in printing numerous stories (which I find have a perhaps unintended unfortunate distractive effect away from even serious eco-concerns) on persecuted and disadvantaged minority groups, most notably those of race (and perhaps that of relevant related religion), sexuality, gender, and especially stories involving society’s most disenfranchised—the homeless and those with mindbogglingly decrepit living quarters very few of us would even think of inhabiting; and, not to be mistaken, I find stupendous and crucial such journalistic social activism. (As it were, the current potent distraction is that of the celebrity sexual misconduct scandals flowing from the showbiz industry, and its unquestionable long-overdue legitimacy makes it all the more effective diversion from critical natural environment concerns planet wide.) But to me it’s clearly counterproductively absurd to continue that fervent extensive-coverage activism without the thorough inclusion of the grave threats to the natural environment and eco-systems—and therefore us humans—by big industries.
As an aside: I wonder whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at this point in time anyway, has his re-election hopes hinged upon his currently favourable politics of race (and any relevantly related religion), gender and gender-bending, the three major social issues most enthusiastically covered by The Star chain and CBC?
Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley may be left with similar political hopes, as her environment-health reputation has taken a rightful beating since her bedding with Big Oil https://commonground.ca/the-ndp-world-made-for-oil/
Furthermore, in thirty years of consuming mainstream news media, I’ve yet to come across a single serious thorough discussion—not even in Canada’s otherwise progressive outlets—on why our national and provincial governments consistently refuse to process our own oil and lumber here in Canada instead of exporting it bulk raw—that is, without the topic discussion already having been parameterized thus the outcome predetermined (or to me at least strongly seeming to do so). And I’m not talking about just on the one and same day, open and closed topic, as I’ve witnessed two or three of those insufficient efforts.
However, if I somehow managed to miss one or more thorough print/electronic national discussions during the three decades that continued for at least a week, what reasons (good and bad) had been put forward to essentially render the issue conclusively settled—i.e. there are no practical and/or environmentally sound means of processing our own bulk raw lumber and crude oil?
As for editors and journalists within the near-monopoly mainstream corporate news-media (e.g. Canada’s Postmedia), I believe they may be compromising their professionalism as well as perhaps their own eco-health-concern convictions for the sake of a buck and a byline (i.e. a company paycheque and a frequently published name with stories); however, there are also those climate science deniers-of-convenience who are especially susceptible to econo-euphoria and the concept of an unhindered libertarian economy with, of course, the oil industry at (or near) the top of that chain. But what infuriates me is that they, like our theocratically orientated previous (Conservative Stephen Harper) national government, are abusing their position of power and/or immense electorate-consent-manufacturing influence, and resultantly dragging the rest of the 99.99 percent of the globe’s population (i.e. us non-believers) to hell along with them.
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/03/26/Harper-Evangelical-Mission AND https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/09/14/Covert-Evangelism-Stephen-Harper/
Some reporters and editors would (as though with big innocent fawn-like eyes) reply to such critiques as this with, “Who, me? I’m just the messenger.” Whatever the news media may be, they are not ‘just the messenger’; nor are they but a reflection of the community—or their consumership, for that matter—in which they circulate. They’ll be ‘just the messenger’ when the entire news production team consists of dispassionate robots, who couldn’t care less who rules the nation, who stays wealthy, and how to triple the daily freight shipments of diluted bitumen oil-sands product, etcetera; and then even those automatons would have to be programed by other artificial intelligence, and so on.
Furthermore, very disturbing is the corresponding tendency, in general, for polled voters heading into an election to rate the environment as the least, or next to it, of their listed election issues of importance and, equally troubling, the economy as their primary concern. After all, seemingly goes the prevailing mentality, what back and brain busting labourer will readily retain the energy to worry about such things immediately unseen regardless of their most immense importance?
http://commonground.ca/science-betrayed-crime-denial/ AND http://commonground.ca/revolving-door-revolution-patch-interview-kevin-taft/
Even worsening the entire situation, such widely published poll findings can perpetuate such skewed-logic priorities, as can a negligence of otherwise meriting eco-threat coverage erroneously imply there are no real, serious environmental concerns out there about which to worry.
https://www1.udel.edu/htr/American/Texts/campcov.html AND http://gcml.org/corporate-media-and-big-oil-coup
I see it all as somewhat like a cafeteria lineup consisting of diversely socially represented people, all adamantly arguing over which identifiable traditionally marginalized person should be at the front and, conversely, at the back of the line; and, furthermore, to whom amongst them should go the last piece of quality pie—all the while the interstellar spaceship on which they’re all permanently confined is burning and suffering some serious storage-tank-breach spillage of lethally toxic chemicals at onboard locations that cannot be immediately seen.
But in their defense, how can the general populace truly know what is in fact most important when the immense gravity of a situation is basically neglected by the mainstream news-media—except on the rare North American occasion of a Houston (Texas) Hurricane Harvey or New Orleans (Louisiana) Hurricane Katrina where there’s an unmistakably big brightly-lit sore-thumb unprecedented devastation and large-human-toll event (1,800-plus fatalities in the latter catastrophic occurrence during August 23-31, 2005) that no one can readily dismiss.
Granted, I could understand why a more palliative approach to our Earthly fate might be in order, such as significantly correcting primary social injustices amongst the planet’s populaces, had humankind’s fate been irreversibly solidified in regards to global warming, as believed by a responding editor with a British monthly climate-concerned publication as well as many reputable climate scientists.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/dec/09/poznan-copenhagen-global-warming-targets-climate-change AND https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/have-we-passed-the-point-of-no-return-on-climate-change
As a species, we really can be so narrow-mindedly over-preoccupied with our own admittedly overwhelming little worlds, that we’ll miss the most critical biggest of pictures.
The last line refers to the normal mind or 4 Miss B Can’ t Understand Normal Thinking. Truly the issue still is in the hands of the land owner failng to be compensated. Who pays for a decommission? There is a long process before the line is abandoned filled with nitrogen and left as is where is. This is not the goal. Create a solution based on real models. Rise sea levels8mis the campus under water? Fire hazard is too real!! Good work Kai. Just went through podcast. Lol at never prying the pipe from katkattooiis. Maybe watch APTN Sophie the Chiefs Candidates are speaking. Pretty cool. My terms are the same work towards a team work fast and keep them confused. Aloha Walt