Early on the morning of Tuesday July 3, 12 climbers including an Indigenous grassroots leader and Greenpeace activists formed an aerial blockade from the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge in Vancouver in the path of oil tanker traffic from the Trans Mountain pipeline terminal.<\/p>\n
Why exactly have these activists chosen to put themselves in between tar sands tankers and the ocean?<\/strong> Good question!<\/p>\n The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is a proposal to build a new 1,150 km pipeline between Alberta and the BC coast, alongside an existing 60-year-old pipeline. The new pipeline would almost triple the amount of tar sands oil carried through the existing pipeline, and increase oil tanker traffic on the BC coast sevenfold.<\/p>\n Oil spills from the pipeline or the hundreds of tankers it would bring to the Pacific Coast every year could contaminate drinking water, pollute the ocean or expose millions of people to toxic chemicals, including in Indigenous communities whose territories the proposed pipeline and tankers would cross without consent.<\/p>\n The pipeline would also mean a ramping up of oil extraction in Canada\u2019s tar sands, which would hurt people everywhere by helping to fuel climate-driven super-storms and other disasters. If this weren\u2019t enough, the noise pollution from the anticipated seven-fold increase in tanker traffic could push endangered orcas to extinction.<\/p>\n We can\u2019t let this happen\u2014not while we can still protect everything this pipeline puts at risk.<\/p>\n Want to join in the wave of resistance?<\/strong> Tell Prime Minister Trudeau not to buy-out the Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project<\/p>\n