Great news! The government of Canadian British Columbia just shitcanned the West Coast tar sands pipeline project, a.k.a. Northern Gateway. Unlike Keystone XL, this massive monster of a pipeline would have remained within Canadian borders:
From
Mother Jones:
While we've been having a big fight over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline down here in the US, Canada has also been debating a massive pipeline for exporting tar sands oil, the Northern Gateway. And on Friday, the government of British Columbia put the kibosh on that whole idea.
BC's environment minister said Friday that Enbridge, the company seeking to build the pipeline, had not adequately answered the government's questions about the project, and that there were still outstanding concerns about spill prevention and response. The CBC reports:
"British Columbia thoroughly reviewed all of the evidence and submissions made to the panel and asked substantive questions about the project, including its route, spill response capacity and financial structure to handle any incidents," said Environment Minister Terry Lake.
"Our questions were not satisfactorily answered during these hearings."
http://www.motherjones.com/...
350.org founder Bill McKibben released this statement:
“For years the tar sands promoters have said: ‘if we don't build Keystone XL the tar sands will get out some other way.' British Columbians just slammed the door on the most obvious other way, so now it's up to President Obama. If he approves Keystone XL he bails out the Koch Brothers and other tar sands investors; if he rejects the pipeline, then an awful lot of that crude is going to stay in the ground where it belongs.”
http://www.enewspf.com/...
UPDATE 1:
Just found this recent tweet from Bill McKibben:
The BC rejection of Northern Gateway is one of the biggest victories yet in the tarsands fight http://www.calgaryherald.com/...
The article he links to helps explain why he can say that with such confidence. Here's a taste:
VICTORIA - The B.C. Liberal government has strongly rejected the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, writing in a formal submission to the Joint Review Panel that the company has not properly addressed the province's environmental concerns.
"(Enbridge Northern Gateway) has presented little evidence about how it will respond in the event of a spill," the province wrote in its submission to the Northern Gateway Pipeline Joint Review Panel.
"Put another way, it is not clear from the evidence that NG (Northern Gateway) will in fact be able to respond effectively to spills either from the pipeline itself, or from tankers transporting diluted Bitumen from the proposed Kitimat terminal."
Sounds kinda like Enbridge just received an Eco-smack down. Yayy. Let's hope we do the same with the Keystone XL proposal.