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Canada: Kinder Morgan leaves Burnaby Mountain in win for pipeline protesters
un articulo por Kate Aronoff, Waging Nonviolence reprinted courtesy of a Creative Commons license (slightly abridged)
On the morning of November 28, after weeks of
sustained protest, energy infrastructure company
Kinder Morgan packed up the equipment it had
planned to use in the construction of a new
pipeline on Burnaby Mountain in British Columbia,
and left without finishing the job. 
Protesters rally against the proposed Kinder Morgan oil pipeline on Burnaby Mountain in British Columbia on November 17. (Flickr / Mark Klotz)
click on photo to enlarge
Weeks earlier, the company had legally declared a
“no protest zone” — valid through December 1 —
to keep protesters away from the mountainside
construction sites on the grounds that their
presence would present a safety hazard and
undue expenses. When that wasn’t enough, they
filed an application with the British Columbia
Supreme Court to extend the injunction for
another two weeks. But the court rejected their
application, when it was revealed that Kinder
Morgan had provided the wrong GPS coordinates
for the injunction zone. As a result, charges were
also lifted from the over 100 people arrested for
civil contempt due to a lack of clarity around
where they could and could not be on the
mountain.
Most importantly, the ruling means that Kinder
Morgan can no longer continue construction on
the site, as it has no legal grounds to do so.
According to Reuters, the project would have
more than tripled the volume of the existing Trans
Mountain pipeline, which transports an estimated
300,000 barrels of tar sands oil daily through
Alberta and British Columbia. . .
Protests were attended by local residents,
students, environmental groups and indigenous
advocates, who took on a lead role in the anti-
pipeline organizing. The land on which Kinder
Morgan intended to build the expansion is the
unceded traditional territory of the Tseil-Waututh,
Musqueam, Sto:lo and Squamish Nations. Tseil-
Waututh representatives have filed a legal
challenge with Canada’s Federal Court of
Appeals. Building the pipeline would also run
directly counter to a recent U.N. report stating that
companies need explicit consent from Canada’s
First Nations before beginning construction, even
as First Nations’ land rights are enshrined in the
country’s constitution.
Sut-Lut, a Squamish Nation elder who kept a fire
burning throughout the protests, told a local
paper, “This isn’t a First Nations issue, it’s not a
Burnaby resident problem only, it’s a people
problem, and it’s about our survival. We have one
Earth, and unless this government is hiding
another healthy Earth somewhere, we need to
take care of the one we’ve got, and it’s now, it’s
now we have to step up.”
Activists took part in a festival commemorating
the court’s decision on Burnaby Mountain this
past weekend, including workshops, dance
performances, parties and speak-outs.
Celebrating the victory, veteran organizer Valerie
Langer explained to the Vancouver Observer that
“This is just one battle, and there are still a lot of
battles to come.” Oil companies TransCanada and
Enbridge are each seeking to build or expand oil
pipelines through other parts of Canada.
Thursday’s ruling represents a turning point for
anti-extraction fights across North America.
Combined with recent victories against the
Keystone XL and Energy East pipelines, fossil fuel
companies can expect more “challenging times”
in the months and years to come.
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DISCUSSION
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