After years of campaigning, demonstrations, and pressure led by First Nations, workers, and environmentalists TransCanada has announced they are pulling the plug on the Energy East tar sands pipeline and taking a one billion dollar loss on the project.
This victory is because of all of us who worked so hard to ensure this pipeline never saw the light of day. It was because we wrote letters, took to the streets and the banks, pressured governments and built broad coalitions that we were able to delay this project, and ensure that once the project’s climate impacts were assessed even TransCanada recognized there’s no place for Energy East in a climate safe world.
What’s true for Energy East’s climate impacts is true for all the other proposed tar sands pipelines: Keystone XL, Line 3, and the Trans Mountain expansion. They are all incompatible with action on climate change and Indigenous rights and investors should take note. It’s time for banks (like TDand JP Morgan Chase) to get on the right side of history and move their investments.
The movement for a sustainable, just, and prosperous economy will continue to grow and ensure none of these pipelines never get built. Building a green economy requires rapidly phasing out the fossil fuel sector, and that starts with high carbon fuels like the tar sands. Instead of spending billions on new tar sands pipelines, that money should go to supporting workers, creating new green jobs, and building a just transition to renewable energy.
We know that and today those ideas won.
I hope you all take this day to celebrate and to recognize the power of everyday people to do extraordinary things. We stood up to a multibillion dollar pipeline company and we beat them. We beat them because the world we want is better then the world then want to keep us locked into.
So raise a glass, high five your friends, and hug your family because today the world got just a little brighter.
Then after the champagne has been drank, let’s go and stop the other three, (KXL, Line 3, and Kinder Morgan) and build the just transition, that supports workers and the environment, and that the world so desperately needs to see.
Two down, three to go.
With love and respect,
m
