Against impossible odds: Ecuadoreans’ Legal Fight Against Chevron Continues in Canada.
Texaco/Chevron vs Ecuador. Photo: La Hora.
On South America’s teleSur, journalist Joe Emersberger interviews lawyer Stephen Donziger on a crucial case with huge implications for us all.
Donziger: “The fact top law firms around the world are helping the Ecuadorean villagers is terrifying to Chevron and the fossil fuel industry and completely changes the risk calculus of oil drilling in delicate ecosystems. These firms normally represent the oil industry; now they are representing groups fighting that industry. That’s never happened before.”
True, this couldn’t happen without the lawyers. But before, during and after the courts have their say, again and again it’s people who live on the land and water under siege that have to hold the front line. Against Dakota Access, Enbridge, Line 9, Kinder Morgan, Energy East and all the other petro-invaders.
If our planet is to remain livable, these are the first people we should thank, and support.
In Saskatchewan’s second major oil spill, crews are still trying to identify where the rupture occurred in a tangle of pipelines from the Alberta tar sands that cross this land. Oil Pipeline Spills 53,000 Gallons on First Nations Land.
Tar sands, Alberta, Canada
Meanwhile, in Washington DC President Trump has just re-opened the door to the infamous Keystone XL pipeline, which his predecessor had temporarily blocked. The new president also promised to accelerate construction of bitterly fought Dakota Access Pipeline.
In Ottawa, the Liberal government recently rubber-stamped two dangerously invasive pipelines in Canada: Kinder Morgan’s line to the Pacific coast and Enbridge’s expansion of Line 3 to the U.S. midwest.
Prime Minister Trudeau also welcomed the Keystone decision. “I’ve been on the record for many years supporting it,” he said in Calgary. “We know we can get our resources to market more safely and responsibly while meeting our climate-change goals.”
Soon the world’s dirtiest oil will flow more abundantly than ever from the Alberta tar sands.
We are told by the oil cabal, its collaborators in government and big media that Canadians need it. But notice where it’s going: to the Pacific Ocean and to the USA, in both cases for sale far, far away. It will leave behind: mountains of broken promises to First Nations and the rest of us, a moonscape in northern Alberta, toxic spills and explosions along the routes, and countless tons of life-destroying greenhouse gas. Hidden somewhere in there, we are told, is a fair bargain.
In Alberta, Premier Rachel Notley welcomed all three pipelines. At the same time, her NDP government reneged on a promise to charge oil companies higher provincial royalties for the oil they plunder. “It is not the time to reach out and make a big money grab,” she told reporters, “because that is just not going to help Albertans.”
Ah. But then soon after and with no apparent shame Notley said, “We’re at the point now where the Alberta economy needs to be enjoying the benefits of a higher return for our oil and gas… That is definitely something that will happen as a result of the Keystone.”
With Liberals and social democrats like these running things, who needs a Trump?
Across Canada, the US and planet earth, our only home, the battle goes on.
Governments come and go. But life endures, as long as earth, water and air can sustain it.
All of these face escalating assaults by powerful corporations whose twin obsessions, power and profit, are fundamentally, irredeemably anti-life.
People who defend the essentials of life from theft and degradation need and deserve any support the rest of us can offer. On Turtle Island/North America, often it’s indigenous peoples who live on the front lines, and thus are called to lead some of the most intense struggles.
Standing Rock has the highest profile right now, but there are others just as crucial, though less widely known. Some context:
This arrogant statement directly contradicts the Liberal government´s promises to follow Supreme Court rulings and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which require “free, prior, and informed consent” of Indigenous Nations to any natural resource projects affecting their traditional and treaty territories.
At the behest of its partners in the oil/gas industry, this government is poised to approve, among other dangerous pipelines (see below), the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline to carry toxic crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to the Pacific coast for shipping abroad. It would pass through – invade, really – the territory of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation.
The Minister’s casual dismissal of the government’s legal obligations provoked strong reactions from First Nations, including this one from Kanesatake Grand Chief Serge Simon: “Consent, it’s what we are demanding, and he will never get our consent, not for something like this. What if we gave Canada 20 Standing Rocks? I wonder if his position will change then.”
In late November this issue will be tested at the Supreme Court of Canada, in the case of yet another pipeline, Enbridge’s Line 9. It is due to carry tar sands bitumen and fracked oil to Montreal, crossing more than 120 vital waterways and 830 kilometers of land along the way, including territory of the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation, without their consent. (Neither does the project have consent from millions of Canadians who live along the route, the most densely populated in Canada, but the government blithely ignores this too.)
Since the Supreme Court agrees to hear only a small fraction of the cases submitted to it, clearly it considers this one vital to the people it is meant to serve. So should we all. Given the catastrophic impacts of mining and transporting tar sands and fracked oil, the fate of this case has profound implications for First Nations, for Canadians, and ultimately for all life on this earth.
Details on the case and how to support it are here.
For an eloquent view of why these struggles keep happening, meet Seneca First Nation biologist Henry Lickers, chapter 1 in Bold Scientists. An excerpt is here.
The spin: As usual, the industry and its government partners assure us that “clean-up efforts are underway.” What else can they say, spill after spill…
Tar sands pipelines. Image: newrepublic.com
The worse news: The industry is poised to send millions of gallons of this muck via pipelines and trains across thousands of kilometres/miles through every kind of terrain and aquifer to the west and east coasts, and south through the US.
The good news: Every step of the way, courageous people are resisting.
At Burnaby Mountain in British Columbia, more than 100 resisters have been arrested to date for trying to block a scheme by the Texas-based Kinder Morgan corporation to ram a pipeline through the mountain.
Canada’s National Energy Board granted the company rubber-stamp approval to proceed with test drilling, despite the fact that the pipeline will cross – invade, actually – territory which the Indigenous First Nations have never legally ceded to either the federal or provincial government.
Last week, a provincial court judge threw out the charges against the Burnaby Mountain resisters, which included both First Nations and non-First Nations citizens.
Unfortunately, the judge’s ruling was based on Kinder Morgan having provided inaccurate GPS boundaries for its drilling sites, which leaves the company free to get a new revised injunction against the resisters.
Michael Riordon 