Sven Biggs is the Canadian oil and gas program director at Stand.earth, an international non-profit environmental organization with offices in Canada and the United States that is known for its groundbreaking research and successful corporate and citizens’ engagement campaigns to create new policies and industry standards in protecting forests, advocating the rights of Indigenous peoples, and protecting the climate.
For the oil companies, there is more profit to be made from exporting unrefined oil to jurisdictions with low wages and lower environmental standards than in creating jobs here in Canada.
The most effective way to support oilpatch workers and their families is not by giving their former employers government handouts, but by supporting workers directly.
Even if the pipeline went ahead, at least they'd make good on an election promise to use "every tool available" to stop Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain expansion.
Our climate targets have us heading for a three degree increase - a level at which scientists agree that large parts of the earth will become inhospitable to human civilization.
