Canadians Answer The Call To Defend Our Coast While Climate Silence Reigns South of Border

It was a cool rainy day in Victoria, British Columbia yesterday, but that didn’t stop thousands of people from coming out to the B.C. Legislature to show both the provincial and the federal governments that they are opposed to the two pipelines that industry and governments want to build to carry tar sands oil across the province for export to China. But it’s more than just about these two pipelines, as the Defend Our Coast website makes clear:

We’re here because the Canadian tar sands are the most destructive industrial project on earth, and will be “game over for the climate” according to NASA’s Jim Hansen. We are here because we’re tired of being bullied by the biggest, most profitable industry on earth, Big Oil. And we’re pushing back on the anti-environment, anti-democratic, dissent-crushing actions of Canada’s federal Conservative government.

The head count varied, from 5,000 according to the organizers to the 3,000 reported by the CBC. Shaun Atleo went up the middle and tweeted that there were 4,000 people at the Legislature. In my experience, organizers try to get an accurate count and (these days, at least) the media chronically under reports the number of protestors. Here’s one report on the protest by CTV News:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT3w6ULaayo&feature=share]

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And here’s another more personal video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7ADypWF1rE&feature=youtu.be]

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Meanwhile south of the border the mockery of democracy that’s called the American election continued with a third debate between presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. As @petridishes  tweeted, it was “...the most aggressive bout of Two People Basically Agreeing On A Large Number of Points I’ve seen in a long time.” And the climate silence continued – for the first time since the 1980s when the world became aware of the threat of global warming, there was no mention of it in any of the presidential debates. 350.org put this out before last night’s debate, and sadly it remains true, only the number is now 390 minutes:

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In contrast, via Grist.org comes this video from 24 years ago (!!) showing how the threat of global warming was addressed during the vice presidential debate between Dan Quayle and Democratic challenger Lloyd Bentsen in 1988:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVZo5m5uSug&feature=player_embedded]

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Grist’s David Roberts does an excellent piece on the reasons behind this dangerous silence – Climate Silence: It’s the Right, Stupid.

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*Thanks to Emma for the Defend Our Coast links!*