2015: The Year We Turn Away from Tar Sands
In 2014 Naomi Klein popularized the term “blockadia” in her book This Changes Everythingusing the term as a sort of catch-all to describe the grassroots insurgency emerging across the globe in the face of extreme energy development. This past year also saw the continued desperate push by tar sands peddlers to build more pipelines, new mines and rush to dig up every last drop of tar sands crude. Thankfully, community opposition from the source to every coast (and even across the Atlantic in Europe, where protests met the arrival of the first shipment of tar sands to Europe) has risen up. As we leave 2014 and look forwards to 2015, here is a snapshot of the global movement to stop the tar sands.
The Source
Just a few short years ago the Northern Alberta tar sands were a little known unconventional oil reserve. Not anymore, thanks to the tireless efforts of activists & community leaders from Indigenous communities downstream of the tar sands. Projects like the Healing Walk, the final walk that happened this past June, have brought global awareness to one of the world’s largest and most dangerous pools of carbon.
This year saw three major tar sands projects shelved. Shell, Total and Stat-Oil all suspended projects that previously had been seen as “done deals” because of a lack of market access, financial uncertainty and rising opposition. With the falling price of oil, and the world waking up to the reality of the carbon bubble, this could be just the beginning for financial trouble in the tar sands. In 2015, new projects like Teck’s Frontier Mine – the largest open pit tar sands mine ever proposed – could become a litmus test for the future of new tar sands developments, and a turning point to stopping tar sands at the source.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
