{"id":54544,"date":"2020-08-03T08:52:27","date_gmt":"2020-08-03T13:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54544"},"modified":"2020-08-03T08:52:57","modified_gmt":"2020-08-03T13:52:57","slug":"what-kenney-had-to-kill-to-embrace-coal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54544","title":{"rendered":"What Kenney Had to Kill to Embrace Coal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What Kenney Had to Kill to Embrace Coal<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Alberta\u2019s 1976 Coal Policy protected vital drinking water supplies for much of the province. That\u2019s gone now.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"kenney-main-coal.jpg\"\/
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. His government, after being heavily lobbied by coal interests, opted to open a huge swath of sensitive Rocky Mountains land to open pit mining, rendering longstanding protections \u2018obsolete.\u2019 Photo by Jason Franson, the Canadian Press.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Under the cover of a pandemic, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney quietly wiped away a near half-century of safeguards against open pit coal mining in most of the province\u2019s Rocky Mountains and foothills.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result could be the stripping away of mountain tops across more than a million and half hectares of terrain \u2014 about half the size of Vancouver Island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gone, as of last May, is the province\u2019s 1976 Coal Policy, which protected the headwaters of rivers that secure drinking water for Canadians across the prairies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Coal Policy was established by the Progressive Conservative government then led by Peter Lougheed, based on nearly six years of active public consultations. It was quietly axed this spring without input by First Nations or the wider public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Kenney\u2019s government only talked to one group, the Coal Association of Canada<\/a>. (See this related story<\/a> published today on The Tyee.)The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That lobbying group is directed<\/a> by Robin Campbell, a former Tory provincial environmental minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now a handful of largely Australian-owned corporations intent on serving metallurgical coal markets in India and China are poised to begin transforming Alberta\u2019s eastern slopes into an industrial mining zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Kenney Had to Kill to Embrace Coal Alberta\u2019s 1976 Coal Policy protected vital drinking water supplies for much of the province. That\u2019s gone now. Under the cover of a pandemic, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney quietly wiped away a near half-century of safeguards against open pit coal mining in most of the province\u2019s Rocky Mountains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[1082,5549,147,327,328,25592,5499],"class_list":["post-54544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","tag-alberta","tag-andrew-nikiforuk","tag-coal","tag-fossil-fuel-industry","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-jason-kenney","tag-the-tyee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54545,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54544\/revisions\/54545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}