It's been pretty amazing in the last few days watching the nearly 200 people who have been arrested outside the White House. They are amongst the 2000 who over the next two weeks who are willing to face arrest in order to call on their president, Barack Obama, to "stand up to Big Oil" and reject the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Author Bill Mckibben was one of the more than 50 people who were arrested on the first day of this civil disobedience. The organization he founded, 350.org, has been a leader in organizing the action at the White House. Mckibben has described this effort to stop this pipeline as "defusing a carbon bomb".

The "super-sizing" of the Keystone Pipeline (to make it XL) would extend this pipeline from the tar sands in Alberta, one of the largest reserves of oil on earth, down to the refineries in Texas on the gulf coast. This would literally and symbolically connect the tar sands in Alberta to Texas (the centre of the storm for Big Oil) and ultimately the scene of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Needless to say this is the antithesis of responsible action to reduce CO2 emissions to the levels dictated by climate science.

On Saturday August 27th at 2pm here in the Metro Vancouver Lower Mainland we are holding a rally that is part of this international effort to stop the activities that are causing climate change. We are opposing the expansion of all pipelines and tanker traffic that facilitate the expansion of the Canadian tar sands. To make the point, we are holding our event right on top of a key tar sands pipeline right here in our backyard. I hope you will join us this weekend – here’s a description of where we’ll be. 

We are meeting at 1pm at the bus stop in front of Waves at Pender and West Hastings in Vancouver.  When taking public transit to the rally in Burnaby you will, ironically enough, get off the bus at a gas station. It's a spot where there is a fork in the road between going up the mountain to the university (SFU) or down Inlet Drive towards the oil terminal.

This is poetic reminder of what this struggle is all about: the necessary transition to a society with roads less travelled by private cars, transforming our transportation system and kicking our oil addiction.

We urgently need to start these changes today, and that’s about choosing healthier trajectories. Do we, as a society, go down the road (in this case Inlet Drive) towards more oil consumption, sprawl, oil dependence and climate change, or do we listen to science and consider the context of our responsibilities in the world?

When we get off the bus, we will cross the street and meet others in the park. We will have a few folks say a few words at the park and then we will walk down toward the oil tanker terminal. 

When we were planning this event we were struck by the stark contrast between the different warning signs close to the terminal. This really is a place where life in the wild confronts the power brokers we cordially call "Big Oil".

We will converge at the Kinder Morgan oil terminal’s front gate and show our solidarity with the tar sands Keystone XL pipeline protest in Washington, DC. 

This is where our current pipelines meet with the tankers that are threatening Vancouver Harbour as we speak.