Cross-border climate change rally
Global News
Ahead of a United Nations climate summit in New York City, hundreds rallied at the Peace Arch border crossing Saturday afternoon in a show of solidarity on both sides of the border to fight climate change.
Environmentalists say climate change knows no borders or boundaries. The issue of fossil fuel development, according to the protestors, needs to be addressed from a region wide perspective to better protect the ecosystem.
Protestors in Canada and the U.S. chanted “no means no,” demonstrating their opposition to an expansion of coal terminals, tar sands pipelines and liquefied natural gas.
U.S. president Barack Obama is attending the United Nations Summit, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be a no show. British prime minister David Cameron, French president Francois Hollande and about 125 other world leaders will convene this Tuesday for the United Nations summit.
“We feel it’s disgraceful, a real disappointment that our own Prime Minister neglected to go,” says Eoin Madden, rally organizer from the Wilderness Committee.
A permit for a proposed coal terminal on the West Coast of Oregon was refused last month by state regulators. Madden says that rejection should serve as an example to the Canadian government to halt those types of projects in Canada.
“The Canadian elected leaders need to catch up with the United States and say we cannot afford to ship coal to be burnt in Asia anymore.”
Madden says the consequences of shipping coal, gas and oil to Asia or any other market are immense.
“It will come back in the shape of climate change.”
But Alan Fryer from the Coal Alliance says killing the coal industry could cripple B.C.’s economy.
“Coal and other natural resources – that is the backbone of the Canadian and B.C. economy. To say that we should somehow stop doing that. That we should stop mining these natural resources I think that some groups are proposing to do is irresponsible.”
According to the Mining Association of B.C., the coal industry generates 26,000 direct and indirect jobs in the province.
Photo: A crowd gathers at Peace Arch Provincial Park to demand action against climate change, September 20, 2014.
