The embattled Enbridge pipeline has been getting a lot of worried public attention lately, and that is entirely appropriate. The proposal represents a lunatic mash up of corporate greed, Tory ideology and environmental suicide, all in one metallic python writhing savagely across the face of B.C. Happily, it is looking less likely that the project will go forward. But the proposal is still active and well-funded.

Our premier's pathetic attempt to seem tough on this issue by demanding more money from Alberta has done little to rally support for the pipeline, or to restore her plummeting poll numbers.

All of this is good news for environmental sanity, but the danger remains that the public will be distracted by all the Enbridge furor from two other dangerous proposals from the fossil fuel industry.

One of the threatened pipelines will "twin" the existing Transmountain Pipeline that runs from Alberta to Burnaby, where the pipeline owner, Kinder Morgan, is planning on catastrophic increases in the toxic bitumen to be shipped out from under the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Bridge in huge tankers bound for Asia.

The second pipeline project that has so far escaped much public notice (and has, shamefully, been endorsed by the provincial NDP, which otherwise has played a useful role in opposing bitumen pipelines) is the Pacific Trail natural gas pipeline, which will, if completed, bring up to a billion cubic feet of natural gas daily from Summit Lake to Kitimat. Like the Enbridge line, the Pacific Trail route is meant to feed carbon-rich fossil fuel to the Pacific for export to Asian markets. And like the Enbridge line and the doubling of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, Pacific Trail will dramatically increase B.C.'s carbon footprint. We all have a stake in the fate of all three of these projects, and we should all be fighting to prevent government and industry from signing off on projects that amount to suicide notes for the world climate system.

The Kinder Morgan project is closest to home for Courier readers. If the firm, founded by former top executives from the crime and scandal ridden Enron, gets its way, it will be allowed to ramp up the number of tankers leaving through Vancouver harbour to nearly one a day. (As opposed to 22 tankers in 2005.) And Kinder Morgan wants to dredge deep beneath the Second Narrows to allow it to use grotesquely large Suezmax tankers, which carry a million barrels each, four times the volume spilled by the infamous Exxon Valdez.

Just imagine what a million barrels of diluted bitumen, tarry oil solids in a diabolical cocktail of benzene, toluene and other poisons, will do to water and wildlife in our harbour.

Say goodbye to common loons, western grebes, great blue herons, cormorants, seals, sea lions and whales. And say hello to clouds of toxic gas over the city. Note that I say "will" not "may." If we let this proposal go through, we are in effect agreeing to the inevitable spill in our harbour and all the death and degradation it will inflict on ecosystems and species who share the inlet with us, not to mention lung-searing clouds of benzene and other toxins in our air. If they ship it, it will spill.

But while Kinder Morgan represents a danger on our civic doorstep, the two other pipelines pose threats to the Interior of the province and to our endangered coastal waters, and all three will ramp up B.C.'s contribution to climate-skewing emissions, just when we should be working to reduce the damage we are doing to climate equilibrium.

The Tsleil-Waututh nation on the North Shore, is one of over a hundred First Nations pledged to resisting pipelines that threaten the Fraser River and its watershed. On Sept. 1, I am advised, it will host a major aboriginal anti-pipeline event in local waters, and on Sept. 2, the Wilderness Committee, together with The Tyee, Tanker Free BC, W2, Transformation Projects and the Squamish Nation will be sponsoring a concert and public gathering to support pipeline resistance.

I urge my readers to attend and support these events, and to speak out strongly calling for a moratorium on any further pipeline construction and a full public commitment to immediately developing alternative power sources and de-carbonizing our economy. Otherwise, we just have to get used to living in a charnel house for dying species and we'll need to learn how to breathe benzene and eat bitumen.