LIVE: Climbers block oil tanker from Vancouver bridge

Early this morning, 12 climbers including an Indigenous grassroots leader and Greenpeace activists formed an aerial blockade from the Iron Workers’ Memorial Bridge in Vancouver, stopping tar sands tanker traffic from leaving the Trans Mountain pipeline terminal. Why exactly have these activists chosen to put themselves in between tar sands tankers and the ocean? Good question! The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is a proposal to build a new 1,150 km pipeline between Alberta and the BC coast, alongside an existing 60-year-old pipeline. The new pipeline would almost triple the amount of tar sands oil carried through the existing pipeline, and increase tar sands tanker traffic on the BC coast sevenfold. Oil spills from the pipeline or the hundreds of tankers it would bring to the Pacific Coast every year could contaminate drinking water, pollute the ocean or expose millions of people to toxic chemicals, including in Indigenous communities whose territories the proposed pipeline and tankers would cross without consent. The pipeline would also mean a ramping up of oil extraction in Canada’s tar sands, which would hurt people everywhere by helping to fuel climate-driven super-storms and other disasters. If this weren’t enough, the noise pollution from the anticipated seven-fold increase in tanker traffic could push an endangered population of orcas to extinction. We can’t let this happen — and there’s still time to stop it. Want to join in the wave of resistance? Tell Prime Minister Trudeau not to buy-out the Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project >> https://act.gp/2KsGV95 Next, tell the Dirty Dozen banks not to fund toxic oil pipelines >> https://act.gp/2Kvew26