Pipelines as Sun Tunnels: Visualizing Alternatives to Carboniferous Capitalism

Pipelines as Sun Tunnels: Visualizing Alternatives to Carboniferous Capitalism Published in CTheory, March 28, 2017 Trudi Lynn Smith and James K. Rowe School of Environmental Studies University of Victoria Canada is home to the third largest oil deposit in the world, the Alberta Tar Sands (behind only Venezuela and Saudi Arabia). Over the past decade there have been quickening efforts by tar sands producers to build new pipelines to transport more oil to market. The precise reason industry wants new pipelines – allowing for expanded tar sands production – is why they are being so fiercely resisted by indigenous peoples and environmentalists. Growing the tar sands will further pollute and despoil the traditional territories of the Beaver Lake Cree and many other First Nations affected by the intensive mining required to extract tar sands oil. 1 Expanded production will also grow global C02 emissions, making it increasingly challenging for Canada and the global community to arrest dangerous climate change. 2 Finally, new pipeline infrastructure necessarily means more spills of oil onto land and water and the further production of capitalist “sacrifice zones.” 3 The Keystone XL pipeline, proposed to transport tar sands oil across the Canadian border and through the United States was defeated thanks to powerful alliances between indigenous peoples, environmentalists and local communities along the pipeline route who were rightfully worried about the adverse effects of spills. While Donald Trump has signed an executive order that resurrects the project, opposition remains strong and the project’s future is uncertain. 4 The Enbridge Northern Gateway project, another high-profile tar sands pipeline, was recently defeated by similar assemblages of opposition. The proposed project would have sent tar sands oil to Canada’s west coast – a distance of approximately 1,200 kilometres – where it would then be loaded onto supertankers bound for Asian markets. Resistances to Keystone XL and Northern Gateway are manifestations of what journalist Naomi Klein calls “blockadia” – a “roving transnational conflict zone that is cropping up with increasing frequency and intensity wherever extractive projects are attempting to dig and drill, whether for open-pit mines, or gas fracking, or tar sands oil pipelines.” 5 The same day that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his government’s opposition to the Enbridge Northern Gateway project in November 2016, he gave his approval to the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion. 6 Cut off one tar sands tentacle and another one sprouts. Blockadia has now set its sights on the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which is currently the major flashpoint over tar sands expansion in Canada. The Kinder Morgan project would twin an existing pipeline that runs from the Alberta tar sands to metro Vancouver (a distance of roughly 1,150 kilometres). At full capacity, the expanded pipeline will transport 890,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day. The Tsleil-Waututh Nation, whose traditional territories are proposed to house the terminus for the pipeline expansion, have consistently warned about the increased chance of catastrophic oil

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