climate change

Public concerns about toxic tar-sand and volatile Bakken oil have escalated with recent railway accidents and pipeline leaks and fires. The horrendous death of fourty-seven people going about their daily lives in Lac-Megantic, Quebec has scorched the dangers of oil transportation onto the Canadian soul. Since then there have been other oil-by-rail accidents at Sexsmith and Gainford, Alberta; Plaster Rock, New Brunswick and Landis, Saskatchewan.

Neil Young and Diana Krall’s Honour the Treaties tour will be over by the time you read this. But the political fall-out will carry on. I am mostly interested in the impacts of the tar-sands on air, water, land and treaty rights. But it’s also interesting to consider what the backlash to the tour tells us about the “politics of oil”.