John Mayba has organized a ‘Stop Kinder Morgan’ protest for Monday, June 4 at Harbour Quay. The Port Alberni protest will be part of a national day of action organized by Leadnow.ca, 350.org and the Council of Canadians, all objecting to the federal government’s recent decision to purchase the Kinder Morgan pipeline in order to finish the project.
“I feel even though Port Alberni is pretty far away from (the pipeline issue) we still need to make our voices heard,” Mayba said.
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The protest in Port Alberni will take place at 5 p.m. at Harbour Quay, 5440 Argyle Street and will last about half an hour. “Even if we’re just out there briefly I think it’s important to make our voices heard.”
Mayba said he’s heard a variety of opinions and feelings from people over the pipeline project. “There’s a lot of thought about whether this is going to create the number of jobs they say it will…and how important it really is to the Canadian economy.”
Leadnow.ca is leading public protests in the hopes that enough of them will force Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to reconsider the pipeline buyout. Mayba says the debate is about more than the pipeline.
“It’s about the government’s lack of response to the looming climate disaster which is facing not only our children and grandchildren but is more and more apparent at the present time in the floods and droughts and storms, insect infestations and forest fires we are facing,” he said.
“Personally, the issue for me is climate change and Trudeau’s lack of leadership in this area.”
Mayba would like to see comparative studies of the future needs of both coal and oil, and two or three different scenarios: what would happen if we continue using these resources as we are now; examine how much we would need to transition to sustainable energy solutions and for how long; and take an honest look at how going to war against climate change would cost if we ceased using such resources immediately.
“When we’ve got these three studies then we’ll know how much oil we’ll need in the next 20 years.”