SOMETHING LIKE A PIPELINE IS VERY CONCRETE.

as the central thrust behind pipeline opposition, bolstered by a mix of forces such as local concerns over sensitive water bodies, aboriginal land rights and a general distrust of the oil industry.

The Washington protests in 2011 were successful because they met a certain threshold of public involvement, Whittingham said. “It’s a rallying point and an inflection point,” he said. “I don’t agree with the idea that this one pipeline is a carbon bomb, and it’s game over for the planet if you build one.”

The stauncher Canadian environmentalists suffered a blow when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in November approved both

Line 3 replacement and Trans Mountain expansion. But pipeline opposition remains one of the most successful rallying points for the broader environmental movement, which has people, motivate people to take political action, the notion that you can actually win is something that draws people into a struggle,” said Keith Stewart, head of Greenpeace Canada’s climate and energy campaign. “No one wants to spend an evening in a public meeting, going on a march, spending a weekend to pass out pamphlets, if they don’t think they can win."

Language also plays a major factor in luring fellow activists, and pipelines have the added benefit of being something tangible. They “cut through” ecosystems and “divide” entire nations.

“Maybe the issue of climate change didn’t grab people as much because we focused on the abstract, and something like a pipeline is very concrete,” said Gretchen Fitzgerald, director of the Atlantic chapter of the Sierra Club Canada Foundation.

“Up until Copenhagen, there was a lot of critique of the science being so couched in the language that is traditional to science — that is, if the probability may be even between 95 per cent and 99 per cent probabilities, scientists still use the term ‘probability.’ ” That tone began to change when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) took a firmer stance in its 2013 annual report, saying it was “extremely likely” that humans were responsible for the bulk of rising temperatures.

Another challenge is marketing. Environmental organizations don’t have the same uniform representation as industry. The public tends to lump them all together, though they are actually made up of a number of disparate parts, from the David Suzuki Foundation to The Council of Canadians to Greenpeace. The tactics used by these groups also vary greatly, from Pembina’s policy-driven approach to Greenpeace’s disobedience.

“No two organizations are alike, and what you lack is something like CAPP (Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers),” Whittingham said.

Even as the tone of climatechange discussions has shifted, it remains a divisive issue. The debate over the extent to which human activity is causing climate change is — to the consternation of environmentalists — still ongoing. But Stewart said attitudes toward climate policy are changing rapidly.

“For a very long time, doing good climate policy was the right thing to do — now it’s a politically necessary thing to do,” he said.

The pipeline debate shows little sign of dwindling. After Trudeau approved Trans Mountain in November, many environmentalists lashed out with apocalyptic-like rhetoric. Pipeline proponents pointed out that the approvals had come only after the various governments implemented coal phase-outs and an incremental carbon tax.

“Without question, the greatest source of emissions is at the point of combustion — when you sit in a car, or a plane or a bus or whatever it is,” Whittingham said. “But if you look at Canada and you care about big pointsource emissions, you have to care about oilsands.”

But for environmentalist organizations, tighter policies on carbon emissions — particularly on the consumption side — do not alleviate the need to oppose infrastructure expansion. Instead, pressure against pipelines is likely to grow as the approval of Trans Mountain improves the likelihood of new investment in the oilsands.