Local Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion opponents protest
Group marches from City Hall to MP Maryam Monsef’s office
About 30 concerned citizens gathered downtown early Monday afternoon to protest the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion.
Starting at the intersection of
George and Hunter streets at 12:30 p.m., the group marched to Peterborough-Kawartha MP Maryam Monsef ’s office.
The pipeline, which currently runs from Alberta’s landlocked oil patch to British Colombia’s coast, is expected to expand another 100 kilometres or so.
Protesters say their goal of the march is to raise awareness of the severity of climate change and hopefully capture the government’s attention.
“We can’t afford to be burning more fossil fuels, especially the dirtiest fossil fuels from tar sands,” said Alan Slavin, a participant in the protest.
Herb Wiseman, one of the protest’s organizers, believes the government should support more renewable types of energy.
“Extracting carbon product from the ground is bad for the environment. We need to leave it in the ground and shift to solar,” Wiseman said.
“We need to make better use of things like hydrogen power, solar power, wind power — all the reusables.”
Protest participant Aubrey Ellis also believes that the government should support renewable energy.
“It (the money) would be better spent providing jobs for all of the energy workers in the west who will lose their jobs when the oil industry closes,”
Ellis said.
“We need to provide jobs for those men and women in the renewable energy sector.”
Peter Morgan was the head organizer of the march.
Extracting carbon product from the ground is bad for the environment. We need to leave it in the ground and shift to solar. HERB WISEMAN
“We wouldn’t be doubling down on technology that’s going to be history,” if the government put as much money towards renewable energy and creating jobs in that category.
Morgan also believes that politicians aren’t doing enough.
“They (politicians) aren’t doing enough to fight climate change and the Kinder Morgan pipeline is very symbolic of that in action,” he said.
“And actually of retrograde action, where it’s making CO2 emissions worse than they are now by expanding oil and gas production.”
The worsening of climate change is also a concern for many citizens who attended the march.
“Most projections already say there are irreversible changes that are going to occur and if they go on for much longer, the way of life that we know, will disappear,” Morgan said.
“This part of Ontario is luckily one of the places that is going to be some time until we see the worst of climate change, but even now things are changing,” Slavin said.
“They’re saying that within 30 or 40 years there may be no more maple trees in southern Ontario. I mean ... the maple tree is the emblem on our Canadian flag.”
“How can you improve the climate and fight climate change by creating more of the thing that is killing us and changing the climate,” Morgan said.