Another day, another megatonne. Or was it gigatonnes? No one in power seems much bothered either way.

It has been quite a week on the fossil front. On Tuesday Prime Minister Mark Carney arrived in Vancouver to celebrate the multinational consortium moving ahead to build LNG Canada Phase 2. It will become the second-largest LNG facility in the world, the PM cheered. 

Carney, along with BC Premier David Eby, also “welcomed” the decision by TC Energy to double the capacity of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. It will boost the transport of fossil gas to the Pacific coast from the fracking grounds in Alberta and northeastern BC.

And then on Thursday, Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith took to a podium, dwarfed by a gargantuan, self-driving oilsands truck and announced that a new bitumen pipeline had been designated as being in the “national interest” — a term even more slippery than the powers governments are giving themselves to circumvent laws and environmental protections. It will be called the Pacific Link and will be fast-tracked to the West Coast.

Squeezed in amongst the frenzy of fossil fuel announcements, Carney paused to announce funds for Canada’s beleaguered Pacific coast. A boost to the “ocean protection” budget. An offering to allay pesky concerns over the vanishing Southern Resident orcas whose plight might stymie the nation’s quest to become a seafaring superpower in oil and gas.

It would be wrong to say that concerns about the climate didn’t figure at all in these announcements. On both days, flicking between........

© National Observer