A mindboggling 292 square km open pit mine in northern Alberta is quietly working its way through the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency’s approval process.
This behemoth relies on relentless growth in oil demand at a time of growing climate instability.
Frontier would pump out an annual 4.1 megatonnes of climate-heating pollution, adding to this country’s already surging oil sands emissions.
The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there are less than a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty.
Canadian health care providers are sounding the alarm that the health impacts of climate change on a global scale are already devastating
Approval of this colossal project is heading in exactly the wrong direction.
How can the federal government ignore such dire warnings from those who know most about it? Is it because climate inaction is fundamentally about political economy? This inaction will determine the level of loss of lives in poorer countries that rich countries, like Canada, are willing to accommodate.
Have your say: the federal cabinet must deliver its decision before March.
Dona Grace-Campbell
Kaslo