Carleton Engineers Without Borders (EWB) has started Hear Our Voice, a new campaign aimed at opening dialogue to convince the federal government to reject three pipeline proposals currently under review by the National Energy Board.
These three pipeline proposals are TransCanada’s Energy East Pipeline, Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline, and Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion.
According to a Brendan Lucas, vice-president (advocacy) of Carleton EWB, the campaign will focus on raising awareness on three main issues that will allegedly be negatively affected by the pipeline proposals: Water safety and public health, indigenous rights, and upstream greenhouse gas emissions.
Hear Our Voice was started by Robbie Venis, a Carleton graduate student in environmental engineering. Venis said he got the idea for the campaign from doing his undergraduate thesis on the effects of underground pipeline spills.
“I felt that working with Engineers Without Borders was the best way to bring a voice from a tangible perspective,” Venis said. “As engineers, we do understand the repercussions of what it means to build a pipeline, and we also understand the benefits of building a pipeline.”
Venis said the campaign will use social media to launch the message and share as much information as possible to inform the public about the negative impact of the pipelines.
Lucas said the campaign aims to mobilize the youth voice to call attention to this issue. He added this is the first time Carleton EWB has taken this big of an initiative.
“We want to frame the intentions of this campaign so that the youth vote is recognized,” Lucas said. “We want to be recognized as people who’ve considered what’s going on and are making informed judgements.”
Fen Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton, said people have to consider the different alternatives of delivering oil and natural gas for energy use. He said transporting oil by train is less environmentally friendly than pipelines.
Hampson said environmentally sustainable policies don’t necessarily mean stopping all pipelines.
“At the end of the day, I think this is where the government is headed: we obviously need to have a proper carbon tax system in place in Canada to reduce carbon gas emissions,” Hampson said. “At the same time, we also have to recognize that oil and natural gas are going to continue to be important until real substitutes are found in terms of our own energy consumption patterns, whether it’s for heating or for transportation.”
Venis said Canadian youth want to see the nation move towards cleaner energy initiatives.
“We’d like to see Canada move into a clean-energy future and perhaps even be global leaders in clean energy,” Venis said.
