Protestors will be on hand Wednesday to greet the Prime Minister and his cabinet in Nanaimo to raise awareness about the links between climate change and the Trans Mountain pipeline project.
The protest could be against the backdrop of smoke from the province’s forest fires that some B.C. physicians say is the result of climate change.
Dr. Stephanie von Dehn, a member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and one of the protestors arrested at Burnaby Mountain over the pipeline expansion in May, the same day the Federal government announced they would be taking over the project.
Von Deyn says climate change is lengthening the dry season and preventing cold winters so that the forests are having insect epidemics and extreme forest fire events.
She says people need to understand the wildfires we are experiencing are not normal, in nature, there are small, occasional fires but it doesn’t have fires that lead to the kind of air quality issues we are experiencing now.
Von Dehn says the pipeline expansion will double the size of the tar sands and that will result in an increase in carbon emissions.
