Over the objections of scientists, environmentalists, labor unions, and the First Nations indigenous population, Canada’s conservative government has approved a pipeline known as the “Northern Gateway” to send crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the Pacific coast so it could be loaded onto tankers and shipped to Asia.

Conservative party Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the westward pipeline is necessary, especially after US President Barack Obama delayed the southern Keystone XL route to the Gulf of Mexico under intense pressure from environmentalists.  He accuses critics of being “hostile” to the energy sector.  But the opposition says Harper’s urgency is just a smokescreen.

“The prime minister endorsed this pipeline publicly three years ago,” said Tom Mulcair of the center-left new Democrat Party.  “No matter what evidence, how many people speak out, how many people stand up against him, he keeps pushing this project.”

Harper may have been trying to get the Northern Gateway decision out of the way before next year’s federal elections.  The deeply unpopular project could impact his fellow conservatives in western Canada’s British Columbia province, where opposition tops two-thirds - the risk to the Northern Rockies is just too great. 

The town that’s supposed to be the terminal for the pipeline doesn’t want it, fearing spills from tankers or the pipeline itself that can’t be cleaned up.  The output of Alberta’s tar sands refineries isn’t like regular light-sweet crude that’s pumped out of the ground.  It’s heavy, needs to be steam-blasted out of shale rock, and it does not float – if it spills into the Minette Bay, Hecate Straight, or Pacific Ocean, it will sink and lay waste to the environment.  The Alberta project itself has turned that once-pristine wilderness into Mordor.