LILLEY: Hulk star, other celebs have it wrong on Canadian oil and gas

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Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo may get offended just like the Hulk at listening to this, however his newest “environmental marketing campaign” does nothing however assist dictators like Vladimir Putin. Ruffalo is the lead voice of a gaggle of Hollywood stars as soon as once more attempting to close down Canada’s oil and fuel business.

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He’s joined by such luminaries as Jane Fonda, Scarlett Johansson, Ben Stiller and the band The Lumineers together with an extended record of others. It’s too unhealthy their understanding of world points isn’t as spectacular as their expertise on the stage and display.

They need Royal Financial institution to cease financing the Coastal GasLink pipeline and have launched a “No Extra Soiled Banks” marketing campaign claiming that Canada’s largest financial institution is taking advantage of environmental destruction. Simply as along with his years-long marketing campaign towards the Keystone XL pipeline, Ruffalo exhibits he doesn’t perceive that if Canadian oil and fuel can’t make it to market, it will likely be changed with merchandise from Russia, Venezuela or Saudi Arabia — nations with worse environmental and human rights data.

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This doesn’t matter to Ruffalo and the opposite Hollywood celebrities. Their curiosity isn’t find an answer, it’s to punish Canada’s pure assets and use First Nations teams as a entrance whereas doing so.

“For over a decade, the Moist’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs, members of the nation and their supporters have protested this pipeline — at vital threat to their very own lives,” Ruffalo and the others state boldly of their open letter.

What he doesn’t state is that 16 totally different First Nations are companions within the Coastal GasLink pipeline. They’ve an possession stake within the mission. Greater than 30 First Nations and Metis teams have consulted on the mission over the previous a number of years and their enter has helped form the route of the pipeline.

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Ruffalo additionally doesn’t state that whereas some hereditary chiefs of the Moist’suwet’en oppose the mission, different hereditary chiefs and group members help the mission. Simply as with the campaigns towards Keystone XL, this mission is a foreign-funded affair utilizing American cash, American celebrities and Canadian First Nations to push a political agenda.

“The teams which might be publicizing this, which might be the engine of the publicity are Stand Earth, West Coast Environmental Legislation and others that have been on the helm of the Tar Sands marketing campaign,” Vivian Krause stated Thursday from Vancouver.

Krause has spent years monitoring the affect of American cash in Canadian environmental and Indigenous teams against the oil and fuel business. She was the primary to reveal the 2008 Tar Sands marketing campaign, which introduced collectively teams akin to Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund with the nicely funded Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Tides Basis.

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Your entire objective of that marketing campaign was to landlock Canadian oil and fuel, which is strictly what Ruffalo is attempting to do right here.

Maintaining Canadian oil and fuel within the floor solely helps Vladimir Putin. It solely solidifies his means to wage his warfare in Ukraine simply because it has financed his takeover of different components of the previous Soviet Empire. If Coastal GasLink and different initiatives have been operational by now as an alternative of dealing with fixed delays by American-funded campaigns like this, China and India would have various, and cleaner, sources of power from Canada than what is obtainable by Putin.

Is that one thing that Ruffalo or Leonardo DiCaprio consider earlier than launching these campaigns?

Clearly, the reply is not any. They don’t suppose earlier than they jet off on a non-public aircraft to choose up an award for his or her good environmental work earlier than vacationing within the Mediterranean or flying to their subsequent film shoot. In the event that they did step again and suppose for a second, they may understand that Canadian oil and fuel isn’t a part of the issue on the earth proper now, it’s a part of the answer.

blilley@postmedia.com