‘Pipelines will be blown up,’ warns enviro guru David Suzuki, if leaders don’t act on climate change – Conducted ‘Funeral for the future’

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/pipelines-will-be-blown-up-says-david-suzuki-if-leaders-dont-act-on-climate-change/wcm/900a492d-08da-4644-9c12-d554d31d4554/amp/

By Tyler Dawson

David Suzuki, the godfather of the Canadian environmental movement, warned over the weekend that if politicians don’t act to reverse climate change, there could be attacks against oil and gas infrastructure.

“We’re in deep, deep doo-doo,” said Suzuki Saturday, speaking at an Extinction Rebellion protest on Vancouver Island. “This is what we’re come to. The next stage after this, there are going to be pipelines blown up if our leaders don’t pay attention to what’s going on.”

Suzuki, reached by the National Post on Monday, said violence within the environmental movement is already happening, although he identified police actions against anti-logging protesters and anti-gas pipeline protesters as the culprits.

Asked whether or not he would support the bombing of pipelines, Suzuki said, “Of course not.”

“The violence is coming from the authorities, from government, from the RCMP,” said Suzuki. “They’re declaring war against those that are protesting.”

Still, Suzuki warned he feels that there are few remaining options for protesters who feel government isn’t moving rapidly enough to tackle climate change. What else is there but violence, he wondered.

“I think it’s going to be threatened by groups that feel government isn’t going anything,” Suzuki said.

It wouldn’t be unprecedented. In Alberta, in the 1990s, Wiebo Ludwig, who died in 2012, engaged in a running war with the oil and gas sector in northwestern Alberta. He was convicted in 2000 for bombing a Suncor well in 1998, though Ludwig maintained his innocence.

“If the oil companies run roughshod over your lives, you have to take defensive action against them, whatever is necessary,” Ludwig said in 1997, after two wells near his home were blown up. “You can’t just let them kill your children.”

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney called for Suzuki’s comments to be universally condemned.

“This incitement to violence by David Suzuki is dangerous,” he wrote in a tweet on Monday. “In Canada we resolve our differences peacefully and democratically, not with threats of terrorism or acts of violence.”

Erin O’Toole, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, echoed Kenney’s Twitter comments, calling Suzuki’s remarks dangerous and undemocratic, and saying they should be condemned.

The event in Victoria, called Funeral for the Future, came on the heels of extreme weather in British Columbia last week that left a handful of people dead and caused major damage to infrastructure in the province. Shortly before that, world leaders had gathered in Glasgow, Scotland, for a climate conference.

Protesters were calling on the British Columbia government to declare a “climate emergency,” and end investment in pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure.

“People in Extinction Rebellion are saying we’re headed in a direction of extinction and we’re rebelling against it. That’s why I’m here,” Suzuki said, according to CHEK News.

Ellis Ross, the MLA for Skeena, who’s running to lead the B.C. Liberal party, told the Post that this sort of rhetoric is “irresponsible” and “reckless.”

“It’s quite scary, to be honest,” Ross said. “We’re talking about violence.”

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Related: 

‘Pipelines blown up’: Extinction Rebellion defends David Suzuki’s controversial comments (VIDEO)

2019: Environmentalist David Suzuki calls Morano ‘an evil person’ & a ‘bad-ass’ at UN while urging overthrow of capitalism

Sept 2021: NPR / New Yorker feature Eco-terrorist threats to UN climate summit (COP26) – New Yorker asks: ‘Should The Climate Movement Embrace Sabotage?’

New York Magazine climate reporter David Wallace-Wells, also provided a featured review of Malm’s book“If a livable world requires an all-over transformation, where and when and how do we start? Perhaps with this book, a provocative manifesto from the pioneering theorist of the climate age.” – David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth

In 2010, NASA’s former lead climate scientist also endorsed a similar sounding book. See: James Hansen declared author ‘has it right…the system is the problem’ — Book proposes ‘razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine’

2013: Video: Eco-Terror Threats Issued at Rally: Climate Depot attended: ‘We will dismantle the Pipeline’ sign prominently displayed at rally — ‘By any means necessary’

2018 Watch: Morano on RT: Green radicals are ready to kill for their cause

2019: NYT laments Hollywood’s ‘trend of linking environmentalism to eco-terrorism’ – ‘They create mass murderers who are the only ones fighting climate change’

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