Brad Hornick's blog

Kinder Morgan: The fight starts now!

Brad Hornick — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 22:32:56 +0000

At the thousands-strong demonstration against Kinder Morgan earlier this month in Vancouver, I lounged in a sailboat in False Creek with kayaktivists swarming around me, looking up under the Cambie Bridge at a very large homemade "NO KINDER MORGAN" banner that my friends had stitched in fishnet.

As I watched the horizon, hordes of righteous, beaming souls started a police-escorted procession and then moved across the bridge and into downtown. The demo ended with spectacular speeches by a range of First Nations displaying a singular commitment to defeat Kinder Morgan's plan to massively expand its Trans Mountain Pipeline, which runs from Alberta to Burnaby, B.C.

When it comes to climate, is Trudeau any different than the old boss?

Brad Hornick — Wed, 05 Oct 2016 21:10:27 +0000

The fresh new face Canada showed the world at the Paris COP21 climate meetings held out hope for many Canadian climate activists that a national course change was in the works.

In its less than a decade in power, the Harper government extinguished multiple important Canadian environmental laws, muzzled climate scientists, harassed environmental NGOs, created "anti-terrorism" legislation that targets First Nations and other pipeline activists, and generally introduced regressive and reactionary social policy while promoting Canada as the world's new petro-state.

COP21 Fossil Fuel Addiction: A guide for intervention from the climate justice movement

Brad Hornick — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 04:15:48 +0000

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Author's note: This article is meant to be both deadly serious and parody. It attempts humour and commits unforgiveable psychological reductionism of political issues. It is hoped the reader will discern the message behind the form of delivery.

Vancouver aims to rival Ottawa at Sunday's Global Climate March

Brad Hornick — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 01:09:20 +0000

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Don't be fooled: Greenpeace Alberta's support for Rachel Notley contradicted by other Greenpeace sentiments

Brad Hornick — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 18:33:44 +0000

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Witness a real-time drama happening in Canada that is representative of the political absurdities unfolding in the Paris COP 21 process -- and that provides a stark example of establishment NGO politics versus the authentic climate justice movement.

Corporate agenda threatens to straightjacket Paris COP 21 proceedings yet again

Brad Hornick — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 20:10:53 +0000

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"As I see it, the world may be warming, but politics are frozen. We talk endlessly of climate change and yet we have not created any climate for change."

-- Henrietta L. Moore, Imagine 2020 -- Art and Climate Change

Chris Hedges: Whose conference is this anyway?

Brad Hornick — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 05:52:09 +0000

(My name is Brad Hornick. I am male, a student and settler on Coast Salish Territories. Like Hedges, I have worked and travelled in war zones, and I am not an expert on issues of gender violence. I have lived and worked in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, including working in a small capacity for one of the organizations listed below many years ago. The relevance of my response to Hedges is that I am on the State of Extraction organizing committee. All the views expressed within this article are mine alone.)

A view from Burnaby Mountain: Naomi Klein's 'This Changes Everything'

Brad Hornick — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 17:52:46 +0000

"The call came to protestors assembled at borehole 2 on Burnaby Mountain: 'Kinder Morgan has arrived! Get your asses down here.' I ran to the motorcycle and hurried down to Drummond Walk. A few comrades were just starting to follow KM workers -- 2 hardhats with chain saws, a couple management types and a few security guards. I raged internally as I accompanied them into the forest at the ready, but not knowing what the next step was...

The Jane and John Does of Kinder Morgan's injunction

Brad Hornick — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 15:52:59 +0000

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-- Dylan Thomas

Kinder Morgan standoff: Standing with the Caretakers and residents of Burnaby Mountain

Brad Hornick — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 01:22:07 +0000

Burnaby residents and community members have been conducting a peaceful vigil on Burnaby Mountain since August to ensure that Kinder Morgan's Mountain Pipeline geotechnical survey work will not proceed in preparation for a new tar sands bitumen pipeline.

Five people have been served an injunction and a $5.6-million lawsuit by Kinder Morgan. Pete McMartin from the Globe and Mail on Monday called this "Big Oil Acting as a Big Bully," calling the lawsuit "excessive" and the protesters "martyrs."

Party against the pipelines: Carnival and rising tide

Brad Hornick — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 20:33:43 +0000

"If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn't we need to turn it over to get it ‎to stand up straight?" - Eduardo Galeano

A settler's experience at the Unist'ot'en camp

Brad Hornick — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 02:18:49 +0000

Twelve hours into a motorcycle ride from Vancouver to the Unist'ot'en camp, and after short dips in a couple of the hundreds of small lakes in 40 degree weather, the glow of the northern British Columbia evening sky turns thick and otherworldly with smoke from nearby forest fires. Seeking a place to sleep, I skip the first small town whose cheap motels were filled with some of the hundreds of firefighters and evacuees from local oil and gas camps. The fires rage as a result of pine-beetle ravaged forests and a hot, dry B.C. interior.

Mark Jaccard and climate solutions through carbon pricing: 'If only Harper were more honest!'

Brad Hornick — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 19:03:13 +0000

Mark Jaccard yesterday said he is "horribly let down" by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's failure to "competently" enact emissions regulations in 2007 which would have kept his Kyoto Protocol promises on track to 2020. Harper himself, Jaccard says, formally withdrew from the Kyoto processes while charging the previous Liberal government with "incompetence" in neglecting to set in motion adequate policies to reach Kyoto goals.

First Nations rights and title claims: Is it legitimate to call it class struggle?

Brad Hornick — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 07:04:29 +0000

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On the environmental question, Sam Gindin has got it wrong.

Brad Hornick — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 04:55:23 +0000

Sam Gindin's recent contributions to the The Bullet and Jacobin explore the lost potential of the working class in revolutionary politics. On the economic and ecological fronts, he argues, working-class politics has been incapable of catalyzing widespread and consequential societal mobilization, or becoming vital sites of theoretical and practical struggle.

People's Climate March: An invitation to change everything?

Brad Hornick — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 21:59:59 +0000

A very large and loud event is about to reshape New York City once again this September and likely propel social change across the continent. A convergence of organizations under the banner of the "People's Climate March," have pledged to make this event in New York City an opportunity for an unprecedented climate mobilization. Offering no less than an "invitation to change everything" and to "take a stand to bend the course of history", hundreds of diverse organizations (green NGOs, academic, peace, religious, labour, civil-rights, etc.) have already lent their names to the initiative.

Northern Gateway and class politics in British Columbia: Ready for war?

Brad Hornick — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 06:03:29 +0000

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But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence… illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.

- Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity

Until environmentalists tackle capitalism, we will never stop climate change

Brad Hornick — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 17:59:01 +0000

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In a recent speech, environmental journalist George Monbiot argues that opposition to the central drivers of climate change (neoliberal economic policies being the key) is consistently neutralized by environmentalists themselves. He says environmentalists shape their strategies to appease people who do not share their values.