Growth in the UK climate direct action movement: experience, politics and practice

This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and-that no quotation from the thesis, nor any information derived therefrom, may be published without the author’s prior, written consent. © Growth in the UK climate direct action movement 2 Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a new radical social movement focused on climate change. This thesis explores the experience and negotiation of growth within the climate direct action (CDA) movement, and provides an ethnography of its politics, values and strategies. The thesis is situated at the intersection of meso level studies of movement and organisational growth, and micro level studies of individual participation. It argues that the field of social movement studies has neglected the ways in which participation is actively shaped by the understandings and practices of movement activists; and that dominant structural approaches to participation and growth offe

Cross-border citizen action: Protecting the Salish Sea from the risks of fossil fuel transport

Currently, more than a dozen oil, coal and liquid natural gas projects are proposed on both sides of the border, threatening the health of the Salish Sea and its communities, as well as the global climate. Recent estimates suggest that if all the projects were to be approved, each year they would generate an extra 308 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and an additional 1,200 ship journeys through the already-busy waters of the Salish Sea. Each fossil fuel project proposed in BC and Washington is currently being assessed in isolation from the others by the government agencies that are responsible for providing permits, without adequate consideration of the combined impacts both regionally and globally. Until recently, civil society opposition to these projects has also been largely place-based and project-specific. However, BC and Washington residents are becoming increasingly aware of the region-wide picture of fossil fuel exports via the shared waters of the Salish Sea. A narrative is growing around the Pacific Northwest as the ‘thin green line’ between a land-locked fossil fuel industry and its overseas markets. This presentation will summarize the proposed projects and their combined impacts, and discuss the growing number of civil society initiatives aiming to unite BC and Washington communities in protecting the region as a whole from the threats posed by fossil fuel transport, and transforming the Salish Sea from a carbon corridor to a fossil fuel bottleneck. Cross-border assessment and protection tools, advocacy campaigns and grassroots projects will all be discussed

Deformation of continental crust along a transform boundary, Coast Mountains, British Columbia

New structural, paleomagnetic, and apatite (U-Th)/He results from the continental margin inboard of the Queen Charlotte fault (~54°N) delineate patterns of brittle faulting linked to transform development since ~50 Ma. In the core of the orogen, ~250 km from the transform, north striking, dip-slip brittle faults and vertical axis rotation of large crustal domains occurred after ~50 Ma and before intrusion of mafic dikes at 20 Ma. By 20 Ma, dextral faulting was active in the core of the orogen, but extension had migrated toward the transform, continuing there until <9 Ma. Local tilting in the core of the orogen is associated with glacially driven, post-4 Ma exhumation. Integration with previous results shows that post-50 Ma dextral and normal faulting affected a region ~250 km inboard of the transform and ~300 km along strike. Initially widespread, the zone of active extension narrowed and migrated toward the transform ~25 Ma after initiation of the transform, while dextral faulting continued throughout the region. Differential amounts of post-50 Ma extension created oroclines at the southern and northern boundaries of the deformed region. This region approximately corresponds to continental crust that was highly extended just prior to transform initiation. Variation in Neogene crustal tilts weakens interpretations relying on uniform tilting to explain anomalous paleomagnetic inclinations of mid-Cretaceous plutons. Similarities to the Gulf of California suggest that development of a transform in continental crust is aided by previous crustal extension and that initially widespread extension narrows and moves toward the transform as the margin develops

From boat to beach: Using drift cards to improve our knowledge of ocean currents, areas at risk and oil spill trajectories.

In October 2013, Raincoast Conservation Foundation and Georgia Strait Alliance launched 1644 drift cards from 9 locations along the shipping route through the Salish Sea to Vancouver, British Columbia. Drift cards are 4x6” pieces of marine plywood painted bright yellow and numbered. Drift cards have historically been used to assess the way in which floating objects move in various contexts, including potential oil spills from underwater pipelines, marine park planning, sewage outflows and more. In this case, these drift cards were released in the context of Kinder Morgan’s plans to twin the Trans Mountain pipeline, which if approved would see increases in tanker traffic on the shipping route by up to 500%. Results from this study indicate that cards released in Burrard Inlet very quickly landed across many of Vancouver’s beaches, cards released in Burrard Inlet eventually moved from near Vancouver to other locations ranging from the San Juans to the Broughton Archipelago, cards released outside Burrard Inlet can disperse to distant locations relatively quickly, and card recoveries in some areas were from many different drops, indicating that some areas could be affected from incidents along much of the shipping route. Card movement is also compared to the oil spill modelling presented in Kinder Morgan’s National Energy Board application. Implications for spill response, oil spill modelling and environmental/societal impacts are also discussed