COAL TRAINS, OIL TRAINS, PIPELINES coming through the Pacific Northwest

This summer the port of Vancouver, Washington approved plans to build a terminal for oil trains, over widespread opposition from the community. Meanwhile anti-coal activists are still trying to fend off three proposed coal terminals in Oregon and Washington and Kinder Morgan is going ahead promoting its plan to enlarge and extend its Trans Mountain Pipeline that carries tar sands crude from Alberta to Burnaby, BC.

If they have their way the Georgia Strait and Strait of San Juan de Fuca will become a shipping channel for scores of super tankers, carrying the heavy oil to refineries in California. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Eric de Place with Sightline Institute in Seattle about what will happen to our region if these plans for coal and oil rail corridors and terminals come to fruition. Eric de Place is a researcher, writer, speaker, and policy analyst for the Sightline Institute. For more than a decade, he has spearheaded Sightline’s work on climate and energy policy, emerging as a leading Northwest expert on strategies and policies to cut carbon emissions