Police Remove Protestor

On Monday December 7th at UBC Professor Patrick Condon joined a group of climate activists who occupied a freeway construction site in Vancouver. Work was stopped at the site for four hours. The protest coincided with the first day of climate change talks in Copenhagen, where today Canada received yet another Fossil of the Day Award. The notorious award goes to the country doing the most to obstruct progress at UN climate negotiations.

This action was directed at the controversial Gateway Program, a massive freeway-expansion project that would increase greenhouse gases (GHGs) in a sector that is already the largest source of emissions in our region. The province's own assessment estimates the increase at over 160,000 tonnes per year. If the billions being spent on Gateway were re-directed to an emissions reduction program including cost-effective public transit, emissions could be reduced by millions of tonnes per year.