A Youtuber Is Occupying a Tree To Protest a Pipeline and Climate Change

Raising awareness for climate change

The Canadian science YouTuber and climate change activist Kurtis Baute is currently living in a tent suspended between two trees to protest the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion from Alberta to Vancouver. The trees stand on First Nation territory and are scheduled to be cut down to make room for the pipeline. The expansion would triple the capacity of the already existing pipeline, which would not only increase the risk of catastrophic oil spills locally but also increase the carbon emissions on a global scale.

Kurtis Baute in his tent suspended between two trees scheduled to be cut down, image by Kurtis Baute.

History of the pipeline

After the discovery of oil in Alberta in 1947, the original Trans Mountain Pipeline was conceived and built until 1953. With some small additions, it has a capacity of 300,000 barrels of oil per day. In 2013 the new expansion was proposed, which would roughly follow the path of the existing pipeline and increase the system’s capacity to 890,000 barrels per day.

After protests and legal battles, the pipeline was acquired by the Canadian government in 2018 and shut down by the federal court immediately after that because the government did not sufficiently consult the First Nation groups, whose territory the pipeline would cross. However, after…