Force of Nature was founded in 2014 by a group of climate organizers concerned about the two tar sands pipelines that were slated to be built in British Columbia: Enbridge Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan Transmountain. We met at coffee shops and kitchen tables for many months before officially forming our society in December in 2014, and began organizing a series of community conversation events on pipelines and climate solutions through the spring and summer of 2015.
Through intensive canvassing and collaboration with West Coast Environmental Law to distribute thousands of brochures that raised awareness about Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, and the gutting of environmental laws through bills C38 & C45, we helped to raise the profile of our issues and eventually amassed a supporter base of tens of thousands of concerned citizens. In the run-up to the 2015 federal election, we launched a massive phonebanking effort to make sure our supporters got out to vote.
The following year we hosted town hall meetings about Kinder Morgan, collected over a thousand letters and postcards demanding an new environmental review process, and advocated tirelessly for the reversal of the Kinder Morgan decision. When the government announced its new consultation process the following spring, we worked with the For the Coast coalition to turnout our supporters to consultation meetings from Kamloops to Victoria. We also convened private meetings with six Lower Mainland Members of Parliament, and pitched in to raise thousands of dollars for RAVEN's first Pull Together against Enbridge campaign.
The First Nations legal challenges put some of the final nails in Enbridge's coffin, but to our dismay, the federal government ultimately gave the green light to Kinder Morgan. The news came as a devastating blow, but also highlighted the need for us to integrate a positive and proactive vision of a just and sustainable future into our climate justice advocacy work, and inspired us to create opportunities for Lower Mainlanders to build the future they do want, in addition to rallying to oppose the projects they don't.
Our early experiences advocating and organizing against tar sands and pipeline expansion eventually inspired us to launch Mission: Transition in 2018, a project that is focused on bringing about climate solutions at the municipal level. As we speed headlong into the uncertainty our ever-warming planet will bring, we hope that the next leg of our Force of Nature journey will lead us to new victories in the quest toward a more just, equitable and sustainable world.
