Alberta's Heartland - yeh, sure!
May 31, 2010
The saying has it that you can’t eat money and you can’t drink oil. Don’t tell that to Premier Stelmach or Prime Minister Harper, they think you can. Or at least, it seems that way after touring the ever so inappropriately named, Alberta Heartland – a place that is rapidly suffering whatever heart it ever had being ripped from it. The place is almost devoid of human inhabitation and what public is still there is steadily being driven into evacuating, bailing out, taking the money and running.
Travelling around the area in two hired school buses, witnessing the black SUV trailing our every move and the security guards from within photographing us at every stop was, to say the very least, intimidating. I thought the roads we were on were public property and we were at liberty to drive wherever we chose without prejudice – I guess I am getting too old for the Orwellian world of the Alberta Heartland.
You can’t blame the oil companies for buying up some of the best farming land in the province with the promise of incentives, tax breaks and near non-existent duties on their profits. I guess family owned farms don’t have the same sexy cache as the multi-nationals who want to pave over that rich soil and refine the synthetic crude from the Athabasca tar sands. Maybe they also haven’t heard the saying about not being able to eat money?
Of course it is within the power of the Harper government to question the effects of these mega projects on water ways, if they chose to. They are responsible for enforcing our international responsibilities under the Kyoto protocol to, if they felt like it. The federal government could put constraints on the toxic chemicals produced by these types of industries, if they thought there was a need. But, after 4 years as the government of Canada, they don’t seem very inclined toward environmental preservation, loss of community or the devastating effects of climate change.
Then we stop at the massive Scotford upgrader and the words of Mike Hudema, as quoted in the Journal article of the 26th May, come to mind, "This is the amount of infrastructure that it takes for one upgrading facility". There it is, like another West Edmonton Mall without the cars, the people or anything else of aesthetic value, unless you see beauty in distillation columns. Perhaps you do have to believe that you can eat money to see more value in this structure than in the soil covered over, the absent wildlife and the empty, boarded up farm houses.
All the time, during the bus tour, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head of the quote from pastor Martin Niemoller about the rise to power of the German Nazis: "THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. THEN THEY CAME for me and by that time no one was left to speak up."
Most of us aren’t farmers, landowners or even rural residents. The voracious appetite for oil can’t affect our insulated urban lifestyles, can’t it? Well, city dwellers can’t eat money either.
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Alberta is on the minds of many
Yes, many of us are thinking about Alberta's rural heartland lately, as a result of watching the BPocalypse unfold in the Gulf (thanks go to Saskboy for that particular phrase).
Many are now thinking that the Alberta Tar Sands are the "answer" to oil security for North America, especially if off-shore drilling is remotely derailed.
This article from Michael "Oil Sands Forever" Den Tandt of Sun Media cheerleads the needs of Tar Sands industry for more "clean & green" power (for the purpose of mining dirty bitumen). His answer (and it's not just his, unfortunately): what else, but nuclear energy.
Maybe the next time that you take a drive down those rural highways and by-ways, there may be a few new additions in the form of nuke plants to add to that rustic idyll of the rural way of living.
"Nuclear power should be the key to ramping up oil sands"
Our best chance is the Americans?
Sounds dreadful but what if the BPocalypse had not happened? It has certainly changed the debate on big oil in the US. These are remarks from President Obama yesterday (June 2nd)
"Now, this brings me to an issue that’s on everybody’s minds right now -- namely, what kind of energy future can ensure our long-term prosperity. The catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf right now may prove to be a result of human error, or of corporations taking dangerous shortcuts to compromise safety, or a combination of both. And I’ve launched a National Commission so that the American people will have answers on exactly what happened. But we have to acknowledge that there are inherent risks to drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth, and these are risks -- (applause) -- these are risks that are bound to increase the harder oil extraction becomes. We also have to acknowledge that an America run solely on fossil fuels should not be the vision we have for our children and our grandchildren. (Applause.)
We consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves. So without a major change in our energy policy, our dependence on oil means that we will continue to send billions of dollars of our hard-earned wealth to other countries every month -- including countries in dangerous and unstable regions. In other words, our continued dependence on fossil fuels will jeopardize our national security. It will smother our planet. And it will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.
Now, I understand that we can’t end our dependence on fossil fuels overnight. That’s why I supported a careful plan of offshore oil production as one part of our overall energy strategy. But we can pursue such production only if it’s safe, and only if it’s used as a short-term solution while we transition to a clean energy economy.
And the time has come to aggressively accelerate that transition. The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean energy future. (Applause.) Now, that means continuing our unprecedented effort to make everything from our homes and businesses to our cars and trucks more energy-efficient. It means tapping into our natural gas reserves, and moving ahead with our plan to expand our nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants. It means rolling back billions of dollars of tax breaks to oil companies so we can prioritize investments in clean energy research and development."
If the US can legislate a carbon price which reflects the unstated externalities in his speech presumably Harper and the government will have to follow in lock-step as usual. Still a long way to go but maybe its enough to get the bus turned around.
the Good and Bad of Ending the Oil Industry Subsidy
I have to think that at some point in the near future, the Conservatives will turn to the mountain of money which is currently subsidizing the oil industry in Canada, point to it, and say to Canadians, "This is what we are going to use to fight the deficit with, rather than raise your taxes as the Liberals want to do" (whether or not the Liberals might be pointing at the same mountain of cash with the same thoughts about the deficit really won't matter).
The good news in all of this, with Conservative Cabinent Members pushing for an early end to the subsidies, is that the subsidy should stop flowing (to what extent, we'll have to wait and see...exploration subsidies should also be kiboshed, and I believe that's what Obama wants).
Now, stopping the flow of the subsidy has been meat and potatoes (chick peas and soy?) for a long while now, and in the last election, the NDP also campaigned on it. Not sure about the Libs. While I'm happy to hear that the subsidy seems destined to die (and as long as the money saved isn't used for yet more tax cuts, and is instead re-invested in our society), what this means from a political stand-point is that we'll be down a pretty significant plank which differentiates us from the other parties, leading to one less reason for voters to choose our party.
We will continue to see the "greening" of the other parties in the near future, and that's why I believe that we simply must get an MP or two in parliament in the next election, or risk irrelevancy (or, increasingly lately, "absorption" in a "coalition").
Keep telling the truth - they know what it is.
Greens know that the subsidization of sunset industries must end, and ultimately will. The big question is, will it come about from necessity (peak oil) and catastrophy (BPocalyps) or will we recognize what we are, addicts, and use our inherent rationality.
Addicts eventually give up, but sadly they have to hit rock bottom first. However, society is made up of a much more diverse selection of types than this, after all we do command about 10% to 13% of the polling numbers.
We Greens are an essential component of the change that will come. The system mitigates against change, with the best example being the electoral system. All we can do is continue telling the truth and exploiting the emerging recognition. As soon as we begin to play the games of the other parties will be the day we become "just another freakin' political party".