Another of many protests against the tar sands and Keystone pipeline in front of the White House
A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
While so many newspapers and broadcasters in Canada’s mainstream media function like marketing agents for the Alberta tar sands and proposed Keystone XL pipeline for carrying crude from these filthy pits to refineries in Texas, one of America’s largest and most influential newspapers is urging U.S. President Barack Obama to say no to the pipeline.
“The U.S. State Department’s latest environmental assessment of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline makes no recommendation about whether President Obama should approve it. Here is ours,” reads a lead editorial that ran in the New York Times this March 10. “He (President Obama) should say no, and for one overriding reason: A president who has repeatedly identified climate change as one of humanity’s most pressing dangers cannot in good conscience approve a project that — even by the State Department’s most cautious calculations — can only add to the problem.”
The editorial, featured in what is still regarded as one of the most influential newspapers in an age when newspapers are struggling for a place in a multi-media world, comes at a time when Canada’s Stephen Harper government is trying harder than ever to get the U.S. administration of Barack Obama to give a green light to the Keystone XL pipeline. It comes at a time when some of Harper’s house boys, including his reprehensible minister of natural resources, Joe Oliver, are touring the United States, speaking to members of the petroleum industry or anyone else who might convince the White House to say yes to this God-forsaken keystone pipe.
“We’re going to say we’re very responsible from an environmental point of view,” Oliver had the nerve to tell reporters on the Canadian side of the border before he ventured to the States this March to sell the pipeline.
Americans and Canadians should not be fooled by anything Oliver and his government say on the environmental file. Oliver is one who has gone out of his way to vilify any Canadians who have questioned the continued destruction of the country’s boreal forests and other ecosystems for this tar, and who has generally painted environmentalists as enemies of Canada’s national interests for demanding environmental reviews of tar-sand related projects.
The Harper government has placed its stamp of approval on Oliver’s demonization of whatever is left of Canada’s environmental movement by deliberately muzzling Environment Canada and other government scientists who may have date to share with the public that might interfere with the myth that the tar sands are environmentally friendly. The Harper government has also gutted Canada’s Fisheries Act – a piece of legislation once lauded around the globe as leading-edge for protecting rivers and lakes from toxic assaults – and it has done everything possible to weaken environmental assessment reviews of corporate projects like tar sands pipelines.
For those of you who may still think Canada’s tar sands are so great, why don’t you plan a vacation or propose to build a multi-storey condo tower near here.
Meanwhile, mainstream media in Canada has not only done a pathetic job of covering the environmental impacts of strip-mining large acreage of Canada’s ecology for this black, shitty goo, it bent over to the will of the Harper government and its petroleum sponsors to refer to this disgusting enterprise as “oil sands.” Sad to think that we have to go to American media to read or hear them referred to by their original name – ‘tar sands’.
The New York Times editorial of March 10 ends with the following important message that all of us, including Canadians who may never read or hear it in The Globe and Mail, National or even, unfortunately, on CBC.
“In itself, the Keystone pipeline will not push the world into a climate apocalypse. But it will continue to fuel our appetite for oil and add to the carbon load in the atmosphere. There is no need to accept it.”
You can read the entire New York Times editorial by clicking on http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/opinion/when-to-say-no-to-the-keystone-xl.html?_r=0 .
And further to that, I have read and heard a great deal in the United States that opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline may offend Canadians, and many Americans do care about their Canadian friends.
On that score, I think it is time for Canadians – and I believe there are many of us – to let the Obama White House know that rejecting the Keystone Pipeline may offend Harper and friends, but not so many of us who still care enough about the environment that we are willing to cut the health of our planet at least a little slack while others are counting their petro/tar sand dollars.
Before the U.S. president makes a decision on whether or not to approve the Keystone pipeline, as many Canadians as possible who don’t approve of a tar sands future for our country or the United States, should contact the White House and let the president know that he has support in Canada if he says no to Keystone.
You can contact the White House with your message on this issue by clicking on http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact .
(Niagara At Large invites you so share your views on this post. Remember that we only post comments by individuals who are willing to share their first and last names. Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to resident in our greater Niagara region and beyond.)
Niagara At Large 
Doug:
I recognise that you aren’t a hypocrite on this subject because you’ve shown me your house where you can’t install Wind & Solar power because of all your lovely trees.
However, the Oil from the Tar Sands will be mainly used for you to drive YOUR CAR all over Niagara to report to us on NAL.
What have you done PERSONALLY to reduce your carbon footprint?
– Electric bicycle ($<1000)?
– made-in-Québec ZENN car ($12,000)? (Are they legal to drive yet in Ontario?)
– Convert a minivan to Natural Gas ($.699 /Litre)?
– Hybrid?
– Electric car? (fuelled by nuclear power with nowhere to store radiactive waste for 10,000 years)
Secondly, have you thought of the immediate economic consequences of shutting down the Tar Sands? The federal government is already looking to cut back on expenses in order to balance their books – their next steps will be to cut back on transfers to the Provinces as the taxes dry up from Tar Sands companies and workers.
Which brings us to Ontario, where we are about to have an election over the issue of "When the money runs out". Have you looked at the first things that Ontario cuts: transfer to municipalities, especially for social services to people who are most in need.
Finally, do a private survey of your family & friends to see how many of them EITHER work in Alberta OR have clients who do (like my bookkeeper wife with one client who closed most of his small business in Niagara and went to work in Alberta; or a millwright I met who spent the past 2 years working at the Bruce Power refit [3 years and $2B over budget! this will raise our hydro rates even more!] and is now off to the Tar Sands because THERE AREN'T ANY JOBS IN ONTARIO!!!).
And before you start talking about how much we need to raise Corporate taxes, please remember that the ONLY taxpayers who don't need passports to earn income in other provinces or countries … are Corporations. They can move away fairly easily, as witness Inco, Stelco, John Deere, to name only a handful of companies from de-industrialised Niagara who left after nuclear power came & did away with our cheap Niagara Falls hydro rate advantage. Imagine what's about to soon happen to our rates after they RETIRE & REPLACE Pickering.
I don't have simple answers – there aren't any.
But I do know it starts with ME. I don't believe that CO2 is the main cause of Climate Change. CH4 (methane) is far more dangerous – should we put methane traps on all of our home sewer chimneys?
But I do want clean air, water & soil, and am doing all I can to use Renewable Energy as fast as I can afford to do so.
If I'm not part of the solution, I'm part of the problem. Talk is cheap. ACTION PLEASE.
A reply from NAL publisher Doug Draper – Since Mr. White questions whether I am “part of the solution” and goes on to suggest that my “talk is cheap” (which is true in the sense that unlike his media heroes at Sun Media, I don’t get paid for doing this), I feel it is appropriate to respond.
Mr. White suggests that methane may be more of an issue around climate change than petro emissions. Perhaps he is on to something there since I recently heard someone from the Tea Party in the U.S. argue that gastro emissions from cattle, or to put it more plainly, cow farts, may be doing more to alter the climate than the burning of fossil fuels. Since our federal government has muzzled climatologists from Environment Canada and other divisions of the government from speaking out publicly on this topic, I suppose I will have to consider Mr. White and the Tea Party individual to be the voice of authority on these matters. It is nice to know that I can now go on idling the engine of my car in my driveway for hours on end and cranking my furncase up to 30 degrees C, then turn around and blame the dairy farm down the road for any atmosphereic alterations.
As the father of a 21 year old who will face the consequences of our actions on this planet long after I am gone, I am afraid I have just about lost all of my patience for climate change deniers. Sorry if I have offended Mr. White, but the stakes are high here.
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Bitumen is the filthiest, hardest to refine oil on the planet and also caustic to pipelines due to impurities it contains. The price it is currently commanding (Alberta’s boom is starting to fade because of it) will hopefully scuttle the whole project. Even a pipeline to the coast would be asking for trouble in such a seismically active region as BC. Short term gain/long term pain. Somebody PLEASE get rid of Harper.
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The media, all three political parties, most of the Canadian public have bought into this notion that the way things are being done are the only way to do things. Is Canada broke? What’s the rush to rip this stuff out of the ground and sell it off to interests like the notoriously unethical Chinese government and/or the Americans?
If I had a set of baseball cards in the attic and realized they had more value than I thought they had, I would sit on them for a while. Maybe sell one at a time and test the market. Drive up the demand and then sell them to A: someone who was giving me full value for them; and B. someone who would value them as much as I did.
Even better yet, maybe I would give up the cash grab, only sell the ones I needed too, but keep a hold of the best ones for my grandchildren to enjoy.
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I know where a whole generation of smart kids, that grew up with my son in Black Creek, as soon as they graduated headed off to Alberta , my son an engineer and a MBA is working as a consultant out there, after working in many US states.Me I don’t like the way the American’s behave under NAFTA they have put a huge sur- charge on Canadian lumber a “Tariff,” kept out beef, pork, chicken and durum wheat citing government subsidies, while US farmers are subsidized to the hilt by Congress. While we won many of these cases they, the Americans will not pay the tariff money back to us, we are selling our tar oil to the US $30 a barrel below the world price, no wonder Alberta is losing money. Our neighbor play’s hard ball with us, while we cry our eyes out. unfair.
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There must be fuel alternatives. Criticizing someone for driving a car is a low blow since it is almost impossible to perform daily activities such as commuting to work without one. People are no longer living in subsistence villages. Electric cars are also problematic due to the components, chemicals and disposal of batteries and their limited mileage. Instead of incentives for buying eco-friendly vehicles, prices are higher than gas powered ones.
How many here even participate in earth hour? My lights are off but they are blazing up and down my block including street lights. While only symbolic, it is at least a gesture to recognize the problem. There is so much waste eg street lights illuminating the sky. This pollution affects the circadian rythyms of humans and animals let alone obliterating the grandeur of the night sky. Noise pollution also affects us. My outdoor lights are all low voltage, mostly motion activated and night sky friendly, ie they only illuminate downward. These are simple solutions but if everyone used them it would save energy galore. Right now these cost more but the price would come down over time , save energy in the long run and I consider the price secondary to the result.
Rain barrels should be used for watering. Recycling and compost all help. I bicycle or walk when possible and I live in the sticks. Buying local produce when available helps the economy and reduces transport. Planting trees helps. How many people cut them down because they’re too lazy to rake a few leaves? They are our lungs. For those who criticize, do they employ these measures?
Fossil fuels need to be replaced. Thirty years ago people thought Bill Gates was stupid because personal computers would be too big and expensive to be common place. The same with fuels. It can be done. The incentive isn’t there. Put that ingenuity into alternatives instead of continuing with the same follies. Energy producers should invest in new fuel sources and, if they were ahead of the curve like Gates was, they would be gazillionaires too. It’s so much easier to avoid change and go with the immediate source of dollars than sacrifice a little now to be on the cutting edge later.
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PS – Can you just imagine what dinosaur farts must have done climatologically???? Dinosaur farts caused their demise after all. Perhaps fewer people on the planet, all also producing methane farts, would be a good idea too. I had no kids so I did my bit!
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