NOWHERE DID WE SEE ECONOMIC HIGH-HANDEDNESS PLAY OUT with greater zeal than at the United Nations climate change conference in November 2011 in Durban, South Africa. Aside from the now almost mundane fact that Durban repeated the failures of Copenhagen and Cancun by again delaying global commitment on effective emission reductions, Canada brought an extra degree of calculated cynicism to the table when it became the first industrialized nation to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol. Its excuse was that it cannot meet its treaty obligations. It claimed that the cost of that failure would be in the billions of dollars in terms of the added burden of emission reduction commitments in the post-2012 commitment period. To boot, it blamed non-industrialized nations for not cutting back their emissions thereby making it difficult for Canada to sell emission reductions at home. All of this is true. But it is deceitful. Canada’s failure is intentional and entirely of its own making. It was a government decision to allow the uncontrolled growth of the tar sands projects in northern Alberta. It was a political decision that has made the Canadian economy so dependent on oil that the country has become a sort of one-industry town. To oppose the unfettered growth of the tar sands has now become heresy and a threat to Canada’s entire economy.1 To contest the construction of a pipeline earns a federal cabinet rebuke for being “radical.” And those foundations that give financial support to environmental activists earn a visit from representatives of the prime minister’s office carrying the underlying threat to decertify the foundation indulging in political partisan activity. Plans have been approved to double the tar sands output by 2020, thereby more than tripling greenhouse gas emissions.
From an environmental monitoring point of view, the history of the tar sands has been one of deceit and chicanery. Since 1997, the scientific monitoring of the tar sands environment has been the sole responsibility of the Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program (RAMP), which is funded entirely by industry. There was no peer reviewed study of its published studies and its raw data was kept secret. A peer review by federal scientists of RAMP’s five-year report from 1997 to 2001 found that its data collection methods and statistical analysis had no credibility and its conclusions were “unsupported.”2 The study offered recommendations to improve the monitoring of the aquatic environment. But the federal government shelved the report and kept it secret until 2009. So nothing was done. RAMP continued with its phony scientific studies that allowed it to conclude in 2008 that “there were no detectable regional changes in aquatic resources related to oil sands development.” Finally, independent scientific studies published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrated in 2009 that this conclusion was wrong. The tar sands industry was emitting enormous amounts of harmful toxins annually into the aquatic systems of the Athabasca that were having a toxic effect on fish and other aquatic life.3 The studies also raised the possibility that these emissions could be a danger to human health. The work of these independent scientists ultimately forced the Canadian and Alberta governments and the tar sands industry in 2012 to admit that their monitoring had been totally inadequate. New protocols were put in place and $50 million of industry money was set aside to create what the Canadian and Alberta governments called a “world class” environmental assessment program. The fact that some scientists both inside and outside of government had complained for years about this lack of oversight leads to no other conclusion than it was intentional.
Why is this important in the greater scope of climate change geopolitics? The tar sands project is the largest and most environmentally devastating energy project ever launched by mankind. It swallows hundreds of billions of dollars in investment capital from pretty well every major energy company in the world. The vested interests are global. It costs about $8 billion to build a tar sands project. Up and running, projects such as Suncor’s earn more than $5 billion a year. We charge not one cent of that for the destruction of the environment. Instead, the industry drapes it in a mantle of lies claiming the tar sands are “ethical” and “clean” to confound our better judgment and appease those dark concerns that lurk deep in the shadows of every thinking person’s brain. The tar sands are the battle ground for the continuance of the old economy. It is a battle we will all ultimately lose simply because the onslaught of climate change is unrelenting.
Geologists have recently concluded that mankind’s influence on climate has become so powerful that we have entered a new geological age. They call it the Anthropocene, the Age of Man. Over the next few years they hope to formalize this new era. It is one of the great ironies of climate change that the Holocene, which for the last about 11,500 years has given mankind a stable climate in which to thrive, also gave him the evolutionary space to become his own destroyer.
March 2012