How can we protect the Environment??

I'm glad the Tyee is allowing people to see what is going on up north. There is no protection for the people or the environment. Greed is the main motivator for the governments and businessess that make their money from the tar sands. The few people that try to stand up to say what is really going on are fighting the oil companies, provincial and federal governments and the US government as well.

Not only the environment

Quite ironic that common folk everywhere have to fight with their government for protection of the environment and country in which they reside.

Oh yeah, government for the people they tell us….which people exactly?
I am convinced now the only thing that will stop this madness is people in the streets. Nothing else seems to work any longer; common sense is out the window; curing the insatiable desire for currency seems to be the only concern now with all matters.

The Battle Lines Indeed...

"The battle line divides two viscerally opposed camps: Those arguing that North America's deepening dependence on Alberta's oil sands industry represents a pragmatic solution to looming energy crises, and those who say relying on oil sands crude marks an irreversible step closer to climate change catastrophe." from Tyee article.

The US Empire is evidencing serious signs, abroad throughout its areas of imperial control, and internally, of being in a serious decline stage of development. The cost of maintaining its Empire grip is reaching that point, especially across the Middle East, where it is beginning to out-weighing the benefit... in both blood and treasure. Even while it has still rather extensive untapped oil reserves of its own, it is under increasing pressure in those "cheap oil" third world places it strategically prefers to drawn down ahead of its own oil... save to offset somewhat, total offshore reliance.

But even then, if it chose to emergency develop and tap into its own reserves , given its bloated population and economic development appetite needs, it could not overlong be self sustaining at it. Indeed, the evidence is, it is already looking elsewhere, closer to home, where there is more stable and compliant governance, and from where it already gets the larger share of its imported oil and all other energy sources, including water. It is a near ideal place, long with a rooted colonial mindset in its population and leadership, of serving Empire, where the US already much controls the economy and resource access, and there is a military in form, structure, culture and command system much integrated into and subservient to its own High Command. (Not unlike Egypt.)

Indeed, there is really no mystery here. This country, Canada, is much already committed to The Empire, through prenuptial agreements that guarantee (NAFTA etc) it equal access to ALL our resources, including water, equal to our own right of claim and use. And if worse comes to worse, and there is serious "civil disturbance" and "terror" threats to the arrangement, and either government, under recent military agreements as part of the US Norther Command, we are agreed to the US having the right to station its troops in this country. (We can "formally" do likewise, but is "practically" a joke. We are the lamb that has chosen to lie down with the lion.)

http://www.northcom.mil/news/2008/021408.html

So clearly, changing this "right of access" The Empire has with us, especially with ALL our governance options in Ottawa, it would take great risk and, minimally, masses in the streets, as pianosaurus has observed.

I advocate for the building of such a movement. But make no mistake about the risks.

Jerry
http://coyotetimesca.blogspot.com/

Thanks, Harper

The worst part of this is that a government that received only 40% support in the last election is acting as though it had an overwhelming mandate.

Canada has a minority government that acts with impunity. This is not democracy!

The "informal coalition" that props up this one-man show needs to be replaced with a true coalition government, one in which King Steven doesn't call the shots without formal, transparent consultation with one or more partners who together represent a majority of Canadians.

Conservatives changing the language of Global Warming

"Global Warming" used to be the term used, then the conservative spin machine changed it to the more favourable "Climate Change". Now there is talk of "Climate Disruption".

The conservative world of business (energy) was concerned they would be burdened with the blame for "Global Warming", so their wordsmith, Frank Luntz came up with "Climate Change" to deflect any possible blame.

Now when the media reports on this subject, the journalists have had their lexicon changed so they automatically now use Climate Change without even thinking about it.

I continue to use the term "Global Warming", because that is what it is and there is no evidence to the contrary.

36% (Cons) + 23% (Libs) = 59% (Leger - today)

59% is a majority.

Lib leader:
"The Alberta oilsands will allow Canada to stand up to the U.S. on everything from Arctic sovereignty to rewriting NAFTA, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said Wednesday.

Ignatieff told a town hall meeting in a Gastown pub that Canadians are just starting to understand “how powerful the oilsands make us.” ...

“It is awe-inspiring,” he said, adding that the controversial project boasts enough oil to last the rest of this century.

“We’ve got oil reserves there that are just staggering in size. It changes everything about our economic future. It changes everything about Canada’s importance in the world."

“This is where a chill falls over the room because everybody expects me to say they’re terrible and shut them down,” said Ignatieff. “Absolutely not.”

http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/Federal-Politics/2009/01/15/IgnatieffOil/

Help me Square this one Realisticman

Joyce Murray has a Private Members Bill before the House. It calls for a tanker ban on Canada's mid - north coast. No where else in Canada, just the upper BC coast.

But her party is in favor of the oil sands.

So I have to ask, isn't the Liberals position full of hypocrisy or is it an intentional plan to divert Alberta bitumen solely to the USA market, thus ensuring Canada does not export to Asia / China and additionally does not get a fair competitive market price for the extraction of this dirty oil?

I challenged Ms. Murray at a public meeting with this and she didn't even attempt an answer.

She and her party have to answer for this in the upcoming election. This is a Pan Canadian issue, a BC issue, and possibly a matter of law, whereby some areas of Canada are treated more favorably than others.

Get off imported oil

There is a third side to this story besides environmentalists vs oil companies, namely the pernicious political effects of importing oil from countries that are not democracies. See:

Gordon, R. (2011). Cosmic Embryo #2: Quitting Imported Oil Cold Turkey. http://www.science20.com/cosmic_embryo/cosmic_embryo_2_quitting_imported_oil_cold_turkey

We pay for our environmental political correctness by supporting tyrannies.

-Dick Gordon,

People are stupid

People are stupid. There's now 6.4 billion humans on the planet all requiring the basics of air, food and water on a daily basis. Pillaging and destroying our environment at such an incredible rate can and will exhaust the supply of many things and cause devastating shortages around the world. More people every year with a dwindling supply of the basics and you do the math. A LOT OF PEOPLE have to lose.

The rich and powerful corporations have full control over every aspect of our lives now and they exist only to make money. The oil sands projects prove this. So nothing we can say, no argument we make, whether valid or invalid, is going to stop them from achieving their goals. We do not hold any clout over their decisions anymore. Maybe at one point our voices counted for something with politicians but not anymore. The industry billionaires bought all of the key politicians.

And we let it happen. We are too stupid to survive.

Yes humans are stupid

“We are too stupid to survive.”

Yep humans are inherently stupid; I have had this opinion for a long time and I am only mid-50……

A civilization that uses dialogue and other types of peaceful communications to create change with its people is a civilization that is growing and evolving.

A civilization that uses war, threats, corporate economic intimidation, and trashes its own population to get the message to its people, is a civilization in decline.

Which do you see in outside the front door these days?

What we are witnessing in the Arab world is only the beginning of this; and these problems will be thrust upon us here in North America.

There is going to be war again in Europe within the next 15 years, maybe earlier. The split will happen along religious lines as before…..

The Croats are appealing to Russia and the Security Council for protection of their status. The dominant radical al-Qaeda elements continue fostering Jihad and terrorism training compounds.

Now that multiculturalism has been declared a failure – multicult is dead – by Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, buttressed by the outburst of the Austrian parliamentarian on the floor of that nation’s Parliament last fall, we should consider, as the philosopher A. N. Whitehead said, that our current problems should be regarded as opportunities.

dan

Besides reading Nikiforuk's book, "Tar Sands"...

Rent borrow or steal the DVD entitled "Petropolis." If the flyover of the Tar Sands doesn't convince you of the need to make all the big tar sands companies cut back, and clean up their act, nothing will. Perhaps the interviews included in the video with natives whose fishing life is being disrupted and whose members are dying of cancer, and with the ecologists who are studying the tar sands and finding that very little is being done to put the mined areas back the way they were supposed to be, then that might help.

Politically correct oil

We pay for our environmental political correctness by supporting tyrannies.

Riiiigghht. I'm sure when Chevron and Shell sell their imported oil in the gas stations of North America, it's how "environmentally friendly" the method was to extract that oil that goes through their heads.

Rather than how cheap it was to extract vs. tar sand oil.

If we truly wanted to be "ethical" in our energy consumption, we wouldn't use oil. Period. Until that day, money rules.

OIL SANDS LOBBY IN ALBERTA

Don't the lobbyists have children?
Some of those lobbyists are personal friends and I'll remind them they're accountable to their children and future generations.
And now they plan to use Indian lands to strip mine and pollute moose pastures in Sakatchewan and Manitoba.

It's a Done Deal?

Wellll, I'm not so sure that is exactly what I'm saying, mopled. That it's a done deal.

Though it's a long ways toward being done deal to the extent it's already happening... the tar sands will not quickly or easily, in the prevailing global reality or oil supply situation be pried from the cold dead hands of corporate Amerika, or those that serve them. (They would agree with you that global warming is another kind of climate change reality. Hence, burn baby, burn!)

But having butted heads with you long enough to know that no matter what anyone says, they are not going to make any traction with talking "global warming" with you, I agree that nonetheless there are countless other reasons for opposing tar sands development as well. At least at the prevailing scale and level of technology. (We are not yet up there with the Gods, as much as there might be a tendency to "technology think".)

But the most serious point I have to make right here is, we don't have as much ownership or control over our own territory or resources as much as we think we do. We gave the US Empire an at least equal access claim to it under NAFTA and subsequent trade and military agreements. (It's all a matter of how we choose versus how they choose to interpret these Agreements in any future "civil disturbance" or "acts of terrorism". And unlike ourselves, the US has its own national interest centred world view. We are more inclined to "be compliant". They otherwise.)

To turn off ANY especially oil or other strategic resource spigot to the Empire now, whether for the sake of global warming or any other reason, given our own and global political and economic realities, and the growing state of The Empire, is going to be a really big deal. A big, bid deal unlikely to be resolved by meetings, conferences, studies or get togethers of "environmentalists" with politicians and corporate heads in Washington. It ain't gonna happen. Period.

It's going to take a power, class, ideas and conscience struggle at the level of the street, engaging masses. And I do mean masses. And it could get as ugly, more ugly, than Libya.

Am I confident this country has the wherewithal balls/ovaries?

Nope. Only the hope.

Not just Semantics

shepsil, global warming is probably accurate, despite mopled's reference to the graph provided at the hockeysctick site (funny how there is no graph before 1998 or how reduced CO2 production that affects temperatures may correspond with lower economic activity during the dot.com meltdown, 9/11 or the great recession, let alone solar effects).

Various cycles like El Nino give us the spikes we see in such graphs, but these can be altered by events like large volcanic eruptions. Very complex stuff.

2010 has been reported as the warmest year of the 10 warmest years in the last couple of decades, which has been warmer than any time in modern history.

Would so many reputable scientists risk their reputations and livelihoods by lying to us? More likely the other end who have big oil interests. Chase the big money on this one, not the penny anty stuff that Tea Party types go after.

The problem with the term "Global Warming" is that it becomes difficult for many to comprehend, given our current, colder and snowier La Nina winter. Many view it as a phenomena that technology can correct 30, 100 or 300 years from now. Such is modern urban life.

"Climate Change" offers immediate meteorological responses due to the warmth enhancement and acceleration of storm systems and wet, dry, hot and even cold weather events that will become more frequent and intense over years as temperature rises.

Of course "Climate Disruption" is truly misleading as it suggests a temporary event that will soon go back to a 'normal" climate situation. Ridiculous.

JPR is correct, but not just the arctic, but the Graham peninsula/Larson ice shelf of Antarctica, nearly all alpine glaciers around the world, here in B.C., Europe's Alps, Himalayas, Kilimanjaro, Columbia's Andes, etc., so much of the globe's non seasonal drinking and agricultural freshwater vanishing.

Iggy or Harpo, no difference, I'm not sure where the NDP are on this one, only the Greens or BQ are clear.

Of course you can't fly military planes without oil, not even F35 stealth fighters, that Harpo says meet our unrevealed military needs.

Imagine where we could be if all those oil billions were invested in wind/solar, etc. Of course there's little profit if people produce energy to meet most of their own needs for the next 30 to 50 years.

Not as simple as US hegemony

Jerry Munro - I love your fiery rhetoric, but the tar sands are being pushed by Alberta first and foremost. The extraction firms are American, but also French, Chinese, British, Norwegian, even Canadian. There is $100 billion in new investment set to come online within a decade, so expansion appears imminent. Yet, when the Cumulative Effects Management Association (reflecting industry and environmentalists alike) recently petitioned Alberta to temporarily halt even more expansion, the province turned around and leased 200,000 more hectares. Certainly the US empire benefits by diversifying its oil sources, however, it is too simple to say that is the sole driver.

Trans national money rules

Hardly sovereign. Canada is now tied by the throat to corporate continental concerns. Its obvious that even the U.S. administration must bow to these big coal, oil and gas interests or be replaced by a more energy friendly government.

Be it Sheila Copps or Stephan Dionne's attempts to implement a carbon tax here, or the U.S. representatives who lost in 2010 backing of Cap and Trade, neither could succeed against the coalition of big energy, like Exxon Mobil and the Koch brothers.

My heart, among millions of others, goes out to the environmental groups' efforts, but it would seem this is a done deal, and has about as much chance of success as Joyce Murray's, no pipeline, bill.

It seems that more people are interested in the Sadins, Justin Beber or Charlie Sheen. Going to the streets in significant numbers just isn't in the cards, yet. Maybe when food, fuel and home heating get really pricey.

Feiry Rhetoric I... :-)

"Jerry Munro - I love your fiery rhetoric, but the tar sands are being pushed by Alberta first and foremost." alsuli

A good and accurate analysis should carry its own fire with it. :-)

If I have created the impression that I think the only "driver" here is the US Empire appetite for our and other people's stuff, I certainly would be wrong. For this is raw, naked capitalism on both sides of the border we are talking... and nowhere more so in this country than Alberta. (That this can exist as well alongside a kind of culture of national subservience here, is plain as well in many parts of the world where US power holds sway. Not only here.) I understand that. Like the War on Drugs however, it is the "demand with cash" on the US side of the border that creates the draw or suck, and brings in the other greed players to capitalism that have "the product" to sell, in Mexico and the Alberta Tar Sands.

But more important than that is the overarching reality of the influence and power the US Empire has within and over this country and Alberta, IF even the decision was made to change it... in order for us to make better use of our own resources for our own more rounded economic development. As the US Empire gets slowly but surely pushed out of controlling the resource flow from other parts of the world, especially oil in the Middle East, like I say, they are already looking elsewhere. And it would appear that we are it. (And of course there are other global players to capitalism. The US position comes with no guarantee of invincibility or absolute permanence... no more than did the British Empire before it. Which is what adds to their desperation and makes them even more dangerous at this increasingly apparent decline stage of their capitalist and imperial development.)

continued next post...

Feiry Rhetoric II... 8-D

Continuing from above...

And of course there are those here positioned, like Saudi Royals or the ruling class of Egypt, even Qaddafi "over there", to get rich at the expense of this more rounded economic development of Canada, and off the bloated need for endless resource inputs into the great maw of the new Empire Motherland. And they have the armed means, easier to put boots on the ground here than in the Middle East even.

In the final analysis, it is the endless growth in population and GDP, and endless consumption needs of a global capitalist system that is at the heart of it all, I know that too. There is no solution to any of this, the environmental or poverty issues, any of it, without once, finally and for all dealing with capitalism everywhere. Of which the US, especially its working class citizenry, increasingly, as this crisis of capitalism and its need for endless "Lebensraum" expansion, is a victim as well. Their sons and daughters are doing the dying for it.

Like I say... a big, big problem. Such as it is difficult to know where to start. Though again, masses on the streets, at the end of the day, is the key... in my read of the tea leaves.

Hopefully this more fully explains my view.

Jerry
http://coyotetimesca.blogspot.com/

China

Shell Oil had a huge project with the government of China converting vast coal deposits to petroleum, but the Government scrapped it in 2008. Didn't like the environmental damage. Much better to let Canada foul her nest.

Big tarsands polluter is airborne particulates. Could industry install scrubbers?

Re fiery rhetoric

I especially agree that U.S. demand drives much of the rest. My concern remains your hyperbole re empire and Malthusian insatiability. The U.S. could be oil independent if fleet-wide mileage approached merely 50 miles per gallon, hardly inconceivable. As it is U.S. oil demand peaked in 2006. Of course it is silly to not seek cleaner fuels than the tar sands too, but some argue carbon taxes would be preferable to shutting them down. We can focus economies on improvement, efficiency and quality, which can greatly slow down environmental impacts. Such gains can come within existing footprints, offering a path of growth distinct from the treadmill of Lebensraum.

Like you I'm not naive enough to think this change occurs due to market forces alone. Significant social activism often is needed to force firms into the kinds of ecological optimization I'm talking about. My point is we can solve a lot of our problems, which however challenging, are relatively easier than overturning capitalism.

More On Fiery Rhetoric...

"My concern remains your hyperbole re empire and Malthusian insatiability." alsuli

To which I can only reply that one man's hyperbole is another's truth, depending on one's class or intellectual perspective, at least very often.

Though there is objective "hyperbole" as well, no doubt, such as the refusal to see that the US, with its world wide system of military occupation bases and naval fleets, and interventions into the affairs of other countries for smokescreen reasons are but manifestations of a mask for their imperial interests. That the US is in fact a late bloomer Empire, not as great as was, but not essentially different either from the old British Empire, or even the Roman Empire, is obvious enough to most people in the world. Though more its victims than its beneficiaries, for sure.

Some will simply never see what they don't want to see. Such as, as well, it's becoming clear that its global grip on Empire is already failing, and is not going to last near as long as did either previous mentioned Empires. It's already beyond its due date, judging from appearances at home and abroad.

But the really big hyperbole piece that you are yourself victim of, again, in my view, is this "keep it within the system" notion that what technology has wrought under capitalism, is also its fix... more, bigger and better technological fixes. (Environmentalism as salesmen.) Such as a skyline filled with wind driven electrical generation. (It is the great weakness and failure of most "official" environmentalism.)

You want to slow down the expansion, effectively admitting yourself that you understand there at the heart of capitalism is the real problem source alright, but still allow the expansion, only "hopefully" at a slower pace. Because you know yourself that capitalism can't function without never ending growth. (Kind of like cancer. Eh?) Which is simply intellectual dishonesty, even cowardice. Again, my view.... And ain't gonna happen. The fear and greed motivators also built into and part of the system and its casino mentality, in the end, overwhelm all good intentions... example, the Welfare State, which was to have put a human face on capitalism.

Capitalism successfully absorbed the hippies, and now it is seeking to absorb the environmentalists... or at least those "official Green" sectors of it. Green Capitalism... :-)

Even Malthus was, even part of the then prevailing class system himself, at least more intellectually honest... and up front.

Now, I must go a get a load of hay. :-) I'll be away at least until this evening.

the fire continues

Hey Jerry, I'm pretty sure we're sympatico. The imperial fist retains its potency. The incrementalism of which I speak is to some degree a deal with the Devil. It also recognizes that I am indeed a beneficiary of the imperial class society of which you speak (and likely also belong), so reducing my out-sized ecological footprint is indeed worth pursuing, no matter how incremental. Even if, with morbid irony, that means allowing some tar sands to continue. For example, allowing mining (2% of the area for 60% of the payout) and drastically reducing in situ drilling might be a wise step.

I don't see this as intellectual dishonesty and cowardice so much as intellectual integrity and courage in admitting my conflicted position.

All this said, I have no problems with Ward Churchill, so if that is your role, all praise to you.