Pipeline Politics: Capitalism, Extractivism, and Resistance in Canada
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Pipeline Politics: Capitalism, Extractivism, and Resistance in Canada Kristian Gareau A Thesis in the Individualized Program Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Arts (Individualized Program) at Concordia University Montréal, Québec, Canada December 2016 © Kristian Gareau, 2016 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Kristian Gareau Entitled: Pipeline Politics: Capitalism, Extractivism, and Resistance in Canada and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Individualized Program) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final examining committee: ______Ketra Schmitt_____________________ Chair _____ Satoshi Ikeda_____________________ Examiner ______Warren Linds_____________________ Examiner ______Katja Neves______________________ Supervisor Approved by _______________________________________________ Chair of Department or Graduate Program Director _______________________________________________ Dean of Faculty Date December 12th, 2016______________________________ ABSTRACT Pipeline Politics: Capitalism, Extractivism, and Resistance in Canada Kristian Gareau Economic and political pressures to extract Canada’s oil sands—among the most carbon- intensive and polluting fossil fuels on the planet—have increased manifold, while heightened risks of toxic spills, climate change, and environmental degradation from fossil fuel use and production have solicited intense public concern. Yet, influenced by neoliberalism, political solutions to climate and environmental crises are often swept aside in favor of market-based approaches to economic and social organization. In the face of such depoliticizing trends, and an economic model that makes life on Earth increasingly precarious, a loose network of environmental organizations and citizens took social and political action against oil pipelines in response to the “failure of institutional representation” (Dufour et al., 2015: 127). This movement—dubbed the anti-fossil fuel or anti-pipeline movement (Klein, 2014)—sought to challenge the dominant cultures and politics of fossil-fueled capitalism to initiate a public conversation about building and governing differently in a socio-ecologically precarious world. For that reason, social resistance to a specific oil infrastructure project, the Energy East pipeline in Canada, presents an opportunity to unpack how political claims for a post-carbon society are enacted and formulated. Drawing primarily on reviews of the social science literature on risk, capitalism, and environmental politics, as well as discourse analysis and in-depth interviews with key anti-fossil fuel movement actors, the thesis aims to explore how anti-pipeline claims problematize capitalist solutions to contemporary environmental problems. It argues that social resistance to pipelines carves out a space in the public imaginary for a future beyond petroleum—and perhaps even modern capitalism itself. KEYWORDS: tar sands, oil sands, pipelines, extractivism, resistance, political ecology, environmental politics, anti-fossil fuel movement. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank several people for their support during the past few years. Without you, the writing of this thesis would have been far more difficult than it already was. Firstly, I feel much gratitude for my supervisor Katja Neves’ immense support and enthusiastic engagement with my ideas, along with committee members Satoshi Ikeda and Warren Linds. Also, thank you to Caroline Seagle for her friendship and critical feedback at a crucial stage in this project. Secondly, the support of my parents, Michael Gareau and Wendi Gareau née Ponting, were indispensable to my successful completion of the thesis. Thank you for your patience and understanding for the not-so-conventional life path I have chosen for myself. And, finally, I would be remiss to not recognize the contributions of the many brave and tenacious people who have sacrificed their personal time—and in some cases, physical bodies and mental health—to dare to dream and fight for a more humane society. Of that motley crew of thinkers, doers, makers, and seers, this research project is most of all dedicated to the memory of Jean Léger, whose passion for social and environmental justice drove him to take a stand for a cleaner and fairer world. iv Table of Contents LIST OF FIGURES and TABLES ............................................................................................ vii LIST OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................... viii Chapter 1: With pipeline politics comes “people power” ................................................... 1 1.1 Oil pipeline expansion against environmental movements: Questions of governance ....................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 From global to local and back again: Pipeline resistance in Quebec .......................... 5 1.3.1 Anti-pipeline movements: Against the fossil economy logic ............................... 10 1.4 Research question, theoretical aims and objectives ............................................. 15 1.5 Methodology, research rationale and overview of data collection process ............ 16 1.5.2 Research design, actor groups and data collection specificities ........................ 18 1.5.3 Operationalizing 'society' through theory and discourse analysis ...................... 20 1.5.4 Reflexivity and the limits to objectivity: The researcher-informant dialectic ........ 21 1.6 Chapter Overview ................................................................................................. 22 Chapter 2: Risk, capitalist power and petroleum .............................................................. 26 2.1.1 Risk and Petroleum: The principal products of the Anthropocene ...................... 27 2.1.2 Defense against harm and degradation: Fostering communities of care for people and planet ........................................................................................................... 30 2.2.1 Pushing the planet to the brink for profit: Capitalism’s metabolic rift .................. 33 2.2.2 Trapped by carbon capitalism: Petroleum path dependencies ........................... 36 2.2.3 Regime resistance to post-oil claims .................................................................. 37 2.3.1 Oil or nothing: Neoliberalism and petroleum’s precarious dominance ............... 39 2.3.2 The depoliticization of oil-based life ................................................................... 41 2.4 Sustaining petroculture: Hegemony, common sense and fossil knowledge .......... 43 2.5 The emerging social dissensus against oil ............................................................ 46 Chapter 3: Histories of extractivist dominance and tar sands resistance ...................... 50 3.1.1 The world’s fossil economy: A very brief history of oil ........................................ 51 3.1.2 Unconventional oil and the “extreme” energy transition ..................................... 52 3.2.1 Canada’s fossil economy in global context: Primarization, extractivism and the staples trap ............................................................................................................... 56 3.2.2 A Northern Petro-state? Canada’s resource curse and new staples trap .......... 59 3.3 Pipeline Controversies .......................................................................................... 62 3.3.1 The Energy East Pipeline .................................................................................. 62 3.4.1 “Keep it in the ground!”: A brief sketch of resistance to extreme energies in Quebec and North America ............................................................................................. 66 v 3.4.2 The emergence of anti-pipeline climate politics through resistance to the 'carbon lock-in' ................................................................................................................ 70 Chapter 4: Institutions, governance and anti-pipeline politics ........................................ 74 4.1 Petrolization in Canada: The omnibus bill case ..................................................... 75 4.2 Petrolization in Quebec: The beluga case ............................................................. 82 4.3 From the ‘gouvernemamam’ to Quebec Inc.: Environmental governance and hydrocarbon vigilance ..................................................................................................... 88 4.4.1 “Bogus” consultations, democratic deficits and bottom-up social action ............ 92 4.4.2 Oil’s Public Interest?: Oil sands as object of participatory versus managerial governance ..................................................................................................................... 94 Chapter 5: Infrastructure, citizenship and anti-pipeline politics ...................................... 99 5.1 Knowledgeable citizens against oil: Information politics ...................................... 100 5.2.1 Concerned citizens against oil: The politics of obligation ................................. 102 5.2.2 The “citizen awakening” in the anti-pipeline movement ................................... 104 5.3.1 “The semblance of democracy” in the pipeline