English 1130 Academic Writing Case 4: Tar sands/oil sands
Reading Log
Part One: We’ve discussed the ways Logos arguments (facts, stats, logic) can be used to lend legitimacy and veracity to an argument. However, the presence of facts, stats, data does not inherently mean that an argument is more sound; indeed, the very same facts can be used to support competing arguments. Logos is one strategy among many, and it’s important to distinguish between using Logos as a strategy, and simply assuming that facts and statistics are automatically better than other kinds of argument.
Take a look at the first two news releases in the case (“High Cancer Rates Among Fort Chipewyan Residents” and “Fort Chipewyan Cancer Study Findings Released”), and compare the ways each article uses the Alberta Health Services study on cancer in Fort Chipewyan. Both rely on the same data, which you can explore in the executive summary of the study.
How does each news release arrive at its version of the story?
What differences (in order, placement of information, emphasis) do you see between the two articles? Circle important contrasting details and note down differences in how the articles each use the data:
We’ve said that a word or concept can be like a package or a container. It may look small on the outside, but open up a concept and you find there is a lot more inside it than you may have expected before you began.
Since we live in a complex world, we need complex, careful thinking to be able to understand what is happening around us. This week a new theme is the ways quality research and argumentation can ‘complicate’ (or nuance) a debate, so that we can think about it in more complex, rigourous ways.
Good quality argumentation, the kind respected in scholarly settings, lets us think in these complex ways, using precise ideas that hold together logically and offer nuance and rigour.
On the other hand, poor argumentation simplifies and thins the debate, sometimes by using emotional appeal (such as fear or outrage) to shut down other kinds of thought, and sometimes by framing the debate in a simplistic way that renders it harder to think about. Keep this in mind as you read, and look for indicators of complexity, or oversimplification/framing.
The rest of the case includes: Part Two: Environmental (Woynillowicz), Indigenous (Poitras and Deranger), and corporate (Morgan) perspectives on the Tar Sands / Oil Sands. These offer genuine concerns and ‘sides’ to consider.
Part Three: PR material (Levant) that seeks to ‘frame’ the issue by intentionally employing logical fallacies (false dichotomy and red herring), as an example of intentional manipulation of public opinion. Response pieces (Taber, Nikiforuk, Edmonton Journal) that contextualize and point out these logical issues in Levant’s PR pieces, much the way you might when pointing out logical issues in your naysayers’ articles.
1. In the pieces by Woynillowicz, Poitras, Deranger, and Morgan, note samples of vocabulary worth looking up:
2. Also in the pieces by Woynillowicz, Poitras, Deranger, and Morgan, point out a few rhetorical moves that you find persuasive:
3. Compare the ‘genuine’ conservative pieces (by Morgan) with the intentional abuse of logical fallacies employed by Levant. What are the differences in these approaches? Which of these pieces ‘elevate’ the debate, giving us legitimate arguments to consider, and how? Which of these pieces simplify or ‘thin’ the debate and make it harder to think about clearly, and how? If you were writing an academic paper, Morgan’s articles, although in a popular source, might offer starter ideas for a debate. On the other hand, Levant’s approach would largely disqualify these pieces as ‘legitimate’ sources. Describe what makes this approach inappropriate for use in an academic paper:
4. Find examples in which Levant intentionally uses logical fallacies to attempt to manipulate public opinion:
5. What do you think? Which of the pieces by Woynillowicz, Poitras, Deranger, and Morgan are closest to your own view? Are there other perspectives that these pieces do not cover? What else about this topic interests you? (If you’re not sure, play devil’s advocate): Early release, published at www.cmaj.ca on February 26, 2009. Subject to revision.
High Cancer Rates Among Fort Chipewyan Residents
Early release, published at www.cmaj.ca the cancer incidence in Fort Chipewyan, ticularly with the report of statistically on Feb. 25, 2009. a largely aboriginal community 600 and clinically elevated rates of rare and kilometres northeast of Edmonton, after environmentally sensitive cancers such wo doctors who raised concerns Dr. John O’Connor went to the media as leukemias, found to be two times about cancer risks for residents reporting a high number of cases of more common than expected, while no T of Fort Chipewyan living near cholangiocarcinoma, a rare bile duct cases occurred in the control group.” Alberta’s oil sands say they feel vindi- cancer. O’Connor and community resi- In releasing the report, Dr. Tony cated by a new report confirming ele- dents linked these and other cancers to Fields, head of Alberta’s cancer serv- vated cancer rates in the community. exposure to environmental contamina- ices, said more study is required to con- An Alberta Health Services study, tions (CMAJ 2008;178[12]:1529). The firm the reasons for the elevated num- released Feb. 6, found 51 cancers in 47 community is on the Athabasca River, ber of cancers. He would not make the people between 1995 and 2006, instead 250 kilometres downstream from the oil link to environmental concerns. of the 39 incidents of cancer that would sands, as well as close to uranium mines But Sauvé says even the provincial have been expected statistically. There and pulp mills. report acknowledges the incidence rate were higher incidents of biliary tract Although the provincial study con- of cholangiocarcinoma in all Alberta cancers (3 cases: 2 of cholangiocarci- firmed only 2 cholangiocarcinoma First Nations is 2 to 3 times higher than noma and 1 of adenocarcinoma of Am- cases, and O’Connor reported 2 con- that in non-First Nations people. He pulla of Vater), cancers of the blood firmed and 3 suspected, O’Connor says raised a link to the amount of tri- and lymphatic system (8 cases — more the study confirms he and his patients halomethanes, toxic chemicals that are than double what was expected), and 2 were right to be alarmed. a byproduct of chlorination. These lev- cases of soft tissue cancers, according “I certainly feel that I’ve been vidi- els were identified in a 1999 Northern to the study, which Dr. Yiqun Chen cated,” O’Connor told CMAJ in an in- River Basins Study Human Monitoring conducted for the province. terview from Clyde River, Nova Sco- Report as being more than twice the The increased incidence of these 3 tia, where he now lives, although he still upper acceptable levels and in the types of cancers “warrant closer moni- commutes to Alberta to see patients. range linked with causing cancer and toring of cancer occurrence in upcom- “I’m definitely interested in looking fetal damage. ing years,” the report states. “Whether into the detail of what defines a biliary “Shouldn’t that send a signal that fur- people living in Fort Chipewyan have tract cancer and a cholangiocarcinoma.” ther studies are needed?” Sauvé asks. an increased risk of developing cancer O’Connor’s colleague in Fort Mac- — Laura Eggertson, CMAJ is still not clear.” Murray, Alberta, Dr. Michel Sauvé, said Alberta Health Services investigated the study also raises new questions, “par- DOI:10.1503/cmaj.090248
CMAJ • MARCH 31, 2009 • 180(7) Online-1 © 2009 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors Fort Chipewyan cancer study findings released | News & Events | Alberta... http://www.albertahealthservices.ca/500.asp
Home > News & Events > News Releases > News Release Archive > 2009 News Releases > Fort Chipewyan cancer study findings released
Fort Chipewyan cancer study findings released
February 06, 2009
EDMONTON, AB – A study of the cancer incidence in Fort Chipewyan finds levels of the rare cancer cholangiocarcinoma are not higher than expected. Of the six suspected cases reported by community physician Dr. John O’Connor, two are confirmed cases of cholangiocarcinoma. Upon review, three of the reported cases were found to be other cancers; another was not a cancer.
“The community was seriously concerned,” says Dr. Tony Fields, Vice President, Cancer Corridor, Alberta Health Services. “To address their concerns, Alberta Health Services undertook the most stringent analysis possible. This way, we can follow up on increased levels that are even borderline statistically significant.”
Fifty-one cancers in 47 individuals were found in Fort Chipewyan between 1995 and 2006, compared to 39 cancers expected. The cancers that were higher than expected were biliary tract cancers as a whole, cancers of the blood and lymphatic system, and soft tissue cancers. Only when biliary cancers were grouped together did they reach a significant level, three cases over a 12-year period. Other cancers were at or below expected levels.
“I believe the community should be reassured that numbers are not as high as reported,” says Fields. “These results were based on a small number of cases - there is no cause for alarm but there is an indication that continued monitoring and analysis are warranted.”
An increase in observed cancers over expected could be due to chance, to increased detection, or to increased risk (lifestyle, environmental or occupational) in the community.
“We will need to do ongoing monitoring in Fort Chipewyan over the coming years to see if these are continuing trends,” says Fields.
The study, conducted by Dr. Yiqun Chen, was reviewed by independent experts from Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, as well as two Canadian Aboriginal researchers, one of whom was recommended by the Nunee Health Board Society in Fort Chipewyan.
“We are confident the study is sound,” says Dr. Fields. “Seldom does a scientific study answer all our questions. Instead, research often points us to where we need to look next. Working with the community we will take those next steps to finding answers.”
The complete report and reviewer comments are available at www.albertahealthservices.ca
View News Release
View Study View Independent Peer Reviews
-30-
For media inquiries, please contact:
Mark Kastner Executive Director, Media Relations, Alberta Health Services Phone: 403-816-3762 or 780-974-4658
Follow Us
Copyright © 2012. Alberta Health Services.
1 of 1 01/09/2012 12:57 PM
Cancer Incidence in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta 1995-2006
Alberta Cancer Board Division of Population Health and Information Surveillance
Feb 2009
Prepared for:
Alberta Health Services Nunee Health Board Society Alberta Health and Wellness Health Canada
Prepared by:
Yiqun Chen, BMed, MSc, PhD Leader, Surveillance Division of Population Health and Information Alberta Cancer Board
Page 2 Table of Contents
Executive summary ...... 7
Introduction ...... 11
Background ...... 12 The Athabasca Oil Sands, uranium mining and Fort Chipewyan ...... 12 Previous investigations of cancer incidence in Fort Chipewyan ...... 13 Background to the present report ...... 14
Methods ...... 15 Study and comparison populations ...... 15 Cancer classification and inclusion criteria ...... 16 Active case ascertainment and verification ...... 17 Methods of analysis ...... 18 Ethical approval ...... 20
Results ...... 20 Study populations...... 20 Results from verification of suspected cancer cases ...... 21 Results from active case ascertainment ...... 21 Number of cancer cases and age-standardized incidence rates (ASIRs) ...... 22 Cancer rates by sex, age group and First Nation status ...... 23 Observed versus expected number of cases of cancer: all cancers ...... 23 Observed versus expected number of cases of cholangiocarcinoma, leukemia and lymphoma, and colon cancer ...... 24 Observed versus expected number of cases of cancer by sex ...... 25 Observed versus expected number of cases of cancer: trends over time ...... 25 Observed versus expected number of cases based on simulation ...... 25
Discussion...... 27 Cholangiocarcinoma ...... 27 Leukemia...... 30 Colon cancer ...... 31 Cancer in First Nations in Alberta ...... 31 Possible explanation of the results ...... 32 Review of the literature on health effects of living near an oil field ...... 34 Strengths of the current study ...... 38 Evaluation of the degree of an increase ...... 39 Potential limitations of the study ...... 41 Next steps ...... 42
Conclusions ...... 44 Page 3 Conflict of Interest ...... 44
Acknowledgements ...... 45
Abbreviations ...... 46
Appendices ...... 47 Appendix 1: Overview of the study process ...... 47 Appendix 2: Counting the Fort Chipewyan population ...... 54 Appendix 3: Case definition and selection criteria for cholangiocarcinoma for epidemiologic studies ...... 56 Appendix 4: Data collection by the Alberta Cancer Registry ...... 60 Appendix 5: Previous investigation of environmental contamination in Fort Chipewyan and the surrounding areas ...... 63
References ...... 65
Tables ...... 74 Table 1: Population distribution by sex, age group, First Nation status for Fort Chipewyan, the comparison communities and Alberta, 1995-2006 ...... 74 Table 2: Population distribution by age group and year for Fort Chipewyan and Alberta, 1995-2006 ...... 75 Table 3: Review of the 12 suspected colon cancer cases reported by the former community physician in Fort Chipewyan ...... 76 Table 4: Review of the six suspected cholangiocarcinoma cases reported by the former community physician in Fort Chipewyan ...... 77 Table 5: Number of cancer cases a and Age-Standardized Incidence Rates (ASIRs) per 100,000b for Fort Chipewyan, the comparison communities and Alberta, 1995-2006 ...... 78 Table 6: Number of cancer cases and Age Specific Incidence Rates per 100,000 by age group for Fort Chipewyan, the comparison communities and Alberta, 1995-2006 ...... 79 Table 7: Number of cancer cases and Age Standardized Incidence Rates (ASIRs) per 100,000b by sex for Fort Chipewyan, the comparison communities and Alberta, 1995-2006 ...... 80 Table 8: Age Standardized Incidence Rates per 100,000a for all cancers and for specific type of cancers, comparing First Nations with non-First Nations in Alberta, 1995-2006 ...... 81 Table 9: Observed (O) versus Expected (E) number of cancer cases and the Indirect Standardized Incidence Ratios (ISIRs) for Fort Chipewyan and the comparison communities, 1995-2006 ...... 82 Table 10: Observed (O) versus Expected (E) number of cancer cases and Indirect Standardized Incidence Ratios (ISIRs) for men and women in Fort Chipewyan, 1995-2006 ...... 83
Page 4 Table 11: Observed (O) versus Expected (E) number of cancer cases and Indirect Standardized Incidence Ratios (ISIRs) for Fort Chipewyan in the two consecutive six-year time periods, 1995-2000 and 2001-2006 ...... 84 Table 12: Cancer sites with a statistically significant increase in the number of observed incidence cases in Fort Chipewyan, 1995-2006, comparing findings from the 99%CIs, 95%CIs and 90%CIs of ISIRs and the simulation ...... 85
Figures ...... 86 Figure 1: Geographical location of Fort Chipewyan and the comparison communities in Alberta ...... 86 Figure 2: Age Standardized Incidence Rates (ASIRs) and 95% Confidence Intervals (CIs) of all cancer cases for Fort Chipewyan, the comparison communities and Alberta, 1995-2006 ...... 87 Figure 3: Comparing the actual Observed (O) number of cancer cases to a simulated distribution of possible cancer incidence counts in Fort Chipewyan, 1995-2006 ...... 88 (a) All cancers ...... 88 (b) Cholangiocarcinoma ...... 89 (c) Leukemia ...... 90 (d) Colon Cancer ...... 91
Page 5
Executive summary
Background Fort Chipewyan is a small community located approximately 600 kilometres north-east of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. In 2006, Dr. John O’Connor, a physician working in Fort Chipewyan, reported a high number of cases of cholangiocarcinoma, a rare form of bile duct cancer, as well as high rates of other cancers.
Local residents echoed his concerns, attributing cancers in their community to environmental contamination from a range of industrial development including the oil sands 250 kilometres upstream, uranium mining and pulp mills.
An initial review of the Alberta Cancer Registry, the usual first step, did not confirm an increased incidence of cancer in Fort Chipewyan.
The community called for a further investigation, and after Dr. O’Connor submitted his list of cases in August 2007, a working group was formed to support the Alberta Cancer Board in doing a cluster investigation based on the guidelines of the U.S. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
Purpose The purpose of the investigation is to determine if there is an elevated rate of cholangiocarcinoma in Fort Chipewyan and whether there is an elevated rate of cancers overall in Fort Chipewyan.
Methods • The number of observed cancer cases in the community was compared with the number of expected cases over a 12-year study period (1995-2006) • Observed cases were determined through the Alberta Cancer Registry and cancer case reports from the community physicians. • Expected cases were determined by applying yearly Alberta rates to the population in Fort Chipewyan, taking into account o the size of the population o the composition of the population by age, sex, and First Nations status. • To ensure accurate comparisons, only those cases where the individual resided in Fort Chipewyan at the time of diagnosis were included. • Cancer rates for several communities in similar geographic locations were calculated for comparison. • A simulation was done (one million times) to provide the specific probability of observing the same or a higher number of cases. • The simulation results were compared from a range of perspectives: a 90%, 95% and 99% Confidence Intervals. • For the conclusions of this investigation, an increase was considered statistically significant if there was less than a 5% chance of observing the same number or a higher number of cancers in that community.
Page 7
Overall findings • The two cholangiocarcinomas in Fort Chipewyan were within the expected range. • The cancer rate overall (51 cancers in 47 individuals) was higher than expected (39). • Higher than expected numbers of cancers of the blood and lymphatic system, biliary tract cancers as a group, and soft tissue cancers were found. • These findings were based on a small number of cases and could be due to chance, increased detection or increased risk in the community.
Specific findings
Cholangiocarcinoma • The observed number of cases of cholangiocarcinoma was within the expected range. • Of six suspected cases reported by Dr. O’Connor, two were confirmed. • Three reported cases were other types of cancer, one was not cancer. • No suspected cases of cholangiocarcinoma were excluded from the study due to residency at the time of diagnosis. • The two cases of cholangiocarcinoma were diagnosed in individuals older than 60 and 80 respectively. • The two cases of cholangiocarcinoma were diagnosed in 2003/2004. • No cases of cholangiocarcinoma were found before or since 2003/2004. • One case was diagnosed by Ultrasound and the other case was diagnosed by cytology test. Both cases were included in the analysis in order to be inclusive. • In each case, the individuals were found to have known risk factors for cholangiocarcinoma. • Further investigation was done to identify all Albertans of First Nations status diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma since 1983. None had lived in Fort Chipewyan between 1983 and the present (apart from the two in the investigation).
Biliary tract cancers • Cholangiocarcinoma is one type of biliary tract cancer. • The observed number of cases of biliary tract cancers as a whole is greater than would be expected as a result of finding one additional case of biliary tract cancer of another type, adenocarcinoma of Ampulla of Vater.
Colon cancers • The observed number of cases of colon cancer was within the expected range. • Of the 12 suspected cases reported by Dr. O’Connor, three were confirmed as colon cancer diagnosed in Fort Chipewyan residents during the study period. • An additional three were found through the Alberta Cancer Registry for a total of six cases, although two were cases within the same individual who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer four years before. • Only one of the six cases was diagnosed in the most recent six years of the 12-year study period.
Page 8 Cancers of the blood and lymphatic system • The observed number of cases of blood and lymphatic system cancers was higher than expected. • Seven of the eight cases occurred within the most recent six years of the 12-year study period. • Two of the seven cases were diagnosed in the same patient.
Lung cancers • Lung cancers as a whole were within the expected range. • When women were looked at separately, however, the number of cases of lung cancer (7) was higher than expected (2).
Soft tissue cancers • Soft tissue cancers were observed (2) to be higher than expected (0.3).
All cancer combined • The total observed number of cancer cases in Fort Chipewyan (51 cancers in 47 individuals) was higher than the expected number (39). • The ages of the individuals ranged from 26 to 87 with an average age of 66 at the time of diagnosis.
Cancer in First Nations in Alberta • Adjusting for the high proportion of First Nations people in Fort Chipewyan is the main reason the current findings differ from the initial 2006 analysis. • First Nations Albertans have a significantly lower rate than non-First Nations Albertans for all cancer, leukemia and breast cancer. • The rate for cholangiocarcinoma in First Nations Albertans, however, is significantly higher than that in non-First Nations. • No difference was seen for lung cancer and colon cancer between First Nations and non-First Nations in Alberta.
Strengths of the study • This investigation takes a cautious approach that identifies increased incidence of cancers that are border line statistically significant and may turn out to be of no concern upon follow up. This cautious approach insures, however, that cancers that may turn out to be of concern are identified so appropriate follow-up can be done. • The investigation is based on general guidelines from cluster investigations outlined by the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. • Processes were established to ensure all relevant cancer cases in the community were counted. • Population data and geographic boundaries were reviewed and confirmed with community representatives.
Page 9 • The diagnosis and classification of cancer cases in the community were reviewed and confirmed with the current community physician. The community nurse practitioner confirmed she had asked Dr. O’Connor to inform the clinic about any more suspected cases. • Cancer rates within First Nations populations in Alberta were calculated for the first time and incorporated into the analysis for a more accurate calculation of the expected cancer rate.
Limitations of the study • The small population size of Fort Chipewyan limits the ability to interpret results. In larger populations, one additional case does not have the same impact. • The increased rates observed were all based on a small number of cases. • The First Nations in Fort Chipewyan may have unique characteristics that are different from other First Nations communities in Alberta; this cannot be accounted for in the current analysis. • This study was not able to account for the effect of migration on the cancer rate calculation. • The study was not designed to determine whether living in Fort Chipewyan elevated cancer risk. • The study was not designed to determine the cause of any of the cancers experienced in Fort Chipewyan.
Conclusions The observed cases of cholangiocarcinoma and colon cancer during the period of investigation (1995-2006) are within the expected range of cancer occurrence.
The number of cancer cases overall was higher than expected. In particular, increases of observed over expected were found for biliary tract cancers as a group and cancers of the blood and lymphatic system. These increases were based on a small number of cases and could be due to chance or increased detection. The possibility that the increased rate is due to increased risk in the community, however, cannot be ruled out.
The increased number of cases of biliary tract cancers, cancers in the blood and lymphatic system and cancers of unknown primary seen in the most recent six years (2001-2006) compared to the years 1995-2000 of the investigation warrant closer monitoring of cancer occurrences in Fort Chipewyan in the coming years.
Further investigation is required to evaluate if there is a risk posed by living in Fort Chipewyan. This would be done by tracking a cohort of residents who have lived in the area within the past 20 to 30 years.
As part of an overall assessment of the health status of the community, further analysis should also be done of many potential risk factors, such as lifestyle risk factors, family history and occupational and environmental exposures.
Page 10
he environmental consequences of oil production from Alberta's tar sands are major, beginning with its effect on climate change. North America's transition to oil from the tar sands not only perpetuates, but actually worsens, emissions of greenhouse gas pollution from oil consumption.
While the end products from conventional oil and tar sands are the same (mostly transportation fuels), producing a barrel of synthetic crude oil from the tar sands releases up to three times more greenhouse gas pollution than conventional oil. This is a result of the huge amount of energy (primarily from burning natural gas) required to generate the heat needed to extract bitumen from the tar sands and upgrade it into synthetic crude. The energy equivalent of one barrel of oil is required to produce just three barrels of oil from the tar sands.
GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS
In 2002, the Canadian government ratified the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, legally committing to a target of reducing the country's greenhouse gas pollution by six per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. But oil industry lobbying and the rapid growth of tar sands development have undermined efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution for over a decade.
Since 1990, Canada's total emissions have risen 25.3 per cent, a pace far exceeding the 16.3 per cent increase in the United States, the second-fastest-rising nation, according to United Nations data. Regulations introduced in early 2007 are so fraught with loopholes and gaps that greenhouse gas pollution from tar sands is predicted to triple by 2020. Canada's greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 are projected to be two per cent above 1990 levels. The environmental consequences of tar sands development hardly stop with climate change. Nowhere in the world is there a form of oil extraction and processing with more intense impacts on forests and wildlife, freshwater resources and air quality.
FORESTS
The tar sands are found beneath boreal forest, a complex ecosystem that comprises a unique mosaic of forest, wetlands and lakes. Canada's boreal forest is globally significant, representing one-quarter of the world's remaining intact forests. Beyond the ecosystem services it provides (cleansing water, producing oxygen and storing carbon), it is home to a wide variety of wildlife, including bears, wolves, lynx and some of the largest populations of woodland caribou left in the world. Its wetlands and lakes provide critical habitat for 30 per cent of North America's songbirds and 40 per cent of its waterfowl.
If currently planned tar sands development projects unfold as expected, approximately 3,000 square kilometres of boreal forest could be cleared, drained and strip-mined to access tar sands deposits close to the surface, while the remaining 137,000 square kilometres could be fragmented into a spider's web of seismic lines, roads, pipelines and well pads from in situ drilling projects. Studies suggest that this scale of industrial development could push the boreal ecosystem over its ecological tipping point, leading to irreversible ecological damage and loss of biodiversity.
'Staggering challenges'
Satellite images readily illustrate the magnitude of boreal forest impacts from tar sands mining operations. The United Nations Environment Program has identified Alberta's tar sands mines as one of 100 key global "hotspots" of environmental degradation. According to Environment Canada, development of the tar sands presents "staggering challenges for forest conservation and reclamation."
Very little of the area directly affected by mining operations has been reclaimed, and after 40 years of mining, not a single operation has received a reclamation certificate from the government of Alberta. Suncor Energy's operation, the longest-operating tar sands mine, says it has reclaimed 858 hectares of land since starting operations in 1967, less than nine per cent of the land its operations have disturbed to date. Syncrude Canada, the largest daily producer of tar sands, says its operations have disturbed 18,653 hectares since 1978, with just 4,055 hectares of land reclaimed. None of this reclaimed land has been certified as such. At best, reclamation of the tar sands region will be a large-scale experiment that is unlikely to restore a self-sustaining boreal forest ecosystem within the next century.
WATERS
The Athabasca River winds nearly 1,500 kilometres from its source at the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park to Lake Athabasca in Wood Buffalo National Park. It is Alberta's longest river and one of North America's longest undammed rivers. It enters Lake Athabasca at the Peace-Athabasca Delta, the largest boreal delta in the world, a World Heritage Site, and one of the most important waterfowl nesting and staging areas in North America.
It also passes directly through the boreal forest being cleared and strip-mined, and serves as the primary source of water used to separate the bitumen from the mined tar sands. Water withdrawals for tar sands surface mining operations pose threats to both the sustainability of fish populations in the Athabasca River and to the sustainability of the Peace-Athabasca Delta, jeopardizing the subsistence and commercial fisheries of local aboriginals.
Tar sands mining operations withdraw two to 4.5 barrels of fresh water from the river for every barrel of oil they produce. Current operations are permitted to withdraw more than 349 million cubic metres of water per year, a volume equivalent to the amount required by a city of two million people. But unlike city effluent waters, which are treated and released back into the river, tar sands mining effluent becomes so contaminated that it must be impounded.
No stopper on the drain
Historically it was believed that the Athabasca River had sufficient water flows to meet the needs of tar sands operations. But it is becoming clearer that this might not be the case, particularly during the winter months, when river flows are naturally lower, and growing demand for water withdrawals could lead to long-term ecological impacts. The sustainability of fish populations in the Athabasca River is threatened by continuous tar sands water withdrawals during the winter months in years when low precipitation rates in the Athabasca River basin lead to low flow conditions. Nonetheless, the government has failed to implement regulations that would require tar sands withdrawals to stop when the health of the river is at risk. In fact, the government explicitly allows the tar sands industry to continue withdrawing water no matter how low the river flows become.
For certain in situ drilling operations, significant amounts of water are required to create steam to be injected underground. Because the steam condenses into water and is pumped up with the bitumen, the water can be recycled. However, because some water remains underground, a continuous source of additional water (about half a barrel of water per barrel of bitumen) is required.
These operations are located much farther from the river and, as a result, rely mainly upon groundwater. Where shallower freshwater aquifers are used, the continuous pumping of water can lower the water table in the region. Because these groundwater aquifers are connected to lakes, rivers and wetlands, reducing their levels can cause lakes to shrink and wetlands to dry out. As a result, some operators have switched to deeper sources of salty groundwater. But because they require fresh water, the salty water must be treated, which produces large amounts of waste sludge that must be disposed of.
Vast reservoirs of waste
Both tar sands mining and in situ operations produce large volumes of waste as a result of their water use. For in situ operations, the primary waste stream, a result of treating salt water and the water that is pumped up with the bitumen, is disposed of in landfills or injected underground. Tar sands mining operations present a much more significant risk, because they produce large volumes of waste in the form of mine tailings (six barrels of tailings per barrel of bitumen extracted). These tailings, a slurry of water, sand, fine clay and residual bitumen, are stored in vast wastewater reservoirs. The industry misleadingly refers to them as "tailings ponds," but collectively these pools of waste cover more than 50 square kilometres and are so extensive that they can be seen from space. One tailings pond at Syncrude's mining operation is held in check by the third-largest dam in the world. These tailings dumps pose an environmental threat resulting from the migration of pollutants through the groundwater system and the risk of leaks to the surrounding soil and surface water.
The high concentrations of pollutants such as naphthenic acids, which are found at concentrations 100 times greater than in the natural environment, are acutely toxic to aquatic life, yet the government has no water-quality regulations for these substances. Migratory birds fare slightly better: to prevent them from landing, propane cannon go off at random intervals and scarecrows stand guard on floating barrels. How this tailings waste, and its grave risks, might be dealt with in the long term remains unknown.
AIR
Tar sands air pollution, both provincial and transboundary, is rapidly increasing. Since 2003, Alberta has been the industrial air pollution capital of Canada. Criteria Air Contaminants (CACs) are the most common air pollutants released by heavy industry burning fossil fuels. CACs are defined as "air pollutants that affect our health and contribute to air pollution problems" and include such things as nitrogen oxides (NOX), sulphur dioxide (SO2), volatile organic compounds and particulate matter, all of which are emitted in large volumes by tar sands operations.
Modelling of the impacts of approved tar sands development, which includes three operating mines and three operations at various stages of planning and construction, shows that maximum predicted ambient air concentrations of NOX and SO2 would exceed provincial, national and international guidelines. Emissions of volatile organic compounds such as benzene are also on the rise because of both emissions from burning fossil fuels (e.g., natural gas, diesel, coke) and the growing number of tailings ponds. The costs of such air pollution have not been considered.
source: https://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/09/20/TarSands/
My people are dying, and we believe British companies are responsible. My community, Fort Chipewyan in Alberta, Canada, is situated at the heart of the vast toxic moonscape that is the tar sands development. We live in a beautiful area, but unfortunately, we find ourselves upstream from the largest fossil fuel development on earth. UK oil companies like BP, and banks like RBS, are extracting the dirtiest form of oil from our traditional lands, and we fear it is killing us.
We have come to call the tar sands "bloody oil". This is why, this week, I am coming to London to attend the Camp for Climate Action, with the aim of internationalising the campaign for a complete tar sands moratorium.
We believe the extraction of oil from Canada's tar sands is having a devastating impact on our indigenous people. This year, a study confirms that there are elevated levels of rare and other cancers among indigenous residents who live directly downstream from the tar sands activity, and that the contamination of our waters, snow, vegetation, wildlife and fish has grown exponentially in the past five years.
This evidence, however, is never acknowledged by the Albertan or Canadian governments, or the oil companies investing in the tar sands, when they promote it globally as being "environmentally sustainable".
People deserve to know the life and death impacts of the tar sands, especially residents of the UK, because your oil companies and banks are some of the biggest players.
In 2006, our community's physician informed the responsible authorities that he was diagnosing disproportionate levels of unusual cancers. Rather than come to his aid, the provincial and
federal health authorities charged him with "causing undue alarm" to our people; a charge that remains outstanding. Furthermore, we have proven that the levels of metals like mercury, arsenic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in our waters and sediment are abnormally high. Combined, these metals are known carcinogens that cause the type of rare cancers found in our community. But the government and oil companies continue to dismiss these claims, despite the rigorous scientific methods employed.
When the cancer study was released in February 2009, it did two things for residents of my community. First, it vindicated us. It proved our fears that we were burying our loved ones all too frequently were valid. Second, it created further anxiety in us because we believed that any one of us living in our community was now much more susceptible to becoming afflicted with cancer in the future.
Despite western scientists proving that there are elevated levels of metals in the water and sediment, vegetation, fish and snow; that the air quality in the region is worse than other geographic regions in Canada; and that the acid rain disposition is greater than other locales; the Alberta and Canadian governments continue to deny any of this evidence.
So, since 2006, our lives have been consumed with making governments and oil companies responsible and accountable in their quest to exploit the resources from our traditional homelands, a challenge that is often characterised as a "David & Goliath" situation.
Our community has called for a moratorium on any further approvals of these multibillion- dollar mega-projects. We have had support from doctors, former politicians, indigenous councils, and entire provinces for the moratorium. But we have never been heeded.
Alberta's tar sands are now the subject of three legal actions by indigenous governments against the government of Alberta for not consulting with its indigenous communities before going ahead with this development, which has been called "the most destructive project on earth".
We realise that the development of Alberta's tar sands is no longer just an issue central to those of us living in its direct path. Rather, it has become a global challenge. The greenhouse gases emitted are contributing to climate change globally – extracting oil from these sludgy deposits produces three to five times as much CO2 as conventional oil. The Alberta and Canadian governments unsparingly spend millions of dollars to promote investment in the tar sands worldwide. Foreign oil companies, including BP and Shell, are now much bigger beneficiaries from the exploitation of our resources than we are.
But what is most disturbing is the fear that any oil company or financial institution that invests in Alberta's tar sands is contributing to the early demise of my people. To date, governments, banks and oil companies continue to deny this.
So we are grateful to our friends from the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Camp for Climate Action, who have joined together to support us. At the camp, we will share our struggle with activists from the UK. We hope that whichever UK residents we reach can assist us by persuading your government, national oil companies and banking institutions to reconsider their investment in Alberta's bloody oil.
Source: http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/24/climate-camp-canada-oil-tar- sands?cat=commentisfree&type=article
or years, concerned members of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) in Canada, like myself, have voiced concerns about the impacts caused by oil sand exploitation. The vast majority of our community resides downstream from large scale oil sands surface mining and has seen first hand the complex impacts this industry has.
Now, over 100 renowned scientists and academics have echoed our concernsabout oil sands in a call for a moratorium on expansion, which is being taken seriously by the public and the media.
Moratoriums have been called for and debated for many years with little traction. Keepers of the Athabasca Watershed, a local NGO, documented these calls to action from First Nations to mayoral and union representatives calling for either a full halt or a progressive slow down in the oil sands.
The recent moratorium recognizes that current oil sands laws, regulations and policies are “inconsistent with the title and rights of many Aboriginal Peoples of North America” and “not designed to assess cumulative impacts.” These points are consistent with concerns our community has outlined in various interventions launched against oil sands applications in our territory. It is for this reason that we support this call to action to address both the systemic and environmental concerns in the region.
The public often criticized the ACFN for challenging the expansion of the oil sands because of the employment and revenue potentials for First Nation communities, who have seen little in the way of economic prosperity since the decline of the fur trade. We cannot deny the economic benefits the oil sands; we have a thriving business sector, long standing relationships with oil and gas companies and community members who are directly
employed by them. However, we have also seen the direct, cumulative and irreparable damage the oil sands have left on the lands, waters, climate, species, people and, ultimately, treaty agreements and Indigenous rights in Canada. Finding a way to reconcile the negative and positive impacts is becoming increasingly difficult.
A failing regulatory system has allowed environmental protection and the rights of Indigenous peoples to fall through the cracks. This compounds the complicated relationship between Indigenous peoples and governments. Current laws and regulations in Canada were created to protect and preserve promises the Canadian government made to Native communities, including First Nations’ ability to hunt, fish, trap and gather within their recognized territories. However, the expansion of oil sands into regions that are critical for the survival of species, ecosystems and the integrity of Native rights continues unabated in Northern Alberta.
This battle between Indigenous peoples of North America and European settlers over access, control and governance of land has waged since first contact. The Indigenous position has been rooted in the need to preserve and protect sacred lands, waterways, species and territories from the threat of industrialization. While this need to “protect the sacred” is often viewed as pagan or savage, it is becoming increasingly clear that we need to reevaluate our relationship with the planet. Centuries of misuse and abuse of Mother Earth is leading to climate change, extinction and irreversible environmental degradation. We must draw on the indigenous perspective of earth’s sacredness for the sake of our collective survival.
The complexities faced by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation are a microcosm of the challenges we face as humans here on Earth. Economic development at the expense of people and the planet makes no sense. We must push for change.
Our Nation made the decision to protect sacred lands and called for our own moratorium of development north of the Firebag River, Alberta, in our 2012 report Níh Boghodi: We are the Stewards of our Land. We did this knowing that it may impact our relationships with industry in the oil sands, but we hope that this will pave the way for a different future that will respect our lands, waters, climate, species, people and the unique indigenous rights promised through the treaty with the Canadian state and affirmed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Our Nation is not against development of our lands and territory - we want to see the respectful sharing and utilization of the land. However, current oil sands development isn’t meeting that mark. That’s why we stand behind this call to action by academics and scientists. These actions will take us one step closer to finding truth and reconciliation for indigenous peoples here in the oil sands and the pathways necessary for the survival of life as we know it.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/23/canadas-tar-sands-oil-fields- sacred-lands
Gwyn Morgan is the retired founding CEO of EnCana Corp.
Oil an easy target, but imagine the outrage if supply falls short Morgan, Gwyn. The Globe and Mail [Toronto, Ont] 23 June 2008: B.2.
The audience was a diverse group of promising and intelligent Canadians a decade or so into careers in the public, private and non-profit sectors. My talk focused on a favourite topic - values based leadership. Halfway through the Q & A session came the question ... how could I credibly espouse ethical values given my career in the oil and gas industry? It seemed as though the questioner expected me to admit that retirement has brought repentance for this great sin. I wondered how the many thousands of creative, dedicated and proud employees I had once led would expect me to answer this attack on EnCana's Mission of "Energy for People." The same week brought news that the husband of Quebec's environment minister owned shares in companies involved in oil sands and liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals. A spokesman for a Quebec-based NGO responded: "It's like having a justice minister who was a full-fledged member of the Hell's Angels."
When did an industry whose products Canadians depend upon for essentially every aspect of their daily lives become a pariah? And what sense does it make that, while consumers express outrage over high energy prices, environmental groups say the "cost of carbon" is too low? And what to make of the goings-on in Ottawa, where some MPs want to haul oil industry leaders before a parliamentary committee to explain why prices are so high, while all of the opposition parties devise plans that would make prices even higher? The oil and gas industry is an easy target ... from high prices to apocalyptic articles about the environmental impact of oil sands development. It seems few support the activities needed to produce oil and gas, but I wonder what the public's reaction would be if motor fuel failed to reach service stations, or if natural gas supplies fell short on a cold winter day?
Questions, so many questions, all easier to ask than answer. I don't intend to try in this short column, but intelligent debate needs to be founded in realism. Here is a dose of reality.
Almost 80 per cent of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions are created by end-users, i.e. businesses, agriculture and individual consumers, and another 10 per cent arises from the production and transportation of those same hydrocarbons. The balance comes from the production and export of oil and gas to the United States.
Asian demand growth, primarily Chinese, is the primary driver of high oil prices as well as the skyrocketing prices of coal, copper and nickel. In fact, OECD demand for these commodities has decreased.
When OPEC's unutilized capacity grew to over 10 million barrels a day in the 1980s, oil prices fell. Today, excess capacity is only 2 million barrels a day out of world demand of over 85 million. This precarious cushion fuels fears of supply shortfall, driving market reaction to news such as political or social conflict in countries such as Venezuela, Nigeria and Iran.
Recent weeks have brought allegations of speculative futures trading as a root cause of rising oil prices. While these activities can have a temporary and modest effect, it's real world data and events that ultimately drive oil prices. Recent data showing falling crude inventories, falling spare production capacity, along with reports of Nigerian unrest and potential Middle East conflict, are what's driving up prices.
In the 1960s, 85 per cent of global oil and gas reserves were available to private sector firms for exploration and development. Reserve depletion in the West, combined with resource nationalism in Latin America and the Middle East, have reduced reserves available to what some like to call "big oil" to a meagre 7 per cent, leaving oil firms with few places to offset falling production.
In 1783, fur trader and explorer Peter Pond reported using bitumen tar flowing from natural seeps on the banks of the Athabasca River to repair his expedition's canoes. Today, we know the source to be a massive deposit of bitumen-soaked sands. Canada's oil sands are the most important source of production growth in a stable, developed country. The resulting scale and geographical concentration of oil sands projects have drawn environmental concern. As usual, perspective is important. While technically complex, oil sands development basically involves digging up the gooey sands, separating the oil, and returning the cleaned sand back where it came from. Like any mining project, it looks pretty messy along the way, but a visit to the two longest-running projects operated by Suncor and Syncrude reveals a very high standard of reclamation.
World oil supplies are being stretched ever tighter, and a higher and higher portion comes from areas subject to instability such as the Middle East and Africa, ideologically hostile regimes such as Venezuela or countries thirsting for geopolitical dominance, such as Russia. Through good fortune of resource endowment and the technological ingenuity and professionalism of its people, our country does not have to rely upon these vulnerable sources for our supplies. (Optional)
Gwyn Morgan is the retired founding CEO of EnCana Corp.
Leaders must counter bogus oil sands spin The fanatics’ campaigns are winning the day because there is a lack of courage to state the realities of energy use Morgan, Gwyn. The Globe and Mail [Toronto, Ont] Report on Business
What do the seal harvesters of Atlantic Canada have in common with workers in Alberta’s oil sands? Both are targets of sustained attacks aimed at the demise of their livelihood. And in both cases, the main strategy of attackers is to eliminate the market.
Photo-ops of Paul McCartney and his former wife cuddling seals on an ice floe helped secure a vote by the European Parliament to ban seal fur imports. Now, environmental zealots are pulling out all the stops to promote a U.S. ban on fuel made from oil sands crude. Their tactics include a “Rethink Alberta” billboard and video campaign, along with mailing thousands of postcards to travel agents implying that oil sands development threatens Alberta’s most famous mountain tourist destinations.
And no anti-oil-sands campaign would be complete without those “do as I say, not what I do” mega-greenhouse-gas-emitting stars of stage and screen. Hollywood’s Variety magazine used Canadian-born director James Cameron’s film Avatar as an oil sands metaphor. The plot revolves around destruction of pristine forest on the mythical moon Pandora to mine the mineral “unobtainium” for shipment to an energy-starved planet Earth. And from the “aiding your attackers” file comes the embarrassing revelation that the Alberta government helped fund the film Dirty Oil starring Canadian actress Neve Campbell.
The oil sands took another hit with the release of a study by University of Alberta ecologist and anti-oil-sands activist David Schindler. His study showing elevated levels of heavy metals in the Athabasca River downstream of the oil sands created sensational headlines, even though it revealed nothing new. Contamination from natural oil seeps into the Athabasca River has been documented since 1783, when fur trader and explorer Peter Pond reported using ‘bitumen tar” from its banks to repair his expedition’s canoes. Comments from federal and provincial environment ministers pointing out that elevated contaminant levels were present long before oil sands development were ridiculed in Canadian news media, including the editorial page of this newspaper.
The anti-oil-sands campaigners have also attracted corporate green-washers. U.S.- based Whole Foods, Walgreens, the Gap, Levi-Strauss and Timberland all sanctimoniously announced that oil-sands-based fuel would be banned from their operations. Missing from their announcements was how, exactly, they would accomplish that.
Canadian oil is also a controversial topic within the Democratic Party in the United States. After her recent Ottawa discussions on the oil sands with leaders of industry, government and environmental groups, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi commented that she doesn’t like “any fossil, regardless of … where it comes from.”
On the surface, these events would seem to portend success for the concerted campaign to the ban oil sands imports. But I wouldn’t advise betting on that outcome. Seal furs for Europeans are a discretionary purchase, but oil imports for Americans are definitely not. So let’s inject some realities into this dreamscape:
-Nancy Pelosi may detest “any fossil,” but the U.S. Energy Information Administration data show that fossil fuels satisfy 84 per cent of America’s ravenous appetite for energy. Nuclear, hydro and geothermal supply about 11.4 per cent; wood and other waste 2.5 per cent. Bio-fuel, wind and solar, the great green hopes that Ms. Pelosi is counting on for salvation from fossil purgatory, contribute a mere 2.1 per cent.
-In the 25-year period ended with 2009, U.S. oil consumption rose by more than 30 per cent to 20.7 million barrels a day, close to one-quarter of global production. And 11.7 million barrels a day of that oil is imported, with Canada supplying more than twice as much as any other country.
-Those corporate green-washers who made headlines by stating they will “avoid” the use of fuels from oil sands crude clearly have no comprehension of U.S. refining and distribution. From the Midwest to Texas, billions of dollars have been spent converting refineries to process oil sands crude. And billions more in refinery upgrading is currently being spent, creating a lot of American jobs. Banning oil sands crude would not only kill those jobs and destroy huge investments already made by U.S. oil companies, but cutting off supply to those refineries would create serious fuel shortages. Then there is the reality that gasoline, diesel and jet fuel are shipped to market hubs across the country through integrated pipeline and storage networks, making it essentiality impossible to differentiate between crude sources.
- Ms. Pelosi’s opinion that she doesn’t like “any fossil, regardless of … where it comes from” is unlikely to be shared by U.S. geopolitical strategists. Venezuela, led by self-declared anti-American Hugo Chavez, is the second-largest supplier of U.S. crude imports at 1.1 million barrels a day. Ironically, much of that is also “heavy crude” similar to the oil sands, yet where are the environmental and political critics of Venezuelan imports? The U.S. depends on Iraq, Nigeria, Algeria and Angola for another 2.3 million barrels a day. The bottom line is that much of America’s oil comes from unstable or unfriendly regimes, and Canada’s oil sands represents the largest source of supply growth in a stable Western democracy.
-Environmentalists who gathered in Ottawa for the Pelosi meetings called the oil sands “one of the world’s largest single sources of new greenhouse gases.” Nonsensical rhetoric, dutifully reported as fact. The growth of China’s coal-fired power emissions alone dwarfs that of the oil sands. But let’s look in Ms. Pelosi’s backyard. Coal-fired power in the U.S. generates some 3,400 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year. The Canadian oil sands generate 30, less than one one-hundredth.
One thing I learned from my many years as a CEO is that corporations must ensure what they say will stand up as the truth in the face of intense scrutiny, while the innuendo and deliberate distortions of their critics are seldom questioned. But I also learned that you don’t win games back on your heels playing defence. Industry leaders need do more than sitting behind the blue line trying to block shots. They need to take their oil sands story and skate hard up the ice.
Originally published in The Globe and Mail. Republished at: http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article1713860.html
Ezra Levant has become an unlikely muse for Stephen Harper. The simple yet provocative phrase he invented – “ethical oil” – which is the title of his new book on the Alberta oil sands, is now part of the Harper Conservative lexicon.
Just like that, Peter Kent, the new Environment Minister, invoked the phrase last week to defend the oil sands; Prime Minister Harper repeated it two days later.
Fire hits oil sands upgrader
Although neither politician has read his book, Mr. Levant couldn’t be more thrilled. “Yeah, I feel great,” he said in an interview this week, describing this new and unexpected role as muse as “the icing on the cake.”
No wonder. The larger-than-life lawyer, author, conservative political activist journalist and former spin doctor has not always seen eye-to-eye with the Prime Minister.
He once famously declared himself as a “Stockaholic” – his way of characterizing the depths of his support for Stockwell Day’s leadership of the Canadian Alliance.
Mr. Day’s stint as leader did not go well. Neither did Mr. Levant’s stint as his communications director. It lasted only 13 weeks – back then he needed to work on his communication skills. Later, Mr. Levant kept Mr. Harper sweating on the sidelines, taking his time to decide whether he would step aside for the new leader as the party’s candidate in Calgary Southwest. Finally he did; Mr. Harper went on to win the riding.
All of this, however, is water under the bridge. Mr. Levant, 38, is a calmer fellow now and back influencing public opinion, having provided the Tories with new language, and a fresh way to sell the much-maligned oil sands and its dirty reputation.
Known more for self-promotion than humility, Mr. Levant considers his book a “debate changer.”
“It’s tough for Conservatives to defend the oil sands because the traditional Conservative arguments sound a little bit heartless – property rights, money, things like that,” Mr. Levant said.
He believes the Prime Minister’s characterization of Canada as an “energy superpower” is an ineffective phrase and poor way to sell the country’s oil assets. “It doesn’t ring true for Canadians,” he argued. “First of all, I don’t think we really think of ourselves as a superpower. … The Soviet Union was a superpower, you don’t want to be like them.”
Canadians, he asserted, see themselves as ethical – “People who try and do the right things, sort of the Boy Scouts of the world, the guys who help with foreign aid.”
So the argument he poses in his book is really quite simple: Wouldn’t you rather buy your oil from a country that respects human rights, workers’ rights, peace and environmental responsibility rather than from countries such as Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Iran?
“We don’t kill gays. Well they do in Iran,” said Mr. Levant. “We don’t stone women to death. Well they do in Saudi.…”
Although he supports improving the operation of the oil sands, he cautions against comparing them to “some impossible-to-achieve perfection.”
It was this way of thinking that led to him to concoct the phrase “ethical oil.”
“I was just thinking about what would fit,” he recalled. “There is the phrase ‘conflict diamonds’ and ‘conflict-free diamonds’ and that makes sense. I get it.”
The genesis of the phrase, however, dates back to 2009 when he attended a writer’s conference in Ottawa. He was asked, at the last minute, to participate in a panel on the oil sands. Realizing he was the “token Alberta whipping boy,” Mr. Levant also knew that after 90 minutes he hadn’t convinced anyone in the audience the oil sands were a good thing.
He decided to write a book to try to change some minds.
And he pictured the imaginary small-l liberal – a “twenty-something student at McGill, maybe taking vegetarian studies. Her name is Zoe, she’s never been west of Hamilton” – he needed to win her over. “How am I going to talk to her,” he asked himself. “Let’s win the debate on her terms instead of trying to get her to accept my values.”
Not wanting to repeat the same old lines, he purposely avoided contacting the big oil companies. “Instead of looking at right-wing sources, let me read up on Amnesty International …,” he said, describing how he pursued his research. He wanted to come up with “new arguments” and “weird comparisons.”
Last September, his book, Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oil Sands, hit the stores. It’s a “liberal book,” Mr. Levant said, from a “right-wing guy.”
Mr. Kent, meanwhile, plans to “eventually read Ezra’s book as well as the books of people across the environmental spectrum,” said the minister’s spokesman Bill Rodgers.
The Prime Minister’s plans, however, are not clear.
Source: http://ezralevant.com/2011/01/ethical-oil-in-the-globe-and-m.html (Ezra Levant’s blog)
I must say, that the Globe and Mail has been exceedingly kind to me and to the phrase "ethical oil" in the past two weeks. I think they've written about it four times including on the front page, in a two-page spread, and now with a friendly notebook-style report that literally takes up two thirds of a page of the paper. They even found a photographer who was able to photoshop some of the ugly out of my picture (see left).
Here's a link to today's piece by Jane Taber.
As I write this, there are over 600 comments to the story. I've skimmed the first 100, and I think 99 of them are negative. I think that's remarkable!
I know that doesn't represent the state of the oilsands in Canadian public opinion. They're controversial, but Canadians are much more open to the oilsands than the commenters to the Globe would suggest. Here's a column I wrote back in November about a massive public opinion survey proving that assertion. So what's going on here? Are the Globe's readers tilted towards the anti-oilsands radicals? Or is it just people who don't like me personally taking some shots (some are).
I don't think so. It might be self-serving for me to say so, but it is my observation that radical environmentalists go absolutely nuts when you use the phrase "ethical oil". They hate it with a burning passion, because it strikes at their very core: their moral self-righteousness, and their sense of superiority.
The environmentalist movement has some facts and arguments on their side -- of course they do. But much more dominant in their movement, and much more effective, is their use of emotion. They skilfully portray their enemies as heartless, and themselves as caring and ethical.
The phrase ethical oil takes that away from them, and points out that, whether they like it or not, their arguments favour OPEC oil over oilsands oil. So, if we were to take their advice and shut down the oilsands, we'd simply be handing billions of dollars of business to misogynistic, terrorist-financing, nuclear bomb-building, union-busting, gay-bashing dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.
God they hate that.
So that's my explanation for the 99% hate on the Globe's comment boards.
It's not the general public.
It's not the Globe's readers.
It's the screaming of every radical environmentalist in the country, whose bluff has been called.
They know that Canadian oil is more ethical than OPEC oil. They'd do anything to stop people from talking about that. They want to get back to their science fiction fantasy debate, of oilsands oil vs. some fantasy fuel of the future.
But that's not morally serious. That's not real life.
Ethical oil vs. unethical oil is.
Leger Marketing has done a new poll asking Canadians about the oilsands.
Canadians believe technology will solve the challenges of the oilsands - but they're not confident technology can solve the problems of offshore oil in places like the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea.
Confidence in oilsands technology is probably wellplaced.
To pick just one example, since 1990, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted to produce an average barrel of oilsands oil has fallen by 38%.
And it's not just CO2. Underground "in situ" oilsands production doesn't use any fresh water, and it doesn't create a large blemish on the surface of the land. Canadians know our OPEC competitors don't care about a clean environment, but the oilsands do. The poll is encouraging for that reason alone.
Canadians also told Leger they care about the economy - not surprising given the recent recession. And 44% of Canadians say our national economy depends on the oilsands, as opposed to 28% who say it doesn't. Those 28% probably don't realize their pension funds are invested in oilsands companies, which are as large as the financial sector on the TSX.
And 44% of Canadians say oilsands development benefits all Canadians, as opposed to 29% who say it only benefits Albertans. That 29% probably doesn't know there are more people working for the oilsands in Ontario - from Bay Street finance jobs to heavy equipment manufacturing - than work for the Big Three automakers.
And, as Liberal Sen. Bill Rompkey said in the Senate earlier this month, there are plenty of communities in Newfoundland where half of the income in town comes from the oilsands.
Leger also asked Canadians who they look to for environmental information. Greenpeace was suggested as one answer, and Canadians were allowed to choose as many answers as they liked.
Only 13.8% of Canadians said Greenpeace, and just 10.1% said they listened to Greenpeace about the oilsands in particular. The media loves Greenpeace, and dutifully acts as their stenographers.
But Canadians know Greenpeace is about as credible as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the radical vegetarian group more about stunts and showboating than actual informed debate.
Only one in 10 Canadians look to Greenpeace for information about the oilsands - probably the same number that look to a palm-reader or Ouija board.
Leger says the number one phrase Canadians choose to describe the energy sector is "job- creating." But the number two phrase is "environmental disaster."
There are real environmental disasters in the world: Nigeria, with nearly 2,000 unremediated toxic oil spills that will never be cleaned up; Nigeria and Iraq flare off so much natural gas, you can see it at night from space.
The idea of reforesting a mine, as over 60 sq.-km of oilsands have already done, is unthinkable in OPEC countries.
They're dictatorships that don't value human life - why would they value plants?
And that's another thing: Leger asked about the environment. But they didn't ask Canadians to compare the ethics of the oilsands to OPEC when it comes to human rights, fair wages or war and terrorism.
Canada's oilsands have a lot more persuading to do. But the Leger survey says ordinary Canadians haven't bought the anti-oilsands propaganda served up to them by the CBC, or foreign lobby groups like Greenpeace.
Source: http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/ezra_levant/2010/11/22/16270276.html
Suncor upgrader complex adjacent to the Athabasca River. Photo: Chris Evans, The Pembina Institute
"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that." -- Thomas Edison, 1931
Aided by small-minded extremists, Big Oil has a new argument to defend the shoddy management of Canada's oil sands. It goes like this: Canadian oil is fundamentally ethical compared to the world's worst oil producers.
Saudi oil barons may beat their women and whip foreign workers, but Canada happily employs aboriginals in open pit mines. Nigeria hangs its critics, but Canada just accuses them of being Greenpeace scum. Venezuela censors its media, but Ottawa will bring peace to the planet with the world's most expensive oil. And hey, bitumen has the consistency of peanut butter. It probably tastes good too. In other words, a $200-billion project developed by the very same corporations that defrauded Nigeria, bloodied the Sudan, vilified climate change science and polluted the Gulf of Mexico has suddenly become a supreme moral force making the world a better place.* Only in Canada can CEOs as narcissistic as Tony Hayward morph into Mother Teresa, and companies as morally compromised as Shell play St Francis. Dig, Canada, dig.
But to swallow this remarkable argument you have suspend common sense, ignore the corruptive influence of oil revenue on governments and enjoy the company of murderers and thieves. Comparing Canada to bloody Sudanese oil producers may make Stephen Harper look angelic, but it doesn't fix the serious ethical challenges that Canada now faces as the largest exporter of oil to the United States.
It's about money, not morals
For starters, oil has never been about ethics. It's always about the money and what economists call the paradox of plenty. While oil companies get rich, oil-exporting nations get poor. Louisiana may be a critical oil producer, but it sports outrageous poverty and some of the worst environmental degradation in the United States. John D. Rockefeller wasn't kidding when he called petroleum "the devil's tears." Moreover, oil discourages if not undermines ethical discussions. Oil money typically funds extremists from the left and right including such charmers as Sarah Palin and Hugo Chavez.
(Oil that is mined with shovels and trucks raises even more ethical challenges. As Mark Twain once quipped, "A mine is a big hole in the ground with a liar on top.")
BP and the China Petrochemical Corp., whose executives could use an instructor like Aristotle or Confucius, haven't invested in the oil sands because of bitumen's snow white character. They've done so because Canadian governments give away water for free, facilitate immensely profitable regimes with low rents and offer friendly regulators armed with rubber stamps more flexible than Gumby. Even the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2009 that Alberta gave away more oil profits to oil companies than Alaska or Louisiana.
When the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, a non-partisan group, explains that low taxes and low royalties have driven rapid oil sands development, Canadian taxpayers should pay full attention.
And if the media were to examine the state of Canada's energy regulators (most are funded by oil companies via levies), they'd find an unethical morass resonant with the corruption in the U.S. offshore oil regulator, the now defunct Mineral Management Services.
What oil does to an exporting nation
All oil exporters, whether authoritarian or democratic, rich or poor, Christian or Muslim, share certain troubling characteristics. They typically don't save the money or collect their fair share of the revenue. They overspend and under-tax. They eschew transparency. They entertain hubris such as becoming "energy super powers." And they increasingly concentrate power into fewer and fewer hands. (Many such as Saudi Arabia and Harper's Tories also don't believe in climate change, a real revenue spoiler.) Oil can also give political parties such as Mexico's PRI and Alberta's Tories long and unhealthy regimes. A province ruled by one party for 40 years is not a maverick; it's simply a dysfunctional state where oil revenue has greased the wheels and hindered democracy. A decade ago, Stanford political scientist Terry Karl aptly described the character of oil exporting nations in an excellent essay titled "The Perils of the Petro State: Reflections on the Paradox of Plenty." Karl, a student of Venezuela's wasteful oil regimes, wrote that: "Petro states rely on an unsustainable development trajectory fueled by an exhaustible resource -- and the very rents produced by this resource form an implacable barrier to change." As a consequence, oil exporters simply don't behave rationally.
But the cheerful salesmen now calling bitumen "ethical" don't want Canadians to examine these issues, let alone compare the country to responsible oil exporters such as Alaska or Norway. Unlike Canada, Norway had a vigorous debate about its oil wealth. Parties of both the left and right agreed to take oil revenue off the table and save it for future generations. That's why Norway now has a $400-billion pension fund. (Even the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has strongly criticized the management of oil wealth in Canada!)
Norway's oil ethics put ours to shame
Unlike Canada, Norway's government doesn't run on hydrocarbon revenue but on a national carbon tax. As a consequence, it morally represents its citizens as opposed to North Sea crude. Incredibly, its environment minister doesn't defend oil but advocates for land, water and trees. In contrast, the federal government of Canada has already pissed away $50 billion worth of tax revenue from the oil sands (mostly to lower the GST) while Alberta has saved next to nothing. To date, no Canadian political party wants to talk about these dramatic ethical lapses.
Next comes the regulation of the resource. Having industry fund and administer a third-rate water monitoring program on the Athabasca River with a system of proprietary data is one thing. But when regulators, politicians and lobbyists dismiss, deny and deflect peer reviewed science that consistently documents pollution on the river, Canada has entered Saudi territory. In Canada, petrolistas now deny pollution the same way Saudi society denies any mistreatment of women. In this regard, the poor management of the oil sands has eroded Canada's moral capital around the world.
Next come the economic implications of rapid development. Canada's petro dollar has massacred the country's manufacturing sector and probably accounts for half of the sector's 340,000 job losses in the last six years.
Bitumen's poison taste
Where's the ethical public policy to deal with this economic fallout? Is it wise to make the country more dependent on a single volatile resource that even the U.S. military, the continent's largest consumer of petroleum, correctly views as an economic security risk?
Last but not least, let's examine the fundamentally tough and ugly character of bitumen, a non- renewable resource. It's not oil floating on sand or fair trade coffee, but a badly degraded asphalt- like junk crude that requires extensive upgrading. If you spread it on toast, you'll lose all your teeth because bituminous sand is four times more abrasive than diamonds. Steaming hydrocarbons out of the ground requires one-fifth of the nation's natural gas supply and billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies.
Given its unconventional character, bitumen can only be a second line of defence against the depletion of cheap oil. Because it consumes four times more energy and twenty times more capital than light oil, it will never be a sustainable replacement for light crude. Nor is it a recipe for prosperity. The energy returns for every barrel of oil invested in the oil sands is nearly 70 per cent less than conventional petroleum. No civilization can run on junk crude for long without eventually bankrupting the whole damn North American economy. When it takes two tonnes of sand to make one barrel of oil, the world has fundamentally changed.
But petrolistas fear transitions. They also espouse a fairytale faith that promises more energy from dirtier sources with fewer ethical dilemmas. Every North American is now part of this oily scam. We not only believe that we are entitled to more energy, but that we can get fatter and lazier on oil without consequences. The farmer and Christian poet Wendell Berry once noted that "The basic cause of the energy crisis is not scarcity: it is moral ignorance and weakness of character. We don't know how to use energy or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy."
Scraping the moral bottom
So whenever a pundit or CEO tells you that bitumen is absolutely ethical, he's really telling to suspend all judgment and shut up. He doesn't want you to ask any pointed questions about the money. Or the need for pension funds. Or the weakness of compromised regulators. Or the ethical pursuit of renewable energy. Or the moral imperative of going on an energy diet. Or $20- billion clean-up liabilities and deformed fish.
To date, no Canadian politician has talked sensibly about the oil sands except for Alberta's former premier, Peter Lougheed. The statesman proposed six ethical standards: Behave like an owner. Slow down. Get our fair share. Save the money. Clean up the mess. And approve only one project at a time.
On this appropriate ethical scale, Norway gets top marks. In contrast, the governments of Canada and Alberta remain at the bottom of a very dirty barrel, a step above the worst but a valley below the best.
Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning Calgary journalist and author, as well as The Tyee's first writer in residence. Read his previous Tyee articles here.
Source: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2010/09/22/EthicalOilFallacy/
As a debating point on Alberta's oilsands industry, the notion of "ethical oil" is both politically clever and intellectually seductive.
It is clever because it asks the listener to stand back, place the oilsands in the context of all fossil-fuel sources, and wonder why it is being singled out for demonization instead of production by notorious regimes like Iran and Venezuela.
It is seductive because there's some truth to the charge that the "tarsands" are a fashionable object of protest these days partly because they are the new villain on the block. Just because people have become used to the negative aspects of oil from elsewhere - pollution, dictatorship, corruption and terror - doesn't mean they have gone away.
What a shame clever, seductive debating points have no influence over whether the extraction, refining and transportation processes for bitumen actually contribute to climate change, and precious little over what threats masses of suspicious people around the world choose to believe and place priority on.
Out in the real world, the ethical-oil argument makes no sense whatever - except on one condition we'll get to later - as a principle for defending our heavy-oil resource at international conferences and in public relations campaigns.
In the first place, the evils that oil revenues have financed in various places around the world, the regimes they have supported, and the foreign policies they have influenced in energy-dependent democracies are no more morally comparable to climate change than an apple is to a slice of roast beef.
What have the ethics of Canadians got to do with whether a product contributes to global warming? Does it matter to the Earth's atmosphere that Canada respects the rule of law, and Venezuela does not, or that Canada is a democracy guaranteeing equal rights to all and Saudi Arabia is not?
And in the second place, it is not the role or within the power of the governments of Canada and Alberta or industry defenders of the oilsands to decide what European environmentalists or anyone else should or should not worry about as a threat to civilization.
Energy policy
No doubt many people living in central and Eastern Canada thought Albertans were a bit over the top on the existential threat that Pierre Trudeau's energy policy posed to our province. But how we felt about the NEP wasn't their call. Neither is it ours to lecture environmentalists in other countries about what they should be concerned about.
It is also curious for Canada and Britain to profess a distaste for "unethical oil" now, given how little commitment they have had over the years to applying genuine pressure on suppliers for fear that supplies of this supposedly distasteful commodity might dry up.
It's further intriguing to note how eager the federal government is to play the China card in the face of the Keystone XL pipeline moratorium in the U.S. Once, Canadian policymakers concerned themselves with the considerable ethical gap between communist China and liberal- democratic Canada. Conservatives in particular much preferred trading partners less likely to suppress religion and chuck democrats in jail. Now, however, if the Americans get too squishy in their concern for the environment, we'll use our "ethical oil" to boost China's economy.
By this point, the thoughtful reader may be waiting a bit restlessly for the promised "one condition" in which the ethical-oil argument holds water. Logically, it is "only if climate change isn't real."
Economic disruption
The latest science, however, says that by the end of this century average temperatures could rise by up to six degrees from pre- industrial levels unless we reduce carbon- dioxide emissions on a global scale. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a cautious, conservative, mainstream body, believes that this will mean great economic disruption, and that the cost of tackling climate change will actually be far less to Canada over that time than the cost of doing nothing.
If that is true - and there is no credible indication that it is not - then climate change is a threat to our way of life, one that Hugo Chavez and the late Moammar Gadhafi couldn't match in their fondest dreams.
If that's true, Europeans can argue plausibly that their concerns about a fuel source unusually high in carbon emissions are both correct and the only ethical choice.
Now, does this mean for one second that the oilsands should be phased out of production, or that the producers feeding the globe's insatiable appetite for fossil fuels are villains for meeting consumers' demands? No.
On the contrary, those producers, their employees and dependents, and all Albertans and Canadians for that matter - both as economic beneficiaries and as consumers - need support and protection. But they also need a better approach to development than trying to deflect discussion from the very real concerns of much of the rest of the globe.
The fact is, a great many oilsands producers are making significant efforts to reduce the industry's environmental footprint, and they aren't helped by clever arguments that are designed to change the subject, and turn the oil production into a moral comparison in which other people conveniently look worse.
Such arguments, and our tendency to align ourselves with other anti- Kyoto governments to get vaguer, longer-term goals at the impending climate-change conference in South Africa, suggest we don't take climate change seriously.
Such arguments make us look selfish, self-righteous and overconfident that we are on the winning side of a seller's market.
Our industry and our province deserve better.
© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal
Source:http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/Ethical+idea+miss es+point+oilsands+debate/5781774/story.html
(Letter to the editor, untitled)
Food and fuel are two things that no one can do without. Denigrating the thousands of Canadians from coast to coast who ensure that oil and gas is available when and where it's needed makes as little sense as would vilifying our farmers over rising world food prices.
2008 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Sierra Club vs. Ethical Oil on CBC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toR3Tt9fS2E background: http://www.kathrynmarshall.ca/bio/
Astroturf: http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/astroturfing
Rabble piece on Ethical Oil http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/emmapullman/2012/01/cozy-ties-astroturf-ethical-oil- and- conservative-alliance-promote
Satire – Rick Mercer Report on ‘insurgents that threaten democracy’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZf5fC9v2qE&feature=share