Today we are sending letters to 15 U.S. and Canadian airlines asking that they participate in a new campaign we are launching called “Cool Fuels.”  We’re asking participants in “Cool Fuels,” to adopt their own corporate “Low Carbon Fuel Standard” and to publicly oppose the expansion of what we are calling “dirty fuels.”  Dirty fuels are fuels derived from the tar sands, liquid coal, and oil shale and they may well be our “fuels of the future” if we don’t get serious about developing greener, cleaner alternative fuels. Already over 1 million barrels of tar sands oil is shipped to the U.S. every day. To get this oil, all the big names in the oil industry are up digging the heart out of the Canadian boreal forest, our largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon and home to lynx, bear, caribou, nearly half of our nesting songbirds, and most importantly, aboriginal communities that have lived in peace with the land for millennia.  

And getting this oil is dirty business. It has to be strip mined or boiled out of tons of gravel, dirt and peat that was once a beautiful, natural landscape of old growth trees, fens and wetlands.  What was once miles upon miles of green and blue forest is now one of the world’s largest industrial landscapes.  For every barrel of oil that is produced. 2-5 barrels of water must be used. And for every barrel, over two tons of dirt – or what is euphemistically called “overburden” – has to be disposed of. Massive amounts of natural gas is used, which means using clean fuel to create a dirty fuel, which is like throwing good money after bad.  And now they are seriously debating building two dozen nuclear reactors to do the job. Is this what it takes to fuel our addiction to oil?  How do we feel about that?  As a biologist was quoted saying in a recent, excellent California SacBee piece, what disturbs her the most is that we are destroying their forest to produce this oil and not even trying to conserve.  That’s where the airlines come in. Our research shows us that our biggest U.S. carriers, United Airlines, American Airlines, and Southwest, are already using tar sands oil in the Chicago and Denver airports. Northwest is also a big carrier and is likely fueling from tar sands oil at its largest hub, the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.  We traced this oil back from the airlines, to the airports, to their fuel distribution terminals, to the refineries and then back all the way to Alberta. It’s a spider web of addiction and it’s growing larger and larger.   This doesn’t have to be the case. The airlines have lots of opportunities to substitute fuel efficency and alternative fuels for dirty fuels.

Airlines can reduce their fuel use – through improved air traffic control, routing, descent practices, and moving to electric towing at airports. They can modify their existing planes and, when they need to increase their fleet, to buy new, more efficient models, such as Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. And they can get serious about developing the next generation of jet fuels – from biobutanol to algae derived fuel. Unfortunately, some of our major U.S. airlines are going backwards, not forwards.  United Airlines and American Airlines are on record supporting the expansion of the pipelines bringing tar sands crude to the Chicago region and Jet Blue is on record supporting the development of liquid coal, albeit a “greener” variety.   What is alarming is that this seems to be going on below the radar. 

Most companies are busy signing on to statements and groups about reducing their global warming impact, but in practice the airlines and the major oil companies, like BP, Chevron, Conoco Philips, Exxon Mobil, Murphy Oil, Shell and Suncor, are all digging themselves deeper and deeper into the dirtiest of dirty carbon dependent future. BP, of the expensive branding campaign, “Beyond Petroleum,” just announced in December that it is investing in the tar sands. So now they must more rightly be called the “Bitumen Polluter,” for the gooey-tarlike substance they’ll soon be mining in what was the home of loons and caribou.

When I think about all this, I feel both despondent and hopeful. Despondent, because I wonder when some of our biggest U.S. companies are finally going to get it beyond ‘greenwashing’ about global warming.  And hopeful, because we are all customers of these companies and can let them know loud and clear that we want them to clean up this part of our carbon footprint. A start is by urging them to participate in “Cool Fuels".  So let’s get them aboard and get them moving forward, not backwards!