Liz Barratt-Brown's Blog: Saving Wildlife and Wild Places

Mordor of the North - Tar Sands premiers as “The Most Destructive Project on Earth”

2008-02-28T20:40:35Z

Those who visit the Canadian tar sands in Alberta often describe what they have seen as a visit to Tolkien’s Mordor – miles of open pits and lagoons of toxic waste water and a night sky lit by fires and lights of a great industrial complex where there was once an intact Boreal forest of trees, rivers and fens populated with woodland caribou and nesting birds. In the epic Tolkien tale, the Dark Lord Sauron is willing to destroy everything in his path to build his power base from his dark Kingdom of Mordor and capture the One Ring forever.

And while the exploitation of the tar sands looks frighteningly like Mordor, what may be more analogous is the tale of greed and desperation that would drive oil companies to strip mine and drill for ever harder to access fossil fuels. With the price of oil at an all time high and profits in the billions, even a company that casts itself as “Beyond Petroleum” – British Petroleum – could not resist the dark pull of Mordor of the North and has re-entered the tar sands. As oil reserves in other parts of the world decline, the pull magnifies.

The struggle between the quest for billions, literally scraped out of the earth, and a world fearful that our addiction to fossil fuels will be the planet’s ruin is not new. But what is new is that this story is increasingly playing out in the media – in Alberta, Canada, the U.S. and Europe. And even in the Alberta provincial election itself.

In the last month, there has been a barrage of news stories. One piece following another in such rapidity that even those of us following the tar sands issue closely could not keep up: Billions committed to develop the tar sands and the web of pipelines; pipelines approved and purchased by major oil companies; and refineries readied to take the dirty oil, with potentially enormous increases in carbon dioxide pollution. A piece ran last Friday in the Houston Chronicle with the title, “Canada's oil sands, open arms alluring.”

However, just as many in Tolkien’s Middle Earth warned about the impacts of Mordor’s growing reach, there are those who warn of the repercussions of this new push for tar sands oil. Recent news stories have highlighted the high carbon future tar sands oil will lock us into. Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, ran an eight part series, starting with “An empire from a tub of goo,” evaluating the challenges and huge environmental costs of producing oil from the tar sands. Another piece from The Globe and Mail, “The Long Arm of the U.S.,” suggested that just as Canada’s exports of oil and electricity are reaching into the U.S., the U.S. is increasingly extending its environmental protections to include Canada because of a vacuum of leadership there. It explored the role that California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard and Section 526 of the newly passed Energy Security and Independence Act (EISA) will have on limiting the flow of tar sands high carbon oil into the U.S.

Perhaps the most startling piece of all was an editorial in The Times of London– not the more left leaning Guardian or Independent – calling on Shell, BP, and other oil companies to get out of the tar sands or risk not only being called Big Oil but Bad Oil and on the next U.S. President to make this a priority since it was unlikely that “…companies themselves could resolve to end this new filthy habit.”

Does the peaceful hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, and his heir, Frodo, stand a chance against the power of Mordor? What it takes in Tolkien’s tales is a strong Fellowship. We may not have that yet, but the first calls for a slow down in the pace of tar sands oil development might give us the space to choose a better future for ourselves. In what can only be seen as a chink in the armor of the Mordor of the North, major tar sands oil companies have joined with an environmental group and Environment Canada, a branch of the Canadian Federal Government, to propose a moratorium on new leases based on environmental concerns. And the tar sands have become an election issue in Alberta itself.

Yesterday’s Calgary Herald led with the story, “Most candidates in Pembina survey want oilsands slowdown.” A majority of nearly 200 Albertan politicians who are up for election on March 3 are now on record supporting what surely would have been an act of political suicide just a few years ago. This will further isolate the Premier, Ed Stelmach, who has refused to “touch the brake” on developments in the tar sands. The Calgary Herald piece also noted that his most serious opponent, the Liberal leader, Kevin Taft, has said that calls for a moratorium show the province needs to rethink how it’s developing the tar sands and that, if the Liberals were in power, the party wouldn’t approve new tar sands projects until a detailed plan is drafted for managing impacts on the environment, infrastructure and labor.

With the recent release and coast-to-coast pickup of the Ottawa-based Environmental Defense report “The Most Destructive Project on Earth”, a new era for the tar sands has been ushered in. When you hear politicians like Alberta NDP Leader, Brian Mason, quoted saying “The devastation on water and the environment is severe…And it’s really one of the reasons we think we need to be reforming our economy into a green energy economy,” you know the Fellowship is growing and, as in Tolkien’s story, a Fellowship can set us on a better path – this time for our energy future – one that does not carry the cost of the destruction we see in the tar sands.

The Ring is back in play.

PHOTO CREDITS: Tar Sands pits - Garth Lenz; Crane and truck - Pembina Institute

Bearing witness to the myth that tar sands are a clean fuel

2008-01-18T16:59:40Z

Premier Stelmach came to town this week to promote increased production of tar sands oil and was met by protestors and serious questions about the impacts of this production on Alberta and on the U.S. I wonder what he expected? Maybe the good old days (the Edmonton Journal reported this morning that the Premier is meeting with our own VP Dick Cheney today, perpetrator of the secret Energy Task Force). But those days are largely gone and a new urgency about global warming and energy conservation has taken their place. No longer is it really acceptable to come to Washington and talk about environmental concerns around oil production as “myths”.

The Premier returns to Alberta today and we are left to ask what did his visit accomplish? His visit has generated a huge amount of Canadian press with headlines like “Protestors dog Stelmach in Washington”, "Stelmach Mauled in D.C.", “Premier Defends Oilsands in D.C. Visit”, and “Stelmach fights ‘dirty’ image of Oilsands in Washington”. These headlines could, of course, paint the Premier in some parts as Heroic, but more likely than not, they point to a deep misunderstanding about how much the landscape has changed in Washington D.C. and across the country.

Global warming has arrived. Even our new National Intelligence Director recently suggested that global warming is a threat perhaps more serious than terrorism. Multiple members of Congress have introduced legislation to address global warming. The first global warming bill, Lieberman-Warner(PDF), passed 11-8 this fall in the Senate Committee responsible for moving a bill forward. Bills are expected to be taken up in Congress this year.

And who would have thought it could happen? President Bush signed into law a new energy bill that requires that cars meet a 35 miles-per-gallon fleet-wide standard, raising fuel economy standards for the first time in 30 years. The bill also contained a Renewable Fuel Standard that mandates production of environmentally-sensitive biofuels. The provision that may have the greatest impact on tar sand production in the future is the little-known section 526 that prohibits procurement of "unconventional oil" by the federal government that has higher lifecycle CO2 emissions than conventional oil.

At the state level, there is even more activity. 600 mayors have adopted “mini Kyoto-protocols” – the international agreement to cut emissions that the Bush Administration has refused to sign. Eighteen states have made commitments to cap carbon. Twelve states are considering doing the same. And another twelve are considering following the lead of California and adopting Low Carbon Fuel Standards.

This all marks a directional shift that few will say is likely to revert back. All the Democrats running for President have endorsed strong global warming legislation and even a couple of the Republicans, including the arguable front-runner, John McCain. So, in my view, the gig is up. We are becoming a nation that is low carbon-minded if not low carbon in fact. What does this mean for Alberta and for Premier Stelmach? We may not want to commit to a high carbon spider-web of new pipelines and refineries to refine tar sands oil from Canada. We may not want the North American West to become drilled, strip-mined and spoiled for oil. We may not want the Midwest to be refining the dirtiest fuel that can be bought on the market. Maybe we’d rather have our big oil companies invest instead in renewable fuels. After all, it’s about the gas we put in our gas tank and, as a result, we have the right – and the responsibility – to say no to dirty fuels of the past.

When the Premier gets home, I hope he'll put his energy behind cleaning up the tar sands, not waging a PR battle, which history has shown, he is bound to lose.

Photo Credit: Oil Change International 2008

NRDC asks airlines to oppose dirty fuels and cut global warming pollution

2008-01-10T21:37:07Z

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!