[IPSM] When will they learn?

[Macdonald Stainsby]

  Al Pope, March 12, 2005

     When will they learn?


     On the southern approach to Dawson City, the heart of the Klondike 
gold-mining region, miles of environmental devastation greet the 
traveler. A hundred years after giant dredges tore up the ground that 
was once boreal forest, scattered willows and aspens have just begun to 
reclaim the tailings piles.

     If someone had mentioned this legacy to the goldminers of the early 
20th Century they would surely have scoffed. So what? There’s tens of 
thousands of miles of forest out there, stretching away in every 
direction, far beyond the limits of the human imagination. What’s a few 
hundred acres when there’s fortunes to be made?

     Scene change: Fort McMurray, 2006. The rush to develop the Alberta 
oil sands dwarfs the Klondike Gold Rush in every way. A gold dredge 
could disappear unnoticed under the wheels of the machines that mine for 
oil. Syncrude’s Southwest Sand-Storage Facility, a barren wasteland of 
polluted water and giant tailings piles, is one of the three largest 
dams in the world. There are more than 400 million cubic metres of 
tailings in Mildred Lake, one of several oil-slick tailings ponds 
visible to the naked eye from space.

     Alberta Pacific Forestry Limited holds leases over 5.8 million 
hectares of boreal forest, most of which are either stripped bare to 
accommodate oil sands development, or criss-crossed with seismic lines 
and roads, and dotted with huge drill platforms and work camps. Rivers, 
creeks and underground aquifers are diverted or destroyed, and ancient 
peat bogs are lost for ever.

     While environmental standards were unheard of during the Klondike 
Gold Rush, developers in the oil sands are required to make reclamation 
plans. This does not mean that the boreal forest will ever be back. It 
will be replaced if at all by replanted tree-farms or grassy hills of 
toxic tailings, laden with salt, bitumen, and naphthenic acid, prettier 
than the Dawson tailings piles, but far less benign.

     Synthetic crude oil, the kind produced by the oil sands, is some of 
the dirtiest fuel on the planet. Massive amounts of water and secondary 
fuels are required to extract oil from sand, driving greenhouse gas 
emissions to unprecedented levels. Due mainly to oil sands development, 
Alberta now has the worst air pollution in Canada.

     Scene change: Sachs Harbour, Nunavut. Observations in this high 
arctic community demonstrate that climate change is occurring at a far 
faster rate than ever predicted. Already, freeze-up occurs a month later 
than normal, and break-up comes earlier every year. The multi-year 
sea-ice is shrinking, seals and caribou are disappearing, permafrost is 
melting, causing banks to slough, buildings to shift, and lakes to 
drain. Polar bears and native fish are disappearing and southern species 
such as grizzlies and salmon are appearing for the first time.

     We’re destroying Canada’s North to feed the world’s greed for oil. 
At this rate, the polar bear could be extinct in a matter of decades, 
the grizzly reduced to a scattered handful driven ever farther north, 
caribou herds decimated, song birds silenced, cancer rates multiplied 
and multiplied again, the way of life of First Nations and Inuit people 
and many other Northerners lost forever.

     Scene change: McKenzie Valley, NWT. The McKenzie Gas Project is 
conducting public hearings on its pipeline proposal to trunk natural gas 
from the McKenzie Delta to southern markets. Natural gas is touted as 
the clean transition fuel that will help to wean us off crude oil and 
onto renewable energy sources. First Nations in the corridor are asked 
to support the project which “respects the peoples of Canada's North and 
the land, wildlife and environment that sustains them”.

     But what will really become of the McKenzie Valley gas? To extract 
a barrel of oil using Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage, one of two 
methods used in the Alberta oils sands, costs 1000 cubic metres of 
natural gas. At its present level, the oil sands project consumes 0.6 
billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. By 2012, that amount is 
projected to increase to 2 billion cubic feet per day, or 1.5 times the 
output of the McKenzie Valley pipeline.

     The vast majority of the fuel produced by the oil sands project 
will be shipped to the United States, to feed an ever-growing greed for 
bigger, faster cars and an ever-expanding war machine. Americans can’t 
afford to pay for the millions of barrels of oil they consume each day, 
so they mortgage their country’s future to the tune of trillions of 
dollars every year, a few billions of which flows back to Alberta.

     But foreign customers are not the only ones footing the bill for 
the staggering rapacity of the oil sands project. Besides over-consuming 
oil ourselves, Canadians are paying for the destruction of our ecology 
and our health with enormous tax breaks to energy producers. No industry 
in Canada enjoys the tax advantages of the oil sands developers, who 
have profited from about $40 billion in federal tax breaks and 
incentives, and millions more in provincial breaks and deferments.

     In short, we’re paying through the nose in cash and in kind to 
enrich a few and impoverish the planet. Governments spend incalculable 
resources on the most destructive fuels on Earth and peanuts on 
renewable energy. Natural gas, which might be used as a bridge fuel to a 
saner economy, is squandered on cranking out more oil. In the meantime, 
Albertans rejoice when the government drops $400 in their mailbox. Has 
acquiescence ever been bought so cheap? How much will the people of the 
McKenzie Valley sell out for, or Yukoners in our turn when the Alaska 
Highway Pipeline booms and busts? No matter how big the cheque, it will 
never replace what’s lost every day.

     The drive to Dawson City is a lesson in real economics and true 
costs. The flight over Fort McMurray proves that lesson has not yet been 
learned. Another decade of tax-subsidized oil production at the current 
rate, and it may be too late to learn.
-- 
Macdonald Stainsby
http://independentmedia.ca/survivingcanada
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
    --Bertholt Brecht.