[IPSM] A Tar Sands Partnership Agreement in the Making?

[Macdonald Stainsby]

A Tar Sands Partnership Agreement in the Making?

Macdonald Stainsby | August 1st 2011
Canadian Dimension
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/4070/

Campaigns against tar sands production have grown rapidly over the last
four years. From the relative obscurity in Alberta to an international
lightning rod for people trying to address all manner of concerns from
indigenous and community self-determination to peak oil and climate change
– criticisms of the largest industrial project in human history have
gained a major voice. The voices are certainly not homogenous, but a large
contingent of these voices call for a shut down of tar sands production
and a move away from fossil fuels – if not an outright move away from
market-led growth of any sort. But, in the language of the environmental
elite, what are the “decision makers” preparing to do with all this
anti-tar sands resistance?

While there are still small scale, community led victories against certain
developments – like the defeat of the recent Prosperity Mine proposal in
British Columbia – I contend that mainstream environmentalism has
effectively become a means by which corporations (who used to be anathema
to environmentalists) now get the social license necessary to operate.
There are obvious examples such as the World Wildlife Fund running
commercials with Coca-Cola. But the real social management is done out of
sight, and involves some of the most important players in the circles of
the North American ruling class.

Co-opting Environmentalism

In the United States, major foundations – led at the time by the
Sunoco-oil founded and controlled Pew Charitable Trusts – stopped fighting
against environmentalism and sought instead to co-opt it and make it a
“partner.” This model expanded over the next couple of decades until it
slowly began to creep north of the border into Canada. Now this same
technique dominates the Canadian enviro landscape as well, in some cases
with a new twist. The Canadian Boreal Initiative [CBI] – a champion of
“working with industry to find common solutions” – is not even an
organization, but receives their money from Ducks Unlimited Canada who
receive theirs from Ducks Unlimited in the United States. All of this
funding originates with the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia. The Pew
Foundation was started with a multi-billion dollar grant from Sunoco and
today their board of directors is more than 50 percent tied to Sunoco,
either through the Pew family or executive work with the oil giant. This
same Pew gives funding to other well-known policy right-wing hawkish think
tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

The CBI spearheads something they call “the Boreal Conservation
Framework,” a plan to protect at least half the Boreal Forest. Fact: far,
far less than half the boreal forest has been developed or is slated for
development. This “initiative” partners openly with corporations such as
Suncor, Nexen and several leading forestry corporations. The CBI, funded
and directed by the Pew, also signs on to their framework the
International Boreal Conservation Campaign – another Pew front group in
the US. Along with corporate friendly organizations like the WWF, Canadian
Parks and Wilderness Society, the Nature Conservancy and of course, Ducks
Unlimited are a smattering of First Nations governments. Also among their
signatories are the Tides Foundation and the Ivey Foundation.

With this behind them, the CBI then “negotiates” what the final deal of a
particular industry should look like. Guaranteed at the outset is that
corporations will continue operations, and that the general public is out
of the loop right up until the moment the “deal” is announced.

Many other foundations – most but not all American – now play the same
game of social manipulation in the environmental field. Foundations such
as Rockefeller Brothers, Ford and Hewlett have not only entered into the
fray in a major way, in the case of the tar sands campaigns, they have
collaborated with the Pew to take social manipulation to a new level. The
aforementioned Tides Foundation was set up as a sort of clearing house for
other philanthropists and foundations, for many years receiving the
overwhelming bulk of their money through the Pew. Today, other groups and
foundations give them money and earmark where they want it spent. Tides
exercises total control over something you are not supposed to hear about:
The North American Tar Sands Coalition.

The Tides and the North American Tar Sands Coalition

The routine is fairly straightforward. After a long stretch when
grassroots and community led struggles build up support using a multitude
of strategies – from direct action blockades to boycott campaigns and
speak outs, demonstrations and more – suddenly many of the organizers who
started the campaign are shuffled aside. Professionals are either
appointed within the ranks or are imported from outside and all are given
foundation-led salaries. With or without public knowledge (almost always
without) a “stakeholder” negotiation is undertaken between corporations,
government and the new “professional” environmentalists will take place.
The terms of the negotiations do not reach the public until a smiling
photo-op of the “stakeholders” appears at a press conference to announce
an “end” to a particular “campaign” now called a “win-win.” Details will
vary, but they always include three things: A promise to stop organizing
against a particular industry, market-based incentives that would lead to
“change practices” and a guarantee for that industry to be allowed to
develop, now unhindered. Such a process is slowly being constructed for
tar sands production in Canada.

As if on cue, once the multitude of forces against tar sands development
began to crack into both national and international media the large
foundations appeared in the background. In this particular case, they had
set up a spider’s web of control from the getgo. All the usual foundations
– Pew Charitable Trusts, Hewlett, Rockefeller Brothers, Ford Foundation –
now use the Tides Foundation as a singular source to centralize control
over the would be recipients of funding.

By funnelling all money through the Tides Foundation all organizations and
movements that approach any of these sources can be directed to only one
source – the Tides Foundation and their “North American Tar Sands
Coalition.” The NATSC is headed by one Michael Marx. While they also have
“Canadian” and “American” campaign leaders, Marx has near total authority
to forge the funding decisions, policy directions, media strategy and
over-all focus of how the “coalition” will operate. Who then, is Michael
Marx?

Marx is known as a “corporate responsibility” campaigner. Previously
working with Forest Ethics and now, along side his control over the tar
sands campaign, he is a head of Corporate Ethics International. His own
personal bio celebrates that he has previously helped “green” Wal-Mart,
one of the largest and most labour exploitative corporations in the world.
He does not believe that the tar sands can or should be shut down, and is
shaping political messaging to that end. The list of ENGO’s that are
funded by Michael Marx’s NATSC is long, but to list merely the largest of
the Canadian ones that have been with them from the beginning of the
“invisible to the outside” coalition: The Pembina Institute, Environmental
Defense Canada, ForestEthics, World Wildlife Fund (Canada), The Sierra
Club of Canada (and associated regional chapters), Eco Justice and the
Canadian Boreal Intiative. Perhaps most important to note is that the
coalition also involves Greenpeace Canada – important because historically
GPC did not take foundation funding but has now been listed for several
grants from Tides Canada for this work.

There are also many regional only organizations – working on regional only
campaigns, such as to ostensibly stop the Enbridge Gateway Pipeline across
arts of unceded first nations territory in northern British Columbia.
These groups involve Living Oceans society, The David Suzuki Foundation,
west Coast Environmental Law and the Dogwood Initiative with a host of
community led groups. These regional grants are controlled by Canadian
understudy to Michael Marx, Jennifer Lash.

Since the highly criticized deal called the “Canadian Boreal Forest
Agreement” was signed in 2010 between what was called nine environmental
NGOs and 21 forestry companies, Tides has started muttering in public as
their own voice – calling for the “bridging of the two camps” of
environmentalists and energy companies over the tar sands. No first
nations have been mentioned in their pronouncements. Nonetheless, in
Europe they have moved in to steer the direction of anti-tar sands
campaigning. Marx himself showed up recently in the UK, speaking out on
campaigns to “stop tar sands expansion” in ads paid for by Corporate
Ethics International. These same ads have appeared in Alberta; Marx
himself lives in San Francisco.

Astro-turfing is a term often applied to various Republican or Tea Party
ventures in the United States, ones where money and slick marketing are
used to build an appearance of a grassroots network where, in fact, none
truly exists. While there most certainly is such a grassroots network
against the tar sands – and it is expanding globally – the astro-turfing
of “demands” to go into the backroom negotiations is tailored to appear
genuine. The manner it is done is to put forward a vague and almost
completely uncontroversial call and ask people to sign on to some
declaration.

As of late that has appeared to be towards the blight of the toxic
tailings ponds littering the landscape by the vast open-pit mines. In
recent months as well, Suncor (the original tar sands corporation, former
property of Sunoco oil and largest energy company in Canada) announced
they had developed “dry tailings technology” and that they planned over
time to roll out and implement it. Considering that Suncor is openly
partnered with the Canadian Boreal Initiative, it seems strangely
convenient that the astroturfing campaign is now targeting tailings ponds
– shortly after many of the more corporate environmental organizations and
the largest players among tar sands operators were caught – trying to have
a private, unreported meeting together.

The first attempt at such a meeting, last April, was spearheaded by the
Pembina Institute. The Pembina is employed as consultants for Nexen,
Suncor, TD Financial and many other industrial corporations and has
partnered with the original tar sands giant Suncor Energy since 1982. That
meeting was to be a “fireside chat” but it was cancelled when people got
wind of it and it appeared first on the mediacoop.ca and later on in the
Globe and Mail. Today, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers,
the Tides Foundation and others are calling for “dialogue.”

What Would a Tar Sands Partnership Agreement Look Like?

Based on the market trajectory of the Marx-led team, it will involve
beyond promises on water and tailings – including carbon offsets, promised
investments in “green” energy technology alongside perhaps some
announcement on further research into carbon capture and sequestration
(CCS).

Based on all previous deals in Canada and the United States, such a
framework could only be announced as the “end to the war over tar sands” –
to effectively give social license to tar sands operations permanently.
This would then eliminate Tides based on all previous deals in Canada and
the United States, such a framework could only be announced as the “end to
the war over tar sands” – to effectively give social license to tar sands
operations permanently. This would then eliminate Tides based anti-tar
sands funding for all organizations in the NATSC. Certain groups such as
Greenpeace, the Indigenous Environmental Network, Rainforest Action
Network as well as several community initiatives have official positions
to end tar sands development. The Pembina Institute, CBI, Tides, David
Suzuki Foundation, Sierra Club, and near the totality of ENGO’s who
receive NATSC funding in the United States do not call for the cessation
of tar sands development, but mitigation of the “worst” impacts.

The breathtaking pace and size of tar sands development in Canada has not
gone unnoticed to other would-be producers; many countries around the
planet have deposits of bitumen that would require much the same
technology. Those investors have been visiting Canada, learning, and
heading elsewhere where bitumen beckons. A partial list of locations that
are now threatened with tar sands extraction includes Trinidad and Tobago,
The Republic of Congo, Madagascar, the US state of Utah, China, Russia and
Jordan. There is also the country that may have even larger deposits than
Canada – the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

With the exception of Venezuela, whose production is still but a fraction
of Canada’s, none of these countries have gone into commercial production
at this point. It will be nearly impossible to stop tar sands developments
in Africa, Latin America Asia and elsewhere if all of our collective work
in opposition to the development of tar sands is sacrificed to a
“partnership deal” that allows for continued tar sands extraction.
Corporations like France’s Total in Madagascar could then argue: “If this
development is clean and responsible enough for Canada, why not so for
Madagascar?” Such a dynamic must be avoided at all costs on many levels,
not least of which is the remaining sliver of hope that the worst effects
of climate change can be avoided, rather than simply managed or mitigated.

Climate justice organizing is, in part, an attempt to go beyond the
counting of C02 emissions and to get to the heart of solutions to the
climate crisis – solutions that involve the end of oppression of the
communities that bear the brunt of the climate crisis, and do so in ways
that respects their self-determination. Addressing the needs of these
communities as they speak for the solutions they want cannot be a part of
a backroom, anti-democratic model of development pushed forward with money
from the very industries trying to eliminate them from history. It will
take a global effort to hear and then amplify the voices – from Africa to
Asia, and north to south in the Americas. None of these voices can be
heard if someone closes a door to hold secret meetings with the financial
powers whose assets already scream so loudly – as we edge ever closer to a
point of no return.

Macdonald Stainsby is a social justice activist and journalist currently
living in Edmonton and is the coordinator of http://oilsandstruth.org.


--
Macdonald Stainsby
Co-ordinator,
http://oilsandstruth.org
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moderated radical discussion list:
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In the contradiction lies the hope.
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