Oil Spills Create Jobs

I’m severely disappointed in the lack of vision that conservatives have regarding our economy. Faced with information that burning a lot of fossil fuel is not able to be sustained without Catastrophic, Repulsive, Atmospheric Pollution (CRAP), their response tends toward ignoring evidence of damage to their environment in favour of delaying the predictable economic train wreck that would occur if fuel production were to halt in the span of months or a year.

Jobs are being created to create the doomsday device known as the KXL pipeline. Jobs will be required to [partially] clean up the many spills it will create. Doctors will be needed to treat the cancers created by the soil and water contamination, and the burning of the fuel.

@Rhino_Bob @votelau the long term goal *is* to wind down oil production as much as possible. Cleaner forms of energy are better for life.—
John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) March 31, 2013

@JohnKleinRegina @Rhino_Bob @votelau
Sorry, NO viable solution to end use of fossil fuels (cars, plastics, power prod, etc) = pipe dream.—
Chad (@Chad4Mayor) March 31, 2013

Yet when asked if they’d like to wind down fossil fuel production in favour of renewable sources, they answer “No!” because they can’t envision it ever being an equivalent and essential source of power. When you ask them if they believe in higher education, most will say they do, choosing (at that time) to instead embrace the idea that short term expense and investment can lead to longer term gain through a change in skills and information. There are plenty of conservatives at schools of business.

So, why rush into upgrading ‘ethical’ oil infrastructure, instead of renewable energy manufacturing and design?

Group says latest oil spill is a preview of Keystone's "nightmare scenario" huff.to/10jaGJI—
HuffPost Canada (@HuffPostCanada) April 01, 2013

And seriously, if the tar sand oil companies can’t stave off repeated spills in the months leading up to an approval of KXL pipeline, how can anyone believe they’ll suddenly stop leaking oil all over the place once there is less pressure to behave because they’ll have the pipe built?

Oil The Humanity!

Oww, my sides would be hurting from laughing at the irony of this situation, if it weren’t a deadly serious joke that the Conservatives are playing on Canadians.

On a public relations mission to convince the public that the BC coast will be safe from oil spills, the clean-up vessel ran aground on a sandbar, and was delayed by hours.

British Columbia’s largest oil spill response vessel got stuck on a sandbar en route to a federal news conference where Monday about strengthening Canada’s oil spill defences.

This was only a test. If this had been a real emergency, your coastline would be covered in oil. Joe Oliver would be cackling.

You really have to love it when a press conference fails so badly for any politician hell bent on pitching a catastrophic idea destined to ruin lives and our environment.

Tarsand Analogy

This is an unpolished analogy of Canada’s attitude toward the tarsand/climate change problem.

Let’s say Canada is a person complaining about their weight (they think their carbon footprints are too heavy). To solve this problem they read a diet book that their friend Europa suggested to them, and they even try to get FIT in the Ontario core area, but they continue to eat at the greasy Tar Sands Cafe every day and never learn to cook their own meals in a solar oven. Canada’s friend Alberta and Tex suggest a new method of eating at the Tar Sands which will improve Canada’s bank account by next year. The only catch is that it requires hooking a food line right into a vein and causes early death. Canada isn’t totally sold on the idea, but is addicted, so this mainline seems like an option. Plus, they’re scared about not having enough money.

Canada could choose to start using their solar oven, and make meals at home, but would have to convince Tex and Alberta to join them in making healthier food. That seems like too much work, and it’s so much easier to take the mainline and watch Rex Murphy rant on TV about how things should never change. The dough rolls in, and the weight piles on.

Wall’s Leaky Logic

Brad Wall went to Washington in order to pitch the Keystone XL pipeline project. In doing so, he made some really absurd claims, that CTV failed to juxtapose against the scientifically accurate situation that Wall mischaracterized. Joe Oliver of the Conservatives has also been making totally absurd claims about Canada’s environmental track record under his government’s [lack of] leadership.

“Saskatchewan’s environmental record is not good.” – Global TV news clip from 2009.

It’s totally irresponsible journalism by the Canadian Press to allow the Premier to make the opposite claim without also clarifying his remarks, or offering the comments from someone with a factual response to his fiction.

Here’s the economic case, here’s the energy security and oh, by the way, we care about the environment and here’s what we’re doing with respect to the environmental piece of this.”
“We need to indicate that we’re serious about the environment, because we are,”{… delusional or two faced, I must add.}

This was a horrendously unbalanced CP article. Experts can refute the “Conservative” premier’s claims that Sask. can care about climate change while pushing the carbon-budget-obliterating KXL pipeline project.

Wall’s claim is analogous to a captain saying that he’s serious about keeping a ship afloat by plugging a hole in starboard side, while boring a bigger hole in the port side. It doesn’t matter if water intake is reduced in one side, if the ship’s still getting flooded.

The premier added he’s confident Keystone will soon be approved, particularly following the U.S. State Department’s draft environmental assessment of the pipeline that was dismissive of many of the environmental movement’s concerns about it.

That State Dept. report was actually written by a KXL friendly contractor, we soon later learned. Hard to believe Wall didn’t know the integrity of the report is in doubt. What is not in doubt among scientists is the potential carbon from the tar sands, when burned, will far surpass the carbon budget our climate could possibly withstand for a less than 2 degree change in our climate’s temperature.

Oiled Up

There’s a suspicious situation uncovered at the UofR, by CBC. IPAC, the CO(2) CCS project was audited, and there were apparent conflicts of interest in how some of the money was spent. The report stopped short of saying there was crime, but implied there was the possibility of it.

Only last week I saw a CCTV ad for IPAC-CO2 appear out of nowhere, and I was unfamiliar with the logo they used until I spelled it out and realized it must be for the CCS project. This is the “heart of the Saskatchewan Party’s plan to tackle climate change”, according to Geoff Leo of CBC.

CVI is an IT provider, but they were getting over half of the budget. “There was no set of deliverables.”

One apparent conflict of interest, was Malcolm Wilson for a time being on the board of CVI. He reportedly returned shares so as to not profit from the work.

The Sask Party Minister for CIC, Donna Harpauer said “it’s a conflict of interest”. Wilson, through his lawyer told CBC that when the facts are all in, there was no conflict of interest. A Mr. Fitzpatrick, in the audio interview, said there was “no impropriety”.

–
Side note: I’ve appeared in a Global TV report years ago with both Wilson, and Brad Wall.

Shell, along with the provincial and federal governments gave the UofR millions of dollars years ago to pursue Carbon Capture & Storage at their test facility at Estevan. I’ve toured it; they were using North Dakota’s CO2 gas, instead of gas from the coal plant the test site is built beside. To that point, in ~2008, no gas from power SK production had been stored. I assume that remains the case.

Why would Shell, which has little to do with coal power, invest millions into this R&D? CCS has the ‘side effect’ of forcing exhausted oil fields into extended opportunities of production. In short, put the gas down, and oil comes out. We then burn that oil without using CCS, further limiting the net benefits of CCS.

There are presently 0 “clean coal” plants in production in the world.

The U of R, despite saying they are a “clean energy” research facility, presently has 0 solar panels in production, and 1 VAT windmill in research & production.

NOT a “threat to national security”

The Conservative government is out of control. The Guardian UK newspaper confirms what environmentalists have already suspected (since the Conservatives have openly accused them previously): This Conservative government regards environmentalists as a threat to national security. It’s offensive, absurd, and an extreme step into authoritarian police-state behaviour.

-(UofR image, to keep this blog post from appearing boring.)

“We’re aware of this” said Greenpeace Canada’s executive director Bruce Cox, who met the head of the RCMP last year. “We’re an outspoken voice for non-violence and this was made clear to the RCMP,” Cox said.

He said there was real anger among Canadians about the degradation of the natural environment by oil, gas and other extractive industries and governments working for those industries and not in the public interest. Security forces should see Greenpeace as a “plus”, a non-violent outlet for this anger, he argued. “It is governments and fossil fuel industry who are the extremists, threatening the prosperity of future generations.”

Has there been a report of Greenpeace violence lately? Ever? How about the RCMP, how’s their record for violence lately? Rape. Taser death. Etc.

The reason the Conservatives view environmentalists as a threat to national security, is because Harper thinks he is the nation, and his secure grasp on power is threatened by peaceful protests that spread the truth about his support of environmental and economic collapse for the crude gain of his wealthy backers.

In a Canadian Senate committee on national security and defence meeting Monday Feb 11 Richard Fadden, the director of CSIS said they are more worried about domestic terrorism, acknowledging that the vast majority of its spying is done within Canada. Fadden said they are “following a number of cases where we think people might be inclined to acts of terrorism”.

I’m someone who was once under investigation by CSIS, in order to get a job I had a while ago. It was like an advanced CRCheck, except by our national spies instead of local police. I don’t say this in jest, and my family and friends will confirm it if you ask them. I was (obviously) deemed no threat to Canadian national security, because I’m a loyal Canadian, and a peaceful person. I am also an environmentalist. I am not a terrorist. I care deeply about our country and its people. I have no good way to tell if I’m presently under targeted state observation, but assume I am. This does not make me paranoid, it makes me aware of my surroundings and news reports, and does not significantly change how I go about my life.

If CSIS, the RCMP, and the Cons had announced that since they were aware of “a number of cases” where Christians they were monitoring had been threatening violence, they’d since begun monitoring all Christian groups as possible threats to national security, can you imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth then? How is that different from monitoring all environmental groups because some violent people happen to support protecting natural ecosystems (and apparently not people)?

The Conservatives are literally making you pay for spies and police to monitor grandmothers and children who attend peaceful gatherings, in order to eliminate them as potential threats to Canada. That’s pretty messed up, and it describes what has been going on. Are you going to put stopping it at a lower priority than other things you care about next time you vote?

#ForwardOnClimate Support in Regina: Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline

Stephen McDavid interviewed by CBC/SRC about climate change action:

Stephen explains that the pipeline is a line in the sand. Using it, is crossing that line. I’ll explain why there is a line, further on in this post.

I was also interviewed. The CBC reporter was pleased to learn from me (off camera) that there is a car share co-op in Regina.

I know some people don’t see the big deal with the Keystone XL pipeline, thinking it’s just another way that people can make money. It’s more like a doomsday device, than economic stimulus. Taking into account the truth that burning all of the bitumen in the Alberta tar sands will create enough carbon dioxide to push climate change past +2 degrees Celsius, a pipe intended to be used for that purpose will be seen as a crime against humanity by most people within a few short generations of now. Already, some people understand it to be that.

To meet a halfway reasonable carbon budget in our atmosphere, there’s no good use for the Keystone XL pipeline. To have to shut it down, and clean it up later in order to correct the error today in building it, is a huge folly that Obama can stop.

It’s widely accepted by people that our daily lives cause pollution, and it’s a sort of price we pay for progress. More people need to question what sort of progress we’re striving for as a species. It’s not like we’re trying to stop 7-Eleven from selling drinks that cause diabetes and obesity and kills a few thousand humans indirectly; we’re trying to stop investment in a technology whose use is known to cause so much pollution as to create catastrophic changes to our atmosphere, and will hasten the extinction of countless species and displacement of countless people. It’s a very, very big deal, and that the Harper government in Ottawa sees fit to label peaceful protesters as “adversaries”, “enemies of the state”, and “terrorists”, is in itself terrifying.

Here are the numbers behind why we must not burn all of the fossil fuel we are technologically capable of extracting with today’s technology.

Tarred and Feathered

It’s one of those “I told you so” findings, as the toxic fingerprint of tarsand oil production is found in distant lakes supposedly unaffected by the decades of strip mining. Well, the oil companies and their shills would have had people believe there was no effect, that is. Environmentalists were listening to doctors and people in the region suffering from higher than average cancer rates.

“P. Timoney evaluated environmental contaminants in the area surrounding Fort Chipewyan. From 2001 to 2005, concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) rose within the sediment around Lake Athabasca. The report indicated that the treated drinking water in Fort Chipewyan was safe, but described high levels of arsenic, mercury and PAHs in fish, which is the main diet of many people in Fort Chipewyan, especially members of its Aboriginal communities. Dr. Timoney also quoted evidence from previous documents that there has been water contamination in the region since the 1960s, including evidence of oil spills and leaking. No evidence was available to determine how much of the measured chemicals were due to naturally occurring sources or how much resulted from human activity.

Now, years later, there is evidence further supporting claims by environmentalists.

The joint study between scientists at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., and Environment Canada looked at core samples from five lakes close to the oilsands mining and upgrading operations in Fort McMurray, Alta. They also studied samples from Namur Lake, 90 kilometres northwest.

The authors focused on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. These are cancer-causing chemicals that are released when things are burned. They can occur naturally — from forest fires, volcanic activity and geological deposits — but burning petroleum in the production of the oilsands leaves a particular fingerprint, so the scientists were able to trace where the PAHs in the core samples came from.

So again, the reasons for winding down tar sand production, while ramping-up renewable energy technology use instead, becomes clear.

When Is A Private Sale Public?

Conservatives tell us that state ownership of industry is bad… if it’s Canadian state ownership. Their actions tell a different story. “Canada is just barely holding the reins“.

S.E. writes, “You probably don’t need me to tell you that selling a controlling stake in this country’s largest energy resource to a foreign dictatorship is not really a good plan. We don’t even trust our own government with that kind of thing. I honestly thought we had a chance on this one. I guess the Harper regime’s shortsightedness is even greater than I thought possible.”

MoS says, “The Nexen sell-out obviously commits Harper to ramming through the Northern Gateway so those Chinese Tar Sands barons can get their sludge across the Pacific. The gloves are off from here on in.”

Remember that “ethical oil” is owned by the Communist Party of China, who has monks setting themselves on fire to protest it. Fortunately, there don’t seem to be Canadians willing to light themselves on fire to help others realize that we need rid of the Conservatives from government earlier than yesterday.

ConCalls: Week of Hell #RoboCon

The Conservatives have had a (deservedly) rough week, and it’s about to get more rough next week. The Council of Canadians’ court challenge is Monday. The Prime Minister closed out the final news cycle hour this week by actually taking questions from the press, (which has hardly ever happened before). The Conservatives procedurally pushed a public petition calling for a Royal Commission inquiry into Robocalls, to next week. Will they prorogue first?

.@impolitical Yeah, this from a PM who had a convicted fraud, Bruce Carson, advising him on oil matters. @pmoharper #cdnpoli #nexen—
Saskboy K. (@saskboy) December 07, 2012

Coyne absolutely defines the Harper Conservatives, meaning I think to refer to the F-35 contemptuous boondoggle, but can be generalized to nearly any Conservative initiative.

When I say mess, I don’t mean to suggest charming ineptitude, but culpable incompetence, mixed with deliberate misrepresentation. What started with a catastrophic failure of oversight, progressed through many months of dishonesty, secrecy, and stonewalling, culminating in what can only be called electoral fraud — followed by still more dishonesty about everything that had gone before.

[emphasis added]
Yes, he actually pointed out the Conservatives were involved in election fraud following the fall of their government in 2011 due to contemptuously hiding the true F-35 figures from Parliament. Today we further learned that the PBO was correct and was unfairly smeared by the lying, bungling Conservatives.

Harper won the last election not only via election fraud but also by knowingly misrepresenting facts of a major purchase, the #F35s #cdnpoli—
Danno (@___Danno) December 07, 2012

So, what can we the people do before 2015? Plenty. First, this weekend in Regina is a C-45 protest on Sunday at noon, at the Legislature.