Archive for the ‘Environmentalism’ Category

Media scan:

• David Suzuki - Alberta’s biggest oil spill in 30 years is a call to action for Canadians
• BBC - Oil spill in Canada’s Alberta ‘biggest in 35 years’
• Sun – Spill making kids sick
• Market Wire - Lubicon Lake Nation Still Standing in Face of Environmental Crisis: Oil Spill Has Leaked 4.5 Million Litres Onto Their Lands
• iNews 880 AM - The murky politics that could dampen oil spill clean-up
• Montreal Gazette - Probe demanded after worst Alberta oil spill in four decades
• CBC – Alberta premier criticizes oil spill cleanup

Firstly, I’d like to note that the Alberta Liberal Party has dramatically improved their communication strategy in the last three months. The news releases have been more punchier, more clear, and have been pushing the agenda in the public debate. I’m loving the feisty-ness of the press releases and the adoption of humor in them.

Case and point? “Leave it to the beavers” is the title of the press release that was sent to me a few days ago. It strikes a chord at three different issues at once: that the Stelmach government is incompetent, that the government isn’t doing their job, and that it’s being left to people and defenseless beavers to handle the spill. I’m impressed and I’m positive that part of resonance this issue is getting is because of this framing of the issue.

Problem being.. is that the local media, like the Calgary Herald or the Edmonton Journal, have been inconceivably slow with regards to the oil spill. It has taken a little less than a week for them to report on it. I’m both flabbergasted and annoyed by this.

Anyways, the beavers actually do environmental protection much better than the Stelmach government. There’s no humour in this fact. We have decades old pipe lines (the spill coming out from a pipeline from fifty years ago) and very little regulations. Just last week the “Kinder Morgan Energy Partners had to close its 300,000 bpd Trans Mountain line when a small leak was spotted on the line’s right-of-way, 150 km (93 miles) west of Edmonton.“ With beavers there’s constant attention to levies and dams, never mind that their immediate families live in those watersheds and structures; With Stelmach and the Progressive Conservatives there is no such care, no effort, and no attention.

This is an absolute failure in regulation by the province. This is more than frustrating as an Albertan. More care needs to be given to environmental and health protection of those near oil pipelines. One might ask why even a pipeline is even going through a watershed! As the days go by more information will be coming out I have very little doubt the health and environmental costs of the spill will reach even higher. The Lubicon Lake nation, who relies on this area, will be forever maligned and harmed by this spill, with both their childrens’ health faring much worse and their general way of life burdened forever.

Alberta Liberal Caucus Communications just posted a new video featuring Laurie Blakeman.  In the video she’s encouraging Albertans to speak up about how they want to see the land used in the Lower Athabasca region.  Its’ a direct response to the recommendations about the Lower Athabasca Land Use framework.

If anyone had read the ads and watched them (see their website here for details) they’d know that the hullabaloo created by Californian politician and a randomly called environmentalist and anti-corporation group by the name of Corporation Ethics International (CEI) spouted lies. Big lies.

Not only big lies, but giant whoppers of lies.

First up:

Travis Davies, a spokesman with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the country’s largest industry lobby group, said the [Rethink Alberta] ads distort basic perceptions of the oilsands industry by claiming that an area twice the size of the United Kingdom is being strip mined when in fact mining is limited to an area smaller than most American cities.

And it piles on, and on, and on. The CEI has had their credibility seriously undercut by their rampant abuse of the facts.

Still, as a guy who has friends working in Fort McMurray and in the oil patch, as an ardent environmentalist, and someone who has a balanced perspective between these two sometimes aligned but sometimes opposed ‘sides’, I’m more than pissed with the CEI. Probably more pissed than the regular blogger and media commentators out there because I know that the CEI is engaging in self-sabotage for the environmental cause in North America. There is nothing that undermines the improving of the oil sands than rampant, non=factual propaganda that smears rather than educates. The CEI has undercut any actual attempts at improving the environment for the next few years, harms the people who are behind the greening of the oil sands in Alberta, and sets back the environmentalist agenda for years. I’m pissed because it draws attention away from the almost awe-inspiring reclamation work that Syncrude is doing now (some of the best work in the world, by the way), hurts local environmentalists because of the blowback that’ll be felt against any legitimate criticism from the oil sands, and the entire fiasco oozes with an American-styled political attack job.

It’s combative American politics. One that the Wildrose tried to get Alberta firing back with, war-room style. This would have been a doozy if Ms. Smith jumped onto a podium and began denouncing CEI and likely spilling over with her criticism to other environmentalist groups. And that would have created an emotionally charged situation that’d kill off the chance of the facts being pre-eminent–the point that Mr. Davies pointed out at the beginning of this post–in favour of a good guy vs bad guy media feud where Alberta, in the end, only loses. We’d all be painted as big-government, big-corporation, anti-environmentalist, and the cascading effect of the CEI’s allegations repeated ad nauseum every. single. time. someone writes a story above the ‘big bad Albertans’ versus a green group of California, the ill-informed message would only spread.

Ed Stelmach was right to play it easy and calmly. An emotional reaction would have garnered the group more attention than it was worth and, in the end, the facts have spoken for themselves–with both the CEI and environmentalists taking a gargantuan hit to their credibility over the CEI’s abuse of facts and the truth. If Ed Stelmach followed the Wildrose’s advice the facts would have been rail-roaded in favour of the combative storm that would have arisen between “big bad Bush-like gov’t” vs “environmental good guys”. It was a good move.

A good move like when David Swann headed down to the city of Bellingham to hash things out person-to-person when that city boycotted Canadian oil from Alberta. (The Bellingham city council’s resolution can be found here.) It’s straight to the people, diffusing the situation coolly and quickly, and avoiding the fist pumping, chest pumping, fact dumping, and political campaign-esque creature that would likely have been birthed by the Wildrose.

Thank heavens cooler heads prevailed and that the Wildrose were shunted off into a corner both in that case and in the current Rethink Alberta case. Hopefully this smear campaign will be over and done with soon.

It has always been the accumulation of little things that have caused the greatest of changes in mankind. Reading, the proliferation of books, learning, the use of the wheel, and many, many other things has turned humanity onto bigger and better things. The sum of small acts always has a heavy change on society and of mankind–so please, if you can, use a greener method: use your own cutlery. If you’re going to be going to any breakfasts over the next week and a half please consider bringing your own plate and cutlery.

Y’know, for the environment. Cut down on plastics and cardboard plates, and all that.

Also, my friend has started up this facebook group to get the word out. Join it if you can. :)