This Magazine blogger gets under Alberta's skin about the tar sands
A small magazine can sometimes punch well above its weight, as This Magazine seems to be doing. A posting by regular blogger Emily Hunter about an eco-activist's campaign to get a moratorium on tar sands development in Alberta seems to have struck a nerve in Edmonton.
So much so that a government spokesperson wrote and requested corrections to the post, denying any link between polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH, and cancer incidence in the Athabasca watershed; and also saying there is no evidence of seepage from the Athabasca tailings ponds. Not only did This Magazine decline to make the requested corrections, it went further and asked Ecojustice (formerly the Sierra Legal Defence Fund) to respond to the government's points; then updated its post with both the government and the Ecojustice letter.
Aside from the fact that the multinational petrochemical industry would seem to be well able to defend itself without government blocking and tackling, the posting and response(s) raise the interesting question: why is the Alberta government spending its time and energy defending an eco-disaster in the making rather than defending the health and safety of its people and its land? The strip-mining of the top half of Alberta is a national disgrace.
[Disclosure: the editor of This Magazine is my son.]
So much so that a government spokesperson wrote and requested corrections to the post, denying any link between polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH, and cancer incidence in the Athabasca watershed; and also saying there is no evidence of seepage from the Athabasca tailings ponds. Not only did This Magazine decline to make the requested corrections, it went further and asked Ecojustice (formerly the Sierra Legal Defence Fund) to respond to the government's points; then updated its post with both the government and the Ecojustice letter.
Aside from the fact that the multinational petrochemical industry would seem to be well able to defend itself without government blocking and tackling, the posting and response(s) raise the interesting question: why is the Alberta government spending its time and energy defending an eco-disaster in the making rather than defending the health and safety of its people and its land? The strip-mining of the top half of Alberta is a national disgrace.
[Disclosure: the editor of This Magazine is my son.]
posted by D. B. Scott at
4:40 pm
2 Comments:
Hi DB
I'm afraid I can't let this one go. First, let's correct the misnomer tar sands. Tar is a resin, traditionally made of a distillation of pine wood. The oil sand deposits are a sticky black bitumin or heavy oil. While the pejorative term tar sands is good for creating a negative impression, it is not correct and I'm sure that you, as a journalist, would prefer to use the correct vernacular.
You suggest that the top half of Alberta has been strip-mined. Mining, which accounts for about 2.5% of the production in the oil sands, has currently disturbed 420 square kilometres of the 661,848 sq km which comprises Alberta, or about .06% - a long ways from half. And you can compare that to the 90,642 sq km of land that is deemed protected in the province, and set aside for provincial parks and wildlife.
For your information, the other 97.5% of production is in situ, which is not a mining process and which has a minimal footprint.
Reclamation efforts on mined areas are ongoing - Syncrude has reclaimed 22% of its disturbed land to date. The first tailings pond reclamation will be completed mid-point in 2010.
You call the oil sands an eco-disaster. I'd point out that in 2006 the energy sector invested $2.8 billion in environmental measures, almost one-third of the total $8.6 billion invested by all of Canadian industry, even though the oil sands account for only 5% of the total greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.
Finally, you ask why the Alberta gov't would defend the oil sands. Alberta's oil sands are estimated to contain approx 173 billion barrels of oil, making it second in the world to Saudia Arabia in reserves. Unless you cycle to work every day and toil away in un-air conditioned office, you should care about the sector's ability to supply your energy demands. And if you are that rare individual who doesn't consume any oil or gas, perhaps you care about the $154 billion in federal taxes the oil sands sector will contribute in the next decade, paying for such luxuries as health care and education and, oh I don't know, the Canadian Magazine Fund. Specifically, since you're in Ontario, you might be interested in knowing that your province has a 3.2% share of the GDP created by the oil sands sector, or about $55 billion in the next decade, which will add about $7.2 billion to your provincial tax coffers and create about 27,000 jobs.
I acknowledge that there are legitimate concerns about the environmental impacts of the oil sands sector. But having some context for those criticisms is vital - and true to the spirit of good journalism.
And in the spirit of full disclosure, I own Alberta Oil magazine.
Ruth, I say it is an eco disaster in the making, which it is in my opinion. What has been done already can simply not be swept away by citing the economic benefits. What is already happening is bad enough; what is to come hardly bears contemplation.
I'll grant that to say the "top half" of Alberta is strip mined it is my hyperbole -- at least for now. Rather than derail the conversation, I withdraw the term, unreservedly. But I don't think it is possible to soft-soap this activity as a "disturbance"; it is much more than that. And Alberta's parkland is not some kind of a tradeoff; presumably, the province did this for good and laudable reasons, not as some sort of carbon trading with the oil companies.
You make the point that the "currently disturbed" land represents 420 square kilometres. But oil sands are found in about 140,000 square kilometres of the the Athabasca, Peace River and Cold Lake regions.
If the oilsands have as benign and modest an impact as you claim, then there should be some proof that there is no leaching into the Athabaska River or human health impacts. As far as I know there is no such reassuring research about human health impacts and much credible evidence in the other direction.
I will be the first to applaud if and when Syncrude reclaims its first tailings pond, but it hasn't happened yet. And it is but one of the oil companies involved.
The investment of the energy sector in environmental measures are laudable, but they do what they do because they're required to; I won't clap them on the back for meeting the law of the land. And I'll give credit to government for its requirements, as far as they have gone. They simply are inadequate.
I continue to say it is damned curious that the government spends more time and energy fending off criticism on behalf of the oil companies than it seems to spend in defending the environment and the health of its citizens. If I'm wrong, then I'll have hurt the feelings of a few Albertans; but if they're wrong, we'll have an ecological nightmare on our hands
You are essentially arguing that the oil sands are so valuable that we can't afford not to look the other way as it is extracted and that, unless I and others like me in Ontario don't use energy, or don't benefit from taxes paid, we should shut up about the environmental impact. Those taxes the oil companies pay are the fees we charge them to exploit a resource that belongs to all of us; they are doing us no favours and certainly doing nothing out of sense of altruism.
The economic/energy need arguments are, well, essentially the same that are/were made for nuclear power: Just ignore the vexing little problem of how we'll dispose of the waste and pay for the cleanup and decommissioning and enjoy the kilowatts.
As for context, I think that my post was entirely in context -- reporting on the activity of a small, but Canadian magazine and the reaction of the Alberta government. Yes, I state my opinion, but so what?
Everyone has a stake in the oil industry in one way or another (you own a magazine, I own an RRSP with Royal Bank shares), but that doesn't mean we should meekly accept the blandishments of that industry or the apologetics of the Alberta government.
It is a pointless semantic argument about "tar" and "oil" sands, frankly. You know as well as I that the terms are used and have been used interchangeably. If you feel tar is pejorative, I'll be happy to call them oil sands henceforth.
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