Raphael Lopoukhine

Is B.C. Actually Alberta With A Better PR Campaign?

2013-03-15T13:39:45-04:00

As the British Columbia government rides the wave of opposition to the controversial Northern Gateway pipeline, the province gets to burnish its green credentials, but is B.C. actually Alberta with a better public relations campaign?

When you think of a province most likely to win runner-up in an Alberta contest, Saskatchewan comes to mind. It does have the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions thanks to generating 41 per cent of its electricity from coal-fired power plants and from producing the most oil next to Alberta. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall opposes a carbon tax and is a vocal supporter of pipelines.

B.C. on the other hand is right now the only province where oil pipelines from Alberta aren't either supported or met with feigned indifference. B.C. also boasts one the greenest cities in North America, low per-capital carbon emissions and North America's only serious carbon tax. The province has also recently stopped fossil fuel development in two iconic natural spaces, the Flathead Valley and the Sacred Headwaters.

On the major issues of the day Saskatchewan along with Alberta did win an environmental laggard contest. But arguably, British Columbia could give Saskatchewan a run for its money in a Next Top Fossil competition.

ONLINE MINING

In B.C. thanks to a 2005 reform, you can stake a mining claim on the land traditionally belonging to First Nations online and with a credit card. There are number of hurdles to jump before a claim becomes a mine but B.C.'s environmental review process did approve draining Fish Lake -- a culturally significant body of water for First Nations -- to turn it into a tailings pond for a mine.

UNWATCHED FORESTS

British Columbia invites the world to experience Super Natural B.C., but tourists looking for breathtaking vistas might find a gravel pit instead. That's what happened to B.C.'s Forest Practices Board auditors when they went to inspect a seedling farm and found a pit instead. Overall, auditors found the province has no idea about the cumulative impact of all its approved logging, mining, and drilling.

Within days of the board's report, B.C.'s auditor general found the province was also failing badly to protect its rich biodiversity, letting threatened species go unprotected, while failing to measure and report on its conservation efforts. With its unwatched forests ravaged by the mountain pine beetle, the province recently cut its resource stewardship budget by a third.

B.C.'s system of parks is no better; they are falling apart: trails are overgrown, parks are understaffed and there's no money to buy toilet paper. B.C. and Mississippi are the only jurisdictions in North America without nature interpretive programs.

COALANDIA

Coal extraction, both used in power plants and for making steel, is big business in the province. B.C. collected $129 million in mineral taxes in 2011 and 90 per cent of that came from coal. Expansion plans have prompted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to threaten to take Canada to the International Joint Commission unless the cumulative impacts of current and proposed projects were studied. Meanwhile, Vancouver, one of North America's greenest cities, is set to become the coal exporting capital of North America.

LNGed UP

The greatest producer of natural gas in Canada is B.C. next to Alberta, producing 20 per cent of Canada's gas. The expanding production over the last decade in B.C. has been primarily from shale gas and tight gas plays in the northeast corner of the province. In 2012, 86 per cent of the 476 wells drilled in the province were fracked.

In the U.S. the common narrative is cheap natural gas is in part helping take coal-fired plants offline reducing carbon emissions, but new research questions that narrative.

A Cornell University scientist found the methane-rich shale gas is worse than coal when total lifecycle emissions are calculated. In B.C., methane cannot be as freely vented as the U.S., but without solid data on B.C.'s methane in shale gas, a true accounting of emissions from B.C.'s shale gas industry is not easily achieved. Nevertheless a growing body of research is showing unconventional natural gas is generally not a clean source of energy.

B.C.'s shale dreams will become a climate nightmare when that not-so-clean gas gets compressed in B.C.'s five proposed liquefied natural gas plants. The power required to turn gas into a shippable LNG product for Asian markets is tremendous -- the five plants would need about 50 per cent of B.C.'s current energy supply. It is likely a number of plants won't get built and some say renewable power can help reduce emissions, but B.C.'s proposed and controversial Site C dam would only create enough energy to power one LNG plant. The Sierra Club estimates B.C.'s LNG plans will double carbon emissions and cause the province to contravene its legally mandated greenhouse gas reduction target of 33 per cent below 2007 levels by 2020.

CANADA'S NEXT TOP FOSSIL

When you add up B.C.'s story: the province's online mining, lake draining, forest blundering, coal living and LNG dreaming compared to its carbon taxing Vancouverism, the scale starts to feels pretty heavy on one side.

And the award for Canada's Next Top Fossil goes to ... sorry Saskatchewan, maybe next year.

Northern Gateway Is The Wrong Fight

2013-01-07T14:35:32-05:00

The proposed Northern Gateway pipeline carrying raw bitumen to the B.C. coast is a bad idea, but it's ultimately the wrong fight.

If built, Enbridge Inc.'s Northern Gateway $5.5-billion pipeline would ship half a million barrels per day of raw bitumen from Alberta's oilsands to Kitimat, B.C. to be loaded onto tankers for shipment to Asia.

Yes Enbridge is a cowboy-culture company, with a spotty record and Chinese backers, pushing a project dripping with government-industry collusion. The messy, goopy diluted bitumen coursing through the pipeline could threaten some 800 waterways, endangered species habitat and a rainforest. It's opposed by celebrities, 60 per cent of B.C. residents, First Nations, and even obsessed wonky citizen experts.

The Northern Gateway pipeline has brought Canadian energy policy to the front of the headlines and the public is gripped by the drama. But where is the fight going? What is the goal?

Naomi Klein said the activist community is ready to stop any scheme oil companies "come up with to carry their climate-disrupting, cancer-causing, water-polluting, community-destroying oil out of northern Alberta."

"The pipelines are the bloodlines of the tar sands," said Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians. "If we can keep these arteries from being built, then they can't expand the tar sands."

WHAC-A-MOLE

If stopping the expanded flow of tarsands oil out of Canada is the goal, there are of number proposed pipelines besides Gateway that would have to be killed, such as Kinder Morgan's pipeline expansion, the Keystone XL pipeline to the U.S. Gulf Coast, the reversal of Enbridge's ageing Line 9, and a reversal of a TransCanada gas pipeline.

As well, Enbridge has proposed two other U.S. pipeline projects, the Seaway and the Flannagan South pipelines, to help reduce the glut of oil in the U.S. Midwest and help reduce the price discount on Canadian crude.

Looking at the map of existing pipelines, any number of combinations could be a possible alternative — an alternative without as many negatives as Gateway. Half of B.C. residents who opposed Gateway would support a pipeline with a better economic and environmental narrative.

If the opposition in Canada's most environmentally progressive province is that malleable, stopping all pipelines is a bit like playing Whac-A-Mole, but each mole gets progressively harder to hit.

PIPELINES SHUTTERED

Let's assume the momentum of bringing Enbridge to its knees leads to a mass protest across Canada and all the proposed pipelines are stopped. Oil companies still have other options.

CP Railway's business moving oil by rail has jumped from 500 cars in 2009 to 13,00 in 2011 and is projecting to be using 70,000 cars in a years time. Shipping by rail costs oil companies $10 a barrel by rail, compared to $5 by pipeline but it's well below the $30 on every barrel they earn by exporting it. Stopping all new pipelines will not stop the expanded flow of oil.

Also, if the bitumen hits the rails or the road, there are no National Energy Board hearings or environmental reviews; it's open season and statistically pipelines are 70 times safer for people than trucks.

There is not doubt, the constrained pipelines are hurting oil companies. The lack of pipeline capacity driven by a surging U.S. production of cheaper light crude will slow the growth of Alberta's heavy oil, but this will regionally put renewable energy at a price disadvantage and give western Canadian consumers more financial space to burn more gas. Stopping pipelines will not help shift Canada towards a low-carbon economy.

DEEP IMPACTS, SHALLOW POLITICS

While the country debates the safety and security of pipelines, the effects of climate change continue to mount. The impacts run the gambit from minor irritants like the swarming flies in Beamsville and damaged foundations in Ottawa to the almost science fiction-like dissolving shellfish industries and dead carbon-emitting forests in B.C. The impacts are profound, compounding, and complex, but the political conversation is juvenile.

The governing federal Tories who are slowly and ineffectively imposing sector-by-sector greenhouse gas regulations attempt to paint the NDP as job-killing carbon-tax imposers, while the NDP fearing the tax-and-spend label, run from any assertion their cap-and-trade proposal is a tax.

Meanwhile, the president of Royal Dutch Shell's Canada division, senior figures from Suncor and Cenovus, Preston Manning, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, and virtually all major business associations have all come out in support of a carbon tax or a price on carbon over sector-by-sector regulations.

Imagine if evangelical Christians came out in support of abortion or Moveon.org for corporate tax cuts — it would be a political game changer and front and centre in any political or activist campaign.

Developing an effective market-based carbon policy is, based on the opinion of economists, the best way to begin decoupling GDP from carbon emissions as has been done in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and now starting in British Columbia.

Just before the Conservatives launched their attack against the NDP, 48.6 per cent of Canadians said they opposed a carbon tax if it raised the price of gas and groceries. After the record drought and super storm Sandy devastated the U.S. northeast, 57 per cent of Canadians said it was reasonable for a household to pay $100-a-year more in higher taxes to support fighting climate change.

While those concerned about climate change play the Whac-A-Mole pipeline game, the Stephen Harper government's climate policy is wearing no clothes and needs to be called out.