Burnaby council’s courageous stand against Kinder Morgan’s plan to slice a pipeline bearing Alberta tar sands bitumen through our city reflects valid local concerns. But it has global significance.
The many local, regional and national reasons for opposing this project include these: potential spills, explosions and fires; taxpayers’ cost in preparing for them; property values; earthquake risk; First Nations’ rights; the extra toxicity of diluted bitumen; groundwater quality; long-term marine environment damage from tankers in Burrard Inlet; the export of jobs to refineries overseas; Canada’s future energy needs; and the continued undermining of our democracy by the fossil fuel industry’s (the “Fossils”) excessive influence.
The alleged economic benefits are overstated. According to Conversations for Responsible Economic Development (credbc.ca), oil, gas and support services comprise just three per cent of British Columbia’s GDP (and six per cent of Canada’s), compared to 76 per cent for B.C.’s service sector.
No wonder the Fossils are spending millions on public relations. Through the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, they’ve even made a “thought leadership” advertorial deal with Postmedia, the corporation that owns The Vancouver Sun and Province.
But in the Fossils’ slick propaganda, there’s little mention of the oil sands’ biggest global downside. Leading climate scientist James Hansen estimates that they contain nearly half the carbon that humans can still burn if global temperature increases are to stay under the accepted two-degree threshold for runaway climate catastrophe.
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and a writer who presciently warned of global warming that now kills an estimated 300,000 people annually, calls the tar sands a “carbon bomb.” In his now-famous article “Global warming’s terrifying new math,” McKibben labels the Fossils (like tobacco a generation ago) a rogue industry: their active obstruction of the necessary transition to a post-carbon economy makes them an enemy of the planet.
“Wrecking the planet is their business model,” says Naomi Klein, who is writing a book on the climate crisis. “That’s what they do.”
If we’re in a state of “planetary emergency” (Hansen’s phrase), what is needed? A full-scale policy turn, driven by mobilized citizens who won’t tolerate our business-as-usual drift to civilizational collapse.
End the Fossils’ massive tax subsidies. Divert them to greener technologies and renewable energy.
Increase employment through a green jobs strategy, as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has outlined. Shift B.C.’s commendable carbon tax to an ongoing revenue-neutral carbon tax-and-dividend system.
If the Harper government wants to turn Canada into an authoritarian petro-state, throw it out in 2015.
Slow the breakneck pace of tar sands development so that land reclamation and carbon offsets can catch up, as MLA Andrew Weaver suggests. Encourage international adoption of European-style restrictions on trade in especially dirty oil. Support the growing international fossil fuel divestment movement, like the one that helped defeat South African apartheid, by dumping your own fossil-heavy mutual funds. Some analysts say carbon industries are increasingly risky investments anyhow.
Burnaby is a key chokepoint for exported oil sands bitumen. By stopping or delaying the Kinder Morgan pipeline, we can buy time and build coalitions for these more hopeful developments, overcoming the inevitable opposition of the fossils.
In doing so, we not only protect our city. We also exercise our responsibilities as global citizens.
Bob Hackett is one of the intervenors to the National Energy Board’s hearings on the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
