The True North - Dirty and Obstructionist

By BJ Bjornson

I really wish I could find something to disagree with in this column by George Monbiot, but it is depressingly on target.

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

. . .

It is now clear that Canada will refuse to be sanctioned for abandoning its legal obligations. The Kyoto protocol can be enforced only through goodwill: countries must agree to accept punitive future obligations if they miss their current targets. But the future cut Canada has volunteered is smaller than that of any other rich nation. Never mind special measures; it won't accept even an equal share. The Canadian government is testing the international process to destruction and finding that it breaks all too easily. By demonstrating that climate sanctions aren't worth the paper they're written on, it threatens to render any treaty struck at Copenhagen void.

After giving the finger to Kyoto, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations striking a successor agreement. At the end of 2007, it singlehandedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks. The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world's 60 richest nations, was published in the same month. Saudi Arabia came 60th. Canada came 59th.

In June this year the media obtained Canadian briefing documents which showed the government was scheming to divide the Europeans. During the meeting in Bangkok in October, almost the entire developing world bloc walked out when the Canadian delegate was speaking, as they were so revolted by his bullying. Last week the Commonwealth heads of government battled for hours (and eventually won) against Canada's obstructions. A concerted campaign has now begun to expel Canada from the Commonwealth.

The reason for my country�s becoming the most obstructionist nation on the block is of course the massive tar sands projects, and it shouldn�t surprise anyone that the Canadian government is doing everything it can to protect the tar sands internationally. After all, they�re also ignoring their own laws to protect the development at home, to the detriment of anyone living downstream of the massive tailings ponds.

Monbiot does a pretty fair summary of the energy-intensive extraction and resulting toxic pollutants being produced over an almost unimaginable scale. One of the major problems with that, is that the damage isn�t occurring near any population-dense areas, but instead in a more remote area that few people see. Even driving into the area gives you little idea of the destruction being wrought in the name of profits, you really need an airborne view to truly appreciate the scale, and that just doesn�t happen.

It would be nice to blame this corruption of our government to service the tar sands� needs on the Conservative Party whose base is the kind of anti-science, pro-business lobby-types and their dupes that we all know and loathe, but the truth of the matter is that the tar sands actually do pose a serious conundrum for any Canadian leader.

By the time the project, which has attracted investment from all the world's major petroleum players, exceeds Belgium's carbon emissions in 2020, Canada will be hopelessly dependent on its contribution to the country's economy � to the tune of a $1 trillion a year. Already, the tar sands are largely responsible for keeping the Great White North afloat, hence the problem.

Without the tar sands, Canada's economy is toast. With them, Canada's per capita contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, will be so big that it could draw serious international sanctions, assuming that the rest of world agrees to start bringing emissions down soon. Barack Obama doesn't appear interested in enforcing U.S. law that would bar imports of dirty sources of energy, but sooner or later, that kind of pressure is likely to be expressed.

This probably explains why despite huge majorities in Canada both believing in Climate Change and wanting our government to take action on it, so little action is actually taking place and indeed, we�ve become one of the world�s worst actors on the issue. It is short-term thinking that will likely cost Canada in the long run, but then how many politicians actually think about the long term benefit of the people rather than just themselves? Monbiot does kind of touch on this close to the end of his article, where he compares the tar sands to old-growth logging and the overfishing of the Grand Banks, as well as saying that the tar sands are doing to Canada�s image what whaling does to Japan�s. (On the latter, I wonder what our stance on the seal hunt does to our image compared to Japan�s whaling, since a whole lot of people seem highly upset about that issue as well, despite there being no shortage of seals. Never mind, different issue.)

I would say that logging and fisheries, and even whaling, are poor examples to use in this case. Unlike the tar sands, lumber, fish, and even whales are renewable resources that can, if properly managed, be exploited indefinitely. The tar sands, like all fossil fuel extraction, are a finite resource that will ultimately be played out no matter what one does to manage them, so putting all of your eggs in such a basket is a sure path to economic destruction down the road. It is only the tar sands legacy of toxic sludge and other pollutants that may wind up being around indefinitely.

The whole thing should be a colossal embarrassment, but then again, politicians who feel shame for their actions are even rarer than those who think for the long-term.