Oilsands backlash hits Alberta

By Gillian Steward, Toronto Star --

The anti-oilsands campaigns south of the border have really revved up over the past few weeks. And it doesn’t look as though they are about to stop any time soon.

In early June in Bellingham, Wash., just across the B.C. border, the city council voted 7-0 in favour of a resolution to reconsider what sort of fuel Bellingham buys for its fleet vehicles. The resolution fingers “high carbon fuels such as those derived from the Canadian Tar Sands” as the kinds of fuels that should be replaced.

The resolution is largely symbolic, since the city of 76,000 is locked into its current fuel supply contract until 2015, but it highlights the spreading political pressure on oilsands producers and the Alberta government.

Less than a month later, 50 U.S. congressmen made a case that the $12 billion Keystone XL pipeline expansion should be put on hold. The pipeline is expected to carry oilsands crude from Hardisty, Alta., to Monchy, Sask., before heading into the U.S. midwest and eventually Texas. The U.S. politicians argued it would double consumption of Alberta crude and pay no heed to the potential impact on climate change. Their concerns were echoed a few days later by Henry Waxman, chair of the U.S. Congress’s powerful energy and commerce committee.

Premier Ed Stelmach immediately offered a counter opinion to the Washington Post, which refused to publish it. So he took out a full-page ad that cost $56,000.

Stelmach’s ad opens with the comment: “A good neighbour lends you a cup of sugar. A great neighbour supplies you with 1.4 million barrels of oil per day.” He also points out that Canada is a much more reliable supplier than Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq, Angola and Algeria.

But the attack that outraged Albertans the most was the one launched by a coalition of environmental groups operating under the umbrella of Corporate Ethics International, a San Francisco-based NGO that promotes ethics in business by publicly embarrassing companies deemed unethical.

Called Rethink Alberta, the campaign features YouTube videos, billboards and a website which urge tourists to reconsider a trip to Alberta’s famous mountains and lakes because Alberta is also home to the world’s largest and dirtiest oil extraction projects.

The video is clever in that it effectively juxtaposes all the stunning landscapes, wilderness and wildlife that Alberta is famous for with gloomy, lifeless and earth-scarring images of oilsands production. And, of course, images of ducks drowning in the toxic glue of a tailings pond. Although there was a factual error in the Rethink Alberta video (which was corrected), it’s hard to counter those vivid images with factoids and rational arguments about what the industry has done to clean up its act.

Some commentators here have slammed the Rethink Alberta campaign as yet another example of hypocritical Americans, given that no one there is suggesting a boycott of Louisiana or Florida because of the disastrous BP deep-water blowout.

But the coalition behind this campaign features Canadian environmental groups, not just U.S ones. They include the Polaris Institute, and Forest Ethics, which just happens to have an office in Bellingham, as well as San Francisco, Vancouver and Toronto.

There’s no question that Stelmach and the energy industry are much faster on their feet then they used to be when it comes to defending the oilsands. But if the pressure keeps up, they may soon have to dance even faster.