Tim Murphy: No easy answers on tar sands

Bryan Birtles, January 8, 2009, Vue Weekly -- In the summer of 2007, a group of 19 cyclists organized by the Sierra Youth Coalition travelled from the Montana-Alberta border all the way north to Fort McKay, passing through and documenting the environmental impacts of Alberta’s oil and gas industry as they went. A book, entitled Journey to the Tar Sands, was one of the fruits of their adventure and on January 15 activist and editorial coordinator Tim Murphy will be appearing at the U of A to speak about the book and his group’s experience. Vue Weekly had a chance to talk with Murphy about his trip and the new book.

Vue Weekly: What kind of experience did you have with the tar sands prior to making this trek?

Tim Murphy: No first-hand experience. We were a group of people just interested in climate-change issues, we had been working around climate change and we were interested in understanding how the tar sands fit into that picture. We decided it would be more useful for us to go as observers, to sort of play the role of journalists, capture stories and then share those with people. We didn’t know much but that was a beauty, because the fact that we didn’t know anything allowed us to just go and listen to people and see what they had to say. We called it a storytelling adventure.

VW: Going in with your own biases, how were they changed through the course of your trip, if at all?

TM: It strengthened our opinion that the tar sands needs to slow down and maybe be fixed, but at the same time it confused us and left us feeling a bit lost because the solutions weren’t apparent. The fact that there’s a problem is apparent and that the tar sands is causing a lot of harm to a lot of people and not everybody is benefitting, that was apparent, but how we move away from that was not. So it’s all great to say, “Let’s stop the tar sands,” and that was our conclusion, but when eight out of 10 people make their living from the tar sands or from oil in Alberta, we didn’t come away with any answers on that one.

VW: In your book you attend a number of protests that you weren’t involved in organizing—I’m thinking specifically of the Marie Lake protest. Why do you think these protests aren’t covered by the mainstream media to a greater extent?

TM: It’s very easy for the damage being done to go under the radar because all of this is kind of tucked away in Northern Alberta, in small towns and really remote areas, so it doesn’t make the news as much because the cameras aren’t there. If 500 ducks die, then that attracts media attention. The smaller things are happening all the time: Marie Lake is a handful of cottage owners, but it’s still an environmental struggle. They’re trying to protect a really pristine lake and the habitat there, but it’s just a handful of people so perhaps their voice is seen as less important—and that’s the same for communities downstream from the tar sands. We’ve allowed ourselves to say it’s all right to sacrifice the well-being and the livelihood and the health of a small number of people for the supposed benefit of a greater number.

VW: There seems to be a disconnect between youth, who for the most part seem to agree that climate change is a pressing issue, and governments who don’t. Why do you think that is?

TM: I think maybe young people are able to think a little more long-term because we know we’ll still be around dealing with this. Governments are very shortsighted, they have four-year thinking—and on the federal scene it’s not even four years anymore. They’re just thinking of how they can get elected and it’s very easy to get votes on the job front, but if you talk about protecting something for 20 years down the line, it’s hard to get people to buy into that. We need to have leaders that have the courage to do that and stand up for the people that will be around for the next generations.

VW: When you were cycling across Alberta, you didn’t just see terrible things—what kind of positive things did you see?

TM: There’s something about going to these places that are painted as the harbingers of the apocalypse—usually in those type of places you have a really emergent counter culture and really interesting things happening, people pushing against the flow.

Okotoks was really interesting, because the town has recognized that there are limits to growth. That’s a big first step—to realize we can’t grow forever. It’s a fallacy that economic growth is the way to measure success in a community and that community has said, “No.” They’ve said, “What’s the carrying capacity of this town,” and once they figured that out they’ve decided that they need to work towards that population and make sure that that population can support itself, conserving water and generating it’s own power, these types of things. That’s one example of a community that has some strong leadership, some people that can think down the road, and I think that that impressed us a lot.