As seems to be the norm, the number of occupants of the small, blue-seated auditorium appears to double in the last five minutes before the event is scheduled to start. Seated on stage behind a table (is that a skull-and-crossbones-adorned water glass?) are Stephen Hazell (Sierra Club Director), Clayton Thomas-Muller (Indigenous Oil Campaign Organizer for The Indigenous Environmental Network), Jean-Yves LeFort (Energy Campaigner for the Council of Canadians), and Trevor Haché (of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition (CYCC)). Barely noticeable in a back corner of the stage, surveying the growing crowd over the top of his reading glasses, sits the guest of honour, journalist and author William Marsden.
Marsden wrote Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (and Doesn’t Seem to Care), an investigative tour of the oil and methane gas extraction industries in Alberta and how, the author believes, these industries are leading to the province’s destruction.
Despite a rather mild demeanour, Marsden does not mince words as he condemns the tar sands operation in Alberta and its governmental support. He laments the reluctance that the government has shown towards environmental regulation, and the utter lack of “passion” it displays for looking after the well-being of people who live near tar sands extraction activities.
Near the tar sands is not a pleasant place to live, as Marsden points out. In northern Alberta, a system of dams rivaling the Three Gorges Dam in China has been built to hold back the pools of toxic waste-contaminated water that is a by-product of extracting oil from the sands. The extraction process also burns a lot of natural gas, chosen because it’s the cheapest fuel available. But Canada is quickly running out— by Marsden’s estimate, natural gas production could peak within the next five or six years.
Concerns over this peak are why, in southern Alberta, the extraction of methane gas from coal and shale beds is being speeded up. Methane is jostled from coal seams by drilling into them (or “carpet-bombing” the earth, as Marsden calls it). Not all of the gas can be collected— much of it finds its way to the earth’s surface through the water wells of neighbouring farms, contaminating the water and potentially causing serious illnesses to those who drink it. The same can happen with CO2 sequestration— ostensibly a way of preventing carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, by locking it away in abandoned mines. In one case of attempted carbon dioxide sequestering, the gas escaped and not only did the neighbouring farmers’ wells go bad, but a nearby gravel pit actually started bubbling explosively with CO2. In the end, the entire area became so contaminated that not even mosquitoes can live there any more.
Marsden says that the age we live in— the age of oil and gas, and the only one many of us know— will come to an end, and then it can never be repeated. “Everything that we have in the age of oil and gas is due to oil and gas,” he says. Living without oil is going to require a complete and dramatic shift in the patterns and habits of our lives.
The estimated 174 billion barrels of oil currently locked in the tar sands will be mostly gone by 2050, if extraction continues at its present rate. In addition, Marsden believes that Alberta could be completely unliveable by 2060, with the south turning to desert and deforestation and the proliferation of toxic reservoirs in the north. Albertans, he says, are starting to get scared— which is why Stupid To The Last Drop has been a bestseller in the province for the past four weeks.
Marsden ends his segment of the presentation with a quote from John Livingstone, a Canadian naturalist, who speaks of the loss of community we have experienced in this age of oil and gas. Instead of community, now we are focused on the consumption of resources. He is very concerned about what seems to be a lack of concern for the environment on the part of today’s young people.
Each member of the panel then stands up and, to answer Marsden’s concern, fills us in on the environmental campaigns they are part of. Stephen Hazell is involved in the Sierra Club’s Tar Sands Timeout (http://www.tarsandstimeout.ca/), as well as a campaign opposing the Mackenzie valley pipeline project (http://mackenziewild.ca/). If the pipeline is to go through, he says, the gas should be used wisely and not wasted on the tar sands operations.
Clayton Thomas-Muller (http://www.ienearth.org/) wins the audience’s attention by getting us all to stand up and stretch before he gives his talk. The indigenous people of the world, he says, numbering about 350 million, between them speak 87% of the world’s remaining languages. Within the languages of the indigenous people of Canada lies knowledge, passed down over thousands of years, on how to care for the land. Now, in the pursuit of oil, many of these people are being pushed off their land and their lifestyles are being destroyed. We need an inclusive movement against tar sands development, and we all have a sacred responsibility for the protection of mother Earth, he says. Let’s begin to think seven generations ahead.
Jean-Yves LeFort (http://www.canadians.org/) speaks about the Security and Prosperity Partnership, as it relates to energy. The objective of the North American partnership, he says, is to secure a reliable supply of energy— which means, if necessary, eliminating any restrictions on energy development stemming from environmental regulations or aboriginal land claims. Also in the cards is a five-fold expansion of the tar sands project— which is already the size of the Maritimes.
Trevor Haché remains sitting to speak, as a metaphor for how we are all “sitting down” on the issue of climate change. He issues a series of challenges. One is to journalists: a call for us to embed ourselves in the issues of our time. Another challenge, to Hazell of the Sierra Club: start telling it like it is, and stop being worried about retaining charitable status. And a challenge to everyone present: think about the words of Naomi Klein, who wished for less civil society and more civil disobedience. We need people in the streets, making noise and putting heat on the politicians to do something about climate change, he says. He mentions two events: the Kyoto Now! rally on December 8th (http://www.planetfriendly.net/calendar/item.php?id=7814), and a lecture on December 4th about the effects that global warming is already having on farmers in Africa (http://www.planetfriendly.net/calendar/item.php?id=7810).
During the discussion period afterwards, questions revolve around what we can do to stop the tar sands project from going any farther. There is one comment on terminology: what used to be called tar sands is now referred to as oil sands, apparently in an effort to make the process sound cleaner and easier than it actually is (I have taken his suggestion and used the older term, tar sands). Everyone who speaks up supports the idea of nonviolent civil disobedience as a way to effect change— but what, one audience member asks, are we disobeying?
That’s a good question, especially, as Marsden points out, sometimes it can go too far. He refers to one incident in which a frustrated Alberta farmer shot a chief oil engineer dead when the latter came onto his property and they had an argument. For a democratic society to remain so, however, sometimes it is necessary to— peacefully— challenge laws. At least the unjust ones. If we all weren’t entitled to stand up and say what we think, we wouldn’t be living in a democracy.
