Pipeline Pipe Dreams

Dr. James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world’s leading climate scientists, just quit his job after 46 years of service. The reason? He wants to devote the majority of his time fighting climate change -- in particular the expansion of the Alberta tar sands.

He says if Alberta extracts all of its oil, it’s game over for the climate, human beings and the planet.

It hasn’t been a good week for Alberta tar sands advocates. It started with Suncor Energy spilling 350,000 litres of tar sands toxic wastewater into Alberta’s Athabasca River. Two days later a Canadian Pacific Railway train derailed in Minnesota, spilling almost 15,000 gallons of tar sands oil. The week was capped when Exxon’s Pegasus pipeline cracked and filled a small Arkansas town with 90,000 more barrels of tar sands oil. The Pegasus pipeline was supposed to have the most advanced leak-detection technology, just like the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

The Arkansas spill came as a surprise to no one with a clue about oil pipelines. In 2006 Exxon started sending tar sands oil instead of light crude through the Pegasus pipeline and steadily increased the volume by an extra 30,000 barrels per day. The problem is tar sands oil is thicker and rougher than light crude, so it needs toxic chemicals, high pressure and high temperatures to move it, making it way more prone to leaks. Now Enbridge wants to do the same thing to its Line 9 pipeline that runs through Ontario and Quebec, switching to tar sands oil and pushing an extra 60,000 barrels a day. This will greatly increase the chance of a spill that would devastate the environment and possibly contaminate the drinking water for millions of Canadians.

So it seems these recent events might be trying to tell us something. But the question arises: Are we going to wake up and hear the call? Or are we going to keep our heads buried in the tar sands?

The Tory Mafia

Stephen Harper is running Canada like a Mafia Don. How else can you explain him taking Jane Kittmer (a mother diagnosed with breast cancer during maternity leave) to court to recover the $5,000 she received from employment insurance sickness benefits. This coming after parliament voted unanimously to make sure everyone on parental leave will be eligible for sickness benefits.

In the past year alone Harper has allocated $10 million for pandas, $55.2 million for government ads, and $1 million for bringing his limo to India. It’s estimated that every year 6,000 Canadians will need sickness benefits while on parental leave. Assuming that everyone received the maximum $6,000 for their sickness benefits, that means the money Harper spent on his propaganda alone could have helped over 11,000 sick parents.

Harper is actually spending our tax dollars to prosecute a cancer patient who has a right to the UI benefits she’s received. A right granted her by parliament. Why is he doing this? Certainly not for economic reasons – if so he’d spend money recovering the $7.8 billion rich Canadians hide away in tax havens every year.

No, Harper is doing this for intimidation reasons, plain and simple. He’s turned the government into a gang of thugs.

For the love of God, Stephen Harper, would it hurt you just for once to come out publicly on the side of Canadians who need help?

While countries around the world move towards banning all Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), the U.S. and Canada are doing the complete opposite! The U.S. for example, is not only "allowing" the production of these dangerous foods but is enshrining this right into law. That's right. With the passage of the Monsanto Protection Act in the senate, The U.S. Department of Agriculture has given Monsanto both the right to grow GMO products at will, and the authority to override a judge's ruling to stop the planting of GMO crops.

In other words, Monsanto now has the legal right to ignore science and the rule of law. So if it’s found that a new Monsanto crop causes cancer, it will be impossible to press charges against them because they are above the law. Monsanto will become the new monarchy. Scary times for people who eat food – that’s all of us.

The Koch Brothers Or Us

Alberta is the richest province in Canada, yet has a $2 billion deficit and some of the worst social services in the country. So the answer to Alberta’s problems, according to Conservatives, is dig up more of the dirtiest oil in the world and ship it across the continent to oil-filled Texas.

But why Texas? Answer: two ridiculously rich American brothers, Billionaires Charles and David Koch, bought refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas that only refine heavy crude oil. Unfortunately for them, the only place to get heavy crude is either Venezuela or Alberta, and former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez sold his heavy crude for $35 more per barrel than Alberta.

If the Koch Bros get their way and Barrack Obama approves the incredibly dangerous Keystone pipeline, the brothers will save about $2 billion a year with Alberta oil. That’s the same amount as Alberta’s budget deficit.

But will Canadians gain from this? In Venezuela Chavez invested the profits in his people. He cut the unemployment rate in half, slashed the poverty rate by two thirds, and doubled average incomes.

In Alberta oil production will increase exponentially but only the major oil companies will see the big share of the profit. More importantly, if we burn all the oil in the tar sands, that will increase the atmosphere’s concentration of carbon dioxide from 390 parts per million to nearly 600 parts per million. That’s enough to turn our world into a living Hell. Literally, it will be game over for the climate.

Canadians and especially Albertans have to make a choice. We can either help the economy by destroying the climate at a faster pace, or we can help the economy and the environment by investing in sustainable energy. It’s an easy choice to make, we just have to make our governments realize it.