There’s been another pipeline leak in Alberta and some 230,000 litres of black gold has spilled all over farmland near Elk Point, northeast of Edmonton.
It’s the third dystopic gusher in a month. Crews are still working to clean up an 800,000 litre spill from a well owned by Pace Oil & Gas Ltd close to the Northwest Territories border, and a spill into the Red River of up to 480,000 litres from a Plains Midstream Canada pipeline.
Enbridge owns the pipeline implicated in the most recent spill. That company is currently running community hearings in anticipation of building the Northern Gateway Pipeline from Bruderheim, Alta. to Kitimat, B.C. The new pipeline is set to traverse rugged mountains, pristine wilderness and areas of high geotechnical risk, including avalanches, slides and seismic activity.
The bitumin will then be loaded onto supertankers bound for Asia that have no hope of safely navigating the notoriously treacherous waters of the Inside Passage.
In April, BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix said: “Under the Enbridge proposal, British Columbia would assume almost all the project's risk, yet would see only a fraction of the benefits. By any measure, such a high-risk, low-return approach simply isn't in B.C.'s interests."
In May, Premier Christy Clark described the Northern Gateway project as “a balance of risk and benefit.” As for benefits, she admitted the project would create almost no jobs in B.C. “It creates some jobs in the construction phase but there are very few long-term jobs that would be left in the province after that.”
Like Dix, she concluded it’s a high-risk, low-return game. “B.C. is taking 100 per cent of the risk. But at the moment, B.C. gets about the same benefit as Nova Scotia."
Clark might foresee the risk-benefit ratio would improve if Alberta offers B.C. access fees or a share of royalties. But that would still be a no-win proposition when one calculates the profound costs of the inevitable spills and the loss of the coastline, the fisheries, and the ancestral grounds of First Nations livelihoods and cultures at any point along the pipeline’s path.
Last week, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a report, A Green Industrial Revolution, showing carbon-intensive industrial policies can be overcome and a transition made to a sustainable economy and a zero carbon Canada.
It’s scarcely the first report of its kind. Worldwide, roadmaps for how to get from here to there are as plentiful as blackberries.
There’s no reason for Canadians to be browbeaten into embracing fossil-fuel development as an economic imperative and oil spills as the status quo by politicians who are acting on behalf of their corporate sponsors, the oil and gas industry, rather than their constituents.
Canadians should instead demand a moratorium on new fossil-fuel developments and expansion of the tar sands, and force the federal and provincial governments to finally engage with the coming revolution. “The good news,” says report author Marc Lee, “is that Canada can derive substantial economic advantages … by embracing climate action.”
Dianne Varga has founded advocacy organizations Canadians for Cooperation and the Commotion Collective, and helps organize for others, including the Kelowna Peace Group, LeadNow, 350.org and Casseroles Night in Canada.