Alberta Bringing Environ'l Armageddon to Canada
NY.Trans...@blythe.org
Hash: SHA1
Alberta Bringing Environ'l Armageddon to Canada
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Toronto Globe & Mail - Oct 6, 2007
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071006.BKALBE06/TPStory/Na
tional
Book Review:
"STUPID TO THE LAST DROP
How Alberta is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada
(and Doesn't Seem to Care)"
By William Marsden
Knopf Canada, 246 pages, $29.95
Review by ANDREW NIKIFORUK
I live in oil-addled Alberta, a sort of modern Deadwood complete with
self-possessed con men and blighted landscapes. Every day, the whole
province looks and acts more and more like a profane gold-mining camp.
Ask newcomers, and they will tell you they are here for the money. The
invasion makes most of my rural friends feel like outnumbered Sioux in
the Black Hills.
Even the news reads like an outrageous dime novel. One day the premier,
a man with no sense of irony, praises the tar sands as a car without
brakes; the next day the energy regulator gets caught illegally spying
on citizens who want brakes installed on the car, and then lies like
Richard Nixon about the spying. Alberta could sure use a Roberto Bolaqo
or Kurt Vonnegut about now.
With these cheerful thoughts in mind, I picked up Stupid to the Last
Drop with a mixture of curiosity and caution. A great title, I thought,
and penned by an easterner, no less. The author, William Marsden, hails
from Montreal and used to write about motorcycle gangs. Now he's
graduated to carbon outlaws in the ever-drying West. Not much of a
stretch, really.
Although Marsden does not write with the heated bravado of a Bolaqo or a
Vonnegut, he does bring a fresh pair of discerning eyes to an unusual
series of nation-changing events. With a Montreal mixture of disbelief
and awe, he confidently reports how an entire province is destroying
itself, and then asks why no one in Canada "seems to care."
But let's begin with Marsden's intelligently quirky narrative on energy
and destiny. The investigative reporter starts off with a curious yet
true story about plans to nuke the tar sands, the world's
second-largest source of oil after Saudi Arabia. But separating tar
from sand in the boreal forest has always been a messy job. The good
folks at Richfield Oil and the Alberta government figured out that a
couple of atomic warheads might speed up the process in the 1950s.
Marsden can barely hide his incredulity as he relates this fantastic
story. Yes, engineers spent years fine-tuning the project before it got
axed. And yes, the Russians stole the idea and eventually proved that
nuking heavy oil increases productivity, but also leaves an
inconvenient radioactive fingerprint. And yes, the U.S. government
still holds the patent on the "nuclear explosive method for stimulating
hydrocarbons" in the tar sands.
From these surreal beginnings, Marsden tracks the great tar sands rush
in the late 1990s to the current cocaine-driven mess in Fort McMurray.
He also explains why the oil-obsessed United States understandably
views the megaprojects in northern Alberta as a stable refuge from the
world market: "gangsters, thieves and a surly Venezuelan."
Next, Marsden encounters several smart Albertans with profound messages.
Former premier Peter Lougheed tells him that the province has stupidly
forgotten how to behave like an "owner." David Schindler, one of the
world's foremost water ecologists, explains how the systematic and
ignorant trashing of provincial watersheds could ensure citizens a
bleak future within 50 years. David Hughes, an energy and peak oil
expert, wonders why federal and provincial politicians don't seem
cleverly interested in oil and gas conservation now that Canadians are
stupidly reduced to digging big holes in the ground for the world's
dirtiest oil. And on it goes.
But Marsden really finds his mark while recording the tales of ordinary
Davids facing powerful yet stupid Goliaths. Francis Gardner, one fine
rancher, gets the better of Shell Oil in a brazen, Russian-like
encounter on New Year's Eve. Jessica Ernst, a courageous oil-patch
consultant, tells how EnCana carelessly drilled into a local aquifer
and gave her groundwater a shocking advantage: She can light it on
fire. Dr. John O'Connor, a physician with a moral heart, explains how
both federal and provincial bureaucrats tried to silence his disturbing
documentation of cancer deaths downstream from the tar sands. In these
inspiring tales, at least, Marsden proves that moral intelligence has
not disappeared from Alberta; it just doesn't appear to exist in
government circles any more.
The biggest stupidities that Marsden discovers could and probably
should shock any Canadian. A government that gives away its oil for a
1-per-cent royalty is not only stupid but politically bankrupt. A
regulator ("eight mulish, white male suits") that rubber-stamps
projects and then spies on citizens who question their rubber-stamping
is a Soviet-style disgrace. A former environment minister who rants not
about the destruction of rivers and forests, but about his Harvard
education, is pure Mark Twain territory. Welcome to Saudi Alberta.
Yet for all his insightful storytelling, Marsden offers few solutions
and frequently misdiagnoses the problem. Much of his abbreviated
oil-sands history skimps on critical facts and he even omits seminal
works such as The Tar Sands, by Larry Pratt. The American-bashing is
both tiring and old hat. Our best oil customer has not bullied the
province into submission, as Marsden suggests. No, our leaders simply
gave away the farm.
Nor is Alberta some loony character on the national stage. Explore any
Appalachian-sized open-pit mine north of Fort McMurray, and you'll find
a new national dream writ larger than life as well as scores of
Montreal engineers having the time of their lives. You can call
tar-sand developers anything you want, but "stupid" is one adjective
that would never come to mind. Most are incredibly accomplished and
erudite men.
So let's be honest and stop blaming Alberta for keeping half the nation
tanked up in carbon-emitting fuels. The really big truth is this:
Canadians are land abusers, carbon makers and resource exploiters
extraordinaire. It's what we do best. Our political elites don't give
any more thought to destroying a forest the size of Florida than do
crackheads or the tired Newfies working in Suncor's Millennium camp.
Maybe it's just Canadian to be stupid.
Although Marsden documents the First Law of Petro-Politics (democracies
go bad as they drink more oil), he fails to grasp its overall
importance in the strange doings he explores. And is it not genuinely
foolhardy for Montrealers to ignore Ottawa's disdain of national energy
plans as eastern Canada, a region not connected to the tar sands,
becomes ever more dependent on oil from rogue or hostile nations?
Yet Marsden's unsettling exposi of careless decision-making sheds more
needed light on some very dark corners in Alberta (and Canada). He has
walked into a provincial boom-town, populated largely by arrogant and
greedy males (Hells Angels with suits), and not flinched.
Good on you, partner.
[Contributing reviewer Andrew Nikiforuk is the Calgary author of the
award-winning Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil.]
*
=================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
Our main website: http://www.blythe.org
List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
=================================================================
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (FreeBSD)
iD8DBQFHCT29iz2i76ou9wQRArfKAJ4gvsGoWtkK4Gd0qwohVxiZu5j4XACdF8MA
qY0LwnG9Fro3AttO8N1NOEo=
=9hkW
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----