oil

Canadians Unhappy With Taxpayer Handouts To Richest Industry On Planet

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From the inspired folks at Hamilton350 comes this video:

During Open Streets in Hamilton a few inspired Conservatives asked people to complement the $1.4 billion in annual taxpayer-funded subsidies to the oil industry with money from their own pocket. This seems appropriate since they were already paying about $40 each per year in tax dollars anyway. Why not match this generous Conservative contribution to the dirty fuel business? Sadly, most Hamiltonians weren’t happy with giving handouts to the wealthiest industry on the planet.

When most Hamiltonians declined to support us with money we asked them if they would write a ‘thank you’ note to Stephen Harper. That didn’t go as planned either.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tal-iC6diaQ&feature=youtube]

#EpicFail At Shell’s Arctic Launch Celebration

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Via Occupy Seattle, a close-up glimpse at the folks  our governments are trusting to keep our Arctic pristine and untouched. They can’t even run a launch party without a spill:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMUFci_V4mU&feature=player_embedded]

*

Occupy Seattle’s website says that Logan Price, a Seattle Occupier who’s now living in New York, managed to infiltrate a private party thrown by Shell Oil at the Space Needle to celebrate the launch of its Arctic drilling program, and caught this  video. It gets more interesting because there’s also a website, arcticready.com, that looks a lot like a Shell Oil home page. It reads:

We’ve all heard about global climate change and the challenges it brings, especially to the most vulnerable among us.
For example, 300,000 people already perish each year from climate-change-related causes, mostly in the world’s poorest areas, according to the foundation of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. And evidence suggests that further disruption of our planet’s delicate climate could well result in incredibly dire consequences.

We at Shell are as concerned about this as everyone else. But we also recognize that even the most vulnerable need ever-growing fossil fuel resources for their travel, leisure, scientific, and infrastructure expansion needs, and that all of us, no matter where we live, need to explore every alternative at our disposal in order to one day have the hope of achieving a balanced, sustainable approach to energy production—let alone to deal with the potential consequences of climate change.
 
That’s why we at Shell are committed to not only recognize the challenges that climate change brings, but to take advantage of its tremendous opportunities. And what’s the biggest opportunity we’ve got today? The melting Arctic.
*
Source: Greenpeace

More links:

Occupy Seattle: Shell’s Epic Private Party #Fail

ArcticReady.com
*Update July 20.2012: this was a spoof video put out by Greenpeace and The Yes Men. Read more here.

Why We Resist The Truth About Climate Change

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While I’m away on a canoe trip this week, I will be posting articles from the 350orbust archives. This was first published in June, 2010.

Via “Nothing New Under The Sun“:

“Sometimes facing up to the truth is just too hard. When the facts are distressing it is easier to reframe or ignore them. Around the world only a few have truly faced up to the facts about global warming. Apart from the climate ‘sceptics’, most people do not disbelieve what the climate scientists have been saying about the calamities expected to befall us. But accepting intellectually is not the same as accepting emotionally the possibility that the world as we know it is heading for a horrible end. It’s the same with our own deaths; we all ‘accept’ that we will die, but it is only when death is imminent that we confront the true meaning of our mortality.”

– Clive Hamilton, Requiem for a Species: why we resist the truth about climate change (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2010), viii.

These are the opening words of Hamilton’s new book. In case you hadn’t picked it up from the title, it’s no exercise in optimism. Hamilton believes that we have largely missed our opportunity to respond in time to climate change and now all we can do is minimise the damage and salvage what we can. However, reaching that conclusion involves a willingness to face the full scale of the threat rather than watering it down through a variety of coping mechanisms. (To read the rest of Byron Smith’s article, go to Nothing New Under The Sun.)

Another reason it is difficult for those of us in North America to face the truth about climate change is that our system is working desperately to save the old way.  Big Oil and Gas want to keep us either in denial or overwhelmed by this issue. The result of both is the same –  inaction. That’s why ads like the following from Natural Resource Defense Council are important. They start to lift the veil of denial and addiction we are struggling under:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXJZbsRYQpY&feature=player_embedded]

To take action on climate change, go to my “Action not Apathy” page for some steps to take.  Even baby steps in the right direction are better than continuing down the wrong path.

Warming Atlantic Linked To Hurricane Igor Devastation in Newfoundland

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Much of the east coast of Newfoundland was devastated by Hurricane Igor on Tuesday. Roads have been washed out, electricity is gone, communities have been cut off from help, and one man has been washed out to sea. By now, at least 30 communities have declared a state of emergency.

The news coverage that I heard yesterday had locals emphasizing the unusual strength of Igor. The town clerk from Bonavista interviewed on As It Happens on CBC radio said he’d never seen winds that strong or rainfall that heavy in his lifetime – and Bonavista is on a windy, wet peninsula! Sam Synard, the Mayor of Marystown was quoted in The Star as saying:

“We’ve never seen such a violent storm before.” Synard reported that more than 200 millimetres of rain was dumped in 20 hours, “and very few, if any communities in the country, could deal with that amount of rainfall.”

My heart goes out to Newfoundlanders – “The Rock” is one of my favourite places on earth. The header photo on my blog was taken during a visit last September.  I wish the good people of Newfoundland Godspeed in their recovery from this devastation.

Unfortunately, the warming of the atmosphere and the resulting warming of the ocean which has happened as a result of our unbridled burning of fossil fuels in the last century is making severe weather events like this more and more frequent. The economic as well as the human toll will only increase (the Newfoundland government is predicting it will take at least $100 million to repair the damage from this storm). Recent research has shown that we are experiencing more storms with higher wind speeds, and these storms are more destructive, last longer and make landfall more frequently than in the past. This is our new reality, in Canada and around the globe, as the Arctic ice and the permafrost melt, and the oceans get warmer.  We are starting to reap the destruction that we have sown, and it’s not going to be pleasant.

It’s time for all of us to demand that our governments, particularly at the federal level, start addressing this issue in more ways that just preserving Canada’s claim to the Arctic so we can dig up more oil and gas! For ways to do this, check out Cheryl McNamara’s recent post on Bill C311 – the Climate Accountability Act, or go to my “Action not Apathy” page.

More links:

National Geographic: Is Global Warming Making Hurricanes Worse?

Union of Concerned Scientists: Hurricanes and Climate Change

Popular Science: Hurricane, Climate Change Link Explained

Real Climate: Hurricanes and Climate Change – Is There A Connection?

Canada, Russia expected to win Arctic claims at UN

The following photos were taken around Marystown, on the Burin Peninsula, by Andrew Lundrigan, and posted on the FB page “Hurricane Igor Hits Marystown”

Was Our Oil Dependency Manufactured?

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Is anybody else getting tired of being told that we have to continue on the destructive oil-dependent path we’re currently on? There seems to be a large and vocal part of the population that believes because this is way we’ve been doing things for the last 100 years or so, give or take a few decades, that this is the only possible path to maintain our standard of living. The truth is, unless we take a sharp turn and start living and doing business sustainably, our standard of living is going to come crashing abruptly and painfully down. You just can’t live like there are 5 more planets like earth, like we currently do in North America, when in fact there is only this one.

If you aren’t convinced yet that oil is a dirty fuel after the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, one that is getting filthier all the time due to our growing dependence on the Alberta tar sands, go to Wikipedia.org’s “list of oil spills” page. It is a reverse-chronological  list of oil spills that are currently happening, and that have happened since the early 1900s. Hundreds of thousands of tons of oil have been spilled in 2010 already (remember we’re only halfway through the year) by seven spills around the globe.

And yet, here we are in 2010, and governments around the world are using our taxpayer money to subsidize Big Oil and Gas to the tune of $500 billion a year!  As I wrote previously, we are all subsidizing Big Oil’s war on our grandchildren!

Yet, it turns out, it didn’t have to be this way. Henry Ford’s Model T came right from the factory, in 1911, with flex-fuel capacity; it could run on alcohol and gas. And in the 1930s and 1940s, Henry Ford developed a car body that was made from hemp fiber that also ran on hemp biodiesel. According to the YouTube video clip that features it, the resulting material was “lighter than steel, but could withstand ten times the impact without denting”. It seems clear that Henry Ford did encourage hemp cultivation to use as a fuel and as a manufacturing material. This was before hemp growing was banned in the U.S. in a strange twist in their war on drugs (hemp has no hallucinogenic properties although it is related to the marijuana plant).

Here are some videos that demonstrate how we could have gone down a different path to fueling and making our vehicles, and how, if we act quickly enough, we might still be able to change direction:

Ford’s first flex-fuel car, the 1911 Model T:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qDYoEupI28&feature=player_embedded]

Archival footage of Ford’s 1941 hemp car (the quality is quite poor, but it gives you the general idea):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rgDyEO_8cI]

More links:

B.C. Carbon Tax a Winner: The shift has been an economic boon for the province’s taxpayers and is projected to lower greenhouse gas emissions by five per cent

100 days of oil: Gulf life will never be the same again

Oil Pipeline Leak Pollutes Major Michigan River

Rethink Alberta Campaign Ruffles Some Tar Sands Supporters’ Feathers

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There’s a slick new campaign, launched last week by a consortium of environmental, community and indigenous groups, that has been getting a lot of media attention in Canada, particularly in Alberta. It’s called “Rethink Alberta” and is designed to shine light on the environmental devastation of the Alberta tar sands, and to impact Alberta’s “bottom line” by affecting their tourism industry. Along with a video, the campaign includes billboards in four American cities that compare oil-covered birds in the Gulf of Mexico with dead ducks in a Syncrude tailings pond. The ads call the tar sands the “other oil disaster” and urged travellers to boycott Alberta. Not surprisingly, there has been angry reaction from Premier Stelmach, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), and some Albertans. Watch the video and decide for yourself if extracting oil from the tar sands is worth the price:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dpOzvmBj8k&feature=player_embedded]

Visit the Rethink Alberta website to “take the pledge” to not visit Alberta until the Alberta Government:

  1. Halts the expansion of the Tar Sands.
  2. Stops spending millions of dollars on public relations campaigns designed to keep the United States addicted to dirty Tar Sands oil.
  3. Takes meaningful steps to transition its economy away from dirty Tar Sands oil to clean energy alternatives.

More links:

Rethink Alberta campaign riles Tories

Dead Ducks In A Tailings Pond – How It Happened

Corporate Ethics

Rethink Alberta

Oilsandswatch.org

Activists Demand End to Fossil Fuel Subsidies, Call For Clean Energy Now

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Thursday June 17 was a Global Day of Action in the lead-up to the G8 meetings in Muskoka (June25-26)  and the G20 summit in Toronto (June 26-27). Around the world, activists called on world leaders to invest in the future by tackling climate change, fighting poverty and inequality, and rethinking the global economy.

From the tcktcktck website:

Toronto, Canada is the site of the G20 and played host to the main action of the day. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Chair of the G8 & G20 Summits, has said that ‘climate is a sideshow’. With that in mind, event organizers decided to make Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper the star of his own sideshow.

In a parade through Toronto’s bustling financial district, “Prime Minister Harper” led a group of his favourite banker buddies in a series of joyful dances as they handed out billions of Canada’s brand-new ‘billion’ dollar bills. In their wake, they left a messy crowd of oil-drenched citizens being cleaned up by taxpayers. This peaceful and vibrant anchor event was designed to send a clear message to Prime Minister Stephen Harper: Stop dancing around the issues and put climate change on the agenda of the G8/G20.

Here’s a video of the Toronto event:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o16KbNaOSUE]

More links:

Watch an interview with Robert Fox, Director of OxFam Canada, on CTV TV

“Oily Activists Demand Clean Energy” Toronto Sun

G20 Day of Action.tcktcktck.org

BP Disaster in Gulf: “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”

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Via Climate Progress, the background to this video from David Yarnold, Executive Director of The Environmental Defense Fund:

From a comfortable distance the BP oil disaster is depressing and horrific. But up close, it’s worse.

Two days in the Gulf of Mexico left me enraged – and deeply resolved. Both the widespread damage and the inadequacy of the response effort exceeded my worst fears. I’d spent a full day on the Gulf and we ended up soaked in oily water and seared by the journey.

By Tuesday night, I was home. My throat burned and my head was foggy and dizzy as I showed my pictures and video to my wife, Fran, and my 13-year-old daughter, Nicole, on the TV in the family room.

Images of the gooey peanut-butter colored oil and the blackened wetlands flashed by. Pictures of dolphins diving into our oily wake and brown pelicans futilely trying to pick oil off their backs popped on the screen. And, out of nowhere, Nicole put on the music from the season finale of Glee.

With all these horrific images on the screen, she had turned on the show’s final song of the year, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” The song, a slow, sweet, ukulele and guitar-driven version, couldn’t have added a deeper sense of tragic irony.

…The inspiration [for this video] was Nicole’s. This is for her, and for all of our kids – and theirs to come.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jPjJPVdR4g&feature=player_embedded]

Links:

Environmental Defense Fund

Read the full post on Climate Progress.

Is there a different way of doing things, that moves us away from this dirty fossil fuel addiction we’ve developed over the last century?  Yes!  Check out Four Years.Go: A campaign to change the course of history.

What Happens When BP Spills Coffee, and Big-Oil Lovin’ Senator Murkowski’s Bill Voted Down in U.S. Senate

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  • This video is making the rounds on the net – it was posted on Youtube on June 9th and already has over 200,000 views (*update – 8 hours later, it’s up to 749,461!*).  From the folks at Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AAa0gd7ClM&feature=player_embedded]

Click here go to the UCB’s website.

  • Some great news on the climate change front!  From the League of Conservation Voters, this update about Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s attempt to block the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide emissions, which was voted on in the U.S. Senate today:

…the Senate struck down Senator Murkowski’s reckless proposal to gut the Clean Air Act’s ability to protect public health and hold the biggest polluters accountable for their carbon pollution. LCV would like to thank the Senators that voted down Senator Murkowski’s resolution for standing up to Big Oil and other corporate polluters.

Click here to read the LCV’s press release on the vote.

Click here to go to 350.org for ideas on how to get to work on a cleaner, brighter future in 2010.

On Facing The Truth About Climate Change

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Via “Nothing New Under The Sun“:

“Sometimes facing up to the truth is just too hard. When the facts are distressing it is easier to reframe or ignore them. Around the world only a few have truly faced up to the facts about global warming. Apart from the climate ‘sceptics’, most people do not disbelieve what the climate scientists have been saying about the calamities expected to befall us. But accepting intellectually is not the same as accepting emotionally the possibility that the world as we know it is heading for a horrible end. It’s the same with our own deaths; we all ‘accept’ that we will die, but it is only when death is imminent that we confront the true meaning of our mortality.”

– Clive Hamilton, Requiem for a Species: why we resist the truth
about climate change (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2010), viii.

These are the opening words of Hamilton’s new book. In case you hadn’t picked it up from the title, it’s no exercise in optimism. Hamilton believes that we have largely missed our opportunity to respond in time to climate change and now all we can do is minimise the damage and salvage what we can. However, reaching that conclusion involves a willingness to face the full scale of the threat rather than watering it down through a variety of coping mechanisms. (Click here to read the rest of Byron Smith’s article on his blog.)

Another reason it is difficult for those of us in North America to face the truth about climate change is that our system is working desperately to save the old way.  Big Oil and Gas want to keep us either in denial or overwhelmed by this issue. The result of both is the same –  inaction. That’s why ads like the following from Natural Resource Defense Council are important. They start to lift the veil of denial and addiction we are struggling under:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXJZbsRYQpY&feature=player_embedded]

To take action on climate change, go to my “Action not Apathy” page for some steps to take.  Even baby steps in the right direction are better than continuing down the wrong path.