What The U...S. Wants....
By Jeff Berg
23 January, 2007
Countercurrents.org
...is a quintupling of Canadian tarsand production.This is very much not what the world wants and not what most Canadians want. Notwithstanding this opposition however it is what "our" corporations and the governments that they control want. (Our corporations, hmmm. And they say the age of irony is over.)
As "our corporations" and as "good corporate citizens", there's that irony thing again, is of course how the energy conglomerates relentlessly seek to portray themselves. (Lest like the rest of the world we nationalize what nature bequeathed?) And many who's jobs are in p.r., marketing, advertising, the media and politics still claim to see them that way. That they do so with a genuineness and a heart felt passion that any debutante at her first ball could naught but admire is a quite awesome testament really to the power of media, echo and job security to shape hearts and minds. Or as Upton Sinclair epigrammatically put it, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on his not understanding it."
By the by I have studied this issue somewhat and a quintupling of Canadian tarsand syncrude production is not possible:
A) Without a major diversion of water to the area. Drawing board plans for the diverting of the Sasketchewan river is already an ongoing source of tension in the area.
B) The building of nuclear plants to power the steam needed for the extraction process. To which some will undoubtedly say "What better place to leave such waste but such a wasteland?" Not exactly what one could call a virtuous logic circle.
C) Demand destruction by price mechanisms for other consumers of natural gas. Eg. Those who use natural gas for space heating. aka. Almost all Canadians.
D) Without an immense increase in Canada's increase in GHG's. An increase so large in fact that the rest of the world could not consider such a move as anything but another phase of the Anglosphere's "War against the rest".
Ultimately the choice before us is no choice at all. Either we enact a sea of change or the sea itself will change us. And to my mind given what I like to call Upton's Law (quoted above) a national guaranteed income is the simplest and most workable mechanism for turning the power and wisdom of the crowd into the kind of unified force needed for such a sea of change to take place. Furthermore without a guarantee that opting out of commercialism and opting for voluntary simplification will not lead to the hellish fate experienced by tens of millions just south of our border, I see no chance that the divide and conquer strategies of the BAU crowd will fail here in Canada. In fact increasingly I see just such a guarantee of security as the key to opening a way forward without which none other is possible. I also fail to see how this is not universally true and applicable. Not an original thought its true but such old saws seem to be gaining a new found respect these days. And unless I miss my guess this is because energy security and climate change like hangings serve one good purpose at least: They concentrate the mind.
p.s. LATE BREAKING NEWS: What was said by the world's climate scientists after a conference held in Toronto in 1988. "Humankind is performing an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences may only be rivalled by global nuclear war."
p.s.s. Also rightly said albeit more recently.
"The 21st Century will be everywhere defined the same way. Only those communities who produce their power locally and ensure the energy security of their citizens will escape the ravages of energy fascism." ~ Senor Juan G. Carbonel.
CBC News
The U.S. wants Canada to dramatically expand its oil exports from the Alberta oilsands, a move that could have major implications on the environment.
U.S.and Canadian oil executives and government officials met for a two-day oil summit in Houston in January 2006 and made plans for a "fivefold expansion" in oilsands production in a relatively "short time span," according to minutes of the meeting obtained by the CBC's French-language network, Radio-Canada.
The meeting was organized by Natural Resources Canada and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Canada is already the top exporter of oil to the American market, exporting the equivalent of one million barrels a day — the exact amount that the oilsands industry in Alberta currently produces.
A fivefold increase would mean the export of five million barrels a day, which would supply a quarter of current American consumption and add up to almost half of all U.S. imports.
"We need to look at additional pipelines from Canada to the U.S. as a new source of supplier, a growing source of supply," said Bob Greco of the American Petroleum Institute.
But the current extraction of oil from the tarsands results in the spewing of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere: it's already the biggest source of new greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.
The news of the call for the massive boost in oil production comes as Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged to make the environment one of his top priorities, vowing that Canadians deserve more action on climate change. Polls show the environment is the number one concern of Canadians.
Yet, according to the minutes of the Houston meeting, to multiply its output by five and to do it quickly, Canada would have to "streamline" its environmental regulations for new energy projects. No plans to 'streamline' environmental assessments: PMO
On Thursday, a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office said the federal Tories will not "streamline" environmental assessments to speed up oilsands development.
"Canada's natural resources will be developed but that will not be done at the expense of the environment," Dmitri Soudas told the Canadian Press.
Canada's main oil lobby group said there is no pledge to increase production five-fold for the Americans.
"There is no promise," said Greg Stringham of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. "It's up to the market whether this thing goes fast or slow."
In his state of the union address in 2006, U.S. President George W. Bush set out a goal to drastically reduce oil imports from the Middle East and make American dependence on Middle Eastern oil "a thing of the past."
Paul Michael Weaby, a Washington insider and an expert on the geo-strategic aspect of the oil industry, said Bush is counting on Canada to help wean the United States off Middle Eastern oil — a goal now defined as a national security objective.
"He wanted to have a reduction of 1.5 million barrels a day by 2015 from the Middle East. Although he did not mention Canada, that is in fact where the replacement supply will come from."
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