Dirty Oil Has More Freedom To Move Than People

Free ride for dirty oil, border checks for people. But which is more dangerous?

It's one of those typical injustices of capitalism that money, capital and dirty, earth-destroying, toxic oil products, have more right to cross borders and move around the world than do people - often including people who are trying to flee the impact of toxic oil products or governments who repress their population to protect foreign money and capital. So, we shouldn't expect any different sort of behaviour from the Canadian and American government in relation to their own populations. And that's exactly what they're doing.

As Canada and the US try to push forward with their multi-billion dollar pipeline of liquid death, it seems the US is also trying to find ways to put up fences and surveillance cameras along the 6,400 km border that we share. Why? For national security, of course - which means restricting the movement of people. It's worth noting that the security of the Keystone I pipeline and the rogue oil that passes through its innards is rather less secure than would be the border. In one year of operation the pipeline that was supposed to only have one spill every 7 years had twelve. This high rate of spillage is consistent with the experience of pipelines in Alberta with speculation that dirty tar sands oil is highly corrosive, compared to other forms of oil.

Despite its relatively recent construction, Alberta’s hazardous liquid system had 218 spills greater than 26 gallons per 10,000 miles of pipeline caused by internal corrosion from 2002 to 2010, compared to 13.6 spills greater than 26 gallons per 10,000 miles of pipeline from internal corrosion reported in the United States to PHMSA during that same time period. This rate of spills due to internal corrosion is sixteen times higher in Alberta than in the United States. [page 9]

Of course, it doesn't help that TransCanada, the builders of the pipeline, are apparently willing to use cheap, second rate steel and is petitioning the Canadian government for the right to abrogate existing laws on steel thickness, as well as maximum pressures allowed within the pipe. It has to be said that as a result of past practices, TransCanada have been ordered to dig up whole swathes of pipe for replacement.

TransCanada is digging up 10 sections of a new, $5.2 billion crude oil pipeline, including one in Missouri, after government-ordered tests identified possibly defective steel may have been used in the construction.

And if you think that a couple of people sneaking across the border to sell pot in North Dakota is worth laying on fences, cameras and motion detectors (as opposed to, say, de-criminalizing marijuana) then you ought to lose your mind over the fact that oil leaks in the mid-west drain into the soil, which then sinks into the Ogallala aquifer - an underground sea that provides 30% of the groundwater for US agriculture as well as drinking water to populations stretching from Texas up to South Dakota. The health of millions of people could be directly affected by poisoning this key water source - not to mention the economic impacts. Of course, the Tory government believes people who oppose this "national security" disaster in the making are "extremists", including the Official Opposition, the NDP. This only demonstrates that the no price is too high for Canadian and American workers to pay in order to ensure that the Tories' buddies in the oil industry make fat profits. It doesn't matter of indigenous communities suffer high rates of birth defects downstream from tar sands projects. It doesn't matter if the drinking water of the entire mid-west of the USA is poisoned, ultimately leading to tax payer funded clean-up. And if you think any different, then you are an "extremist". However, spending billions to stop a few people from sneaking across a border that's supposed to have been opened since Free Trade, that's rational.

Carbon Trading Is A Scam

Carbon trading: another market failure

Lots of people have thought that creating a market to "trade" carbon emissions was always a scam. And there's plenty of evidence that scam is really too weak a word to describe how that market is unfolding. Back in March, The Guardian newspaper in the UK revealed that British industries were given lots of surplus credits - worth something like 66 million tonnes of CO2 - above what they needed. Companies are banking this free money (or free pollution) for future use. That means that they can sell their more expensive credits in the EU marketplace, while purchasing cheaper carbon credits from the developing world thus leveraging a profit in the same way that currency traders move money from more valuable to less valuable currencies.

Back in 2007 the Financial Times also noted that there was a lot of phoney-baloney going on in the world of carbon trading that made the scheme borderline useless and really a magnet for (legal) fraud and funny business.

The growing political salience of environmental politics has sparked a "green gold rush", which has seen a dramatic expansion in the number of businesses offering both companies and individuals the chance to go "carbon neutral", offsetting their own energy use by buying carbon credits that cancel out their contribution to global warming.
The burgeoning regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more than double in size to about $68.2bn by 2010, with the unregulated voluntary sector rising to $4bn in the same period.
The FT investigation found:
* Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.
* Industrial companies profiting from doing very little or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.
* Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.
* A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.
* Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.
Francis Sullivan, environment adviser at HSBC, the UK's biggest bank that went carbon-neutral in 2005, said he found "serious credibility concerns" in the offsetting market after evaluating it for several months.
"The police, the fraud squad and trading standards need to be looking into this. Otherwise people will lose faith in it," he said.

Now, comes a kicker - as though you couldn't see this coming from a kilometre away - the EU has suddenly discovered that the carbon trading market is a very attractive outlet for money that the mob needs to launder. Since legitimate businesses have been using it as a scam for years, why wouldn't organized crime get in on the action. Watch in the future as the carbon trading market goes up like the real estate market and then collapses in a heap. Just like with the sub-prime collapse, the powers-that-be will somehow find a way to blame us for the debacle. Meanwhile, nothing will have changed in the level of carbon emissions.

Solar Rate Cut: Ont. Libs Biggest Idiots Under The Sun

After three months of watching oil from the Deepwater Horizon pour into the Gulf of Mexico, killing animals that are reliant on the Gulf eco-system by the truckload, and destroying traditional fishing cultures of the people who live along the Gulf coast - not to mention wetlands - can we finally make some serious investment in green energy?

Well, the good news is that global investment in wind and solar energy has continued to climb year over year and for the past two years constituted the majority of new power generation in North America, Europe, and China. China, who some tried to blame for all the carbon problems, has invested massively in solar and wind technology.

China had the largest addition of renewable power capacity, and the Asian economic powerhouse surpassed the United States as the country with the largest investment in clean energy.
China now produces about 40 per cent of the world’s solar electricity collectors, 25 per cent of its wind turbines, and three-quarters of its solar water heaters.

China's cities are still a smog and carbon-belching nightmare. But the picture of China as the main culprit just doesn't wash. The number that is often used to judge China is the absolute carbon emissions but this is dishonest since China has a population of $1.4 billion whereas the USA has less than a quarter of that total and Canada even less. It's more accurate to look at carbon production per capita and by this measure the USA - and even more so, Canada - are the bottom of the barrel. According to the Conference Board of Canada, a conservative business organization, Canada is the pits.

Canada is one of the world’s largest GHG emitters. Canada ranks 16th out of 17 OECD countries on GHG emissions per capita and scores a “D” grade.3 In 2005, Canada’s GHG emissions were 22.6 tonnes per capita, almost double the 17-country average of 12.4 tonnes per capita. Canada’s per capita GHG emissions were also almost four times greater than Norway’s, the top performer.

The primary reason why Canada's position is so terrible and getting worse all the time - the Tar Sands debacle. The next worse in line is, of course, the USA at 19.1 tonnes per capita. In the case of the United States the terrible record and worse response to the growing disaster of fossil fuels is especially poignant in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Obama's pitiful $2 billion loans to the solar sector in response, even as oil companies get at least double that amount every single year in tax subsidies.

And it isn't the case the up here in the kinder, gentler nation that we're any better. Stephen Harper continues to pour subsidies into the oil sands project, destroying the Alberta watershed, poisoning downstream communities and jacking up Canada's carbon emissions when we should be reducing them. Of course, nobody is surprised that a neanderthal like Harper and his pals will be happy to ride a luxury handbasket into global warming hell.

But Dalton McGuinty leads the progressive Liberals. They don't hate the cities. They had an openly gay man in cabinet. The teachers unions like him. Of course, he is implementing the HST, which is a blatantly regressive tax grab. And in the area of energy policy and development, the Green Belt that was supposed to lead to greater population density - a necessity to make mass transit efficient and to reduce the need for automobiles - in the Greater Toronto Area is a total hoax that does nothing to reign in the developers. And now the Liberals have taken an axe to subsidies for the solar industry, cutting the price paid per kilowatt hour by more than 25% - from 80.2 cents to 58.8 cents per kilowatt hour. Of course, what the government should be doing is directly investing in solar infrastructure, rather than leaving it to the inefficiencies of market mechanisms. Just as they should be investing in infrastructure for electric vehicles. However, it makes no sense to cut solar subsidies at a time when fossil fuel subsidies for the Tar Sands are, if anything, rising under the federal Tories. McGuinty could easily fund the development of renewables and create jobs by taxing carbon producers and investing that money in Green industries. But that would mean taking on corporate priorities and redirecting them to meet social and environmental needs. What this rollback demonstrates is that McGuinty isn't willing to do that. He's more than happy to pass secret, repressive legislation to clampdown on civil liberties - he isn't willing to use his legislative powers to help save the planet.

Climate Change: Permafrost Methane Releases Spell Big Disaster

It isn't exactly new that there was a theoretical possibility that by artificially raising temperatures as a result of greenhouse gases emitted by cars, industry, agriculture and the military, that carbon trapped in the earth's permafrost could be released. This enormous well of carbon - whether in the form of methane or CO2, whether in Canada's vast tundra or the frozen bogs of Siberia - would potentially generate a self-reinforcing cycle, where climate change releases frozen greenhouse gases, which causes more climate change, which releases more greenhouse gases. Well, evidence of this theoretical process is now emerging.

"Reporting to the European Geophysical Union last year, the scientists, affiliated with the University of Alaska and the Russian Academy of Sciences, cited "extreme" saturation of methane in surface waters and in the air above. They said up to 10 percent of the undersea permafrost area had melted, and it was "highly possible" that this would open the way to abrupt release of an estimated 50 billion tons of methane.
"Depending on how much dissolved in the sea, that might multiply methane in the atmosphere several-fold, boosting temperatures enough to cause "catastrophic greenhouse warming," as the Russians called it. It would be self-perpetuating, melting more permafrost, emitting more methane."

Of course, even saying that this was a theoretical possibility is unfair given that many commentators, including the inestimable George Monbiot, have been warning of this possibility for years and years - but neither governments nor most of the media have been listening. In an article at the end of 2008, Monbiot noted in relation to melting sea ice that:

"As the ice disappears, the region becomes darker, which means that it absorbs more heat. A recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the extra warming caused by disappearing sea ice penetrates 1500km inland, covering almost the entire region of continuous permafrost. Arctic permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the entire global atmosphere. It remains safe for as long as the ground stays frozen. But the melting has begun. Methane gushers are now gassing out of some places with such force that they keep the water open in Arctic lakes, through the winter."

The disappearing ice isn't just a slow melt, like an ice cube in your vodka-tonic. These are massive shelves that are breaking off. Earlier this year the ice bridge that connected the Wilkins Ice Shelf - a hunk of ice half the size of Scotland - collapses, severing the shelf from an Antarctic island. This follows on from the collapse of the Larsen A & B ice shelves in the last decade and a half. Larsen B had been stable for 12,000 years and was the size of Rhode Island.

But it's not just in areas of deep freeze that carbon is being released from the soil. In all northern regions, with the rise in temperature - even if only by a degree - there is an increased process of carbon release from the soil taking place.

"Two weeks ago (Sept, 2005), scientists at Cranfield University discovered that the soils in the UK have been losing the carbon they contain: as temperatures rise, the decomposition of organic matter accelarates, which causes more warming, which causes more decomposition. Already the soil in this country has released enough carbon dioxide to counteract the emissions cuts we have made since 1990."

What is clear is that the measures proposed and funded by governments and industry - cap & trade, biofuels - are the equivalent of snake oil. They will do nothing and, in the case of biofuel, will contribute to the problem. Radical reductions in carbon emissions are necessary. We need to rethink everything from the private automobile to the suburban model of development to how we fuel industry. It may already be too late to save the ice caps and may even be beyond the tipping point at which a cascade effect will develop with increasing velocity that will flood coastal cities and stop the ocean current that warms northern Europe.

Government and industry will continue to do nothing as long as possible. The only question, to my mind is whether a movement will develop that is large enough, international enough and militant enough to force government and industry to take action. Here's hoping...

Tiny Township Beats Toxic Dumpsite

Funny, just the other day I was talking with my wife's uncle about this planned dumpsite, Site 41, up in Simcoe County that would have sat on one of the purest aquifers on the planet. I'd also recently been doing some reading on the Oglala Aquifer - an underground sea in the American mid-west that saved the dustbowl and allowed the introduction of irrigation farming. Industrial and agricultural use of that Aquifer is draining it in some areas, polluting it in others. Out west, in Alberta, the development of the tar sands is rapidly depleting and polluting aquifers as millions of litres of water are sucked up and used, in the form of steam to separate oil and sand. As the world's supply of fresh water declines and corporate interests try to sell us stuff that was once free for the taking, water has become a key battleground between the fundamental right of humans to the basic necessities vs corporate privilege to make a profit of every single thing on the planet.
That's why it's important and exciting that a coalition of environmentalists, farmers, indigenous people and locals have defeated Site 41 at a council vote yesterday. In a small way, this victory is an important, momentum-building signpost as, in a much larger way, were the battles over the privatization of water in Bolivia. That it happened in a place called Tiny and yet is reverberating across the country is nicely symbolic. This truly is a mouse that roared. As Maude Barlow noted in the Globe & Mail article:

“Because this was such an intense fight being watched all over the country, I think you're going to see the same debate start happening everywhere. The shift is going to be from councillors searching for the least contentious place to put a dump to saying how can we have no more dump sites? How can we protect the water?”

Spinning Tories

I don’t remember who said that there are three kinds of lies - “lies, damn lies and statistics” – but surely we’d have to include opinion polls as a fourth kind of lie. For instance on the cover of today’s Globe & Mail newspaper is a half-page article on the "Stephen Harper paradox"; ie. how the Tories are doing great at solidifying support and winning us to their agenda but Harper can't quite win our hearts and minds. I will only point out here that the Tories now stand at 33% in the polls. However, in May, 2006 the National Post was creaming its jeans that the Tories - then at 43% - had enough support for a majority. Great job indeed.
With every day bringing more bad news from Afghanistan and the hardening of opinions in opposition to Canada’s involvement over there, it seems funny that the Globe & Mail – which made a special effort to lick Tory butt in the last federal election – decided that now is the moment to tout the "growing support" for the Conservatives. Funny as in suspicious.
So, I went and had a look at the poll on the Strategic Counsel website.
First of all the questions they ask are pretty vague in relation to the Conservatives. For instance “I disagree with the Harper government’s approach to Afghanistan” – 44% agree with the statement, 47% disagree. Well, Harper has been sending out mixed signals recently in relation to Afghanistan. He’s now saying that the troops will come home at the end of their mission in 2009 if there isn’t support. So, people go, ‘ok, he’s listening to the opposition and he’ll bring the troops home.’ And, of course the response from most of the opposition, NDP aside, is to say “oh yeah, well, you better bring the troops home in 2009.” Not exactly hard-hitting critique.
The same basic thing applies to the question on climate change: “The Harper government has shown that it is serious about starting to deal with global warming” – 48% agree and 46% disagree. Well, Harper has worked hard – and done a pretty good job with the help of a compliant media and pathetic parliamentary opposition – to deflect and diffuse their way out of the early controversy over their opposition to any notion of stopping climate change (remember when Harper claimed that Kyoto was a socialist plot? Ah, those were the good old days...)
However, what is more interesting than the confusion that these numbers indicate both because of the questions and the spin of the Harper Tories is how steady is the opposition to the main political thrust of the Tories – and this stuff is revealed deeper in the survey, after the meaningless nonsense about “Stephen Harper is somebody I like – agree or disagree”. Here people were asked whether their opinion would improve or worsen if the Tories did a series of things. The numbers were as follows:
Get us out of a combat role in Afghanistan immediately – 63% (vs 28%)
Standing up to George Bush – 77% (vs 13%)
Meeting Canada’s Kyoto targets to reduce global warming: a WHOPPING 83% vs 13% are down with the socialist plot. Even in Western Canada, that supposed bastion of oil burning conservatism the numbers were 78% vs 13%. So much for that myth.
Putting significantly more money in public transit – 78% vs 8%.
The list goes on. And it’s not all unproblematically left-wing – a larger minority would have their opinion of the Tories improve if they lowered corporate taxes than not (47% vs 39%). And, as usual, the fear of crime drives 81% to want to see the Tories get tough.
Overall, however, the results show clearly that the Tories are WAY to the right of the general population, even in Alberta. In fact, looking at a mid-July survey by the Strategic Counsel Tory support has fallen the most in two regions: Quebec and the West. In the West they have slumped from 49% in 2006 to 40% today – and remember, that’s in the middle of a massive oil boom in Alberta.
If you can’t hold your support in a boom, well, it doesn’t bode well.