Tag Archives: Alberta Canada

Canada, Climate Change, First Nation treaty rights, Fossil fuel divestment, Fossil fuels, Public Health, Tar sands crude

Scientists call for end to tar sands mining

Repost from The Guardian
[Editor: This story is also covered (with great photos) in the National Observer, “Over 100 scientists call for oil sands moratorium.”  – RS]

North American scientists call for end to tar sands mining

More than 100 US and Canadian scientists publish letter saying tar sands crude should be relegated to fuel of last resort, because it causes so much pollution
By Suzanne Goldenberg, 10 June 2015 13.14 EDT 
The Syncrude tar sand site near to Fort McMurray in Northern Alberta, Canada
The Syncrude tar sand site near to Fort McMurray in Northern Alberta, Canada | Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

More than 100 leading US and Canadian scientists called for a halt on future mining of the tar sands, saying extraction of the carbon-heavy fuel was incompatible with fighting climate change.

In a letter published on Wednesday, the researchers said tar sands crude should be relegated to a fuel of last resort, because it causes so much more carbon pollution than conventional oil.

The letter, released two days after G7 countries committed to get off fossil fuels by the end of the century, added to growing international pressure on the Canadian government, which has championed the tar sands and is failing to meet its earlier climate goals.

“If Canada wants to participate constructively in the global effort to stop climate change, we should first stop expanding the oil sands. More growth simply shows Canada has gone rogue,” Thomas Homer-Dixon, professor of governance innovation at the University of Waterloo, said in a statement.

The researchers included a Nobel prize winner, five holders of Canada’s highest national honour, and 34 researchers honoured by Canadian and US scientific societies.

The researchers said it was the first time that scientists had come out as professionals in opposition to the tar sands. The letter offered 10 reasons for the moratorium call, ranging from extraction’s impact on local First Nations communities to destruction of boreal forests and climate change, and argued that foregoing tar sands production would not hurt the economy.

They said they hoped to present those findings to Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, who has lobbied hard in Washington and European capitals for the tar sands.

“We offer a unified voice calling for a moratorium on new oil sands projects,” the scientists said in the letter.

“No new oil sands or related infrastructure projects should proceed unless consistent with an implemented plan to rapidly reduce carbon pollution, safeguard biodiversity, protect human health, and respect treaty rights.”

They said the decisions made by Canada and the US would set an important example for the international community, when it comes to fighting climate change. “The choices we make about the oil sands will reverberate globally, as other countries decide whether or how to develop their own large unconventional oil deposits,” the scientists said.

Since 2000, Canada has doubled tar sands production, and Harper has lobbied Barack Obama to approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would open up new routes to market for Alberta oil.

The crash of oil prices will likely put some future projects on hold, but are unlikely to affect current production, analysts said.

The organisers of the letter said all future projects should be shelved unless Canada put in place safeguards to protect local people and environment and prevent climate change.

“The oil sands should be one of the first fuels we decide not to develop because of its carbon intensity,” said Thomas Sisk, professor of environmental science at Northern Arizona University, and one of the organisers of the letter.

“It is among the highest emitting fuels in terms of greenhouse gas emissions … If we are trying to address the climate crisis this high carbon intensive fuel should be among the first we forego as we move to an economy based around cleaner fuels.”

Researchers including Sisk first outlined reasons for opposition to the tar sands in Nature last year.

Wednesday’s intervention deepens an emerging political and economic distinction around coal and tar sands among climate campaigners.

As a fossil fuel divestment movement moves from college campuses to financial institutions, a number of prominent supporters, such as Rockefeller Brothers Fund, moved swiftly to ditch coal and tar sands holdings, but plan more gradual moves away from oil and gas.

Scientists agree that two-thirds of known fossil fuel reserves will need to stay in the ground to avoid warming above 2C, the internationally agreed threshold on catastrophic climate change.

The Guardian supports the fossil fuel divestment campaign, and has called on two of the world’s largest health charities, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, to rid its holdings of coal, oil, and gas.

Canadian regulation, Greenhouse gas emissions, Tar sands crude

Canada aims for 30 per cent emissions cuts; unlikely with continued tar sands exploitation

Repost from Business Green

Canada aims for 30 per cent emissions cuts

Environmentalists say Harper administration has little chance of meeting the 2030 goal while tar sands expansion continues
By Will Nichols, 19 May 2015
Tar sands in Canada
Tar sands in Canada

Canada has pledged to tackle its rising carbon emissions, but environmentalists have claimed the goal is unattainable while the country continues to exploit its tar sands oil reserves.

Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced late last week Canada would aim to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, as part of the country’s contribution to a global carbon reduction deal that is set to be signed at the UN climate conference in Paris later this year.

The commitment falls short of the US pledge to cut emissions up to 28 per cent against 2005 levels by 2025 and the EU goal of 40 per cent emissions reductions below 1990 levels by 2030.

However, the country’s government insisted the pledge was “in line” with other major industrialised countries.

“This target is fair and ambitious, an ambitious commitment based on our national circumstances, which includes a growing population, a diversified growing economy and Canada’s position as a world leader in clean electricity generation,” Aglukkaq said.

“Achieving this ambitious goal will require actions from all levels of government and we will continue to work together, cooperatively with the provinces and the territories’ goals.”

Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen steadily since 2009, when it joined the US in pledging 17 per cent reductions by 2020, mainly due to growth in tar sands oil production in the province of Alberta. Currently, Canada is only expected to get halfway to the 17 per cent goal, with Alberta alone expected to account for 40 per cent of the country’s carbon pollution by the end of the decade.

Environmentalists said that without scaling back its long-standing plans to expand tar sands production it is difficult to see how Canada will meet the new emissions goal, even given that provinces such as Ontario have announced targets far in excess of the Federal goal.

“The Harper government has not only ignored its existing reduction target, but the pro-tar sands policies it has adopted are taking us in the opposite direction,” said Keith Stewart, climate campaigner for Greenpeace Canada. “Until today’s announcement is backed by a commitment to enacting policies that can actually achieve this new target, it isn’t worth the paper it is written on.”

Canada follows the US, EU, Russia, Mexico, Switzerland, Norway, Gabon, Liechtenstein, and Andorra in officially submitting its climate action plan, or Intended National Determined Contributions in the UN parlance, to the body’s climate change secretariat in readiness for December’s Paris Summit.

Public Health, Tar sands crude, Water quality

Whistleblowing Alberta oil sands doctor fired abruptly

Repost from the National Observer, Vancouver BC

Whistleblowing Alberta oil sands doctor fired abruptly

By Warren Bell in Opinion | May 11th 2015
Photo by Andrew S. Wright of Dr. John O’Connor in Ft. McKay medical centre

My friend and colleague Dr. John O’Connor has just been fired, without cause, and without advance notice.

After 15 years of committed service, his termination came on May 8 without the slightest warning.

“Please be advised that Nunee Health Board Society no longer requires your professional services to provide any patient consultation or on-call services to the staff at the Fort Chipewyan Health Center.”

And just in case that wasn’t hard-edged enough:

“In addition, you have no authority to speak to or represent the Nunee Health Board Society in any way to any other individual, party or entity (sic)”

So hastily was this letter of dismissal sent to Dr. John O’Connor, on-call family physician for the 1200 citizens of the remote community of Fort Chipewyan, that there was no date on the top of the letter, and not even a period at the end of one of the sentences.

Even more peculiar – and suggestive of behind-the-scene machinations – the letter carelessly contained a request that he submit invoices by April 30 for services not already compensated.

The letter, from Roxanne Marcel, chairperson of the Nunee Health Board Society, came as an attachment to one-line email sent to him last Friday by Caroline Adam, health director of the same body. O’Connor said neither has responded to his repeated attempts to contact them.

A few hours before he was fired, Dr. O’Connor said he had spoken to two medical colleagues associated with the community, who made no mention of any plans to replace him. Shortly after, he received the notice of termination.

Then he received an email thread indicating that plans to replace him had already been established, prior to his conversation with his two colleagues.

This extraordinary sequence of events has all the hallmarks of a politically motivated drama.

That’s because John O’Connor is no ordinary family physician. Twelve years ago, he diagnosed an unusual number of cancers of the bile duct in the tiny northern hamlet of Fort Chipewyan, located downstream of the oil sands. The condition is familiar to Dr. O’Connor because his own father died from this same illness in 1993.

He also noted higher-than-average rates of other kinds of diseases, as well as persistent reports from local hunters and fishermen of unpleasant changes in the wildlife in the region – such as dead and disappearing muskrat, and fishes with strange deformities. He wondered if these circumstances had to do with the pollution from the oil sands companies.

In 2006, the CBC reporter contacted O’Connor, who said publicly, for the first time, that he felt there was a looming public health issue in the region.

Dr. John O’Connor’s data was challenged by Health Canada and public health officials in Alberta, and he was threatened with loss of his license because he had raised “undue alarm”.

Eventually he was cleared of all charges and complaints, but the process, which took several years to resolve, changed him forever.

Last year he told Desmog Canada that he emerged a “much tougher person.”

Nothing, however, prepared this family physician for what happened a couple of days ago.

“I am at a huge loss to explain this,” he said. “I feel like I’ve lost a family member.”

The timing of his abrupt dismissal is curious. About three weeks ago, renowned physician Dr. Esther Tailfeathers, who had been spending a week every month in Fort Chipewyan for the last three years, suddenly ended her service, without explaining why to the staff at the nursing station where she worked.

In a long article published in the Edmonton Journal on March 29, she had commented that “it is really difficult to keep nurses in the community and it is certainly hard to recruit physicians.

Dr. Tailfeathers was loved and respected in the community. The nurse in charge of the health clinic called her “really amazing”. Her departure was just as mysterious as the abrupt dismissal of Dr. O’Connor.

John O’Connor has been supplying on-call services, 24/7, for 15 years. He has answered calls while traveling in other countries, from holiday locations, and even from the shower, walking nursing and paramedic staff in Fort Chipewyan through challenging medical emergencies whenever they occurred. On a number of occasions over the years, he offered to reduce his fees if the Nunee Health Board Society was having trouble meeting them. In fact, reduced his invoice for August 2014 to February 2015 by 50 per cent at the request of Caroline Adam, the person who sent him the one-line email on May 8.

That a respected First Nation physician would suddenly disappear from the community, and then three weeks later Dr. O’Connor would be abruptly terminated raises important questions as to what is going on behind the scenes.

Whatever the cause of his dismissal, we can all be sure of one thing: Dr. O’Connor, after a decade-long crusade to draw international attention to the health problems of those living downstream of the oil sands, is unlikely disappear quietly.

Aided by his many friends and colleagues, he will undoubtedly discover who is responsible for ushering him out the door, cutting him off from the community he loves, and and continue advocating for the health of that community.

His story will continue to unfold.

Alberta Canada, Canadian regulation, Crude By Rail, Electoral politics, Oil prices, Pipeline transport, Tar sands crude

Alberta election could send tremors through Montana economy

Repost from The Missoulian
[Editor:  Pay attention to Alberta!  Changes there will send ripples all along the rails in the U.S., from the Upper Midwest to the East Coast, West Coast and Gulf Coast.  Congratulations to Rachel Notley and the New Democratic Party!  – RS]

Alberta election could send tremors through Montana economy

By Rob Chaney, May 09, 2015 5:30 pm
Rachel Notley
Alberta New Democratic Party leader Rachel Notley speaks on stage Tuesday night in Edmonton after being elected Alberta’s new premier. The NDP won a majority in the provincial Legislative Assembly by toppling the Progressive Conservative colossus that has dominated the province for more than four decades. Photo: NATHAN DENETTE, Canadian Press

Montana’s political seismograph didn’t rattle much last Tuesday when its neighbor to the north underwent a governmental earthquake.

But that could change in the coming weeks, as the citizens of Alberta absorb the magnitude of their replacement of Canada’s longest-standing political party rulers with a left-wing opposition pledged to look hard at its energy economy.

“The Progressive Conservative Party has been in power two years longer than I’ve been alive,” said University of Montana biology professor Mark Hebblewhite, a 42-year-old Alberta native. “I think this is a real response to the ongoing mismanagement of Alberta’s bounty. One thing that hit the nail on the head was how the province went from being overrun with money to crashing in another bust. People get really tired of it.”

The New Democratic Party took 53 seats in the Alberta Parliament in Tuesday’s election. Another traditional minority group, the Wildrose Party, surprisingly found itself in second place with 21 seats. The Progressive Conservatives held onto just 10 seats.

NDP party leader Rachel Notley was credited for a remarkable political ground game that unseated Progressive Conservative Party leader Jim Prentice – a man widely considered a future leader of all Canada. Prentice resigned from his post on election night and said he was at least temporarily leaving politics.

Alberta’s entire United States border runs along Montana, from the western edge of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park to the 110th Meridian north of Havre. The province and state share the spine of the Rocky Mountains and the beginnings of the great mid-continental prairies.

They also share a relatively recent surge in energy development. Over the past decade while Montana has exploited its Bakken oil and gas fields along the border with North Dakota, Alberta has been opening massive production in tar sands petroleum near Fort McMurray.

Oil from the tar sands has become both a political and social controversy.

New Democratic Party officials have questioned the need for the Keystone XL pipeline that would run south from Alberta, through a corner of Montana and down to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas. The Obama administration has stalled permitting of the international border crossing, while Montana’s bipartisan congressional delegation has supported it.

“If the Keystone XL doesn’t happen, the amount of rail traffic leaving Alberta would be impacted significantly from that decision,” said Bentek Energy senior analyst Jenna Delaney. “Currently, taking the Keystone XL out would increase petroleum unit trains by five a day out of Alberta. And Transport Canada officials say residents in Canada are very concerned with rail traveling through their communities.”

Moving petroleum by rail has become an issue in both Canada and the United States, signposted most recently by last week’s explosion of a group of oil tank cars near Heimdal, North Dakota.

Caryn Miske of the Flathead Basin Commission said the prospect of moving more oil trains along the southern border of Glacier National Park is under close scrutiny.

“We’re already seeing impacts from the amount of oil that’s moving around,” Miske said. “The number of trains and cars carrying oil has increased, and that’s really concerning, considering how many near-misses we’ve had.”

Burlington Northern Santa Fe has a freight line that runs out of Alberta into Montana at Sweet Grass, although there’s not much cross-border oil traffic there yet.

***

Delaney said another factor of the government change could be the NDP’s campaign pledge to revamp the province’s tax structure on energy development.

“They’re looking at increasing income taxes and royalty rates to corporations, which the oil companies aren’t happy about,” Delaney said. “The last time I was in Calgary, the atmosphere was already a little bleak. If taxes are raised on corporations, I don’t know how they might respond. Companies with offices in other places might shift people away from Calgary.”

Much of the province’s energy economy has extremely expensive initial start-up costs. Energy analysts have already been forecasting a drop in Albertan oil production as new projects slip below their break-even points with falling oil prices.

Delaney said that could have an impact on Montana’s economy, as the demand for megaloads of oil field equipment transported across the state stalls.

Longtime conservation activist Stephen Legault said the provincial government’s failure to manage its oil wealth led to great voter frustration.

“We’re drilling 20,000 wells a year in Alberta, and we’re $7 billion in the hole economically,” Legault said. “That’s largely because when oil goes below $75 a barrel, provincial coffers take a massive hit.”

The result has been a government unable to fix damage from the floods that ravaged Calgary in 2013, or even to send land management officials to cross-border conferences in Montana.

While the new government has majority control of Alberta’s Parliament, its influence over the provincial agencies could be a murkier matter. Those departments have had decades of one-party control appointing their directors and staffs.

“If I was south of the border looking north, I wouldn’t expect to see anything dramatic right away,” Legault said. “We’ve had five changes of government since 1905. The bureaucracy is so deeply entrenched after 45 years of one-party rule, it’s going to take years for a new government to put in place the people it wants to create change.”