I just tuned-in to a fascinating Twitter conversation between Fort McMurray Mayor Melissa Blake and Alheli Picazo. Ms. Picazo’s question was as follows;
I was wondering if you had given your permission for your likeness (to be) used for the “ethical oil” PR campaign. Especially since your image appears next to a woman about to be murdered who clearly didn’t give her consent.
If you have not seen it, Mayor Blake is featured prominently in one of the posters recently released by Ethical Oil, shown below.
Mayor Blake’s responses (1 and 2) were surprising, at least to me (perhaps she has been on the record on this issue before):
I was never even asked!!! I’m not at all pleased about it. I cringe when I see it, no need to send again 🙁
Alheli Picazo’s follow-up:
How do you feel, in general, about the ‘ethical oil” meme? It’s one thing to be for the oil sands, it’s quite another to create this (in my opinion) false-argument.
I’m very pro oilsands+pro environment and anti exageration on either side. We need to deal in FACTS and real-life pros and cons.
This conversation brings to the forefront another set of issues related to my post last night: how do the groups and people portrayed in the Ethical Oil ad campaign feel about it? I read a blog post earlier this week which may or may not be representative of reaction in the GLBT community with respect to this poster, and now this reaction from Mayor Blake of Fort McMurray, a staunch defender of the oilsands.
It will be interesting to see if either Ezra Levant or Alykhan Velshi respond to Mayor Blake’s concerns, or whether CAPP or any other industry players weigh-in. As Alheli Picazo points out, Mayor Blake is, “one of (Ezra) Levant’s favorite talking points re: ‘ethical oil,'” so it will also be interesting to see how that changes from here on in.
I find the use of GLBT by oil companies appalling. I can’t speak for GLB but I was fired by the Mud logging company Datalog in 2003 when they discovered my previous gender change. They told me I was the best programmer they’d hired but that I wasn’t “fitting in”. The oil companies here are anything but ethical when it comes to the transgendered.
I hear these soundbites about ethical oil with increasing frequency. It’s an interesting public relations campaign, in part, because it affirms that we should factor ethics into our economic and market decisions. I find this surprising. You would never hear most of these guys supporting, for example, fair trade coffee or affirming that the right to associate or form a trade union is a human right.
But if ethical considerations are considerations in market choices, then I guess we need to ask scientists about the seriousness of climate change. Right?
I guess I’m skeptical that the guys behind this campaign are really interested in an ethical analysis: they only want the convenient soundbites that allow them to get their oil to market and the dollars in the bank before alternative energy or government regulation drives the profit out of Alberta oil.
Sherwin,
Glad to have you commenting on here. I agree with your first point – I also expect that if the ethical oil logic were applied to other things we were doing in Canada (Who cares if we don’t do a great job of protecting free speech…look at the big picture…we let women drive in this country! Workplace safety? Well yes, we have some room to improve, but really, we allow gay marriage so it’s not a big deal.), many who support it when it’s saying that the focus on the environmental issues is overblown would see it in a different light.
I think those behind the campaign really do feel (as I often do) that Alberta is unfairly singled out and are genuinely interested in fighting back. I don’t think it’s necessarily the right approach, but this is by no means my area of expertise, so you don’t see me taking a strong position on it.
Cheers,
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the response. I’ve been mulling over this idea that Alberta has been unfairly singled out. It is an interesting idea. Certainly growing up there, I am very much familiar with the strong, cultural, sense of injustice about the treatment of Alberta by Ottawa and Quebec and federal politics in general. But you’re not just saying that Albertans generally feel like they are unfairly singled out.
What we’re talking about is whether Alberta actually is unfairly singled out. More precisely, who in Alberta is being unfairly challenged? And who are they being unfairly challenged by?
Where would you recommend I look in order to follow up on this idea?
Hi Sherwin,
I’d say that the first place to start is the discussion around the Keystone XL pipeline. While, even under the best-case scenario, blocking the pipeline would likely reduce global carbon emissions by about 120Mt/yr (assuming none of that oil is eventually produced, and no other sources of oil are enabled as a result), it has been portrayed as a life or death battle for the climate. You don’t have to look far to see someone pushing the idea that stopping the oil sands would, in an of itself, significantly improve our climate change scenarios. Even under the most optimistic assumptions, that’s not true. Second, I’d point to tailings ponds and water pollution/use. Yes, the tailings ponds are a regulatory and commercial legacy that must be dealt with sooner rather than later, but they are hardly unique to oilsands. Furthermore, if you look at water pollution in Canada, even the scariest stories about potential oil sands pollution pale in comparison to other industrial sites in Canada, or even to agricultural areas. I expect, however, that a survey of Canadians would put the oilsands region at the top of water pollution hotspots in Canada. Finally, I’d look at air pollution. If you look at air quality, Ft. McKay in the middle of the oilsands region has better air quality than Toronto, but people simply don’t realize it. Of course, poor air quality in Toronto affects 10000x as many people as in McKay, but people still look at McMurray and area as a toxic wasteland, while ignoring their own pollution issues.
I think Alberta has approached this problem in exactly the wrong way. Rather than arguing that oilsands are no worse than other sites, I would rather see them challenge the governments in charge of those sites to impose similar regulations to those governing oilsands. So, let’s impose the SGER in Ontario and Quebec, and let’s impose the same water monitoring regime on rivers in industrial areas of Ontario and QC as we do for the Athabasca. Finally, let’s put a price on carbon for everyone, and see which industries are the first to suffer – it won’t be oilsands by a long shot. This is why I don’t care for the ethical oil campaign – it speaks to a logic that I don’t think will resonate with Canadians in the same way other strategies would.
Andrew
Hey Andrew,
I feel a little frustrated by your reply. It strikes me as a not very serious reply about a serious issue. Instead of replying here, to the various soundbites and logical fallacies that you present, I’ll post something on my blog. It’ll probably take me a while since I’m busy with other stuff. But that’s good, in a way, because it’ll help me cool a little and try to think more deeply about what you’re actually trying to get at.
Hi Sherwin,
Sorry you feel it’s not a serious reply, and I look forward to reading your post to hear more about what you take issue with. Please don’t read my responses as saying “what we do is okay because others do it too.” I have never and will never say that. Read them as saying, “everybody, including Alberta, should be held to a higher standard.” Not sure how much of my work you have read – while I will certainly argue against over-leveraged attacks on the oilsands, it has never been my opinion that we should be treated any differently from other industries or areas in Canada. There is, however, no doubt that the definition of “equal treatment” is subjective. I hope you’ll weigh in on that.
Andrew
Andrew I think you are being a little naive about the people behind the “ethical” oil meme. You wrote “I think those behind the campaign really do feel (as I often do) that Alberta is unfairly singled out and are genuinely interested in fighting back.”
I would say they are sleazy dishonest shills who are trying to tell plausible lies about the bitumenous sands. For instance, Velshi’s blog looks much like astroturf claiming to be grassroots, with a careful lack of openness about its funding and its supporters. Deep Climate’s new post is essential reading:
http://deepclimate.org/2011/09/01/the-institute/
They are trying to present “ethical oil” vs “blood oil”/”conflict oil” as an equivalent to non-conflict diamonds vs blood diamonds.
I believe Velshi uses some of those words in his debate with Daryl Hannah:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/08/31/pol-keystone-protests.html
There is nothing honest about the purveyors of this meme, and any politician with an ounce of integrity would not use the phrase “ethical oil”. I don’t think Prentice ever used it, though Harper and Kent both have.
I’m a lifelong Albertan and am ashamed of the oil patch sycophancy shown by some Albertans.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Holly. I don’t think I’m naive (but I guess one wouldn’t even if one were) as to their motives, nor am I sufficiently naive to believe that they believe every word of their arguments. They are taking a position, much like many do against Alberta, which is extreme and not entirely defensible. In fact, the debate between Velshi and Hannah is a great example of exactly what I am taking about. Sure, many of Velshi’s arguments are internally inconsistent, and do not justify in my mind some of the holes in Alberta’s environmental protection, but Hannah’s arguments are not remotely grounded in fact – see here http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/09/01/daryl-hannah-oil-sands.html. So, while I don’t think they necessarily believe in all of their arguments, I think they believe in the cause – for whatever reason.
Did you actually READ the arguments at that CBC piece?
Number 1 where Gollom starts by saying Hannah calls the tar sands one of the largest ecological disasters, and he concludes that it is not THE largest disaster. She didn’t call it THE largest disaster, but one of them. So he moved the goalposts to pretend she had it completely wrong and you did not notice?
Even the commenters at the CBC did a better critique of Gollom’s arguments.
The claims about downstream cancer are not shown to be groundless, rather that there is not enough evidence to be certain. And the Alberta government does not have evidence because it has failed to try to acquire evidence. You can’t say there is no evidence until you have actually looked for some.
And did you not notice that Gollom admitted some basis in fact for the fifth point about the threats of expropriation? Are you familiar with the claims about bullying by Transcanada here?: http://www.foe.org/dirty-business-transcanada
So there is some basis for what Hannah said, she was not just making stuff up.
And I saw that you tweeted that CBC article, but why didn’t you also ask why Gollom did not critique anything that Velshi said? Velshi and Levant DO just make stuff up. Levant has had to pay up in some libel cases and to crawl and apologize to avoid other libel suits.
You cannot just assume Velshi and Levant are honest partisans; they will tell any old lie and then convince themselves that their lies are true. They are like the rightwing bloggers who freep polls then claim that the same polls they cheated on prove their point. No intellectual integrity at all.
Yes, I read the CBC piece and also watched the interview. RTs are not endorsements, nor do I feel like I need to critique everything I RT. That piece was notable because (correct me if I am wrong) I have not often seen a piece like that fact-checking an interview from them. Did you read the Royal Society Report? If not, you should. Further, if you read my piece again, or my response to your quote, I never implied that everything Velshi says makes sense, and since you follow me on Twitter, you will also know that I often quarrel with his statements including some of the ones he made during yesterday’s interview. I have also discussed the FtChip cancer evidence off and on, and I agree with your point – saying there’s no evidence does not imply there is no problem. What the Royal Society Report said was that downstream toxins were not consistent with levels expected to cause cancer, and that there was no evidence of pathways to lead to sufficient exposure to explain the claimed effects. They called for further research, which should have been done long ago. Depending on your background in statistics, you will appreciate the problems of assessing rates of rare cancers in small populations – for example, the rate of cancer in my immediate is 75%, which is far above the population average, but not meaningful in a sample of 4. The problem in FtChip is that the cancers in question are very rare and the population very small and not necessarily otherwise identical to the average population of Canada – identifying higher than average cancer rates and tying them to a specific cause will be challenging even if the effects are there. Finally, not sure why you are reading my statements as saying that all the claims made by Velshi and Levant are honest – I said their goals are to defend Alberta against attacks which are over over-leveraged. I expect that, if you cornered either of them offline, they would freely admit that to be the case, just as most people from Greenpeace would tell you that stopping the tar sands will not actually stop climate change, but that doesn’t change their campaigns. Again, if you read my work, you will see that I spend far too much time de-constructing over-leveraged arguments on both sides of the debate.
Yes, well, I agree that it is important to test the statements made by all sides and to get an accurate picture. I haven’t read a lot of what you have posted yet, but will do so. I am used to reading some blogs debating climate science itself, where I perceive the dishonesty to be mostly on one side; but the more you get into politics, the less objectivity there is anywhere.
You might enjoy this:
http://drdawgsblawg.ca/2011/09/the-difference-between-conservative-and-progressive-thought.shtml
I think it’s fair to say that the preponderance of inaccurate information in the climate “debate” comes from those who deny AGW or from those who believe that anthropogenic influence is small and insignificant. On the issue of oilsands, I think both sides of the debate (and in this case, I think it is a real debate) have some who use arguments leveraged by orders of magnitude.
Cheers,
Andrew
Well, it’s nice to find your blog!
I’m just a regular citizen who’s worked in Ft Chip and various oil sands projects. I’ve also worked closely with both Dr O’Conner and Ezra Levant on different projects.
Since I’m a ‘denier’ of global warming, I’m the problem … Do I have that correct?
Every day lately I see more and more info that global warming is a hoax, one that will destroy the West economically and allow the real polluters, (the ones you don’t have the guts to go after, like the Saudi’s) to continue to rape their land while laughing at people like you who try to destroy us from within.
You’ve heard all the arguments, I’m sure. You drive a car, live in a house, wear polyblend clothes – all those advantages we get from oil – yet you’d deny us those advantages or make them so expensive that only the rich could afford them.
I think the tide is turning on this issue, more of us are paying attention to what environmentalists want to take away from us, namely our livelihoods and our children’s future. We can’t all be writer’s and enviro-thinkers for a living, some of us have to work.
Don,
Glad to have you reading, but I have to disagree with your take on the climate change issue. Yes, there are more elements in the popular press these days purporting to show “holes” in the science of climate change, but at the same time the scientific literature has become more unanimous. Beyond that, you now see the National Academy of Science (or equivalent) from almost every developed nation on earth weighing in on the problem. See here for a recent example from the US.
I think you confound the scientific issue of whether GHG’s are likely to increase global mean temperatures and whether these increases in terrestrial retained energy have consequences with the two key policy questions – whether and how we should seek to limit GHG emissions globally. Living in Alberta, it’s very easy to see how the two get confounded, since people are asking Alberta to forego trillions of dollars would of wealth to fight a global problem, while allowing emissions from other sources to continue. There are also those who would seek to tie GHG policies to welath transfers and greater equalization of income across and within countries. Regardless of your stance on income inequality, I think it’s a bad strategy for people to link solutions to the two problems, since rather than building a coalition of supporters, you alienate people who don’t care about one of the two (or both).
I’d encourage you to take some time to read the true scientific literature. Look at the NAS pieces for a start. Unfortunately, the tide of public opinion seems to have been pushed in the wrong direction on the science by exactly the type of wrong-headed policy responses you describe.
Andrew
I have to agree with Don here. The scientific literature is NOT becoming more unanimous. That’s like saying that EVERY scientist agreed with the IPCC report. Bullying.
Let’s get real here for a moment. It took the full cooperation of every human who has ever lived in the last 2,000 years acting in concert to bring us to where we are today. How long to swing it back? I’m not saying we shouldn’t do what we can, but don’t expect a miracle.
In the meantime, if you’re not living as the native Americans/Canadians lived, then aren’t you a hypocrite?
Steve,
Thanks for reading. I would never say that EVERY scientist agreed with the IPCC, nor am I trying to bully anyone into anything. My point to Don, and to you, will be two-fold. 1) Go and read the literature for yourself and make up your own mind. I’d suggest that you start with National Academies of Sciences in major economies such as the US or the EU, but go ahead and choose your own sources. What you will find is that there is generally much more agreement around the basic mechanisms than there was 20 years ago, and much more nuance about the things about which we cannot be sure. There is a lot more care taken to point to human induced changes in climate as one forcing agent among many (a nuance which was missed in the early debate) and that the preponderance of scientific literature supports the view that human induced forcing agents are driving most of the observed changes in the climate system to date relative to what would be expected from an un-forced climate system. 2) Don’t mix the science and the policy response. Science tells us about the impacts from emissions, but it tells us nothing about how much, how, or where we should reduce emissions. Anyone who tells you otherwise is using science to bully you into their political view, and I won’t do that. I also don’t expect miracles or pretend it will be easy. I do think, however, in any situation, if 98% of the people considered to be experts in a field tell you that your actions are increasing risks (imagine 98 out of 100 lawyers in your company telling you that you are risking the company if you take action X), you’d better do what you can to mitigate that risk.
I also don’t think the solution is voluntary action. The entire problem exists because voluntary action won’t be taken to protect others from pollution-induced damages. It’s the basic reality of market failure. If I believe we should pay less income tax and more carbon tax, I can’t make that happen by paying more for my gas and sending a smaller check to Revenue Canada. That will not end well.
Andrew
Interesting thread. I’ll point out that Ezra Levant and Mclennan Ross lawyer Tom Ross are the co-owners and co-shareholders of Ethical Oil Institute, otherwise known as “Ethical Oil” as represented on ethicaloil.org.
My beef with the oilsands isn’t the greenhouse gases. That’s an easy one: offset the emissions by paying to shut down coal-fired powerplants elsewhere, or convert them to natural gas. My beef is that nobody knows what the impacts of the oilsands has been or will be. You cite the Royal Society report, but it’s rife with errors in both science and logic. A better report is the federal Oil Sands Advisory Panel’s report, or either of the two scientific reviews of the primary oil sands monitoring activities under CEMA. The latter three reports highlight that the monitoring programs have been so incompetently or intentionally badly designed as to be essentially useless when it comes to determining the impacts of the oilsands, verifying industry predictions made during regulatory hearings as to the minimal or mitigatable nature of any future impacts, or determining the ecological impacts of future growth and activity. Add to that that federal and provincial environment ministry scientists haven’t been permitted to investigate the impacts or play any role in regulatory hearings (industry proposals are reviewed by federal and Alberta people who aren’t sufficiently qualified to identify the sorts of problems highlighted in those three reports), and that Alberta Environment has even stopped appearing at regulatory hearings for oil sands project assessments and approvals. What it all means is that the politicians have decided it’s ‘full steam ahead’ with oil sands development and expansion, have decided to exercise their ministerial discretion not to apply or enforce our provincial and federal environmental laws and regulations. Apparently, they’ve also decided that the best expenditure of government funds is to finance ad campaigns woth tens of millions of dollars and face-to-face political meetings in defence of the oil sands, while cutting operational and research budgets and staff for environmental assessment. The writing’s on the wall on this issue. It’s just that a large number of people refuse to read it.
Great comments. Suggesting that the Royal Society Report is “rife with errors in science and logic,” without substantiation is a little bit of a stretch. I agree with you that there are other reports, including those you mention, which provide additional, complementary information. I think your logic with respect to the “full speed ahead approach” is correct, although I think you have to look a little more broadly at some of the reasons why – some good and some bad. I’d rather see a more staged approach, but that’s as much for rent dissipation reasons as for any other reason.
Andrew
Re: RSC report, for example a common theme throughout the report is that there aren’t significant health effects or that they expect minimal effects based on monitoring that’s been done, despite that they highlight that insufficient and improperly designed monitoring has been done and there hasn’t been any health study performed that has also been properly designed. You can’t have it both ways, and you can’t conclude minimal effects when monitoring and impact assessment programs have been demonstrated to be incapable of detecting significant effects if they exist.
The easiest way to undermine someone’s public statements about lack of environmental risks from major projects, that are often made and couched with an awareness of the extreme political sensitivities involved, is to go through their own scientific publication record to see if they say different things to their scientific colleagues when not in the harsh glare of the public light.
Dr. Steve Hrudey – the Chair of that RSC committee – himself has co-authored studies highlighting significant health risks posed by organic oil sands contaminants found downstream of Ft. McMurray. Yet as Chair of the RSC committee, he concluded there were minimal health risks from oil sands contaminants. Those who wrote the RSC report also chose to ignore or misinterpret the clear studies by independent scientists like Schindler et al, and concluded that the independent studies and the RAMP monitoring program (for example) were designed for different purposes. In the report – and in Steve Hrudey’s interviews and written statements after its release – there was a consistent failure to recognize or address the contradiction inherent to criticizing RAMP for incompetence but then justifying its failure to detect the kinds of results Schindler et al demonstrated by saying it was designed for something else. These are examples of why the RSC report should be taken with a grain of salt in its conclusions about environmental/health risks associated with oil sands development.
Thanks Bill. I hope you will also apply the same standard when reading Dr. Schindler’s papers and his interventions in the media. I have great respect for Dr Schindler’s academic work, but as you say, he may also be guilty of saying, “different things to (his) scientific colleagues when not in the harsh glare of the public light.” For example, if you read Dr. Schindler’s work on malformations in fish, you will notice that all of the data are based on naturally occurring bitumen deposits, not on consequences of the introduction of pollution into the environment from oilsands – whether or not the results translate is not apparent from his research. All summary reports of research should be taken with a grain of salt, but I think the RSC report did a good job of highlighting what we do not have credible evidence to support, but perhaps did not go far enough in suggesting the means to acquire that evidence. I would also have liked them to make less use of the RAMP data.
I was referring to the two PNAS papers on organic and heavy metal contaminants, and am unaware of any papers he’s published on fish contaminant loads in the Athabasca. Do you have the citation?
It must be very clear to anyone who’s done their obligatory google search on EthicalOil, Velshi, Levant, SunMedia, Kathryn Marshall and her lovely husband, Oil-or-Tar Sands, Fort McMurray, Steven Harper, Calgary School …. etc.
We know. Do they ? (…give a shit)
That’s the question. Next time you see one of them ? Kick the Shit Out Of Them, before they disappear. you might not get another Chance ! 😉
p.s: thanks for caring …