Alberta’s tar sands

I head back to Alberta from Texas to begin a family trek through Chicago and San Francisco the next two weeks. I am finishing a weeklong collegial reflections with members of the Realistic Living Institute in Bonham, Texas, and the sense of social responsibility relative to the planetary environment echoed by SA Desmond Tutu’s comments after a tour of the tar sands at Fort McMurray in Alberta while I transited in Calgary at the end of last month.

Earlier, Tutu’s judgment on Alberta’s tar sands had not been complimentary. “The fact that this filth is being created now, when the link between carbon emissions and global warming is so obvious, reflects negligence and greed,” Tutu told attendees at a conference on tar sands development and treaty rights in Fort McMurray. “Oil sands development not only devastates our shared climate, it is also stripping away the rights of First Nations and affected communities to protect their children, land and water from being poisoned.” The archbishop signed a petition against the Keystone XL pipeline project and expressed in an opinion column that the effort is “appalling.”

Davis Sheremata for TransCanada Corp. that wants to build the Keystone pipeline emailed that fossil fuels have a positive impact. “Oil powered the jet that flew Mr. Tutu to Canada from Africa, produced the fuel for the helicopter tour he had planned of the oil sands, and helped manufacture the microphones and TV cameras for his press conference,” he wrote. Evidently, the effort to persuade the archbishop didn’t work. Sheremata’s opinion was also ingenious, alluding to hypocrisy if not ingratitude, in my reading, on Tutu’s part. Tutu stuck to his earlier proposal that humanity act together to end a threat that already affects the planet and creatures in it.

Nothing is starker than reasoning that an activity is justified because it profits from a need, is a boon to local employment, and has “negligible” adverse impact on the environment, compared to other factors. In fact, a native group whose lives is affected by the project is very supportive of the endeavor for the amount of revenue and support it receives from the investing company. 

One can Google the merits of the arguments for and against the mining of tar sands and the construction of a pipeline to transport it from the pits to the refineries thousands of miles to the Gulf of Mexico. Our reflection is on the ability of those who wield moral influence like Desmond Tutu to stick to their prophetic voices, particularly in light of attempts by marketing corporates to provide band-aid countermeasures to mitigate harm from their activities.

An elderly colleague from Houston spends his waning year putting his body into the barbwires of history, particularly the planned construction of the tar sands pipeline, Keystone XL. Formerly a corporate vice president of an oil company, he has since questioned the necessity of fossil fuel as energy source for power given the available alternatives that are less detrimental to planetary processes.

Those I have met in Calgary were no less supportive of the pipeline construction since tar sands mining in McMurray would be an asset to the provincial coffers and a boon to local employment. Besides, they are clear that the issue is not whether tar sands mining will continue since it will, nor is it a question transporting it elsewhere since the demand is there. If the pipeline is not going be built, it simply means that the tar sands will be transported by some other means.

The pipeline itself is really not a major point of protest as it is the safest way to transport the tar sands if it were to reach U.S. refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. The objection to tar sands and the pipeline comes to those who will simply just tell the truth, the prophetic truth, about the way life is, as not simply needing a “repair” of existing systems of dysfunctionality like our energy power sources of polluting hydrocarbons, but a radical dismantling of the whole system of oil-dependence, knowing that alternative technologies are not only in place but are more than affordable. The issue is being trapped in a dependence on habit, albeit marketed efficiently by existing corporate powers and the willingness to think and act realistically beyond the box.

Can the emerging industry of unneeded tar sands be stopped on its tracks? Can we afford a moratorium on all new coal-fired power plants? (China dots its Nei Menggu, Inner Mongolia, with strategically located coal plants fed from 24/7 coal trucks from fossil fuel rich Shaanxi.) Can we drum up the cause of available and affordable alternative energy sources?

The role of prophets in history comes with the lucidity that the audience will not listen. The prophetic truth is clear: Burning fossil fuel is a “crime” of massive destruction against the planet and all its life forms, including humanity!

Tutu and his ilk of clerical collars are fading. We need authentic voices from the ordinary secular crowd to begin telling the truth. Would we dare? Do we care?