Tar struck

Were those really beads of sweat glistening on Pete
Mansbridge’s polished pate last Wednesday? The CBC TV anchor had worked
himself into a lather on the eve of a presidential stopover in Ottawa.
“What’s at stake when Barack Obama knocks on Stephen Harper’s door?”
Mansbridge bellowed. “This meeting is unlike any other in recent memory
in Canada and what comes out of it could affect things in both
countries for years to come.” Not to be outdone, Ottawa bureau chief
Keith Boag compared the Obama-Harper tete-a-tete to a romantic
rendezvous. “The most important thing tomorrow is for the leaders to
find the chemistry to develop a strong relationship—something like a
first date.”

After that set-up, the presidential visit seemed anticlimactic. The
highlight came when a smiling Obama waved from behind bullet-proof
glass to well-wishers on Parliament Hill. Things went downhill from
there. After lunching on Arctic char and Plains bison, the two leaders
announced “a new initiative.” Yes, “a clean-energy dialogue” to come up
with what Harper called “clean-energy science and technologies that
will reduce greenhouse gases.” Obama mentioned research to advance
“carbon reduction technologies” and to “support the development of an
electric grid that can help deliver the clean and renewable energy of
the future.” Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but hardly as
earth-shattering as Perspiring Pete promised.

And that’s what I hate about these contrived PR events. Prominent
journalists may fantasize about momentous decisions and romantic
chemistry, but events like this are really about slogans and spin. When
a reporter referred indirectly, for example, to Obama’s pledge to wean
the US off dirty oil such as the 780,000 barrels a day it imports from
western Canadian tar sands, the new president expertly dodged that part
of her question and skated smoothly back to his clean-energy message
track. He began by observing that the US also depends on its own dirty
coal. “And if we can figure out how to capture the carbon, that would
make an enormous difference in how we operate,” he added. “Right now
the technologies are at least not cost-effective. So my expectation is,
is that this clean-energy dialogue will move us in the right
direction.”

Obama’s techno-babble about capturing carbon, cost-effective
technologies and a clean-energy dialogue conjures up no troubling
images of belching tar sands smoke stacks and pillaged forests. Tar
sands oil production emits three times more greenhouse gases than
conventional oil and threatens the destruction of a wilderness the size
of all three Maritime provinces. As Obama himself knows, tar sands
production is driven by an insatiable American thirst for oil.
Journalist Andrew Nikiforuk points out in his recent book on the tar
sands that with only five percent of the world’s population, the US
consumes 25 percent of its oil. And thanks to the tar sands, Canada has
now become its biggest foreign supplier. “Canadian crude now accounts
for nearly one-fifth of all US oil imports,” Nikiforuk writes. “If
development continues unabated, Canada will soon provide the fading US
empire with nearly a third of its oil.”

Stephen Harper, a global warming skeptic, boasts that the tar sands
have helped make Canada an energy superpower. Harper is not about to
interfere with the juggernaut of tar sands development, which he
compares to “the building of the pyramids or China’s Great Wall.” Obama
meanwhile, is stuck between the rock of American oil consumption and
the hard place of environmental catastrophe. To make real change, he
must persuade a fractious Congress, a vociferous right-wing media and a
distracted and confused public that dirty oil is not worth its steep
environmental price. In that daunting endeavour, a clean-energy
dialogue with Stephen Harper will achieve sweet fuck all. Obama needs a
strong push from his allies in the environmental movement. Otherwise
he’s stuck in the middle of a toxic Alberta sludge pond without a
paddle.

Is Alberta the economic engine of Canada or the
beginning of the end of a climate-changed world? Let me know at
brucew@thecoast.ca.

This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2009.