climate change

This is a guest post by Gerry Caplan, a Canadian academic, public policy analyst, commentator and political activist.

Soon after the 2011 election, with his majority government at last in hand, Prime Minister Harper decided that nothing, but nothing, was more important to Canada's entire future than a pipeline to carry oil from Alberta to the Pacific. This came as a shock to many Canadians, first because it hadn't been raised in the election, second because many believe that to combat global warming we must reduce, not expand, our reliance on fossil fuels.

In some countries, those who disagree with their government's policies are vilified, demonized, accused of being unpatriotic and operating under the influence of malign foreign influences. In Turkey, for example, Prime Minister Erdogan blames anti-government protests on terrorists and extremists supported by "foreign conspirators."

The same is true in Egypt, as Deepak Obhrai, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, informed the House just this week. An Egyptian court had convict 43 non-profit workers of illegally using foreign funds to foment unrest in the country and sentencing them up to five years in jail. This was unacceptable, Mr. Obhrai said.

A black mound of solid waste is piling up in Detroit, making visualizing the environmental impact of the Canadian tar sands boom a little easier for everyone.

The waste, which is carbon-rich petroleum coke, is a direct result of the Albertan tar sands. Ian Austen writes in the New York Times, that the "three-story pile of petroleum coke covering an entire city block on the...side of the Detroit River" is the "long overlooked byproduct of Canada's oil sands boom."

The coke is waste from a refinery down the river, owned by Marathon Petroleum, which started processing exported Canadian oil from the tar sands as recently as November. The plant refines 28,000 barrels of bitumen crude a day from the tar sands. Already, the results are showing. But even this mountain of what is essentially sulphur and carbon-infused industrial refuse is less a concern than another way to make money for some. The petroleum coke is bought and owned by Koch Carbon.

This week, under questioning from opposition MPs, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver confirmed that his department intends to spend up to 16.5 million dollars on advertising in the upcoming year. Further details on how this taxpayer-funded PR campaign for Canada's natural resources will be run were lacking.

Mike De Souza writes for Canada.com, that Oliver "also declined to provide specifics on a training program, worth up to $500,000, for his department's scientists and other officials, 'designed to help them communicate with the public and to do so in a way that is accessible to the public.'"

Speaking to a special committee studying spending estimates in the House of Commons on Tuesday evening, Oliver confirmed that much of the advertising would be focused on promoting the proposed TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline linking Albertan tar sands oil to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Around the world scientists are not sleeping well. They toss and turn knowing humanity is destroying the Earth’s ability to support mankind. The science is crystal clear and all of us 'ought to shaking in our boots' Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme told me last year.

But hardly any of us are shaking in our boots. Why is that?