Opinion: Climate change, pipelines and Alberta floods
BY DAVID TINDALL, SPECIAL TO THE SUNJULY 1, 2013 http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Opinion+Climate+change+pipelines+Alberta+floods/8602186/story.html The recent flood in southern Alberta is consistent with predictions that climate change is causing extreme weather events, UBC professor writes. Photograph by: JORDAN VERLAGE, THE CANADIAN PRESSMost Canadians sympathize with those affected by the Alberta floods, and many have offered support of various kinds. At the same time, a number of commentators have pointed out the connection between the oilsands projects in Alberta, and the sad irony of the flooding relatively nearby. It has been asserted that intense floods of this nature are consistent with predictions about climate change, and that the oilsands are a significant contributor to global warming. While a single event cannot be used to provide evidence for or against climate change, scientific models predict that global warming will lead to more intense flooding in some places (as is currently happening in Alberta), more intense droughts in others (like in the south of the U.S. for example), more intense hurricanes (such as exemplified by Hurricane Sandy last fall on the Atlantic coast), melting of the polar ice caps (as is happening in the Canadian Arctic) and a variety of other negative outcomes (possibly including contributing to the severity of tornadoes, such as in Oklahoma recently). Using empirical patterns and trends, these models predict that such events will become more frequent (in some cases) and/or more intense over time as global average temperatures continue to rise. Events like the Alberta floods are consistent with such patterns. Incidentally, nine of the hottest 10 years on record (since systematic record keeping began in 1880) have occurred since the year 2000. Whether the Alberta flooding is due to climate change is subject to reasonable debate. However, the oilsands project is a significant contributor to carbon emissions and global warming. Carbon emissions know no border. Carbon emissions from Alberta and other parts of Canada contribute to global warming and climate change planetwide. Indeed, the oilsands have a bigger negative impact per unit than conventional sources of petroleum. Further, both Alberta's and Canada's contributions to greenhouse gas emissions are disproportionate to their respective populations. It is most likely the case that as a society we will have to continue to use significant amounts of oil until a variety of changes are made in terms of behaviour, energy sources, technology, and related infrastructure. It is useful to consider these issues in terms of B.C. and pipeline politics. In the past year, there has been much commentary and protest over proposed oil pipelines in British Columbia (as well as the United States). However, most of the talk - on both sides - has focused on pollution from oil spills rather than on the contributions that such pipelines will make to fuelling climate change. Most of the spokespersons for the oil and gas industry have tried to focus the environmental aspects of the pipelines on the possibility of oil spills on land, and on water, and they argue that the risks from these things are negligible. And opponents of the pipelines have also framed the debate mainly in terms of oil spills. Presumably, this is because of the abstractness of climate change compared with the vivid and easy to understand images we have seen in the past of oil spill events like the Exxon Valdez disaster, and the more recent Gulf oil spill. However, the Alberta flooding provides a concrete opportunity to discuss the connections between the oilsands projects, oil pipelines, and climate change. (Aboriginal rights and title and pipelines are another set of issues, but are beyond the scope of this commentary.) A major problem with new oil pipelines and/or pipeline expansions across British Columbia is that they will facilitate the increase of carbon emissions, which will continue to fuel global warming. This is bad enough in the short term. But perhaps even more important is that once enormous amounts of money are invested in these pipeline projects, this will constitute a path of dependency, which will discourage policies and investments in cleaner energy. The creation of these infrastructures, and the necessary financial and political commitments to them, will result in disastrous contributions to climate change for many decades to come. And to the extent that carbon emissions continue to rise on a global scale, floods like the ones in Alberta will become that much more common and severe. To the extent that policy is about what we should do as a society, then policy about matters that have consequence for climate change is a moral issue. Given the geo-politics of Canada, this is a difficult moral issue to resolve as on the surface it seems to pit the economic interests of one geographical region, against the environmental and economic interests of all Canadians. This cleavage is further compounded by the fact that the current federal government has its financial and political base in the region with specific economic interests in furthering the oilsands. In talking about climate change, Al Gore has quoted Upton Sinclair's statement: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon his not understanding it." In announcing new measures to address climate change this week, U.S. president Barack Obama drew a link between the Keystone XL pipeline and carbon pollution. In Canada, our political structure when coupled with a majority government makes federally initiated policy action on such topics much easier than in the United States, where legislative processes are frequently subject to gridlock in the Congress. In the past both Liberal and Conservative federal governments in Canada have indicated that they were waiting for the U.S. to take action before they did. Now is the time to act. David Tindall is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. His new book (co-edited with Ronald Trosper and Pamela Perreault) is entitled, Aboriginal Peoples and Forest Lands in Canada, published in 2013 by UBC Press. 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