The story-line is familiar: Big Oil wants to produce, transport and market Alberta’s Oilsands at a pace needed to sustain economic yields and Canadians’ quality of life. Environmentalists want to slow down, contain, restrain, even stop, Oilsands activity to sustain the Earth, the ecology and human habitat. Both economists and environmentalists focus on ‘sustainability’ as [...]
EU oil sands ranking disturbs
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011By: Claudia Cattaneo You’d think that the European Union has enough on its hands dealing with the sovereign debt crisis that it doesn’t have the capacity to fire up a new one. Yet the European Commission did just that when it approved this week a green ranking of fuels that singles out Canada’s oil sands [...]
Oil sands expected to undo carbon cuts
Sunday, August 7th, 2011The development of Canada’s oil sands will single-handedly undo greenhouse gas gains made by weaning the country’s electrical supply off coal, a government study predicts. The Environment Canada forecast of Canada’s carbon output over the next decade casts in stark terms the challenge facing the country as it pursues major energy development at a time [...]
Canadian campaign puts the spin on ‘ethical oil’
Thursday, July 28th, 2011Posted by Leo Hickman You’ve got to hand it to Alykhan Velshi: for such a tender age, he seems to be remarkably well-versed in the dark arts of spin and misdirection. Many people outside of Alberta believe the Canadian state’s tar sands industry to be the most environmental destructive energy extraction industry in the world. But not [...]
Ex-Tory message maven tailors his spin to oil sands
Thursday, July 28th, 2011By: Colin Freeze Alykhan Velshi, a 27-year-old who established himself in Ottawa as a master of messaging and a crucial cog in the Conservative machine, has a new job – he’s out to polish the image of Canada’s oil sands in the minds of freedom-loving people everywhere. “When petroleum reserves were deposited around the world, [...]
Oilsands monitoring needs scientific rigour: panel
Thursday, July 7th, 2011From CBC News Environmental monitoring in the Alberta oilsands is insufficient and needs to have “rigorous scientific design and execution” to be effective, a provincially-appointed expert panel concluded in a report released Tuesday. “Monitoring organizations suffer from inadequate funding, weak scientific direction and a general lack of resources to take on the enormous challenge of [...]
Alberta is the oil sands’ best friend
Monday, May 30th, 2011From: National Post An editorial in last Wednessday’s National Post (“Ottawa isn’t the oil sands’ enemy”) left readers with an inaccurate portrayal of the Alberta government’s role in the oil sands. I also admit to being rather surprised by the editorial board of a small-c conservative newspaper like the Post effectively calling for the federal [...]
Tories left oilsands data out of UN climate report
Monday, May 30th, 2011By: Mike De Souza, Postmedia News The federal government has acknowledged that it deliberately excluded data indicating a 20 per cent increase in annual pollution from Canada’s oilsands industry in 2009 from a recent 567-page report on climate change that it was required to submit to the United Nations. The numbers, uncovered by Postmedia News, [...]
Gas industry on fracking offensive
Saturday, May 28th, 2011Claudia Cattaneo, Financial Post The expanding controversy over natural-gas fracking is beginning to look a lot like the campaign against the oil sands. This time, however, the oil-and-gas sector seems to be learning from its mistakes. It’s mobilizing to address concerns and fill communications gaps before critics go too far in shaping public perceptions and [...]
First Nations women standing guard in Canada
Friday, May 13th, 2011It’s a classic image of speaking truth to power: Aboriginal women from B.C. standing guard, defying corporate suits at Enbridge’s AGM to say ‘no pipeline across our lands’. Denying the wisdom of mothers isn’t easy. When I worked in Nigeria for a Canadian extractive company, it was the mothers in the Niger Delta who (finally) [...]