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| One of Ethical Oil's provocative ads promoting Canadian petroleum |
Enbridge pipeline cheerleaders full of hypocrisy in criticizing 'foreign intervention.'
Tuesday January 17, 2012
By Bill Tieleman
"Oil they would buy from anyone. From Satan."
- Christopher Buckley, Florence of Arabia, 2004.
"Ethical oil" my gas!
The number of hypocrites promoting the $5.5 billion Enbridge pipeline through northern B.C. that would ship "ethical oil" to China by tankers is astonishing.
First, pumping Alberta tar sands or oil sands oil -- who cares what term we use other than theindustry -- by a pipeline through pristine B.C. wilderness to the port of Kitimat is damaging enough.
Enbridge's pipeline spill record is scary -- 170 spills and leaks in the United States since 2002 byEnbridge-owned companies.
Enbridge says it's got a better than industry average but Transportation Safety Board says Enbridge and TransCanada were involved in three out of four of reported cases in last two years.
South of the border, don't bother jumping in or fishing on the Kalamazoo River in Michigan -- Enbridge spilled more than one million gallons of diluted bitumen there in July 2010, and the clean up continues.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says there is "a ban on surface water activities on the Kalamazoo River as part of the county's state of emergency, including swimming, wading, fishing, boating, canoeing and kayaking... No one should eat fish of any kind from this stretch of the river."
Then Enbridge would ship oil by giant tankers through dangerous B.C. coastal waters, one of the world's most fragile ecosystems -- and it says everything is totally safe. Just watch this video!
Right. Exxon Valdez going aground in 1989, British Petroleum oil rig explosion in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana -- what could go wrong?
China, our ethical customer?
At a time when a huge cruise ship with 4,200 passengers in the calm Mediterranean can run aground and sink with potentially disastrous environmental results, the industry claims oil tankers are safe?
And where is the "ethical oil" going to go? Mostly to prop up the repressive Communist military dictatorship in China.
"Ethical oil" will keep the machinery oiled for a government that throws world-renowned artists like Ai Weiwei and Nobel Prize-winning human rights activist Liu Xiaobo in jail for daring to want every citizen to get a democratic vote and a choice of parties beyond Communist.
So while the Arab Spring overthrows brutal oil dictators like Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia -- we grease the skids for more Chinese repression.
And let's not even discuss how “ethical oil” will help China continue to build a new coal-fired power plants and soon burn half the world's coal, ensuring its world number one greenhouse gas emitter status.
The Tory public relations strategy
How to get the Enbridge pipeline approved when First Nations, environmentalists and concerned British Columbians don't want it?
Use federal Conservative cheerleaders to create an astroturf group called Ethical Oil and blur the issue by claiming Canadian oil is produced honourably while everyone else is bad.
Ethical Oil spokeswoman Kathryn Marshall (who writes for 24 hours on unrelated political issues) admits the organization takes money from Canadian companies.
But she won't reveal if oil firms donate to the group, citing group policy not to identify any donors.
And Marshall strongly denies it's an astroturf group created to push the industry position. She argues it has "a few hundred members" and over 1,600 Facebook page "likes."
Then blame environmental groups for taking millions from U.S. foundations while ignoring the foreign-owned oil companies spending billions in to produce oil sands gunk.
"Stop foreign billionaires from sabotaging Canada's national interest!" shouts Ethical Oil's website Our Decision.
Get pro-Enbridge politicians from Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Energy Minister Joe Oliver to BC Liberal Premier Christy Clark to all publicly denounce "foreign meddling in our decisions" -- as Clark put it on Sunday -- while welcoming multinational oil companies' participation in hearings.
Pipeline backer now aide to BC premier
Next have Clark pick ex-Enbridge lobbyist and former top Harper advisor Ken Boessenkool as her new chief of staff.
But heck, there's no way he'd influence the province's position on the pipeline -- Christy says so!
Boessenkool, Clark says, is "leaving his private sector connections in the past in coming to perform public service here in British Columbia."
"The fact is, advisers advise, premiers decide," Clark also claimed.
Of course, if the "ethical oil" crew and their Conservative government fan club really cared about foreign intervention that is morally and deeply wrong, they would have been the first to demand Canadian company SNC Lavalin stop building prisons for Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi to torture his own people.
But that would mean criticizing SNC Lavalin's $300,000 a year chair Gwyn Morgan, the hard right-winger who is a Christy Clark advisor, was CEO of natural gas giant Encana and who calls Levant his "favourite iconoclast."
Pumped up indignation
Or the ethical oil can gang might have joined forces with those opposed to the massive takeovers of our country's biggest companies by U.S., Chinese, Brazilian and other foreign corporations -- allying themselves with the nationalist Council of Canadians.
But they didn't. They only use the foreign intervention card to help their non-Canadian petrochemical pals push the Enbridge pipeline past those nasty environmentalists.
It's a cynical strategy made worse by their pumped up indignation.
And while Enbridge would admittedly create lots of construction work building the pipeline, once competed how many permanent jobs does B.C. get from all this risk?
About 104 direct jobs shared with Alberta. Until the first spill, that is.
The Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline is a high risk, high reward project -- but the risks are all for British Columbia and the biggest rewards flow to big oil.
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18 comments:
Good column!
I don't know anyone who believes "ethical oil" is ethical. Some people may support the pipeline and tankers because they mistakenly believe it will create jobs.
yes, it will create a few jobs, as your column pointed out but the real jobs will come from clean up of the spills. Of course the spills will destroy many other jobs which were much more helpful to the economy & citizens of B.C.
Voters gave Harper a majority and now we will have to live with the results. Harper will push the pipeline through unless he thinks there will be an open revolt.
There really isn't much democracy at work here. The only differance is we voted who would be the dictator. We can just wait until enviornmental activitists start having "government agents" calling at their doors.
I just wonder what Harper has been promised to let this, enviornmental disaster waiting to happen, be built. Oh, ya, when he retires we can expect to see him on the Board of Directors of some large oil company. The guy hasn't had a "real" job in the "real" world.
What really baffles me is why China has any interest at all in our natural gas or Alberta's tar when they share a border with Afghanistan which has a proven 236 trillion cbic feet of natural gas reserves and an estimated 270 billion barrels of oil.
Many nations have fought to establish a reasonably stable government there so they could develop and supply their natural resources.
Surely it makes more sense for China to pipe Afghanny crude to their refiners than go over mountains and across oceans for their needs.
yes, it will create a few jobs, as your column pointed out but the real jobs will come from clean up of the spills. Of course the spills will destroy many other jobs which were much more helpful to the economy & citizens of B.C.
Voters gave Harper a majority and now we will have to live with the results. Harper will push the pipeline through unless he thinks there will be an open revolt.
There really isn't much democracy at work here. The only differance is we voted who would be the dictator
More B.S. The pipeline is not a done deal (it will be at least 6 years away).
What is missing out of this equation is why not build a finishing product refinery in the Peace River area to create more badly needed jobs?
And the part about the dictator is also laughable. Would there be a dictatorship when the NDP wins with Brian Topp as Prime Minister (same position in government, diferent leader and party!!)
Where was e.a.f when the election was ongoing? Too lazy to help the NDP I suppose.
There is no such thing as ethical oil, it's all bad. However, the dirty tar sands oil is the dirtiest energy on the planet.
At the meetings of the nations in Durban, there was a strong indication, they were taking climate change, very, very seriously. Harper was at that meeting, to bully country's to accept, the dirty tar sands oil. He wasn't exactly a hit at that meeting either.
Enbridge also had a 1,500 barrel spill in Wrigley N.W.T. This was when Slave Lake was burning.
The Campbell/Clark BC Liberals, are not protecting BC jobs. The U.S. company that won the tear down of the smelter in Kitimat, brought their own workers.
Same as China sending their people to school to learn English, they will work the coal mines.
Who knows, the seven mines going into Northern BC, if foreign owned, may bring their own miners.
Enbridge has their own crew. When the pipeline is done, so are the jobs. The pumping station to load the tankers...somewhere I read, takes 15 people.
Harper and Campbell have thieved enough from this province and the people.
Campbell sold our rivers, a total eco mess destroyed salmon runs. Campbell's election lie, the BCR wasn't for sale. BC people lost that heritage too. The filthy diseased fish farms, are still killing off our wild salmon, another heritage of the BC people, that we are losing.
We have another fight coming up. They want to log our Rain Forest.
It is imperative, we fight the dirty tar tankers, the Chinese freighters will use that same channel, to pick up our raw logs.
Depending, what country's Harper can con into taking the dirty oil? We could have hoards of tankers, coming into that same channel.
I even think, Obama has delayed the Keystone pipeline. If Harper forces the Enbridge and the dirty tankers. Would it not be easier for Obama to send their tankers through the channel too? He could avoid the battle over the Keystone pipeline. It's just my own thought and not read anywhere else.
Read this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/matt-price/ethical-oil-pipeline_b_1209149.html?ref=canada
Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwKXfc_a4Ag&feature=related&mid=57
Look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se5azrCfzlk
Nothing more to say.
Cherylb
When is Suzuki going to formally end his support of the BC Liberals?
What will it take????
The panic will be on as the indications are that the Keystone line won't be fast tracked by Obama. The decision is supposed to come down today
"When is Suzuki going to formally end his support of the BC Liberals?
What will it take????"
Who cares? Just as long as he does not present a picture of himself in his birthday suit to the public again, ever. The one and only one he did that ended up in the public media burned many eyes.
Off Topic
Nominations accepted for 2012 OBC honour.
The deadline for receiving nominations for consideration is March 10, 2012.
http://www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2012/01/nominations-accepted-for-2012-obc-honour.html
Off Topic
Nominations accepted for 2012 OBC honour.
The deadline for receiving nominations for consideration is March 10, 2012.
So what's the purpose of placing this subject into a blog that is obviously left wing? Oh right yeh, le'ts nominate Patti Baccus, or David Eby, right?
While we're at it, why not poor Jagrup Brar? He needs a hand up, not a hand out.
It is only a matter of time before Clark abandones her neutral position on Embridge Gateway pipeline to appeal to BC Conservatives.
"It is only a matter of time before Clark abandones her neutral position on Embridge Gateway pipeline to appeal to BC Conservatives."
The BC Tories aren't as big of a deal yet. We'll see if they win a by-election.
it's only a matter of time before the NDP sells out once it realizes that it can't do everything that Tieleman bloggers want.
The truth burns Ethical Oil.
"Comments Off" at EthicalOil.org as fact finders peel back the odious onion of obfuscation.
Thank you so much so writing this article. We need to move on non petroleum alternatives. How can these people ignore the polution this will case when there is a leak.
Saturday, 21 January, 2012 4:55:00 PM PST
Anonymous said... We need to move on non petroleum alternatives.
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Good idea,why don't you lead the way...
"Good idea,why don't you lead the way..."
Agree. And those adamantly for non petroleum resources can persuade Bill here not to use his car, not to use anything made out of plastics (including his PC, keyboard, mouse etc.), and while they are at it, they can market an idea that would make it easy to move around BC in cold rain without riding a bicycle.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/79228736/Whistleblower-s-Open-Letter-to-Canadians
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Questions+Canadians+should+asking+about+China/6053091/story.html
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