The Gloves Are Off: But should they be?

After nearly a month of being verbally abused, social networked harassed, receiving death-threatening emails for my commentary on environmental issues - I've decided the gloves are off. But my question to you is: should they be?

Since showcasing my Tar Sands documentary on MTV News last December, offering some pretty strong commentary in opposition of the project and showcasing the highly sensitive issue of deterioration of the health of the Indigenous downstream, I have become the new public enemy #1 to dozens of folk across Canada. Of course, I knew that there was going to be some backlash, but not to the extremes I have received.

However, for the past while, I have been maintaining a policy of disengagement with my new found enemies. Attempting to just let both sides speak their mind, as the point of the documentary was to stir up a stronger debate amongst young people on this most important environmental issue in Canada. In the documentary, I offered my side, a little heard side in Canada, if you ask me, to the mainstream. Now, it was everyone else's turn to respond back and offer their side, including on a Facebook group I created for that purpose (see: http://bit.ly/5hyrwt). Creating a forum, if you will, for the dialogue to continue post-documentary screening, whether their comments were positive or negative. But finally today I received Twitter hate and I felt that enough was enough.

It was a response to a different environmental dilemma I took issue with, a tweet I had written on the new Canadian government strategies to keep alive the seal hunt by shipping off products to Chinese markets instead of European (background: the EU now bans seal products, making impossible for the industry to thrive). In response to my opposition on Twitter about this issue:

@RadicalOmnivore said:
"Go get a real job & stop pimping your old man's tired hate memos. Canada's sealing is sustainable and ecologically appropriate."

There are obviously several reasons to take offense on this, but probably the thing that gets me the most isn't anything he wrote here. It's what's not written. Looking at his profile, RadicalOmnivore considers himself somewhat of an activist and environmentalist, from what I gather. And so, it’s my very own movement that is attacking me for my first-hand experience in the anti-seal hunt wars and commentary about the continuation of this hunt. And there in lies the problem, a problem I face with this movement, especially with what I witnessed during the Copenhagen climate conference...we're divided. And divided we fall. We'll never win this battle to save the planet, if we're at each other's necks. This movement is currently weak because we are divided, divided on issues, agendas and approaches. I hope for unity, for us to be a stronger movement by joining forces, but I know I need to do a lot more than hope. I need to learn from my enemies, like my enemies of the tar sand and my foes inside the movement, as well as they need to learn from me.

I admit, at first, I attacked back to RadicalOmnivore via twitter (that's where my gloves came off), saying he had only listened to propaganda, and responses of that sort. Later, analyzing the situation, I have taken down my comments and offer this blog instead. I am not looking for us to holds hands across the world and sing "Kumbaya" together, but I am looking for some common ground. Because it's only there will we actually evolve.

So maybe the gloves need to go back on and instead a dialogue needs to begin.

-Emily

The Biggest Canadian Climate Protest (Ottawa)

The largest Canadian demonstration on climate change is taking place this Saturday in Ottawa on Saturday, Oct. 24th. Thousands of climate activists will be joining forces on The Hill to give a strong message for real action on climate change at the Copenhagen climate negotiations in December.

There are three major campaigns converging:

1 - The 350 campaign is doing global demonstrations on Saturday Oct. 24th, demanding Copenhagen change. There is over 4,000 events organized across the planet in 170 countries, Ottawa being one of them.

2 - Power Shift Canada is the largest youth lobbying on climate change in the nation. Over a thousands youth climate activists will be meeting for a conference from Oct. 23rd - 26th and be presenting a flash mob dance on the Saturday. Please see Australia's similar flash mob dance for an example of what is to come, see link (video a bit slow at the beginning, it picks up by the middle).

3 - Climate Day: Fill The Hill is placing a thousands activists on the steps of Parliament. Eco-celebrity, Rob Stewart, of the award-winning film Sharkwater and his new film in production called Rise Again, will be the key-note speaker.

Bus from Toronto to Ottawa:


The bus leaves at 9am in front of Hart House (7 Hart House circle) on
Friday the 23rd. The cost is $50 round trip per person. You can pay in
cash or cheques (made out to "Taking It Global Youth Association") on
friday morning before you board the bus.

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=hart+house+toronto+on&sll=48.341646,-97.207031&sspn=53.542002,158.027344&ie=UTF8&hq=Hart+House&hnear=Hart+House&ll=43.672776,-79.394417&spn=0.026819,0.077162&z=14&iwloc=D


The bus will be parking in the parking lot of City View United Church.
We will go to the conference from there via public transit.

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=city+view+united+church+ottawa+ontario&sll=43.672776,-79.394417&sspn=0.026819,0.077162&ie=UTF8&hq=city+view+united+church&hnear=Ottawa,+ON&ll=45.383984,-75.719147&spn=0.110198,0.308647&z=12&iwloc=A

The bus will leave the conference at 6pm on Sunday, and will return
back at Hart House at around 11pm.

Meet the woman at Ground Zero of the tar-sands fight

[Editor's note: Every month, I profile an environmental activist from Canada or abroad in a series called "Eco-Warriors." These profiles are part of a collection of stories I am working on for a book called The Next Eco-Warriors.]

Imagine being afraid of the air your daughter breathes, watching your family burying their friends from rare cancers connected to toxic leakage, being unable to eat the plants or animals around you because they are sick, and swimming in your local lake has become dangerous to your health. This is not the picture of a future world gone ecologically mad. This is reality right now for Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, a 30-year-old Dene native living downstream from the tar sands of Alberta.

For Eriel and many other First Nations communities living in Fort Chipewyan, ground zero of the tar-sands fallout, this eco-nightmare is everyday life. But Eriel, coming from a long line of activists, is, as she says, “standing up to the madness.” Deranger is the Tar Sands Campaigner for the Rainforest Action Network.

Uncomfortable calling herself an eco-activist, much less an “eco-warrior,” Deranger considers her work with RAN more to be defending indigenous rights. She argues that what is happening with the tar sands is just a continuation in North America of the same old genocidal tactics: trampling on the basic needs of First Nations people in the name of economic prosperity. But whose prosperity is it? In the past, it was colonialists appropriating land and resources. Today, it is the air, water, food and livelihoods of Canada’s aboriginal communities that are being poisoned because of governments’ and corporations’ get-rich-quick scheme in dirty oil.

“Whether it be environmental activism, Indigenous rights activism or any kind of activism — it all comes down to fighting for our survival,” says Deranger.

And survival is what is at stake, she says. Because what has been touted as the world’s largest energy project is also the world’s most destructive engineering project. Andrew Nikiforuk, the crusading journalist who has been exhaustively chronicling the destructive effects of this project writes in his book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent:

A business-as-usual case for the tar sands will change Canada forever. It will enrich a few powerful companies, hollow out the economy, destroy the world’s third-largest watershed, industrialize nearly one-quarter of Alberta’s landscape, consume the last of the nation’s natural gas supplies, and erode Canadian sovereignty.

Not to mention carve into the boreal forest (a larger carbon sink than the Amazon rainforest); inject toxins into the Athabasca River through tailing-pond leakage (the same chemicals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH, that are associated with the rare cancers found in First Nations communities); make Canada one of the only countries to use nuclear power to increase fossil fuel development; and blacken the sky with increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

“We need a moratorium on new tar sands development. We can’t continue to expand. It’s absurd and idiotic to push forward,” says Deranger.

Deranger is willing to achieve that moratorium with any and all kinds of non-violent means that she can. From demonstrations, rallies, days of action, and her most recent protest: scaling to the top of a Canadian flagpole at the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC) Toronto headquarters , dropping a banner reading “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com.” This appeal, by RAN and the Ruckus Society, was directed at Janet Nixon, wife of RBC CEO Gordon Nixon, asking her to lend her strong and influential voice with her husband to pull the bank’s massive investments in Alberta tar sands projects.

For Deranger, information is power and it is her hope that more Canadians, including influential Canadians like Nixon, will get the message through acts such as these.

“All of the little things slowly add up and it is my hope that more eyes will open and more people will stand up for what is right,” says Deranger.

All of us, as Canadians, have our hands in dirty oil development, whether we realize it or not. When we pump up for gas at Shell, we are funneling money to the largest stakeholder in the oil sands.By doing our banking at RBC, our money is being invested into the largest banker of the oil sands. Not to mention how much of our taxes are being diverted into our governments’ support for the tar sands.

Eco Chamber #14: Science Fiction and Fact collide in Alberta’s tar sands

It’s scary sometimes how science fiction can parallel with reality. The Tar Sands dilemma has come to do just that. As we seek to find a solution to our intensive emissions, here in Canada we are putting all our eggs in one basket, with carbon capture and storage, in a scheme that resembles the story of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series more than a realistic plan for the future.

The book trilogy by Asimov closely resembles that of our climate peril. In both, humans are aware that a catastrophic event is near, and attempt to plan for it (In our case, the catastrophe is the global meltdown that the tar sands heavily contribute to). In the Foundation books, they store knowledge for a new civilization to build upon. Down here on earth, we are instead attempting to store problematic CO₂ deep inside the earth where it will (supposedly) remain. In both scenarios, we don’t know if disaster is ultimately averted or not. The problem is, one is a work of fiction, and the other is a real question of urgent public policy.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been proposed as a catchall solution to runaway climate change by the Canadian government. The problem is, we simply don’t know if it actually is a solution, and there are too many risks involved to treat it as the silver bullet that will save us.

The idea behind CCS is that through integrated technology, carbon dioxide can be captured directly from industrial sources — including coal plants and the oil sands — treated, liquefied, and pumped deep into the earth where it will do no harm. Something that would have seemed like science fiction 20 or 30 years ago is now seriously being considered by Canada’s political leadership.

The federal government and the government of Alberta are together pouring $3 billion collectively into this project. By 2015, the province hopes to have five or six CCS project on the run, pulling 10 million tonnes of CO₂ a year from our air.

But CCS technology is in its infancy and it could be 10 or even 20 years away from being commercialized and affordable on a large enough scale to deal with the carbon emissions of the tar sands, according to The Hill Times. Meanwhile, we are continuing and expanding emissions. And there are environmental regulations and long-term liabilities that have not even begun to be established.

The science fiction scenarios contiue, in which we’re threatened by a human-made carbon tsunami. Leakage or bursts of compressed stored carbon would be deadly, suffocating every living thing in its radius. This kind of carbon disaster has already occurred in Lake Nyos, Cameroon. In August of 1986, carbon at the bottom of the lake surfaced roaring in invisible form in a 19 kilometre death zone, killing 1,700 people, 3,000 cattle, countless birds, and insects — essentially, everything in sight.

True, carbon nightmares like these are rare. Carbon can store for millions of years underground safely in the right geological chemistry, as found in a study in Nature. Even the Pembina Institute, a tar-sands watch dog, says the chances of leakage is slim. As well, Alberta is prime land for carbon storage as the province has stored oil and gas underground for millions of years already.

“(But) you can never factor out human error, pipelines and earthquakes. So why would we take that risk when we don’t have to?,” said Emily Rochon from Greenpeace in an interview with the Canadian Press.

Disingenuous politicians are claiming CCS technology could be a panacea, with all its many uncertainties, but call renewable energies like wind and solar the “risky” ones. Sure, solar, wind and biomass are not the stuff of utopian dreams either, as Jeremy Nelson pointed out recently in This. But shouldn’t reducing GHG and promoting energy efficiently be our ultimate goal — not aiding further climate crimes?

Sure, it’s not all bad. CCS can assist positively in our tar sands and climate perils. As according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, CCS could contribute 15 to 55 percent of the world’s total GHG reductions between now and 2100 if successful. In Canada, we could potentially reduce 40 percent of our emissions by 2050. This is good news. But it will still not be enough to bring Alberta’s emissions down, which at present are 58 million tonnes a year and are only expected to increase with oil sands expansion. Let’s face it: CCS is being wielded as a distraction in order to support the status quo today.

Therefore, putting all our eggs in one basket to stave off “thermageddon” is a science-fiction writer’s fantasy – not a realistic plan. At best, CSS is one of many transitional solutions to creating our green economy. It is not our one and only shining star.

[Next week: meet one activist who is fighting tar sands development, plus why a moratorium is crucial.]

Canada failing the Climate Battle

There is a sense of progress in the air. For the first time in over a decade, G8 countries and developing nations, including China and India, have agreed to reduce their emissions in absolute numbers. But as this global parade marches on, Canada is being left behind as our emissions continue to climb.

The G8 Summit, lead by President Obama, last week finished talks in Italy with industrialized nations and emerging economies agreeing to an 80 per cent emissions cut by 2050, as well as a 2° C threshold. There is still much work to be done, including establishing the essential base year for reductions, the debate ranging from 1990 to 2006 levels. However, for the first time there is American leadership on our climate peril that is driving change not only domestically, but internationally.

“I know in the past, the United States has sometimes fallen short of meeting our responsibilities. So, let me clear: those days are over,” said Obama last week in L’Aquila, Italy.

In the United States, since Obama took office, C02 has been declared officially a danger; $60 billion is being pumped into renewables; and the House recently approved the Waxman-Markey climate bill that will change American fossil fuel reliance, as well as spell out action internationally at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December. Which is not to say there hasn’t been criticism of the Obama administration and the climate bill itself, but these are the first signs of action by a political leader on our global meltdown.

But where does all this political change in climate change leave Canada? According to the WWF’s 2009 Climate Scorecards, dead last.

Canada ranked last out of all the G8 countries for its climate performance. In 2008, the U.S. held this spot. But since Obama took the lead in climate initiatives, Canada is now the one stalling progress.
“Canada’s per capita emissions are among the highest in the world (next to Russia)” states WWF.

We currently emit 24 tonnes of C02 per capita and, despite being one of the first countries to sign the Kyoto Protocol, we are one of the furthest from our Kyoto target. The Kyoto Protocol required a 6 percent emissions decrease by 2012. Since the Accord was established, we have increased emissions by 26 percent. One of our biggest emitters is the Alberta Tar Sands project.

“The Alberta Tar Sands are becoming Canada’s number one global warming machine,” says Tony Clarke, Polaris Institute Director, in his book Tar Sands Showdown.

With Middle East and African oil presenting problems of price fluctuations and political uncertainty, Alberta’s unconventional but secure sources of oil are looking increasingly attractive to global markets. However, production of one barrel of oil from these bitumen deposits produce three times more greenhouse gases (GHGs) than conventional oil. The project pumps out 27 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, or 16% of the total emissions of Canada.

And the government only has plans for expansion. The project is expected to multiply as much as four to five times by the year 2015 to meet growing demand. That’s 108 to 126 megatonnes of GHG poured into the atmosphere annually. That would make the tar sands the single largest industrial contributor of greenhouse gases in North America.

Reducing GHGs by 80 percent, as Canada pledged last week to do, while planning to expand the tar sands project, is simple math that does not add up. We can’t have our cake and eat it too – or in this case, have our bitumen cash crop and claim sustainability. Even if our only emitting producer were the tar sands project and we lived in some eco-utopia otherwise, we are still overextending our GHG emissions with further development of this project.

Singlehandedly, the tar sands sabotage any possibility of Canada fulfilling a Copenhagen climate agreement.

Yet in last Saturday’s Globe & Mail, in an interview with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he said: “A realistic commitment (in the battle against climate change) is consistent with growth in the oil sands.” Frankly, no, it’s not.

[Next week in Part 2 of 3: why carbon-capture and storage is no silver bullet solution for the tar sands]

Eco Chamber #12: Solving our Garbage Footprint

The buzzword around Toronto for the past two weeks has been “garbage.” The garbage that is pilling up around public canisters into miniature CN Towers. The garbage that is filling parks and arenas a quarter full arousing smells and attracting pests to local neighbors. And the garbage Torontonians left behind after the celebratory mess of the Pride Parade and Canada Day.

Its day 12 of a public workers strike in Toronto and already there are signs of our livable-city utopia coming crashing down as garbage stinks up our homes, city and, apparently, attitudes. Some argue the city is keeping its cool. But like all things under smoldering summer heat, it can only keep so long until it ferments. This summer Torontonians will need to face the problem festering in the bins outside our houses: the enormous amount of waste we make.

According to the Toronto Star, Ontario produces 12.4 million tonnes of garbage annually. That is the equivalent weight of more than 80,000 fully loaded Boeing 707 jetliners. Out of that, only 3 million tonnes—just 20 percent—of garbage is diverted into recycled goods despite our aggressive recycling system. Many Ontario landfills will reach full capacity in less than 20 years.

Much of our waste is plastic water bottles, packaging and coffee cups. In Toronto alone, there are 1 million plastic water bottles discarded daily and another 1 million coffee cups, says the Star.

But we can’t blame Starbucks and the Coca-Cola water brand Dasani for this. We are the consumers creating this waste. And while climate change is the umbrella issue of our time, there are other issues that get veiled over. Like the big smelly elephant in the room that nobody likes talking about – our consumption and the waste that follows it.

As individuals, there are many ways to reduce our trash footprint. Adria Vasil promotes several ways to do this in her EcoHolic column, including: composting, going meat-free, package-free, as well as things we commonly don’t think about—such as separating our condoms and “hygiene products.”

GarbageRevolution.com is a film and website that experiments with keeping one’s garbage for an extended period of time to assess our individual garbage output.

There are plenty of additional ways we can redirect our waste into more useful means outside of dumpsites. Treehugger reports that Broward County, Fla., for example is using garbage as a resource in waste-based energy production, creating alternatives for our energy crisis. And Houston’s Waste Management will be converting garbage into fuel and electricity with waste gasification in a joint venture with InEnTec, says Kevin Bulls in Technology Review.

There are plenty of ways of slimming down and transforming our waste streams. But the one thing we can’t do is continue to think of garbage as a simple summer inconvenience with the public workers strike. Otherwise we will literally sink communities and the oceans with our Timmy’s coffee cups. Let’s be bold and face our own stink.

Eco Chamber #11: The Green Consumerism Lie

It seems like everything has “gone green” these days. From retailers to celebrities, airlines to hotels, banks to even runway fashion, the environment is sexy in the marketplace for the first time. But is all the publicity really helping Mother Nature? When consumers are being “greeenwashed” in their attempt to fit into a petite size footprint, there is a serious problem-the status quo.

Greenwashing, like whitewashing, is masks inconvenient truths about the sustainability of products and services. By appearing to be environmentally sensitive, companies are earning billions in “green” revenue. Meanwhile, consumers are misled in their attempts to live green, unknowingly contributing further to planetary destruction.

“It’s greenwashing when a company or organization spends more time and money claiming to be ‘green,’ through advertising and marketing, than actually implementing business practices that minimize environmental impact,” says the Greenwashing Index, a web site that rates the authenticity of companies’ and products’ eco-friendliness.

And the sad reality is most green products out there are bogus. Exactly 98% of products that claim green labels in the market place are greenwashed, says a report by the TerraChoice Environmental Marketing in April. The company says there are seven eco-sins that companies commit, including: misleading consumers about the environmental benefits of a product or the practices of a company; hidden trade offs, for example, energy efficiency versus the production of hazardous chemicals; and vagueness, such as using terms like “green,” “eco-friendly,” and “natural.” Does a naturally-occurring substance like formaldehyde conjure up ideas of eco-consciousness for you?

One example of a greenwashing company is Shell. Shell Canada is currently providing grant money for up to $100,000 towards four major initiatives that improve and preserve the Canadian environment, and $10,000 grants to grassroots, action-oriented projects. And in its ad campaigns, Shell promotes itself as sustainable and eco-friendly. Is this true? Is Shell becoming a business leader in our ecologically pivotal time?

I think not. Shell is spending billions to be the lead company in the business of dirty and unconventional oil with the Alberta Tar Sands. That helps to extend our dependency on fossil fuels and contributes to the most destructive and greenhouse gas-intensive method of oil extraction on earth. The Tar Sands produces 40 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions annually for Canada through this project. Such projects make it impossible for us to meet any significant global climate agreement, like Kyoto, and probably Copenhagen.

However, there is an immune response to all this consumer corruption. Today, there are a number of groups that work as third parties in environmental labelling, such as EcoLogo, Energy Star or Green Seal. There are science-based marketing firms that assist in transforming companies to the ‘green path,’ like TerraChoice. And there are numerous references and indexes for the every-day consumer in verifying the genuine nature of a product, like Greenpeace’s Electronics Report and GreenwashingIndex.com.

But with this surge of green-labelling - including some companies that mimic third-party environmental certifications, such as HP’s Eco Highlights products - it’s no wonder why so many of us are still in the dark about greenwashing. Perhaps, as Treehugger.com argues, we need a universal eco-labelling system to make it easier for consumers to really go green.

Or perhaps we need to get our heads out of our greenwashing asses. Making change involves getting smarter. We cannot keep expecting someone else to do it for us. Being informed as a consumer and human being in our choices is our responsibility. Relying on the other guys is what got us into the mess we are in. Like brainwashing, let’s take back our brains back - and leave the washing for cleaning our hybrid cars with biodegradable products.