Climate change and Canada’s new pipeline – will the Northern Gateway in BC ever get built? Should it be built?

Rivers 100x100By Ray Rivers

June 20, 2104

BURLINGTON, ON.

It has taken him six years to finally announce his first concrete action to combat global climate change and it’s still only a little – and a little late.  US President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has imposed a 30% carbon emission reduction limit on US coal-powered electricity plants by 2030.  That will mean scrapping some of the older plants and conversion of many others to natural gas.  In addition to the greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction benefits, this will also mean 6600 fewer premature deaths and 150,000 fewer asthma cases, they estimate.

By comparison, Ontario which historically burned coal for up to a quarter of its electrical needs, including at the largest coal-fired plant of its time, had completely shut down and banned coal burning earlier this year.  Ontario’s courageous action is Canada’s single most significant greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction ever.

coal burning energy plant

Smokes stacks like this one dotted the province of Ontario. The government put an end to coal fired electrical generation plants – and we all breath easier now.

The federal government had never really been supportive and had refused to help Ontario with costs of this shift away from coal.   Nevertheless, Mr. Harper was only too proud to point out that Canada was already ahead of the US in cleaning up its coal-burning emissions, when Obama challenged him to follow the US regulatory lead.  Canada’s share of emissions from coal burning are now only about a third of the equivalent in the US.  But unlike the US, our overall GHG emissions are heading skywards making a mockery of Canada’s official reduction targets.

In any case, Obama wasn’t talking about coal, when he challenged our PM, he was referring to our oil sands.  The oil industry claims they can now extract a barrel of oil from the sand without having to burn another full barrel in the process, but mining the tar sands is still the most inefficient and environmentally destructive resource extraction anywhere.

So Obama had the Keystone XL pipeline clearly in his sights.  Approving Keystone would just enable further expansion of the oil sands, something US environmentalists have been decrying.  And since American dependence on Canadian oil is declining thanks to horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the US, that Keystone project is looking less and less likely everyday.

Harper and Obama are on different wavelengths.  That became clear as our leader joined with the new Australian PM, recently, promising to thwart carbon pricing and other global attempts to mitigate the effects of climate change, and to oppose efforts such as Obama’s press for climate change through forums like the G20.   Why should we expect dinosaurs to care about fossil fuels?

And Canada isn’t about to be lectured by a lame-duck president.  Mr. Harper has another plan to get the bitumen out of Alberta and into Chinese and other export markets – its called the Northern Gateway project.  Northern Gateway is a pipeline from the tar sands across fragile B.C. terrain, over a thousand kilometres, and to the environmentally sensitive Pacific coast at Kitimat B.C.  Northern Gateway was Harper’s baby form its inception, and just this week he employed the pretense of an energy board review before approving its construction, as everyone was fully predicting he would.

Many Canadians are still unsure about what this means, but not the opposition parties which are united in promising to stop this risky business.  Some pundits think this project could become the PM’s final undoing, since he may lose the crucial support of B.C. voters in next year’s federal election.

The B.C. aboriginal communities, over whose land the pipeline will cross and whose fisheries on the coast would be devastated by the inevitable oil spill, are also unified in their opposition.  And the B.C. government still has conditions and concerns ranging from its desire for compensation to better environmental safeguards, before it consents.  The province does not want to end up saddled with the clean-up costs of any spills.

B.C. residents take their environmental stewardship seriously.  For example, B.C. and Quebec are the only Canadian provinces with carbon taxes to reduce fossil fuel burning and GHG emissions.  And the B.C. economy depends heavily on tourism and its fisheries, both of which are threatened by this project. How is it fair that Alberta gets the royalties while B.C. gets the risk?

Oil pipeline being laid

All he costs related to the transportation of oil through a pipeline have to be taken into account – is that happening?

Early cost estimates of the project which would move the half-million or so barrels of diluted bitumen a day through the Northern Gateway and onto foreign tankers could easily approach twenty billion dollars.  Even if the proponent is in the private sector, there are always federal and provincial subsidies and all the ancillary costs attached to these kinds of mega projects.  One could buy a lot of renewable energy infrastructure for that kind of money.   And damage to the environment from a leak or shipping accident would be… well… just priceless.

Rivers-direct-into-camera1-173x300

Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington where he ran against Cam Jackson in 1995, the year Mike Harris and the Common Sense Revolution swept the province. He developed the current policy process for the Ontario Liberal Party.

Background links:

Ontario Coal Phase-Out         Obama’s Plan       Implications for Canada        Canada’s Response       US Health Benefits      Northern Gateway

 Canada-Australia Coalition         Oil Sands Emissions –        B.C. Carbon Tax

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