Don't you want your oil to come from a beautiful place like this? Creative Commons photo by Flickr user Medmoiselle T

The “ethical oil” campaign is at it again, trying to convince consumers that by supporting tar sands production, they are saving the world from those scary Saudi women-haters. But this time, they have gone so far in appropriating the language the left, I actually thought the ads were spoofs.

Without batting an eyelash, these ads attempt to appeal to the consumer’s environmental conscience. Showing beautiful Canadian landscapes compared to a barren Saudi desert, this ad asks “which environment do you want your oil to come from?” Ahem, do I actually have to point out that tar sands production produces 4 times the amount of greenhouse gases as Saudi oil extraction and that the beautiful lake shown won’t be so sparkly after its use for storage of toxic tailings?

The Guardian also criticizes the campaign, displaying the ads in this article that show how ethically superior Canada is because we employ aboriginal people in the tar sands … Yay? Maybe in the fine print they mention that these oil sands have poisoned the indigenous community of Fort Chipewyan, living downstream on the Athabasca River. With sky high cancer rates from a bitumen contaminated water source, those “good jobs” must come with a hell of a health insurance plan.

The ads’ tagline is “Ethical oil. A choice we have to make.” Do we? I don’t remember the last time my choices at the pump were bronze, silver, gold, and Canadian. I have an inkling that these brazen co-options of homosexuality, feminism, and environmentalism are a clumsy attempt to garner public support in lieu of growing national and international discontent at the tar sands‘ disastrous environmental track record and unabashed plans for increased production.

The latest uproar is the legal action against these ads by the Saudi government, causing the ad to be taken off the air at CTV. I know Sun TV’s Ezra Levant facilitated the birth of the ethical oil campaign, but to see him donning a feminist facade in this rant is a little much.

The contrast these ads try to make is infantile and overly simplistic, if not entirely false. But obviously, Levant disagrees. He assures viewers that the information is 100% true, as “the ad actually footnotes where the information comes from.”

Damn it Levant, you got me again.

Lots more great things to read this issue, including Will Braun‘s cover story on the coming boom in new hydroelectric projects in Canada. Hydro providers will invest billions in new dams in the coming decade, but energy experts, environmentalists, and aboriginal groups are skeptical of hydro’s green reputation—especially since much of this new electricity infrastructure is being built to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the U.S. power grid. On Marshall McLuhan’s 100th birthday, David Hayes offers a short history of the iconic media theorist’s rise, beginning with a curious Globe and Mail reporter’s 1963 profile. And we mark the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan with a special roundtable discussion between Amir Attaran, John Duncan, and Graeme Smith.

Plenty more, of course: Katie Hyslop introduces us to Dechinta Bush University, the culmination of the 50-year dream of a university by and for the North; Katherine Laidlaw talks to the activists who are trying to cut sky-high smoking rates in Nunavut with a new public awareness campaign; Jason Tushinski investigates the “Suspicious Incident Reporting System,” a snitch line for CSIS and the RCMP that has privacy and civil rights experts concerned; Kaitlin Fontana spends eight hours watching Sun News Network so you don’t have to; Daniel Wilson argues for the abolition of the Indian Act; and Jackie Wong profiles photographer Roberta Holden, whose impressionistic images of the arctic capture the changing moods of the landscape.

Plus: Paul McLaughlin interviews Canada’s Nieman Journalism Fellow, David Skok; Teresa Goff on the constitutional right to a healthy environment; Joe Rayment on the rebirth of the company town; Lauren McKeon on Canada’s nudity laws throughout history; Graham F. Scott on the Tories’ tough-on-crime stance; Brigitte Noël on non-hormonal birth control; Heather Stilwell sends a postcard from newly independent Southern Sudan; Stephen Sharpe on origami and papercraft artist Drew Nelson; Navneet Alang on Big Brother in the age of the smartphone; Christina Palassio on Book Madam & Associates; and reviews of Kristyn Dunnion‘s The Dirt Chronicles, Hal Niedzviecki‘s Look Down, This is Where it Must Have Happened, Sam Cheuk‘s Love Figures, and Rebecca Rosenblum‘s The Big Dream.

With new fiction by Pasha Malla, and new poetry by Elena E. Johnson and Carolyn Smart.

Canada is a nation of wild, legendary rivers. The Mackenzie, the Fraser, the Churchill, and dozens more all empty into our national identity. They flow through our landscape, history, and imagination. They are vital to any history textbook, Group of Seven exhibit, or gift-shop postcard rack.

Canada is also a nation of river-tamers. We revere our waterways—but we also dam them. Trudeau canoed the epic Nahanni and two years later presided over the opening of the mammoth Churchill Falls hydroelectric dam in Labrador. We are, as the Canadian Hydropower Association says, a “hydro superpower.” Almost 60 percent of our electricity supply comes from dams—compared to just 16 percent globally—and only China squeezes more electricity out of its rivers than we do.

The heyday of big dam construction in Canada began around the late 1950s. What followed was an exhibition of progress in the raw. Surveyors and bulldozers headed to the frontier. Mighty men tamed mighty rivers. Engineering prowess replaced natural grandeur.

As rock was blasted and cement poured, legacies were forged, both geographical and political. In Manitoba, the two largest rivers and three of the five largest lakes were dramatically re-engineered. In Quebec, 571 dams and control structures have altered the flow of 74 rivers.

The construction phase lasted through the ’80s, then slowed, even though the country’s hydro potential had only been half tapped. Now, after two decades of limited construction—with the exception of Hydro-Québec, which kept on building—the dam-builders are rumbling to life again.

In the next 10 to 15 years, Canadian utilities will spend $55 to $70 billion on new hydroelectric projects. This would add 14,500 megawatts to Canada’s existing 71,000 megawatts of hydroelectric capacity. Most new projects are in Quebec (4,570 MW), B.C. (3,341 MW), Labrador (3,074 MW), and Manitoba (2,380 MW). The largest of these, Labrador’s 2,250 MW Gull Island project, will produce as much power as 750 train locomotives.

The extent and cost of construction will vary over time, but one thing is certain: the push for more hydro is on.

Most of these projects are driven in large part by the prospect of exporting power to the U.S. American interest in hydropower is linked, in part, to its low cost and its low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this context, the push for more hydro is also a push by the industry to position its product as an answer to climate change.

Jacob Irving heads the Canadian Hydropower Association, which represents the interests of the hydro industry. He says hydropower is “a very strong climate change solution,” because it can displace the use of coal and natural gas to generate electricity. The argument is simple and compelling: use more hydropower, use less fossil fuel. The industry especially touts exports of hydro to the U.S., where 600 coal-fired plants produce 45 percent of the nation’s electricity, with another 24 percent fuelled by natural gas. The CHA says hydro exports already reduce continental emissions by half a million tons a year. They want that number to grow.

Given the dire climate prognosis—emissions in Canada, the U.S., and everywhere else are well above levels in 1990, the year used as a benchmark in the Kyoto Accord—the urgency of reducing fossil-fuel consumption is great. Perhaps Canada’s wild rivers, if harnessed, can be our gift to a warming world. Maybe a concrete edifice nestled in a river valley is just as quintessentially Canadian as a lone paddler on a pristine river.

This presents a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too scenario for Canadian utilities. They can build more dams—obviously still a cornerstone of the corporate culture—cash in on lucrative exports, and enjoy eco-hero status. But is damming more of our rivers an optimal strategy for addressing climate change?

Despite the virtues of hydro power, dams can only reduce emissions indirectly. Their climate value hinges in part on the extent to which they substitute for fossilfuel-fired generation, as opposed to displacing nuclear, wind, or other sources. Though displacement is hard to prove, Irving reasons that “were we not to be sending that electricity down to the United States, the next most logical source of generation to meet their load requirements would generally be natural gas and/or coal.” The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) actually predicts that over the next 25 years, 11 percent of new generation in the U.S. will be coal-fired and 60 percent natural gas (which is roughly half as bad as coal in terms of emissions).

In Canada, most new hydro projects are located in provinces with minimal fossil-fuel-fired generation, so limited displacement will happen here. Exceptions are Ontario, Labrador (where 102 MW will be displaced), Nova Scotia (which will import from Labrador), and possibly Saskatchewan, which could use hydro from Manitoba.

While the fossil-fuel displacement argument has obvious merit, it also has weaknesses. Utilities can argue that hydro exports help save the planet, but critics can say these exports just keep the most wasteful society on earth air-conditioned and recharged. They can say that hydro exports just feed an addiction with more and more cheap power, every kilowatt of which reduces the imperative to curb consumption. The basic argument is that reducing demand must be the obvious and dominant priority in energy policy, rather than endlessly ramping up supply.

Government agencies predict electricity demand in Canada will grow almost 10 percent between now and 2020, and in the U.S. by approximately 30 percent between now and 2035. Ralph Torrie says we can and must go in the opposite direction. “We could double the efficiency with which we use fuel and electricity in Canada,” he says. If you want to see how it’s done, he adds, “just take a vacation to Europe.” Torrie, whose energy expertise is internationally recognized, serves as managing director of the Vancouver-based Trottier Energy Futures Project. In contrast to Irving, who accepts that demand for electricity will grow, Torrie advocates a “new way of thinking about the energy future.”

“There is no demand for electricity,” he says. “Nobody wants a kilowatt hour in their living room.” We want the services that electricity can provide, and we must “focus on how we can best meet the underlying needs for amenity with less rather than more fuel and electricity.” That, he says, is the only hope for “anything we might call a sustainable energy future.”

“We waste half the hydro we produce,” says John Bennett, who heads the Sierra Club of Canada. The solution to climate change is “to use less energy,” he says. “That’s where the major investment should be.”

Torrie says large hydro is environmentally preferable to many forms of energy supply, but still, reducing demand can achieve the same thing at a lower cost, and without the decade-long turnaround time for planning and construction. He views conservation as a resource. “There’s almost always a kilowatt of electricity that can be saved for a smaller cost than building the ability to generate a new kilowatt.” Plus, the resource gets bigger with every new innovation in efficiency. As Torrie puts it, “The size of the resource goes up every time somebody has a bright idea.”

Cutting electricity demand by half would include a range of technologies, including LED lighting, sensor-driven smart controls that reduce daytime lighting in buildings, and continued improvements to virtually every device that uses electricity.

But even if we as a continent cut our energy use by half, we still need some energy—and should not a maximum amount of that come from low-emission hydro? Can’t conservation and new hydro be dual priorities?

According to energy consultant Phillipe Dunsky, total spending on efficiency and conservation programs in Canada is only about $1 billion per year. Despite that, Jacob Irving says, “energy conservation has to be forefront of all decisions.” Then he adds a caveat: “There’s a lot of analysis that says energy consumption will grow, and so we need to be ready for that.” Whether demand shrinks or expands, the simple prohydro argument—more hydro equals less fossil fuel— still stands.

But for Tony Maas, who works for the Canadian branch of the World Wildlife Fund, it’s not that simple. He says new hydro projects must be part of an overarching plan for “net reduction in GHG emissions.” He cites Ontario’s Green Energy Act as an example of a plan that commits to overall GHG reduction.

But, as John Bennett points out, “we don’t have a North American plan to reduce emissions,” so new hydro projects “can’t be part of that plan.” The EIA predicts that without policy change, coal use as well as GHG emissions from electricity generation, will continue to increase over the next 25 years. Bennett says building more dams to meet increasing demand is like doubling the fuel efficiency of cars so that people can drive twice as much.

In a release this April, Hydro-Québec, Canada’s largest generator and exporter of hydropower, said, “The major environmental challenge facing North America is to replace coal to generate power and oil used in transportation.” While climate change may be the “major” environmental challenge of the day, it is not the only one. Just because hydro dams do not have highly visible carbon-spewing smoke stacks does not necessarily make them environmentally friendly. Behind the question of whether dams are a climate solution lies a more fundamental question: is hydro actually clean, as utilities and governments regularly assert?

Jacob Irving says, “When people refer to [hydro] as clean, it’s in the context of air emissions.” But rarely is this specified. The categorical use of the term by utilities, without caveat or qualification, is misleading. Tony Maas says he gets “nervous” when hydro is called clean because “it almost implies there are no impacts.” But dams harm the environment. A dam is not an environmental improvement or solution for a watershed.

One of the main impacts is the disruption of the natural “flow regime” in a waterway. Maas says the natural fluctuations in water levels are the “master variable in organizing a river ecosystem,” giving key “cues” to other species. Thus, a WWF report says, “Dams destroy the ecology of river systems by changing the volume, quality, and timing of water flows downstream.” The evidence of this is visible in dammed Canadian rivers, as it is in the hundreds of millions of dollars paid to mitigate and compensate for damages caused by dams. Manitoba Hydro alone has spent over $700 million to address damages from its “clean” hydro projects.

The WWF takes a more nuanced approach. It says some hydro projects can be built without unacceptable harm, but its 2011 global energy plan still “severely restrict[s] future growth of hydro power to reflect the need for an evolution that respects existing ecosystems and human rights.”

Similarly, a 2011 report about Canada’s boreal forests by the Pew Environment Group considers both pros and cons of hydro. In a section about hydro called “How Green Is It?”, the report says:

Although [hydro dams] are comparatively low carbon emitters in comparison to many conventional energy sources, hydropower projects have resulted in significant impacts to wildlife habitat, ecological processes and aboriginal communities.

In a later section, the report states:

While it is clear that allowing our societies to be powered by carbon fuels is not sustainable, this does not mean that alternative or renewable energy sources can simply be viewed as having no cost whatsoever.

The report, entitled “A Forest of Blue,” does not offer a simple verdict. Rather, it says, “We must understand as many of the implications and complexities of the issues as possible.” The candour and openness to complexity demonstrated in the report are exactly what is needed in the assessment of any climate-change strategy.

In keeping with the Pew report’s frank and thorough nature, it also discusses the role Aboriginal peoples play in hydro development. This is an essential part of any discussion of hydropower in Canada since virtually all hydro projects occupy lands to which First Nations have rights. In the past, Aboriginal people vehemently (and mostly unsuccessfully) opposed major dams. That has changed: in some cases Aboriginal opposition has succeeded. The $5 billion, 1,250 MW Slave River project in Alberta has been “deferred” after project proponents were unable to reach a deal with Smith’s Landing First Nation last year.

The proposed Site C Dam, a 1,100 MW, $7.9 billion project planned for the Peace River in B.C., faces resolute opposition from four First Nations in the area. But the outcome of that David-and-Goliath battle will not be know for some time.

Elsewhere, opposition has given way to participation—David and Goliath have become allies. Most recently, members of the Innu Nation in Labrador voted in June to allow the massive Lower Churchill River projects—Muskrat Falls (824 MW) and Gull Island (2,250 MW)—to proceed. In exchange, the 2,800 Innu receive $5 million per year to assist with their process costs during and prior to construction, up to $400 million in contracts during construction, and share of project profits thereafter (5 percent of “After Debt Net Cashflow”).

The broad Tshash Petapen (New Dawn) Agreement, in which these provisions are contained, also includes an agreement in principle on land claims and $2 million a year as compensation for damages related to the existing Upper Churchill Falls dam.

Meanwhile, the Inuit (distinct from the Innu), who are concerned about downstream impacts in their territory, say they have been largely left out of the process.

In Quebec, the James Bay Cree receive over $100 million a year in hydro, forestry, and mining royalties as a result of the 2002 Peace of the Braves agreement. In it they consented to the Eastmain-1-A/Sarcelle/Rupert Project (918 MW) while securing the permanent abandonment of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert project, which would have flooded 6,000 square kilometres.

First Nations near proposed dam sites in Manitoba have been offered lump-sum compensation packages, along with the opportunity to invest in projects. For instance, the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, with its 4,500 members, will be entitled to a third of the profits of the nearly completed Wuskwatim Dam if they can come up with a third of the $1.3 billion cost of the dam. They also benefit from $60 million of employment training.

In June, four other First Nations joined Manitoba Hydro in announcing the start of construction on the 695 MW, $5.6 billion Keeyask dam. Like Nisichawayasihk, they will be offered the chance to invest in the dam, as well as employment opportunities.

What’s clear in all these cases is that Canadian utilities cannot ignore Aboriginal demands. “We can stop development,” says Ovide Mercredi, former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations and the recently retired Chief of the Misipawistik Cree Nation in northern Manitoba. His community sits right next to the 479 MW Grand Rapids Dam, which floods 115,700 hectares. In reference to the water flowing through that dam, Mercredi’s message to the province is simple: “That’s not your water, it belongs to our people and we want a share of that money.” The dam’s 50-year provincial licence expires in 2015 and Mercredi wants licence renewal to be contingent on public acknowledgement of the harm, increased mitigation of damages, and a revenue-sharing agreement. In part, the message is that if utilities do not deal with Aboriginal concerns now, they will have to later.

Whether First Nations are defiant or eager for new dams to power their economic future, the broader environmental questions remain. While Aboriginal influence has led to a reduction in the size of dams and increased environmental mitigation, and First Nations consent improves the general ethical perception of a project, there is still no tidy way to pour thousands of tons of cement into a river.

No matter who is involved, the merit of the case for hydro as a climate solution can be tested by the assumptions it rests on. These assumptions are that hydro is clean; that demand for electricity will grow; and that the primary alternative to more hydro is fossil-fuel generation. Are these solutions part of the solution or the problem?

Ultimately, the solution to climate change, as well as to watershed health, may never be found unless we move past these assumptions and replace them with better, more accurate premises.

First, dams are not green or clean in themselves. To disrupt the flow of a river and blaze a transmission corridor through kilometres of forest is, in itself, bad for the biosphere. To solve one environmental problem (global warming) with another (pouring hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cement in a free-flowing river) is counterintuitive. That said, desperate circumstances may require desperate measures.

Second, energy demand can and must be substantially reduced. The logical outcome of letting demand increase indefinitely and meeting that demand with ever more hydro and other renewables is to have every river dammed, the landscape saturated with wind and solar farms, and consumption still increasing. The ultimate, unavoidable solution is to use less energy. This must be the dominant priority.

Finally, dams do not reduce GHG emissions per se. They increase energy supply. Apart from a demonstrated continental commitment to dramatically reduce emissions (and energy demand), the case for hydro as a climate solution is, for the industry, a rather convenient truth. Hydropower can’t be part of the climate-change solution if there is no solution.

Climate change is one of humanity’s greatest challenges, and to address it we may need to conjure greater creativity than just reviving electricity generation megaprojects conceived of decades ago. Dan McDermott of the Sierra Club’s Ontario Chapters says, “The age of big dams is over.” According to him, hydro proponents “have their heads turned backwards attempting to mortgage the future to maintain the past.”

The large hydro projects currently in the works were envisioned before global warming concerned anyone, in an era summed up by former Manitoba premier Duff Roblin when he rose in the legislature in 1966 and prophesied a grandiose future for hydropower, saying, “We can have our cake, we can eat it and we can make a bigger cake, and sell part of that.”

Though hydro prospects are framed differently now, dam proponents still appear to share Roblin’s belief in limitless, consequence-free development. Now the question of whether taming more of our iconic rivers will help the climate becomes a question of whether Roblin was right.

The Earth Rangers Centre in Woodbridge, Ontario.

In 2001, when Earth Rangers was planning for its new facility, the mandate its members gave to the engineers and architects was that they wanted a building with the lowest environmental impact possible, a building on the cutting edge of eco-friendliness. Ten years later, the Earth Rangers Centre is one of the most energy efficient buildings in Canada and boasts some of the world’s leading architectural and technological innovations for reducing energy use.

Earth Rangers is a not-for-profit organization that works with children to “bring back the wild,” as their mission statement says. Rangers travel to schools, attend community events, and host 130,000 visitors at their Centre annually, working to educate kids on how they can coexist with the environment, protect animals and their habitats, and understand and preserve nature for years to come.

The Earth Rangers Centre features a theatre, interactive displays, and wildlife enclosures. But visitors to the Centre can learn almost as much about protecting the environment from the structure itself as they can from the demonstrations and workshops held there. Located at the Kortright Centre for Conservation in Woodbridge, Ontario, the Centre was designed to be as sustainable and energy efficient as possible. Windows are placed so as to let in the most natural light possible. The windows are also filled with argon gas, providing extra insulation, and there are several huge solar panels outside the building, which yield enough energy to power a third of the Centre’s electrical needs, the equivalent of 10 average Canadian homes.

Underground "Earth Tubes" at the Earth Rangers Centre. The network of conduits passively cools air in summer and heats it in winter.

But those are some of the building’s more pedestrian features. There is also a ventilation system comprised of a series of concrete tunnels, known as “earth tubes,” buried three metres underground. Fans are used to draw outdoor air into the building. The genius of the earth tubes is that, at their depth, ground temperature remains around a static 12 degrees Celsius, all year-round. This means that, while traveling the length of the tubes, hot summer air is gradually cooled, and cold winter air is warmed, before it reaches the Centre, reducing the need to heat or cool the building using generated energy. As the stale air inside the building heats up, it rises to the ceiling and is drawn back into the central exhaust system, where most of it is recycled into the Centre.

It’s innovations like these earth tubes — the largest of their kind in North America — that have won the Centre some acclaim in the building community.

The efforts of Earth Rangers were recognized in 2006, when the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) awarded the Centre with LEED Gold status in the New Constructions category. Although the facility was not built with LEED in mind, the Earth Rangers Centre Manager, Andy Schonberger, explains that, upon the building’s completion, the Earth Rangers realized it met enough of the CaGBC’s criteria to score highly on the LEED scale. They also realized it was worth getting the added publicity of a LEED Gold designation, especially for a charity organization eager to reach more people.

Earth Rangers hasn’t stopped there, though. In the five years since the Centre’s LEED Gold achievement, many modifications have been made to the Centre’s infrastructure and maintenance, increasing its efficiency even further.

“We’ve had a lot of partners help us out with various technologies, and different ways of actually operating the building, sequences of operation, and hardware too [such as] new lighting technologies,” says Schonberger. “A little bit here, a little bit there, we’ve been able to conserve because we’ve continuously been tweaking systems.”

Rooftop solar panels provide about a third of the building's power.

This tweaking has amounted to a pretty hefty increase in efficiency. Originally built to be 67 percent more efficient than the minimum levels mandated by national building codes, the Centre has, in the past year, operated at 90 percent more efficiency than that minimum level. Encouraged by this increase, Earth Rangers has applied for LEED Platinum status for Existing Structures, the highest available ranking in that category.

One of the most significant additions to the Centre’s efficiency came in the form of its radiant heating and cooling system, comprised of 22 kilometres of tubes installed into the structure’s concrete floors and ceilings, and leading to underground wells outside. A mixture of water and glycol, warmed and cooled by the moderate ground temperature, is pumped through those tubes, radiating heat into the building in winter, and drawing heat away from the building in summer. There is also refrigeration equipment outside the Centre to supplement the heating and cooling as needed. The entire process is three times as energy efficient as a boiler would be at heating, and four times as efficient as a cooling tower for cooling.

Further reducing the amount of energy needed to heat and cool the Centre is the building’s thermal mass insulation, which is staggering both in its scale and its effectiveness. Behind the walls of the Earth Rangers Centre are 3,000 cubic metres of concrete, the immense volume of which makes heat transfer and temperature changes a very slow process.

Schoenberger remembers an incident two Christmasses ago when the Centre’s boiler, which was later replaced by the radiant heating tubes, went offline, leaving the building completely unheated. “The temperature [outside] was below zero,” says Schonberger. “But those three days that the boiler was off we only lost two degrees in temperature, just because there’s so much concrete mass. It’s a giant thermal battery, basically.”

The combination of earth tube ventilation, radiant heating, and thermal mass insulation is a prime example of what Schonberger credits with the Centre efficiency success: many different parts complementing each other. It is the integration of many different technologies and the efforts of many people, from designers, to engineers, to installers, that make the Centre so energy efficient. Not that energy efficiency is the only efficiency that concerns Earth Rangers. “It’s energy efficiency, it’s water efficiency. We really meant to minimize our environmental impact,” Schonberger says. Which is why there are also on-site waste water treatment facilities, which recycle between two thirds and three quarters of the water flushed down the Centre’s drains, cleaning it so it can be reused in irrigating the Earth Rangers’ gardens, cleaning out animal enclosures, and watering the plants on the centre’s green roof.

The green roof insulates the building, keeping it cooler in summer and warmer in winter.

It’s all part of Earth Rangers’ staff practicing what they preach which, for an organization whose mission is to teach and motivate kids to become the environmental stewards of Canada’s future, means doing everything possible to protect the environment. The members of Earth Rangers see their Centre as the embodiment of their eco-friendly values.

And while much of the Centre’s efficiency derives from complicated technologies and massive design innovations, Schonberger insists that anyone and everyone can do their part to be more energy efficient and help the environment.

“You can start with very, very simple things, just in what you buy, and how much you recycle, and what you compost. There’s a hundred different things you can do in your home,” he says. “[Energy efficiency] is not one simple thing. It’s every single action we do.”

All images some rights reserved by the Earth Rangers Centre. More available on Flickr.

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The cover story this issue is Elizabeth Wright‘s look at Canada’s broken drug approval process. The way that pharmaceuticals in this country get approved for medical use is needlessly secretive, rushed, and inefficient, many experts say, and its dysfunction puts everyone’s health at risk. And with Big Pharma in the driver’s seat—from the doctor’s office to the federal research labs, it’s increasingly clear that a more accountable, transparent, and independent drug approval process is necessary.

Also in this issue: Brad Badelt reports on the mystery of B.C.’s 2010 salmon run, which saw record-breaking numbers of fish returning to west-coast rivers. The fish-farming industry said it proved that Pacific salmon stocks are perfectly healthy and there’s no need to worry. But was last year’s boom a sign of resurgence—or a last gasp? Plus we bring you a special eight-page photo essay by Ian Willms from the dark heart of the tar sands. In Fort Chipewyan, 300 kilometres downstream from the world’s most environmentally destructive project, residents are living—and dying—amidst a skyrocketing cancer rate and deteriorating ecosystem.

And there’s plenty more: Paul McLaughlin interviews Silicone Diaries playwright-performer Nina Arsenault; Jason Brown explains how Canada is losing the global race for geothermal energy; Ellen Russell asks why we can’t have more muscular banking reforms; Lisa Xing sends a postcard from Jeju Island, South Korea, where the last of the pacific “mermaids” live; Dylan C. Robertson explains how the Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement will change our world; Kapil Khatter shows why that “organic farmed fish” you buy may be anything but; Daniel Wilson untangles the right wing’s curious fixation on aboriginal tax exemptions; and Emily Landau sneaks a peek at the next genre-bending project from KENK publisher Pop Sandbox.

PLUS: Christina Palassio on poetry in schools; Navneet Alang on Wikileaks; Jackie Wong on painter Michael Lewis; Flavie Halais on the West Coast’s greenest city; Victoria Salvas on criminalizing HIV-AIDS; Denise Deby on the fight to save Ottawa’s South March Highlands; and reviews of new books by Renee Rodin, Lorna Goodison, David Collier, and David Lester.

This issue also includes debut fiction by Christine Miscione and new poetry by Jim Smith.

Illustration by Dave Donald

In the world of green power, enhanced geothermal systems technology has big potential. How big? Like enough potential to provide 2,000 times the United States’ annual energy consumption kind of big.

The premise of EGS is simple: use recently developed drilling technology to bore a hole four to six kilometres deep into the earth. Pump in water, let it pick up the heat at that depth (150°C or so), then draw it back to the surface to drive electricity-producing turbines. Unlike solar, wind, hydro, or conventional geothermal technology, EGS can be implemented virtually anywhere; it generates big, steady and reliable power; and it produces negligible pollution. No wonder many countries, including Australia, Japan, and Iceland, have ponied up investment in EGS.

But where is Canada in all of this? “Absolutely nowhere,” says Brian Toohey, board director of the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association. According to Toohey, Canada is one of the few developed nations in the world without a single conventional geothermal plant (which foregoes expensive drilling by exploiting rare plumes of the earth’s natural heat at or near the surface), let alone an EGS plant. There are a number of reasons for the absence of interest here, he adds, including lack of public familiarity with EGS and high front-end set-up costs. But, really, it boils down to support, says Toohey. There isn’t any. Neither the federal nor provincial government is offering the funding kick start R&D needs for any EGS industry to take hold.

Tom Rand, a clean technology analyst at the Toronto-based MaRS Discovery District, shares Toohey’s enthusiasm for EGS, calling it “low hanging fruit” in the search for fossil fuel alternatives. Rand has another explanation for why EGS isn’t taking wing in Canada: green-energy fatigue. “There are already a lot of proven alternative energy technologies,” he says, “So a newcomer is like: ‘Why EGS?’ Which makes it very unlikely for EGS to get funding.” Even so, says Rand, the technique’s unique advantages position it perfectly to replace coal plants on a one-to-one basis. That alone, he says, makes it something “that absolutely must be considered.”

Both men also blame Canada’s historic abundance of cheap energy resources for the government’s short-sighted energy policy. Yet while carbon sequestration—a means of slowing the buildup of greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels—receives huge amounts of funding, EGS is ignored. One of these methods represents a way of putting a green face on the already lucrative fossil-fuel industry; the other, a potential way of escaping its clutches. Guess which way the research money is flowing?

As of today it’s official: every province and territory across Canada is on board with the 350.org climate movement. This Sunday, 350.org events will be held throughout Canada and around the world.

Last year, we saw the beginning of this movement. On Oct. 24th, 2009, several thousand youth took over Parliament Hill in Ottawa to give our leader a strong message: that we want action now.

But the politicians on the Hill haven’t given us that. If anything, the Canadian government has done the opposite, subsidizing $1.5 billion to the fossil fuel industry and cutting investments in renewable energy. Even worse, as we all know too well, the Copenhagen Climate Summit was a complete failure. It took us years, if not a decade, backward in negotiations.

So what do we do now? Is there any point to fighting or should we just give in to this suicidal path we seem to be on? These are the questions that have plagued me since I left the summit last December. It’s fair to tell you that I haven’t written much about this recently because I’ve been in a kind of “eco-coma.” I felt so pessimistic about our future, as I’m sure a lot of us have, that I found it difficult to have even the slightest bit of hope any more.

But maybe that was my mistake. I placed too much hope on some political leaders changing it all. I realize now that we’ve got to get to work ourselves for the change we want. We can’t leave it up to the top-tier powers that are so obviously controlled by the fossil fuel lobby. Throughout history, this has always been the way. It takes strong movements of millions to make change. This year is no exception. Despite our corrupt government, Canadians and people around the world are not backing down. Our movement is only getting stronger.

On Oct. 10th, there will be events happening across the country. In the Yukon Territories, people will weatherize low-income homes. In Nunavut they will take the day to walk instead of drive. While in Prince Edward Island, they will cycle on hybrid electric bikes across the coastal shorelines to promote alternative energies.

In Pakistan, women are learning how to use solar ovens, students in Zimbabwe are installing solar panels on a rural hospital, and sumo wrestlers in Japan are riding their bicycles to practice.

Sure, solving climate change won’t come one bike path at a time. But as Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, wrote, “It’s a key step in continuing to build the movement to safeguard the climate.”

This is probably the most important year yet to preserver in our fight. We’ve seen devastating floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia, and a heat-wave around the world.

But with this movement growing globally, today I am proud to write that I have hope again.

Public anxiety about allowing offshore drilling has been around for a long time, rising to panic levels during accidents and spills, and for good reason. The continuing environmental disaster off the Gulf coast was the result of poor regulation and should prompt Canadians to question our own regulatory regime for offshore exploration. More specifically, we need to address our inability to manage risks that accompany technological advances and ensure that knowledge about our country’s resource potential is used in the public interest.

Offshore drilling started in the Gulf of Mexico over 60 years ago. In fact, the recent Louisiana spill is remarkably similar to the blowout at Mexico’s offshore IXTOC 1 well in 1979. That accident was caused by failures aboard a Canadian-built oil rig, which, like the recent BP accident, also burned and sank, releasing half a billion litres of oil into the ocean—10 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill.

A decade before, that same rig had been used to drill the last hole in Shell Canada’s program off the coast of British Columbia. At that time, the infamous Santa Barbara, California, spill was alerting Canadians to the hazards of offshore drilling, but it hardly mattered, because Shell ended its program as planned, in August 1969.

Oil engineers have had 40 years to learn about preventing offshore blowouts. Rather than question their expertise, a better response would be to ask why government monitors seem unable to anticipate and prevent such events. Disasters caused by new technology occur when a small number of engineers monopolize technical knowledge and fail to protect the public. A prescient 1976 study by the British Council for Science and Society entitled “Superstar Technologies” analyzed this problem.

Frailties of intellect may lead engineers to believe their skills are sufficient for the job; or to work within isolated silos of expertise, ignorant of the skills of others. Frailties of conscience may make them yield to boredom, neglect routine safety measures, or let them be bullied out of more cautious or dissenting opinions. The higher the risk, the greater the need for monitoring, but explicit federal policy cripples its capacity to apply the critical scrutiny necessary to protect our environment.

With the notable exception of Health Canada, federal departments do not recognize provincial licensing for professionals. Self-regulation is the public’s first line of defence. Federal engineers and geoscientists are accountable only to their minister, and not to their peers. Secondly, federal regulators must be attentive to political direction filtering down to their level. If a regulator wanted redundancy in an aspect of blowout prevention and the company engineer replied, “We can’t afford that,” the regulator would be risking his or her chances for promotion by withholding approval. Corporations complain to the political level if their desires are thwarted, and the embattled public servant always hears about it, inevitably acquiescing.

Current drilling of Chevron’s deep well Lona 0-55, off Canada’s East Coast, has made everyone very nervous. The regulators said they balanced this project’s higher risk with more operational requirements and monitoring, but we can’t assess the truth of this statement. Long-standing rules for petroleum rights allow companies to withhold release of their offshore seismic and drilling results for five to 10 years. Arguably, the unexplored Orphan basin off our East Coast needed drilling to define its geology, but Chevron gains the knowledge, not the public. That’s still a problem on our West Coast.

Canada first issued offshore permits for the West Coast in 1961. Shell was the sole bidder, and two years later, the company started a six-year exploration program. After the 1968 discovery of oil on Alaska’s North Slope, everyone saw tankers carrying Alaskan oil to the Lower 48 as a pollution threat. The federal Liberal cabinet then attempted to ban tanker traffic to help its advocacy of a new pipeline for Alaska oil across the continent. By then, the government knew Shell had not found oil.

Preventing oil spills was the government’s rationale when it started the “moratorium” on offshore exploration in 1971. This action exempted Shell from obligations like annual permit fees or releasing geological information. Promises to cancel the permits were not kept, so even today the company pays nothing for its rights, which remain preserved like fossils in bureaucratic amber.

It’s unlikely there is oil off Canada’s West Coast. The moratorium lets Shell sit on what it knows, but it published some hints in 1971. Most of Canada’s oil originated in shallow seas of the Cretaceous era, but rocks of that origin are notably absent on the western continental shelf. Overlying, younger rocks were found to be “tight,” meaning they have poor ability to store any oil or gas squeezed up from older rocks. More ominously, Shell reported drilling into “hard geopressures,” where the rock has higher fluid pressures than the weight of overlying rock would predict. Such conditions make blowouts even more likely.

One might wonder what additional requirements regulators assigned to Chevron’s Lona 0-55, to be equipped to handle “hard geopressures.” If the public has only limited and long-delayed access to facts like these, to understand the geological realities, it cannot properly assess the diligence of the monitors.

Technology seems always one step ahead of our evolving capacity to protect the environment. We should insist that the regulation of offshore development include true independence of the monitoring agency, critical scrutiny by licensed professionals, and complete disclosure, to ensure that the interface between rocks and dollars is managed in the public interest.

Shuffled off this mortal coil. Creative Commons photo by Flickr User Indoloony

The Alberta tar sands are a famously bad place to be a migratory bird. Turns out it’s even worse than we thought. From the Toronto Star:

A new study says birds are likely dying in oilsands tailings ponds at least 30 times the rate suggested by industry and government. […]

The 14-year median, including raptors, songbirds, shorebirds and gulls, is 1,973 deaths every year. That’s more birds than died in the April 2008 incident that saw Syncrude convicted of charges under the environmental protection legislation earlier this year.

And the total is probably higher than that, said [Dr. Kevin] Timoney. His study, which was funded by Dalhousie University, didn’t account for birds that landed and were oiled at night or that simply sank under the surface of the ponds.

Yes, that’s right: 30 times more dead birds than industry and government had originally been claiming.

If Dr. Timoney’s name rings a bell, it’s because he’s called out Syncrude and the Alberta government before, including once coming to This Magazine‘s aid when an Alberta government spokesperson tried to pressure us into retracting a blog post about the the tar sands’ true environmental toll. We know which pony we’re backing in this race!

Shell Canada’s operations in Alberta’s oil sands are clean and green, and simply the victim of nasty rumours spread by environmentalists trying to tar the company’s reputation. That is, if you believe the “six-week Canwest special information feature on climate change, in partnership with Shell Canada.”

Canada’s largest media company teamed up with the oil giant to produce a series of features that showcase how Shell is tackling energy challenges and environmental responsibility. The full-page, feel-good features ran in six Canwest dailies—the National Post, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal and Vancouver Sun—six Saturdays in a row in January and February 2010. The six-part series also appeared in the Toronto Star as a pullout section.

The series profiles friendly Shell employees who share what motivates them to work in Alberta’s oil sands—Canwest style is to avoid the use of “tar sands”—otherwise known as one of the world’s largest and most destructive industrial projects. There’s the climate change expert (a goateed grandpa clutching walking sticks), the chemist (a longhaired family man who dabbles in acting) and the environmental management systems coordinator (a young woman in a Cowichan sweater who spent countless hours as a child flipping through National Geographic). The features include “myth busters” to clear up so-called misconceptions like the idea that Shell’s oil sands production is too energy-intensive, pollutes the Athabasca River and results in “dirty oil,” among other allegedly tarnishing falsehoods. The only myth, however, is that these features are editorial content. The fact is, they’re paid advertisements for Shell.

While advertorials designed to look like newspaper stories are common, they are usually clearly identified as advertisements as urged by regulatory groups like Advertising Standards Canada. This is essential so readers don’t think the material is subject to the same standards and ethics of journalistic stories: accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and accountability.

Nowhere did the word “advertorial” or “advertising” appear on the Shell ads. Rather, “Canwest special information feature on climate change, in partnership with Shell Canada” was inked across the top of the page, suggesting an editorial partnership between Canwest and Shell, a major newsmaker. Seasoned journalist and outgoing chair of the Ryerson School of Journalism Paul Knox says the wording is euphemistic. “You’re either trying to disguise the advertorials as editorial content or you’re not,” says Knox. “And if you’re not trying to disguise them, what’s to be lost by being reasonably explicit about the terms?”

When asked this question, Canwest director of communications Phyllise Gelfand said: “We feel very strongly that the language was clear enough and that readers will appreciate it.” However, when asked to elaborate on what the language means, she said: “I’m not going to go into semantics with you.”

Gelfand pointed out the information features were presented in a different font, layout and style than the papers’ editorial content. However, the ads ran during the lead-up to the Olympics and during the Games, when many papers were using different layouts. Lifestyle spreads (fashion and homes, for example) also often take more colourful and creative layouts, not unlike the Shell ads. (In the Star, the pullout section was printed on a differently coloured paper.)

Advertorials are often distinguished from editorial copy by not placing a byline on the piece. But in this case, Alberta-based freelancers and Canwest contributors Brian Burton and Shannon Sutherland were credited. Both Burton and Sutherland have covered Shell and the oil industry for Canwest. Burton has 20 years of experience in corporate communications for leading energy corporations, according to his LinkedIn profile, which also states his goal: “to advocate successfully for my clients in the court of public opinion.” For Sutherland’s part, her bio on one magazine site says when she’s not “interrogating industrialists” she’s hanging out with her kids.

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The advertorials also appeared on Canwest papers’ websites—on homepages as top stories and in the news section, with URLs that looked like those of any other news story. Just like regular news, readers could comment on the “stories.” Canwest refused to respond to allegations the campaign included seeded comments, meaning a slew of positive comments about Shell were posted and negative ones deleted in an effort to further sway public opinion. “I am not aware of this,” said Shell spokesperson Ed Greenberg. “I know you appreciate that anyone, whether or not they work for Shell, is entitled to read any newspaper or magazine they want and form their own opinions from what they read.”

When Sierra Club Executive Director John Bennett spotted the features in the Ottawa Citizen, the former newspaper reporter and ad sales rep was shocked by the one-sided nature of the information. “I could not tell they were ads,” Bennett says. “They looked and read like editorial content.” He only learned the features were ads when he contacted the publisher of the Citizen to complain about the unbalanced coverage. The nonprofit environmental advocacy organization promptly filed a complaint with Advertising Standards Canada. However, because Sierra Club went public by issuing a news release, ASC did not accept the complaint: it’s against the rules for special interest groups to generate publicity for their cause through the complaint process. Sierra Club also filed a complaint with the Ontario Press Council, which has not yet adjudicated the matter. The council’s advertising policy states ads that look like ordinary news stories should be clearly labelled as advertising.

Despite dismissing the complaint, ASC Vice-President of Standards Janet Feasby says advertising designed to look like news stories is of growing concern and ASC will be publishing an advisory on the subject to bring the issue to the attention of advertisers, media, and the public. Feasby points to a recent precedent decision, in which the ASC found a “special information supplement” in a newspaper that extolled the virtues of Neuragen, a homeopathic product, was presented in a manner that concealed the advertiser’s commercial intent. “It was clear to council that it was advertising, not information.” Like the Shell features, an ad for the company was included at the bottom of the page.

ASC can force advertisers and publications to remove ads, but often it’s too late: the ads have already run and the damage has been done. The only loser is the reader, who may have read and wrongly interpreted the ad as a news story. Papers that blur the line between advertorial and news content risk their credibility and their relationship with their audience. “The problem with these advertorial exercises is they muddy the waters and you’re placing obstacles in the way of a reader who’s trying to figure out, ‘What is my interest here, and what’s behind what I’m being told?’” says Knox, who teaches media ethics at Ryerson. “It has the potential to undermine the trust that your audience has in you and that’s fatal.”

The seriousness of this matter is magnified when the subject of the advertorial is a controversial one, such as climate change. “[These ads] play on public complacency, they play on the public’s hopes that the environment is being protected,” explained the Sierra Club’s Bennett. “One of the reasons we have so much difficulty advancing the environmental agenda in the face of overwhelming public support is because people can’t imagine there are governments or companies not trying to do the best they can. When you get misleading advertising like this, you play to that inborn need for people to believe that things are being looked after.” You also play into the inborn need people have to trust the media to provide them with honest coverage.

While Shell insists it produced the features to clear up “misconceptions” about climate change and its environmental commitment, the company has a track record for producing misleading, greenwashed advertising. In 2008, the Advertising Standards Authority in the U.K. denounced a Shell newspaper ad that described tar sands projects as sustainable, saying it breached rules on substantiation, truthfulness, and environmental claims. A year earlier, the ASA found another Shell ad guilty of greenwashing—this one featuring refinery chimneys emitting flowers. Still, Shell defends its ads.

“We were getting feedback from Canadians that all they were seeing and hearing was one-sided information [about climate change], so [the feature campaign] was done to try to balance the discussion,” said Greenberg. “Don’t you think that’s fair?” Readers?