Photo courtesy of Elias Schewel, via Flickr.

Canada’s oil sands have long been a lightning rod issue in heated debates over national energy futures, economic growth, ecological degradation, and climate change. These tensions are driven in part by the industry’s environmental characteristics: They constitute the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas pollution in Canada, generate significant impacts on boreal forests and species such as woodland caribou, and affect regional freshwater resources.

The Canadian oil sands constitute a staggering 10 percent of technically recoverable global oil reserves. Deposits of molasses-like bitumen—a viscous form of petroleum that is embedded with sand, clay, minerals, and water—underlie 140,000 square-kilometres of boreal forest and muskeg in northern Alberta. Open pit mining operations, where bitumen is found within 75 metres of the surface, are responsible for almost half of current oil sands production and generate severe and potentially intractable environmental impacts that Canadians cannot turn a blind eye to.

For instance, fluid tailings are a byproduct of oil sands mining, where large amounts of chemical laden water are used to extract bitumen from the sands. The fluid waste from this process is then deposited into manmade holding lakes called tailings ponds. More than 1.2 trillion litres of toxic sludge containing cyanide, acids, arsenic, and lead is currently sitting in these enormous open water bodies, posing significant health risks to local communities and wildlife. When oil sands mining first began, companies did not know how to treat and reclaim these tailings, so the ponds were permitted to grow. In 2009, the Government of Alberta finally made an attempt to manage them; however, every single company failed to meet these regulations, and rather than being enforced by the regulator they were simply scrapped.

In 2016 regulations were introduced a second time. But treating tailings remains both difficult and expensive, and all eight existing oil sands mines have since submitted plans to meet the new rules that are largely insufficient. Based on the submitted plans, the tailings ponds can be expected to grow to a peak of approximately 1.5 trillion litres that will not begin to decline for another 20 years. Moreover, almost all the plans rely on placing tailings in the bottom of mined out pits once operations are complete, covering them with water and creating manmade “lakes.” Companies have proposed that it will subsequently take as long as 70 years after mining operations are finished to reclaim these sites and return them back to Canadians. This approach is a microcosm of the industry’s predicament, wherein properly accounting for environmental costs of operations is deemed prohibitively expensive, so they are simply minimized, disregarded, and punted down the road into an ambiguous future.

Adding to the risk that taxpayers might ultimately be left on the hook for billions of dollars in tailings cleanup costs, the economic viability for Canadian oil sands mining in the 21st century is increasingly uncertain. Industry insiders say the 50-year era of multi-billion dollar mining megaprojects has likely come to an end. Oil sands mines are notorious for their exceptionally high start-up and operations costs, and while mega-projects were profitable with oil prices of over $100 USD per barrel, the international oil price crash in 2014 has delivered a painful blow to the industry.

Many operators have struggled to break even since the 2014 slump began. Numerous proposed mining projects have been indefinitely shelved, and international players Total, Shell, and ConocoPhillips sold off almost all of their oil sands assets to Canadian companies. Many investors are growing concerned about what the future holds for the mineable oil sands as an expensive and carbon intensive resource.

With these high economic stakes in mind, governments have undertaken several initiatives to encourage innovation in more efficient and environmentally cleaner oil sands mining technologies. The Government of Alberta’s Climate Leadership Plan (CLP), for instance, introduced an economy-wide carbon price and legislated a cap on oil sands emissions. The CLP provides a mechanism to prevent Canadians from falling off a steep economic cliff in the near future due to a potential financial bubble—or “carbon bubble”—in a world where even baseline International Energy Agency projections suggest decarbonization of energy systems will be inevitable in the 21st century.

But as demonstrated by the consistent failure of industry to adequately tackle tailings cleanup in the last 50 years of operations, reducing the environmental footprint of oil sands mining is a technically challenging and expensive undertaking that extends far beyond emissions management.

Ultimately, the future for oil sands mining is uncertain at best. Companies should account for the true social and environmental costs of their operations now, rather than assuming future revenues will be sufficient to cover them. As the dismal state of the decades-old tailings problem illuminates, current operators must be compelled to bite the bullet and clean up their immense messes while they still have sufficient income to do so. This will protect Canadian taxpayers from potentially having to foot the bill in a world where mineable oil sands produce increasingly marginal barrels and global energy transitions are well underway.

Jodi McNeill is a technical and policy analyst at the Pembina Institute.

Meet the lobbyist who brought the tar sands inside the beltway. Illustration by Antony Hare

Paul Frazer is an invisible Canadian. He doesn’t live in Canada, and hasn’t for more than two decades. But he works for us, and he represents us abroad, and he holds sway over the leaders and big businesses that affect our lives. In many ways, he has power over the powerful. But here at home, this sway is often unremarked upon.

Frazer is a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., focused on representing Canadian interests below the 49th. Many regard him as our secret weapon in an ongoing political and social battle within North America. He has represented our provinces (Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan), and our businesses, on issues including solar energy development, trade policy and homeland security. In his work, Frazer often holds our environment—and thus our economic and social welfare—in his hands.

In his office, two blocks away from the White House, there are two engravings on the wall. One depicts the Battle of Lundy’s Lane during the War of 1812, which the Canadian side won. The other (“For balance,” Frazer notes), the Battle of Chippewa, won by the Americans in the same war. The images of that seminal conflict are what his clients are greeted with when they knock on his door. And if they’re Canadian, with a reliance on doing business in the United States, they inevitably will.

Frazer was born in Toronto and grew up in Niagara Falls, Ontario. His parents owned a summertime motel, a restaurant, and a gas station. His family border-hopped back when it was still easy—some of his aunts, uncles and cousins have married Americans.

A habitué of odd jobs, Frazer spent a summer cleaning basements and washing windows for the late Liberal MP and Pearson cabinet member Judy LaMarsh. He also worked at the Rainbow Bridge, which he credits with teaching him about the basics of migration between Canada and the United States.

Still, “It was clear to me that I would seek my professional work outside of that place,” Frazer says bluntly. In 1967, he spent the summer working at The World Expo in Montreal. At the Ontario Pavilion, the excitement soon wore off—the same old politicians needed handholding tours of the venue, and the glamour of playing host to VIPs lost its lustre as the summer wore on.

“We were fairly jaded,” says Les Monkman, Professor Emeritus at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, who worked the event with Frazer. He remembers a last-minute tour that was scheduled for the end of a long day: “Everyone called out ‘Not it!’ and Paul said he would do it. At that point all we knew was that the tour was for the person who had just become Justice Minister, and his name was Pierre Trudeau. Paul had really good instincts on when to move.” After earning two degrees in political science, from McGill and Carleton universities, Frazer was encouraged by Lester B. Pearson to enter the Foreign Service. When Frazer demurred, Pearson wrote him a recommendation letter for law school instead. Frazer ended up in the Foreign Service anyway: working for Prime Minister Kim Campbell, in the Department of Foreign Affairs under Joe Clark, and was appointed ambassador to the Czech Republic by Brian Mulroney in 1992.

In 1989, Frazer had attended the wedding of Globe and Mail correspondent Paul Koring in Washington—just a short trip from where he was studying international affairs at Harvard University. There, he met Dr. Tina Alster, who was also studying at Harvard. For five years, Frazer and Alster kept up a long distance relationship between Washington (where Alster was raised), Ottawa, and Prague. “This is not a medicine town,” says Alster, of Washington. “I moved back not because of my family, but because this guy was a Canadian diplomat, and I thought one day he’ll be here in Washington.” And he was, but: “I never wanted to be posted to Washington,” says Frazer. “It wasn’t foreign enough for me, it wasn’t exotic.” In 1994, the Foreign Service posted Frazer to Washington to work at the Canadian Embassy, and he’s lived there ever since. It may not be the exotic locale he dreamed of—but the Beltway is home to plenty of unique wildlife and customs all its own.

Frazer and his colleagues like to say that he’s the only lobbyist in Washington to provide basic translation services between Canada and the United States. At the root of it, what he really does is tell Canadian companies how to effectively make Americans do what they want. Likewise, he brings Canadian business to the attention of American policymakers.

As our business interests are so inextricably linked, Frazer’s clients come to him to ensure policy decisions made in Washington don’t lead to turmoil at home. On his part, Frazer continually finds himself reminding Americans that we live in a linked economy.

After the mid-term elections in November 2010, many Canadian businesses were prepared for an upheaval when the Republicans took majority in the House of Representatives. Frazer asked them to cool down, reminding them that the change meant little in terms of legislation.

“You can’t catch all those things that go pop,” he says, with some resignation. “Some of them make more noise than anything else, and some are more serious than others.” He is reluctant to spill client names. Along with the Province of Alberta, Frazer mentions a company in Nova Scotia that developed an enhanced, environmentally friendly process to dispose of toxic liquid. He’s also provided advice to the Government of Ontario regarding American interests in green energy.

The Lobbying Disclosure Act database maintains a list of all lobbying actions filed with the House of Representatives. Frazer is listed in their database dating back to 2001 as having represented clients including the Canada International Pharmacy Association, Scotiabank advisor Adrian Tauro, and the Certified General Accountants of Ontario.

In 2009, Frazer took on a challenging client, and one that would bring him into the spotlight: the Government of Alberta. Frazer and consultant James Blanchard were approached to lobby on behalf of the Government of Alberta’s interests—especially pertaining to the oil sands in northern Alberta. Frazer and Blanchard’s team was paid $40,000 per month for their work.

Frazer’s job, simply, was to monitor the American government to prevent another “Section 526.” The Section 526 provision to the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 forbids the U.S. government from buying the type of high-carbon fuels produced in Alberta’s oil sands. Canadian Embassy officials lobbied hard to weaken the language in the bill, and it shook the province’s business and politics to its core.

As part of his contract, Frazer brought Albertan officials to Washington—something not all clients do. “Frankly, it was just so that they could put a human face on some of this stuff”—“stuff” in this case being things like whole flocks of dead birds, destroyed wetlands, toxic spills, and ravaged landscapes.

Frazer has been fending off criticisms about representing Alberta ever since. At an alumni event in Washington this fall, grads chastised Frazer for his decision to take the province on as a client. “People raised their eyebrows and thought, ‘How could you represent Alberta on oil sands?”,” he says. “But I say, give me something to work with. We have a tap that will turn oil or gas on and off, but the tap for solar and wind is only giving a tiny bit right now.” His contract with the province ended last March and with a new government in Edmonton, Frazer is off the oil sands beat—for now.

Lobbying is more often than not considered ethically dubious, since there are lobbyists for practically every profession from teachers to cigarette companies. But University of British Columbia economics professor Matilde Bombardini says they’re often caught in a game of shoot the messenger.

“They’re the least trusted profession in the U.S., and yes, there are some that do illegal things,” she says. “But most operate within the boundaries. And they often produce information that is useful for policymakers.” John Chenier, former editor and publisher of the Ottawa-based publication The Lobby Monitor, says that lobbying is simply, “Games within games, wheels within wheels.” Of the ethics of lobbying on behalf of a highly controversial project like the oil sands, “I go back and forth,” says Chenier.

“One might judge someone lobbying for the tar sands as arguing on the side of the devils, rather than on the side of the angels. But many people in Alberta would disagree.” According to Chenier, the Government of Canada is this country’s largest spender on lobbying, and it has spent over $100 million in the U.S. and Europe lobbying other governments on environmental issues like softwood lumber exports and the Northern seal hunt.

But while we spend millions abroad, there are no Americans living in Ottawa full-time (as Frazer does in Washington), for the express purpose of lobbying Parliament Hill on American interests. Their embassy does most of the work in Ottawa, simply because our government is quick to consider U.S. interests without needing to be prompted. Decades of ever-tighter economic integration—from the Auto Pact to NAFTA to the proposed Great Lakes Partnership Council—means Canadian governments have no choice but to listen when American businesses speak. In the end it’s an American decision that will determine how the oil sands, and thus a considerable chunk of Canada’s economy, will proceed. “The decision in Washington on the Keystone XL pipeline could very well decide the fate of the tar sands,” says Chenier. “If you’re against it, it’s very important. If you’re for it, it’s very important. They could decide the development of northern Alberta, and in the process the environmental health of the world.”

“Americans don’t think of Canadians as foreign,” Frazer says. “You can take that one way or another. My perspective is to say run with it. Make it work for us.” He argues that Canada needs to be more bullish, in the American style. “Go in. Stand straight. Say your piece.”

David Biette, director of the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (where Frazer is a co-chair on the Institute’s advisory board), remembers a time when a client didn’t follow Frazer’s exact instructions on how to send thank-you cards after they returned to Canada. The next time they visited Washington, they were greeted with a frosty reception. “You can’t really say in Washington, ‘This is great for Canada’,” Biette says. “People look at you and reply, ‘I have a meeting…’ or something.”

That might be changing, though. After the federal election in May 2011, the Wilson Center held a discussion on what a Conservative majority means for Canada-U.S. relations. The house was packed, with an overflow crowd that couldn’t fit in the room.

“I wish I could be back in 1812 right now,” says Frazer, back in his office in Washington. “Or maybe 1814, and ask those Canadians what they think. I think they’d say we as Canadians did something nobody thought we could do.” Earlier this fall, it was announced that the Harper Conservatives had created an $11.5 million fund to recognize the history surrounding the War of 1812. The official commemoration will actually be a four-year process, culminating in 2015. New plaques will be mounted, monuments polished, battle re-enactments held, and plays and musical performances scheduled. In Canada, at least, the bicentennial is being trumpeted as a military victory that forged the nation that would eventually become Canada.

In the U.S., the conflict barely registers. “It doesn’t really have to do with whether it helped form your identity,” Biette explains. “It’s that it’s still part of your identity in 2012. That’s not so much here. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve heard anything about a commemoration of the War of 1812—and that’s when we got the Star-Spangled Banner.”

It’s divides like these that Paul Frazer has made a career bridging, explaining their foreign northern neighbours to America’s political class. Whether you hate or love his line of work, he is among the most important, and poorly understood, figures linking our two countries. For better or worse, a lot depends on Paul Frazer—our man in Washington.

Fort Chipewyan residents are increasingly afraid to consume the fish pulled from Lake Athabasca.

Canada’s oil sands are the largest and most environmentally destructive industrial project in the world. So far, oil sands development has eliminated 602 square kilometers of Boreal forest and emits 29.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses annually. The process involves strip-mining bitumen, a tar-like, sandy earth also known as “tar sands,” then processing it into various petroleum products. This process produces 1.8 billion litres of liquid toxic waste every day, which is stored in man-made “tailings ponds.” These ponds currently hold enough toxic waste to fill 2.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The First Nations community of Fort Chipewyan is located 300 kilometres downstream from the oil sands. In 2006, Fort Chipewyan’s family physician, Dr. John O’Connor, reported that alarmingly high rates of rare and aggressive cancers were killing local residents. As of 2010, band elders reported that cancer had become the leading cause of death in the community. Fear and grief consume Fort Chipewyan as fishermen are finding tumour-laden fish in Lake Athabasca and residents continue to lose their friends and family to cancer.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers continues to tell Canada and the world that there are no lasting impacts upon human health or the environment from the oil sands. Conflicting statements from CAPP, the Government of Alberta, scientists, environmentalists, non-governmental organizations and First Nations people have led to widespread public confusion over the true effects of the operation. Meanwhile, the people of Fort Chipewyan continue to die. Those who survive are afraid to consume the moose, fish and water that have sustained their families for generations.

Pollution from tailings ponds.

Tailings ponds line both sides of the Athabasca River near the oil sands—their toxic contents held back by man-made sand dikes that are hundreds of feet tall. A 2008 study by Environmental Defence showed that the tailings ponds were leaking 11 million litres of liquid into the surrounding environment every day. The Athabasca River runs past the oil sands, through Lake Athabasca, past several indigenous communities including Fort Chipewyan, and eventually empties into the Arctic Ocean.

Cherie Wanderingspirit worries about her children's health.

The abandoned Holy Angels Residential School in Fort Chipewyan.

Young people in Fort Chipewyan are increasingly disconnected from their traditional culture.

Like many Fort Chipewyan parents, Cherie Wanderingspirit (above) is worried about her children’s health. Today’s younger generations in Fort Chipewyan not only face the threat of cancer, but also live with the social trauma passed down to them by family members who lived at Fort Chipewyan’s Holy Angels Residential School (above) which closed in 1974. The torture and sexual abuse endured by the aboriginal children who attended the school have left lasting wounds upon the social and cultural fabric of Fort Chipewyan. Substance abuse, sexual assault, depression, and suicide are ongoing problems within the community. As a result, young people here are largely disconnected from their traditional First Nations culture. Rather than leaning to hunt, fish and trap, the youth (above) are often more interested in video games and urban fashion.

A willow branch marks the passage from Lake Athabasca into the Athabasca Delta.

Other than working in the oil sands, commercial fishing is one of the last ways to make a living in Fort Chipewyan.

Lake Athabasca fish being smoked.

Fish that can't be sold are thrown to the sled dogs.

A young willow branch (above) stuck into the mud by a boater, marks the deepest passage from Lake Athabasca into the Athabasca Delta. Fort Chipewyan’s band elders are concerned that water being taken from the Athabasca River to process bitumen into oil is contributing to declining water levels. Tar sands processing requires almost four barrels of water for every barrel of crude produced; Alberta Energy projects production will reach 3 million barrels of oil per day by 2018. Aside from employment in the oil sands, commercial fishing is one of Fort Chipewyan’s last viable means of making a living. Over the last five years, more and more fish with golf-ball-sized tumours, double tails, and other abnormalities have been caught in Lake Athabasca by commercial fishermen. In 2010, fishermen in Fort Chipewyan were unable to sell any fish commercially due to growing concerns over contamination from pollution, according to Lionel Lepine, the traditional environmental knowledge coordinator for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. Most of the fish caught during 2010 were smoked  or thrown to sled dogs.

Band elder Wilfred Marcel lost his daughter to cancer in 2003. She was 30 years old.

After more than forty years of chiefs and band elders complaining about the effects of pollution from the oil sands and tailings ponds, it took the publicly stated opinion of Dr. John O’Connor and independent environmental assessments by Dr. David Schindler and Dr. Kevin Timoney to finally draw media and public attention to Fort Chipewyan’s health and environmental concerns. The chief and council of Fort Chipewyan have called upon the Canadian government for an independent public health inquiry for over a decade. In that time, hundreds of Fort Chipewyan’s residents have died of unexplained cancers. Band elder Wilfred Marcel (above) lost his daughter Stephanie to cancer in 2003. She was 30 years old.

The cemetery in Fort Chipewyan. Hundreds of residents have died of unexplained cancers.

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.

Wildrose Alliance leader Danielle Smith stumping during her summer tour of Alberta. The far-right party has weakened the right flank of the Progressive Conservatives. Image courtesy Wildrose Alliance.

At Marv’s Classic Soda Shop, Marvin Garriott, known for his oiled handlebar moustache, is often asked to speak of politics. He’s the local prophet on the subject; all small towns have one. A two-term councillor sitting for the 1,900-person Southern Alberta town of Black Diamond, Garriott poses for tourists and reporters, mugging in a bowling-alley inspired uniform matching the laminate, post-war decor of his pop shop. He knew the federal Conservatives would sweep to a majority, predicted the fall of the Liberals and even says he foresaw the Orange Crush (and the demise of the Bloc).

Ask Garriott to predict the outcome of the upcoming provincial leadership race and his vision goes dark. “It’s going to be an interesting one,” he says, passing judgment on the provincial Progressive Conservative party with a wince and a so-so motion of his left hand. “They weren’t listening to us. And the whole health-care issue has been a fiasco, and it still is.” Albertans face a leadership contest and probable election come fall, and are calling for change. Considering Black Diamond is in the dark blue heart of Tory country, Garriott’s verdict is a surprising vote of non-confidence.

For 40 years, the Conservatives, under the auspices of King Ralph Klein and lately “Steady Eddie” Stelmach have boasted vote margins envied by now-deposed Middle Eastern despots. At least, until Stelmach’s bumbling leadership style cost him the support of party insiders. Facing declining oil royalties, ongoing economic sluggishness and a rogue MLA forcing the party’s failing health-care policies into an unflattering news spiral, the Conservative caucus is “dissolving,” according to David Taras, a media studies professor at Mount Royal University. “People elected [Stelmach] thinking he was experienced, but it turned out there was nothing steady about Eddie,” Taras says. “When 45 percent of your budget goes into health-care, that’s the gold standard. That’s the standard by which you will be judged.”

Following in the out-sized footsteps of the iconic Klein, Stelmach’s path was bound to be bumpy. But his political missteps have been scrutinized more severely by the formation of two new parties: the centrist Alberta Party and far-right Wildrose Alliance. The latter, led by charismatic former journalist Danielle Smith, has quickly leeched the support of the populist-minded and arch-conservative alike (though the pendulum may be swinging back lately).

Stelmach’s fading fortifications were dealt a fatal coup de main during budget talks in January. His finance minister, Ted Morton, reportedly threatened to resign rather than deliver a financial plan easy on cuts and leaning heavily on the province’s reserve savings. Stelmach beat Morton to the podium. The premier resigned during a hasty news conference. He took no questions. Two days later, Morton announced himself a leadership contender. The Conservatives are now staging a six-way race to elect a leader in a five-party province.

The turmoil may even lead to an actual contest come election day—a rarity in a region where there’s more competition within parties than between them. The root of Alberta’s electoral intractability lies in its history, according to Taras. Early American immigration, strong religious communities and the hangover of the Trudeau-Era National Energy Program mean it may be decades before the province sees any real political movement—the election of superstar Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi being the exception. Up to a quarter of Alberta’s budget relies on oil royalties, and the rest of the country is growing increasingly hostile to oil sands development.

The result is a hankering for a strong leader who can stand up to the environmentalists and robber barons of Eastern Canada: “The lesson is that we need majority governments that have to be strong vis-à-vis Ottawa, because if they’re not strong, bad things can happen,” Taras says. “People see environmental politics through the lens of ‘what’s Ottawa going to do to us now?’”

And here, it should be noted, Albertans have a point. Last year, the province’s taxpayers gave the federal government $7 billion more than they received in revenue and services—about the same as what Quebec received in equalization payments. The province also receives less than its fair share in health-care transfers.

Since the ’70s, Alberta’s politics have revolved more around the protection of regional interests than the promulgation of truly conservative social values. That leaves a cadre of leadership candidates that run the gamut from Red Tory to Stockwell Day—just as long as they support oil and gas, all seem to be welcome under the big blue tent. For decades, that made for a broad, stable conservative dynasty; now that base appears to be fracturing.

Gary Mar, a former MLA, recently quit his job as the Alberta representative in the Canadian embassy in Washington. He’s emerged as an early front-runner in the leadership race. High on his list of self-described credentials are his lobbying efforts for the Keystone XL pipeline—a tube that would carry crude oil to the U.S., angering environmental groups on both sides of the border.

At 48 years old, Mar is young and eloquent: traits he shares with fellow candidate Doug Griffiths, who holds the title of youngest MLA to serve the province at 29. Former energy minister Rick Orman and deputy premier Doug Horner both have strong resumes, but may be seen as too old-school to tap into the restless undercurrent.

Alison Redford rounds the centrist Tory position. Socially progressive, she supports boosting Calgary as a world energy capital. She’s also pulled some of the campaign brains behind Nenshi’s purple revolution, which saw the mayor sweep last year’s municipal elections. “We can’t continue to presume that an election takes place, we elect a certain set of officials and then those politicians go away to make decisions, and then ask people to vote for them again,” Redford says. “People are demanding a different conversation with their politicians.”

Then there’s Mr. Et-Tu? Morton, who stands for a more conventional, American-style conservatism that blends fiscal utilitarianism and hard-right values such as opposition to same-sex marriage. Whether he has a shot at the top seat in Alberta as the Wildrose splits the right remains to be seen. “The Wildrose has made a lot of inroads,” Garriott says. Stelmach, with his humble rise to the top, should be popular among the types of people who frequent Marv’s soda shop. He’s not. “For a country boy, [Stelmach] lost touch with reality.”

In Alberta, the reality these days seems to be: expect the unexpected.

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.

Click to enlarge

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?

James Cagney, Greenpeace, Syncrude, and other menaces to society.

Conservative provocateur Ezra Levant suggested in a Calgary Sun column last week that, according to Section 467.1 of the Criminal Code, Greenpeace should be prosecuted as a criminal organization.

That section of the Code defines a “criminal organization” as a group numbering more than three people in or outside Canada that “has as one of its main purposes or main activities the facilitation or commission of one or more serious offences that, if committed, would likely result in the direct or indirect receipt of a material benefit, including a financial benefit, by the group or by any of the persons who constitute the group.”

For the record, a serious offence is defined as that which carries a maximum punishment of imprisonment for five years or more.

Levant argues that Greenpeace, which is clearly composed of more than three people both in and outside Canada, financially benefits from repeated illegal activity—Greenpeace’s protests sometimes employ direct action and civil disobedience—through donations after the fact. And because break and enter—a common charge for protesters—is considered a “serious offence,” Greenpeace ought to be categorized as a criminal organization for encouraging it. Levant’s suggestion? Prosecute the bosses.

Now, let’s play along with him and accept for the sake of argument that Greenpeace leaders ought to be tossed behind bars. But as long as we’re cracking down, let’s take a look around for other nefarious criminal organizations hiding in plain sight. Who else was breaking the law in northern Alberta?

Oh, right. There was that consortium of oil giants, Syncrude, which was guilty of breaking two laws—the Alberta Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act, and the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act.

Now, we’re not sure yet what kinds of penalties Syncrude will face, as those won’t be handed down by the court until later this month. But more importantly, we do know what penalties Syncrude could have faced.

According to the Migratory Birds Convention Act, anyone who is convicted of an offence under that Act can be imprisoned “for a term not more than three years”. And if they are convicted a second time, that penalty can double to six years.

Let’s recall the definition of a serious offence: “an indictable offence under [the Criminal Code] or any other Act of Parliament for which the maximum punishment is imprisonment for five years or more.”

If my math is correct, a six-year prison term is longer than five years. So if Syncrude screws up again and a few thousand ducks pay the price, we might have a new criminal organization among our ranks.

Since the federal government is all about getting tough on organized crime these days, we thought they might like to know.

Artist's rendering of a Masdar public square. Click to enlarge.

Looking out over the site of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, it takes some imagination to consider that this slice of hardscrabble desert will soon contain the world’s first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city. A six-metre sign at Masdar’s entrance is the only confirmation that my cab driver and I have arrived at the right place. Despite its ambitious nature, Masdar—the Arabic word for “source,” a reference to the sun—is not a household name in the region, and for the moment its seven square kilometres, demarcated by a corrugated white plastic fence, is home to little more than shrubs and debris.

It’s early December, and one of the last hot days of the year before the mild winter begins. Even at 30 degrees Celsius, today’s temperature is nothing compared to the heat of summer. Migrant labourers dressed in white lay paving stones over the sand. Some of the men wear turbans while others are in baseball caps.

Workers in boots, alternating with workers in suits, come and go from the development’s temporary headquarters, a series of white, two-level portables shaded by circus-sized canopies the colour of desert. Inside, an image framed on the wall projects the future HQ, a wavy steel and glass structure that produces more energy than it consumes.

Once complete, Masdar is supposed to be home to 50,000 residents and 1,500 companies with 40,000 people commuting daily from Abu Dhabi. At its centre is the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, a sustainable-research hub, which as of today is the only building that has started to sprout. By 2018, Masdar is meant to contain two city squares housing day-to-day activity, outside of which will lie all the infrastructure required to sustain an eco-city in a desert: solar-power plants, a waste-to-power plant, an algae farm for biofuel, a solar desalination facility, a tree nursery, and a water-treatment plant.

The form of the city—itself an experiment in sustainable design—will mirror its function, which is to develop a completely new economic sector. Masdar City is the planned home of the Masdar Initiative, a foreign direct-investment fund for renewable energy technology. The end result, its leaders hope, will be Abu Dhabi’s own version of Silicon Valley.

The irony, of course, is that the United Arab Emirates is both a massive oil exporter and produces more carbon per capita than any other nation on Earth. The Abu Dhabi government’s rhetoric is lofty—Masdar will be a “testing ground for the future of humanity,” its purpose to create “a manifesto for sustainable life”—but it’s not empty: there is money behind it. Lots of money, even with Abu Dhabi now feeling the effect of the recession that has been devastating its neighbour Dubai. Oil brought wealth to the tiny emirate only a generation ago, and leaders know the supply is limited. Masdar is an attempt to ensure future security for a newly rich people.

The timing is canny. As the scientific and political consensus has shifted from if there is a climate crisis to how severe it will be, governments, industries, and citizens are increasingly looking for action to take. While change threatens to disrupt many traditional businesses, others see the transition to a post-fossil-fuel economy as a gold rush in the making. In 2008, for the first time, investments in renewables outpaced those in traditional energy: $140 billion was invested in wind, solar, and others, compared with $110 billion for fossil fuel and nuclear. What was once the marginal turf of environmentalists is now fought over by titans of industry. (The UN predicts renewable energy could create as many as 20 million new jobs over the next decade.)

Despite the economic potential, Canadian government policy—fixated on the tar sands—has not kept pace with science. Short-term thinking, buttressed by entrenched industrial interests, has stunted innovation here. Abu Dhabi, by contrast, has kept a long view, developing a vision for a fossil-fuel-free future, and is working to realize it. The motive is self-interest, but the results have the potential to be world-changing.

Political will, of course, is easy to mobilize in a wealthy monarchy unconstrained by democracy, election cycles, or budgets. But still, in striving to wean its prosperous economy off ever-scarcer fossil fuels, the tiny Muslim territory can be seen as a microcosm for the rest of the world, and one we would do well to take a lesson from. Whether it succeeds or fails—and there are bets placed on both outcomes— the emirate knows something that Canada doesn’t seem to: you can’t build a sustainable future without a blueprint.

Arriving in Abu Dhabi, the 20-kilometre drive from the airport to the city’s centre is quick in time more than distance. People in the UAE drive fast: traffic accidents are the number one cause of death here. Brand new SUVs hurl themselves down a 10-lane desert highway that not too long ago was desert itself. The drive to Dubai takes about an hour, but anyone over 50 will recall when the trip could be made only by camel, taking three or four days.

Abu Dhabi’s history reads like a rags-to-riches screenplay: the largest of the seven independent sheikdoms that comprise the United Arab Emirates, it was a poor pearl-farming outpost for the first 60 years of the 20th century, watching from the sidelines as oil strikes elsewhere in the Persian Gulf made its neighbours rich. When Abu Dhabi’s own huge oil reserves were discovered in 1959, residents expected the new wealth would bring long-awaited modernization, but nothing happened. Crown prince Sheik Shakhbut had grown paranoid from decades of dealing with the British, who maintained a presence in the region, and hoarded the wealth in case he should need it to fight off a military threat. By the mid-1960s, the problem was obvious to all, and Shakhbut was overthrown by his youngest brother, Zayed, kicking off an overnight transformation into a modern petrocracy. The nomadic population traded palm huts for air-conditioned villas, camels were swapped for cars (though there were few roads to drive them on), and high rises sprouted. Each Abu Dhabian received at least two plots of land—one for home, another for business—and a lump-sum cash payment. For most, it was a bewildering windfall: it was not uncommon at the time to see residents unaccustomed to keeping bank accounts leaving banks with cardboard boxes full of cash on their heads.

In 1968, when Britain announced its plan to withdraw from all territories east of the Suez, Zayed—fearing the prospect of being swallowed by a larger neighbour—successfully united the region’s quarreling sheiks under the flag of a federated UAE in 1971. Abu Dhabi is the largest and richest of the emirates, holding 90 percent of the country’s oil, about 10 percent of total global reserves. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the notoriously secretive sovereign wealth fund tasked with keeping the country rich, is thought to be worth about US$350 billion.

Headquarters of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Click to enlarge.

ADIA, as the investment authority is commonly called, makes its home in a 36-storey black skyscraper with rounded edges that wouldn’t look out of place in a Star Wars movie—and it dominates the view from where I am staying. My friends’ Abu Dhabi home is a four-bedroom, four-bathroom apartment, palatial, with marble floors and high ceilings. It rents for US$50,000 per year—a bargain by Abu Dhabi standards. With the influx of Western expatriates seeking large, tax-free incomes here, demand for housing outpaces the supply.

Our 14th floor balcony looks directly onto ADIA’s five-storey, airconditioned parking garage, which is topped by a gym featuring a pool that looks like it should be filled with dollar bills—which, in a way, it is. Water in the UAE is desalinated from the Gulf: nine million tonnes of oil are used each year to turn salty water sweet. (Even so, the UAE is number three in water consumption globally— behind the U.S. and Canada.)

I pour a smaller version of the ADIA pool in my en suite bathtub and think about what’s on the other end of the water pipe. In my imagination, it’s sinister machines belching black smoke while men in robes sit around lighting shisha pipes with dollar bills—but at least they are talking about wind farms.

The truth is the sheiks are talking about oil and wind farms—and Formula One racetracks and branches of the Guggenheim designed by Frank Gehry. Along with the new economic sector represented by Masdar, Abu Dhabi is focusing on tourism, aiming to make itself the cultural centre of the Middle East. Call it bet-hedging. The emirate has a lot to lose. If Masdar is successful, it may just happen that Abu Dhabi, a latecomer to the industrial age, will be among the first out the other side.

Nicholas Parker knows something about trying to move past fossil fuel dependence. The Canadian coined the term “cleantech” eight years ago when he founded Cleantech Group, a venture capital company that specializes in technology and knowledge related to the mitigation of ecological crises. Cleantech as an investment category includes everything from energy production to wastewater management to compliance management, and today, it’s the fastest growing sector there is.

Parker sits in the backyard of his home in Toronto’s High Park neighbourhood on a sunny June day. In a sweatshirt, sandals and socks and khaki pants, he looks much more at home than in the suits his business dealings often demand. Parker comes across as generous, gregarious, and as something of a rebel.

To me, he represents the convergence of environmentalism and business that has become our best hope for progress. “I’ve always had a passion for two things: entrepreneurship—I really celebrate that—and sustainable development, social justice, the environment,” he says. “Most of my life I felt schizophrenic; my lefty friends think I’m a right-winger and my right-wing friends think I’m a hardcore revolutionary.”

Parker says he founded Cleantech to “bring the radical disruptive mentality that exists in Silicon Valley and put it at service of the major sustainability challenges of our time.” That, and he claims to be unemployable. It’s true Parker is hard to pin down. He’s a venture capitalist who hasn’t owned a car for 23 years, a lifelong Liberal—but for a dalliance with the Green Party—and a Zen Buddhist.

In his business, the stakes here are high, both financially and environmentally. “If we’re focusing on energy, this is a $6-trillion-a year industry,” says Parker, adding that no other industry gets measured with numbers close to those for power generation. By now, most people know generally what is at stake with global warming. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that Earth’s average temperature will rise somewhere in the range of 1.1 to 6.4 degrees over pre-industrial times by the end of the century. The IPCC’s overall veracity was called into question last year with the exposure of emails suggesting it used questionable sources to advance questionable claims in its groundbreaking 2007 report, but “Emailgate” aside, these warming estimates are widely believed to be conservative, as actual increases have so far outpaced projections.

Beyond two degrees Celsius, the scenarios become apocalyptic: polar ice caps melt, three-quarters of the world’s species face extinction, and rising sea levels threaten coastal settlements. As it is, we’re 0.7 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures and the carbon we’ve emitted so far has us committed to at least another 0.2 degrees. To avoid the worst, environmental scientists believe we must reduce emissions by 80 percent before 2050. The numbers don’t leave a lot of room for optimism.

Parker’s company is at the forefront of innovation in trying to keep us away from the precipice, and he says he spends a lot of time spurring competition in the race toward a greener future. “My job is to run around telling everyone they’re behind everyone else,” he explains with enthusiasm.

When it comes to the environment, Canada has chosen to lag in pretty much every way. Our Kyoto commitment was a six percent reduction below 1990 levels, but we’ve increased emissions by 22 percent since signing on. Environment Canada attributes this trend primarily to increases in fuel production for export (specifically, the Alberta tar sands), as well as new vehicles on the road and our continued reliance on coal-fired power plants. In keeping with its demonstrated priorities, government spending on clean technologies has been almost entirely earmarked for non-renewable nuclear as well as carbon capture and storage, in which emissions are captured at the source and injected into the ground—at best a technological stop-gap. The Tories’ 2010 budget committed Canada to becoming “a leader in green job creation,” but failed to back the pledge with investment in renewable energy technologies.

Canada’s approach to climate change, or lack thereof, became hard to ignore in the weeks leading up to December’s UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, and during the proceedings, where the Canadian government’s disregard for emissions reduction led to loud international scorn. (For the third year running, Canada won the “Fossil of the Year” award, presented by the Climate Change Action Network to the country that has done the most to obstruct progress on climate change.)

This country’s regressive stance means Parker doesn’t do a lot of business close to home. “Canada doesn’t have a top 10 company in any cleantech category,” he says. “That’s why I live here, and I don’t work here.”

Parker is hopeful about the future, but not convinced we will make enough progress to avoid catastrophe. “I think this is an experiment,” he says, “and it’s quite possible we’ll fail. It’s incredible to be smart enough to know we’re fucking it up and stupid enough to still be doing it—it’s an amazing thing to be a human being.”

José Etcheverry is trying to make sure we succeed. A member of the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and president of the Canadian Renewable Energy Alliance, Etcheverry argues that a future in which all energy is derived from renewable sources is possible, if only government would wield policy to stoke innovation—not to mention the jobs it would create. “What we need to do is implement policies that make it possible for project developers to do what they do best,” says Etcheverry. “Entrepreneurs are by definition very creative and what we are missing is the political will to open market possibilities and create policies that give people the will to invest.”

This is what Abu Dhabi is trying to do, and it’s hardly a new idea. Denmark currently derives 19 percent of its energy from wind, thanks to an aggressive policy of government incentives implemented in the 1970s, spurred by the energy crisis. The windswept nation used to get 90 percent of its energy from petroleum sources, and the transition was pure self-defence. Today, Denmark is an energy exporter, and has reduced its carbon emissions by 13 percent since 1990.

John M. R. Stone is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University and until recently was on the bureau of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Opportunities here are abundant, he says, but Canada has not stepped up. “We’ve got a prime minister who doesn’t want to tackle this issue, who would prefer if it simply went away,” says Stone. “And the main reason is because he doesn’t know how to square it with the development in the tar sands. It’s unimaginative.”

Parker says there’s no shortage of imagination: researchers have shown that, theoretically, the planet’s total energy needs could be met with solar arrays covering around four percent of the world’s desert (if it were one plot of land, it would be about the size of the Gobi). “You can make deserts into valuable land,” says Parker, “leave the lights on all night, and it won’t matter, if we get this right. We’re five years, maybe 10, from solar being cost competitive from baseload fossil fuel power, so why aren’t we pursuing it?”

In a plush-seated auditorium in Abu Dhabi’s Chamber of Commerce, Masdar’s leaders are gathered for a specific, important purpose: to convince local businesspeople to sign up for the ecocity’s vision. They are having trouble sourcing materials and labour locally due to the stringent green standards inherent in the project. For local companies—providers of everything from lighting systems to floor finishings to roofs—to do business with Masdar, they must first green their own supply chains, rising to the same environmental and ethical standard Masdar has set for itself.

Masdar City is planned to be 99 percent carbon-free, with the remaining one percent (of what a comparably sized community would emit) offset or stored. The city is being constructed using the World Wildlife Fund’s One Planet Living principles, which include zero-carbon and zero waste, as well as sustainable transport, sustainable water and local food.

The WWF initiative began as a public relations campaign designed to communicate the ecological consequences of overconsumption. By 2035, the WWF figured, Earth’s residents would require a second planet, having exhausted the resources of the first. Its involvement in Masdar, however, goes beyond cheerleading. One Planet Living also acts as an accreditation system. Each principle of sustainability is a target that a project must meet in order to get WWF’s seal of approval. According to WWF, Masdar City goes beyond their expectations.

But even with all the political will and money in the world, people need to be convinced that the change is worth the risk.

At the chamber of commerce, a row of men in flowing white dishdashas take turns speaking, introducing Masdar and its aims in an effort to win the attendees to their view. There is interest—the 400-seat room is more than half full—but this is not an easy sell. Sultan Ahmed al Jaber, CEO of Masdar, lectures to the crowd, his talking points jargon-filled and clearly well-rehearsed. “We are going to direct you. But you must look for opportunities and solutions around the world. Contribute to the knowledge transfer, the making of a knowledge economy. You as the private sector have a major role to play. Don’t underestimate your contribution; the opportunity here is huge. The project we are working on now is a paradigm shift. You must be aggressive.”

But the people who have gathered here are still a few chapters back, and with good reason. This, after all, is a city that doesn’t even have a recycling program. “Why is Masdar next to the airport?” asks the first person to stand up. (He is reassured the development is not under any flight path.) Other questions range from how multicultural the city will be to how fast carbon neutrality can realistically be achieved. A cynical comment gets al Jaber back on his feet, full of fight. “We need to make a choice,” he says, fiercely. “We can do what we usually do—sit in the passenger seat and have others develop the technology and sell it to us. Or, we can take that pioneering and become owners of intellectual property and shop it around the world. Which one would you choose?”

As far as al Jaber is concerned, the choice is made, and the big-picture elements are well under way. The Masdar Initiative’s $250-million venture capital fund has invested in about a dozen early-stage companies around the world. One is Atlanta-based EnerTech, which does waste-to-energy conversion. Since coming on board with Masdar as a small shop, it’s signed a contract with the city of Los Angeles, and could end up meeting as much as 20 percent of L.A.’s energy needs through the conversion of septic sludge. (The process is called SlurryCarb, and it works by using heat and pressure to mimic the natural processes that turn once-living materials to fossil fuel.) Masdar also has high-profile investments in projects such as London Array, the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

As an idea, Masdar is irresistible. It’s compelling, the thought of a green utopia springing forth from the desert within the world’s biggest polluter, funded by the oil money of far-sighted sheiks trying to diversify away from a diminishing and damaging resource. And it’s still early enough that Masdar is a blank canvas on which everyone involved can project their fondest hopes.

Gerard Evanden sits overlooking the Thames at a small round table in the Foster and Partners London offices. Evenden, a stylish fortysomething with spiky salt-and-pepper hair, is lead architect for Masdar City. The architectural firm founded by celebrated British architect Lord Norman Foster is a pioneer in sustainable design—the firm renovated Germany’s Reichstag, the world’s first energy-positive parliament building—but Masdar is their biggest project yet, a chance to engineer a complete city from scratch.

Evenden shows me slides illustrating Foster’s vision: pedestrian walkways elevated seven metres off the ground, with driverless electric taxis bustling below and monorails gliding overhead. According to the plan, no resident will ever be more than 150 metres from emissions-free public transit.

“It’s not just about providing power for buildings and it’s not just about collecting energy,” Evenden says. “It’s about everything from the research through to the way people live, through to the way people move.” Evenden believes Masdar is the most important project in the world right now, and for this team of architects, it’s a dream come true.

Others, however, think of it more as a pipe dream. Christopher Davidson is a fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Durham University in the U.K., who studies the UAE, and has published numerous books on the region. He points out the political dimensions to Abu Dhabi’s motives. As a monarchy, he says, Abu Dhabi continuously needs to prove itself legitimate. “Abu Dhabi in the past couple of years has hit on a fantastic new legitimacy resource, which is championing the environment,” says Davidson. “It’s political and economic. Anyone who claims that Abu Dhabi can diversify away from oil and all related industries is living in a dream cloud. That’s just not accurate.”

But that doesn’t mean its leaders can’t have it both ways. “Despite the titillation we may feel over Abu Dhabi, a massive oil exporter, doing this, once we get over that irony, I think what we can see is a great initiative,” Davidson continues. “They’ve seized on a great opportunity, and in the long term, they might become an international hub for environmental industry.”

When I reach John Stone on the phone, he has just come from a meeting at Parliament in Ottawa—a gathering of a conservation caucus that brings together MPs with scientists and members of NGOs to talk about environmental issues. “They even listened to me,” he jokes.

Stone points out that it’s possible now, with existing technology, to rapidly move to a low-carbon future, and questions why we in Canada are not doing just that. “We should be working as hard as we can toward a new energy system that is carbon free, if possible,” says Stone. “And we have the technologies that we need already: photovoltaics, solar thermal, wind and the like. We basically know what we need to do. We just need to go on and do it.”

Despite the federal government’s foot-dragging, there’s more hope at the regional level. Etcheverry calls Ontario’s energy legislation the most progressive on the continent: the Green Energy Act of May 2009 is the first in North America to mandate feed-in tariffs, compelling electricity utilities to pay renewable energy providers at a premium rate. The law makes it possible for every home, office building, or neighbourhood to produce renewable energy and guarantees a market to sell it. Such a system currently provides 12.5 percent of Germany’s electricity, and adds about $2.20 to the average German home’s monthly energy bill. Solar City, a development in Freiburg, Germany, produces all its own electricity from solar arrays (in one of the cloudiest spots in Europe) and sells the surplus into the grid. A combination energy plant in Kassel, Germany, sells wind and solar power, and switches on biogas combustion to meet peak demand. Based on the Combined Power Plant, German scientists believe that country could be powered entirely with renewables within 40 years.

“It’s very difficult to make a quantum leap if you’re stepping into the unknown,” says Etcheverry about imagining a different future. “For me it’s easy. I have solar power in my own house, and have seen what others have done, and what we could do if we got our collective act together.”

Currently, nearly 60 percent of Canada’s grid is powered by a renewable source: hydro. Other renewables are a tiny 0.5 percent, with the balance coming from coal, natural gas and nuclear. According to world average numbers from the Canadian Renewable Energy Alliance, coal is still the least expensive power source at four to seven cents per kilowatt hour. Wind comes in second at six to nine cents, followed by nuclear at 10 to 13 cents (CanREA factored building-cost overruns into its equation). Expensive carbon capture and storage facilities, which are key to “cleaner coal” schemes, will soon push the price of coal above 12 cents per kWh. The prices for solar and coal are expected to meet within the decade.

Traditional problems with renewables—only being able to produce power when the sun shines or the wind blows—still pose challenges. The most compelling fix is to reconfigure the energy grid as a two-way, distributed system linking together many different types of generation facilities. The same redundancy and flexibility is what makes the internet possible: when one node fails, others pick up the slack. The electricity equivalent, advocates say, would be greener, more efficient, and more resilient.

But business as usual is tempting. It’s easier, for one, and there is still a lot of money to extract from the ground. North America is sitting on a lot of coal—probably enough to last at least 300 years, if we don’t mind tearing mountaintops off to get it. Oil has maybe 100 years; accessible uranium, 40. But climate change is the real catalyst for developing alternatives. From an ecological perspective, diminishing oil stocks are irrelevant. “The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones,” quips Stone, “and the oil age is not going to end because we’ve run out of oil.”

When it comes to energy and climate change, the path forward is as fundamentally uncomplicated as it is urgent. It’s last call for the oil age. The only question now is, how long until we kick the old drunk out of the bar?

Artist's rendering of the completed Masdar City development. Click to enlarge.

A sign at the entrance to the Masdar site dwarfs everything around it. At its top is an aerial illustration of what the city will look like on completion. The rest of it lists the various businesses that are partnering to make it happen.

Masdar’s associates undoubtedly feel good about the project’s noble cause, but the sign would be empty if these companies weren’t making money. The Masdar Initiative is a business: the city is intended to be a magnet for foreign investment, the eventual home of 1,500 companies looking to profit from clean technology. The physical city is one big carbon offset project, generating carbon credits that will be sold on international markets. There is no ambiguity: the motive here is financial; environmental benefits are a bonus. Regardless of the reason for its existence, the Masdar Initiative shows what clearly defined policy and political leadership can do.

Through its two facets, the city and the initiative, Masdar shows that climate change is both an individual problem and a macro one, and that the best tool for change is policy. The city, with its emphasis on living lightly, while retaining a high standard of living, shows what individuals—in intelligently planned surroundings—can do. The initiative is political and economic, creating an environment favourable to the pursuit of alternatives.

There are politicians in Canada who have attempted, in smaller ways, to use policy to fight climate change. Stéphane Dion wanted to put a price on carbon to reduce emissions, but his Green Shift plan—centred on a carbon tax—failed to connect with voters. Similarly, B.C. premier Gordon Campbell did not come away unscathed after implementing a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The public knee jerks at the mention of the word “tax,” but just as there is consensus among scientists that humans are changing the climate, economists are in agreement that carbon pricing is essential if we are serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Before the October 2008 federal election, 230 of Canada’s leading economists from universities across the country signed an open letter to the federal parties urging a coherent economic plan to combat climate change. “In the absence of policy, individuals generally don’t take the environmental consequences of their actions into account, and the result is a ‘market failure’ and excessive levels of pollution,” reads the letter, which goes on to warn: “Even those who are not convinced by today’s scientific evidence need to consider the costs of not acting now. Any action (including inaction) will have substantial economic consequences and, thus, economics lies at the heart of the debate on climate change.”

Industrialization produced the emissions that threaten the climate balance, and moving to a low-carbon society must also largely be driven by economics. Yale University economist William Nordhaus believes that all the conflict and contortions of 2009’s Copenhagen summit, and the next round of wrangling scheduled for November 2010 in Cancún, Mexico, could be avoided if the world could simply agree on a price for carbon. He told a pre-Copenhagen conference that “to bet the world’s climate system on the Kyoto approach is a reckless gamble. Taxation is a proven instrument. Taxes may be unpopular, but they work. The Kyoto model is largely untested and the experience we have tells us it will not meet our objective—to stabilize the world climate system.”

The threat to polar bears may not stir their consciences, but slashand-burn capitalists will respond to threats to their pocketbooks: Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, projected in 2006 that investing one percent of global GDP in emission-reduction measures would spare the world an economic contraction of as much as 20 percent this century. As an investment, that’s a winner. (Two years later, Stern has revised his figure to two percent because climate change is progressing more rapidly than anticipated.)

The first evacuations directly attributable to man-made climate change occurred in 2009 in the Carteret Islands in the South Pacific without much fanfare. If we were paying more attention to such evidence, we would be sprinting toward a clean energy future. Instead, we have been sauntering. As people have discovered there’s money to be made, it’s picked up to a jog. As Parker says, “We’re learning. But the problem is that the situation is deteriorating faster than we’re learning.” Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the economics favour action. “The longer we delay,” says Stone, “the graver the threat, and the more expensive it will be to address.”

There are lessons to be learned from the desert, and they are familiar ones. We’ve mustered political will for important things before. “Other prime ministers have said we will have railroads that will connect the country from coast to coast,” says Etcheverry. “We will have public health care, we will have a Canadian broadcasting corporation, and so on. The big 21st century Canadian project is making our country a generator of clean power, truly clean power. And it could make us rich in the process.”

Louisiana (USA). May 6th, 2010. Aerial view of the oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, the BP leased oil platform exploded April 20 and sank after burning. The picture was taken in the vicinity where the platform sank from an altitude of 3200 ft. Photo by Greenpeace USA 2010.

Even as the Deepwater Horizon spill releases an estimated 25,000 barrels of crude oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico—making it, in some experts’ estimates, an even greater ecological disaster then 1989 Exxon Valdez spill—Chevron Canada Ltd. is pursuing plans to create one of the deepest offshore oil wells in the world off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.  While President Obama and California’s Governor Schwarzenegger have passed a moratorium on offshore drilling in the U.S. in response to the Gulf explosion and the Canadian National Energy Board has announced a review of arctic safety and environmental offshore drilling requirements for the Canadian north, Chevron is preparing to drill 2.6 kilometers under water in the Canadian Atlantic—nearly 1 kilometer deeper then the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico.  The Chevron drill ship Stena Carron will be drilling in the Orphan Basin in the North Atlantic, 430 kilometers northeast of St. John’s; and while many have raised concerns about the dangers of another possible leak, the federal and provincial governments are doing their best to assuage those fears and press on with the project unchanged.

In a debate before the provincial legislature, Newfoundland and Labrador’s NDP leader Lorraine Michail voiced her concern: “Why won’t they put a halt to this project until we know how to deal with incidents so far beneath the ocean?” she asked, referencing BP’s inability to deal with the ongoing spill in the Gulf and their slow reaction time in drilling a relief well.  In response, the province’s natural resources minister Kathy Dunderdale has defended the project, asserting that unlike the Deepwater Horizon ship, the Stena Carron is equipped with three backup systems; “we have a degree of security—as much as one can rely on—that the proper measures and countermeasures are in place,” she said.

While the federal government is assuring those concerned that our safeguards are tougher than those in place south of the border, some analysts worry that Chevron’s backup plans are not designed for this new class of superdeep well. Ian Doig, an oil industry expert, commented to the Globe and Mail that only two rigs are located near enough to the Orphan Basin to be of any help in case of a spill, but that neither of those rigs are equipped to drill relief wells in the depths proposed. “If Chevron gets into problems at the total depth of its proposed well, neither of those two rigs in the area have the capability of going down to that depth […] They’ll just have to stand back and watch,” Doig said.

If Canada’s intractability comes as any surprise to you, it shouldn’t. I only have to point you to George Monbiot’s condemnatory Guardian article accusing Canada of representing the single largest impediment to positive environmental change on the global scale or to Zoe Cormier’s postcard from London last September in which she documents Canada’s place as public enemy number one for many environmental groups.  The reluctance or inability of our government to enforce greater accountability on the oil industry is merely the latest manifestation of an attitude that has spawned the ecological disaster of the tar sands, the world’s dirtiest oil project and the largest single industrial source of carbon emissions.

While Chevron has assured the government that the project is as safe as it can be, the question must be asked: how much of the environment is our government willing to sacrifice for the economy?

Peter von Tiesenhausen with one of his sculptures. Photo courtesy the artist

As you walk through Peter von Tiesenhausen’s land, artwork emerges as if summoned from the ground up. Ships and nests made of willow branches appear along well-worn paths. Statues carved from logs stand watch from between the trees. In Tiesenhausen’s studio, small canvases that resemble the cracked earth of recent droughts are propped across the window sill and sketches of aspen trees (drawn with aspen ash onto aspen pulp paper) hang along the wall.

Philosophically and aesthetically, it’s clear that the landscape and the art are inseparable, and since 1997, the Alberta visual artist has pursued this argument legally as well, taking the unprecedented step of copyrighting his land as a work of art.

Tiesenhausen made the decision after years of legal battles with oil and gas companies that wanted access to the deposits of natural gas that sit just beneath his 800-acre plot of land. Under federal law, Alberta landowners have the rights only to the surface of their land. The riches that lie beneath are generally owned by the government, which can grant oil and gas producers access so long as the companies agree to compensate landowners. This compensation is usually for lost harvests and inconvenience, but, Tiesenhausen reasoned, what if instead of a field of crops these companies were destroying the life’s work of an acclaimed visual artist? Wouldn’t the compensation have to be exponentially higher?

“I’m not trying to get money for my land, I’m just trying to relate to these companies on their level,” says Tiesenhausen from his home near Demmitt, Alberta. “Once I started charging $500 an hour for oil companies to come talk to me, the meetings got shorter and few and far between.”

Tiesenhausen is in a unique position to understand both the realities of industry and the value of the natural world. As a young boy working on the family ranch, his daily job of surveying the cattle left him with an intimate understanding of the family’s land. He left school at 17 to work in the oil fields and eventually found himself in the Yukon in the early ’80s, digging away at surface gold mines. Before he committed to being a full-time artist in 1990, he worked crushing boulders in Antarctica while building an airstrip through the permafrost.

Today, Tiesenhausen is an artist, an active member of his community and a somewhat reluctant environmental icon. “I’m just a guy that likes to have an exciting life,” he says earnestly. “I went to the gold fields, worked in Antarctica, but what I found was that staying at home and making art was the most exciting my life ever got.”

In 2003, he presented his copyright argument before the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, which told him that copyright law was beyond its jurisdiction and he would need to pursue that in the courts. So far that hasn’t been necessary. The oil and gas companies have since backed off, even paying for an expensive rerouting of pipelines, and have yet to bother testing his copyright.

This fall, Tiesenhausen will get a chance to comment on the oil industry through his art, rather than the law. He’s been invited to the Gallery Lambton in Sarnia, Ontario, to create a yet-to-be specified new work in response to the 150th anniversary of North America’s first commercial oil well.