By Ryan Maue.
Free publicity:
Bill McKibben’s Call to Action: “I want to tell you about an upcoming action — it looks set to turn into the biggest civil disobedience protest in the history of the North American climate movement. It will take place at the White House from August 20-Sept. 3, and we need your help spreading the word. But I want to explain the reasoning behind it in some detail, because for me it helps illustrate how some of the debate about Obama is unproductive.”
President Obama has recently been criticized by former VP Al Gore in his rambling Rolling Stone article. But apparently that’s been “unproductive” and some damage control is in order. McKibben has the perfect solution in order to lobby the President to kill the Keystone Pipeline: “We asked people who had Obama buttons in their closets to bring them and wear them — many of us still remember the shivers that ran down our spines when he said, on the eve of his nomination, that with his election “the rise of the oceans would begin to slow and the planet begin to heal.”
The opposition to the Keystone Pipeline is not terribly difficult to figure out. But McKibben deftly summarizes the ultimate stakes that liberal environmentalists face:
But there’s a bigger problem here too. Those Alberta tar sands are the biggest carbon bomb on the continent — indeed, on the whole planet, only Saudi Arabia’s oil deposits are bigger…if you could burn all that oil at once, you’d add 200 parts per million co2 to the atmosphere, and send the planet’s temperature skyrocketing upwards. Any serious exploitation of the tar sands, says Hansen, means it’s “essentially game over” for the climate. So, high stakes. And don’t think that the Canadians will automatically find some other route to send their oil out to, say, China. Native tribes are doing a great job of blocking a proposed pipe to the Pacific; Alberta’s energy minister said recently that he stays up nights worrying that without Keystone his province will be ‘landlocked in bitumen.’ Without the pipeline, said the business pages of Canada’s biggest paper, Alberta oil faces a ‘choke point.’
So, the Call to Action is summarized on a website, where you can go to sign up to join the effort: Tar Sands Action
Get your best business attire, your Obama buttons, and get ready to join Danny Glover, Naomi Klein, and NASA scientist James Hansen at the White House, and help Obama “get his environmental mojo back!”
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From a political point of view, with gas prices soaring and the President in complete reelection/campaign mode, blocking the pipeline would be a huge political gift to any GOP nominee.
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The TransCanada pipeline currently ships half a million barrels a day to the US. The Keystone expansion would increase this by another half million. In 2008, the last year statistics are available, Canada was shipping 1.5 billion barrels per day to the US.
The comments about “dirty oil” are laughable. How do these activists know what percentage of the pipeline oil is dirty oil from the tar sands? Furthermore, how do they know how much of this oil is the dirtiest dirty oil, comprising the 20% of total tar sands production that is extracted from open pit mining? Wouldn’t the dirty oil contaminate the “clean oil?” It seems the American public would be encouraged to cut off Canada’s oil supply all together, lest they be accused of hypocrisy.
As an Albertan, I would be happy with keeping all of our oil. It makes more sense to me that we sell a small percentage of it and save the rest for when it is really needed. Our provincial government has not operated in our best interests. They have opened the door for oil and gas exploration without the most beneficial system of pay back to Albertans and by extension all Canadians. Our federal government owns surface land rights, therefore the public is powerless to stop the infiltration of oil and gas development. The industry creates jobs and brings wealth to our government, but all at a cost to the people who live here. Meanwhile, the majority of Alberta oil is getting shipped south of the border.
The activists quoted in this article decry the environmental impact of the Keystone pipeline. They should take a look at the province of Alberta. It is a patchwork of pipelines covered by a rash of gas wells. Many oil and gas companies building gas wells in our backyards or crossing them with pipelines are American companies. Production in the Alberta oil sands is now dominated by foreign companies. The American government recently petitioned for a fivefold increase in dirty oil sands production.
A study of NAFTA shows that in the event of a national emergency, the American government can usurp Canadians access to our own natural resources. Thus, it can be argued that Americans own the pipeline not Canadians. Secretary of State Clinton understands this which is no doubt why she supports extension of the pipeline to double its capacity. All the activists’ can hope to accomplish is delaying the inevitable. Although, I really do wish them success.
“Those Alberta tar sands are the biggest carbon bomb on the continent — indeed, on the whole planet, only Saudi Arabia’s oil deposits are bigger”
Bill McKibben’s intentions may be pure, but this makes him an official Saudi tool. In effect, he is lobbying on their behalf for free (we hope). If his efforts are successful, only they will benefit. I’m sure they are secretly cheering him on.
The sign-up form for potential participants in the U.S. leg of the
“tar sands” protest is interesting:
http://www.tarsandsaction.org
You give your name, zip code, *e-mail address, and your phone
number. There’s no explaination given or implied as to what the
asterisk indicates.
There’s an “I’ll abide by the rules” box to check… and it wraps up
with a check for “Who was President when you were born ?”.
Once the spurious “Mickey Mouse” signups, the faux phone numbers,
and the too-young participants (born during the Obama, G.W. Bush and
Clinton administrations) are culled from the herd, you have a start on a
list of issue-interested, internet articulate folks who can be contacted
for other issues on down the line.
They pick up your more-or-less permanent home zip and e-mail
addresses, which can be used as a family income identifiers through
Census data. It also gives a “blue” or “red” indicator on local and
state/national political party affiliation intensities in your area.
The odds are good that once you’ve filled in the form, you’ll be
contacted by regional or local special interest organizations
concerning issues, candidates, civil “actions” and other fun
political stuff. Organizations can sell or swap lists so generated
for years to come.
I’m betting someone has a stash of old Obama buttons for the
“tar sands” protesters… or a badge-a-minute set up to produce
them on an as needed basis during the “action”. A lot of folks
in my area have Hillary Clinton buttons, which won’t cut it in
photo ops during the protestations.
We are in the not-so-early phases of the 2012 Presidential
election cycle.
Will Al Gore be there ?
Well, first off, can the author of that comment provide evidence that this “study” exists in the first place? Not knowing exactly what’s in it makes it impossible to refute it.
Secondly, argument by authority doesn’t fly. How many papers ones publishes is not proof of anything but the ability to write papers quickly. Not every peer-reviewed paper is correct anyway, and with the collusion in the reviewing process that’s been documented within the climate science field, “peer review” doesn’t mean all that much any more. As Einstein said before, it doesn’t matter how many people agree with something, it only takes one person to prove it wrong.
Thirdly, in a field like climate science it’s difficult to perform experiments. Similar to how it’s done in astronomy and geology, prediction followed by observation usually stand in for lab work, in that one can’t raise the atmospheric CO2 to 500ppm and observe the results — and doing so in a controlled environment utterly fails to reproduce the chaotic conditions of the natural state of the climate. What you usually get instead are climate model results that then get interpreted by the media and alarmists and non-scientists in general as “evidence,” when they actually ARE the predictions whose validity needs to be determined.
The hard facts are actually few on the ground: the Earth has warmed over the past 150-200 years — but not in the manner predicted by the climate models. The hot spot that was a cornerstone of global warming predictions has never appeared. The oceans are not rising at the rate predicted by the models. Ice is not uniformly disappearing at the poles: the north is losing somewhat but the south is gaining. Hurricane frequency is not increasing. Most of the other things you read are the dire predictions of people with an agenda.
My degree is in geology. One thing I do know is that the Earth’s climate has waxed and waned constantly over her 4+ BY history, and even in the last 10MY — a wink of time, geologically. I know that CO2 has hit 5000ppm in the past, and there were ice ages at the time. The mere fact that CO2 has been so high, and then so low again, is proof positive that there are built-in climate feedback systems that prevent it from “running away” — and there’s no reason to presume that they aren’t still working today.
McKibben and his fellow travellers would prefer that oil be purchased from dictatorships and terrorist hell holes like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Sudan, etc instead of liberal, democratic, human rights-respecting Canada?
TATS says:
July 12, 2011 at 9:25 am
It is not the goal of worldwide socialism, it is totalitarianism,………
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True, and I don’t disagree with the rest of your posit, but it should be pointed out, that totalitarianism, goal or not, is the end result of worldwide socialism.
DCA says:
July 12, 2011 at 7:23 am
I recently read this comment in a local blog:
“The 2009 (published in 2010) study that showed 97+% agreement on human-caused climate change being a serious problem was a survey of thousands of papers written by the hundreds of scientists who had published 20 or more peer-reviewed papers on climate science. They included every scientist who had published 20+ papers on climate science. Those are the real experts. Every one of those papers included real science — the testing of hypotheses with real, hard evidence and original research. The consensus is scientific; the controversy is political.”
Can anyone point me to a credible study refuting this “concensus”?
Nah, DCA, snap your own bad self out of it! It’s also well past your turn to fess up to reality and list every way in which your own diseased propaganda effort itself is really nothing more than the same scientifically worthless propaganda sewage that we all already know CO2 = CAGW “Climate Science” is.
After all, DCA, by now it’s clear that only you can remedy your own problem!
Forget that every single prediction made by Hansen so far has failed miserably, this time he will be right!
To our friends north of the 49th, you guys and gals should know, the majority of the American public is in favor of buying the oil you’re willing to provide. But, as you’re well aware, the spine shivering, leg tingling fanatics dominate the social, political and economic discussion in this bizzarro world of U.S. policy.
I agree with DCC that this is not worthy of the term civil disobedience.
With the help of Tom Wolfe’s perceptiveness, let’s call it what it is: The radical chic greenies are mau mauing the flak catchers.
The westward pipeline from Alberta to the British Columbia coast is not in question. It is the 21st century version of the Canadian Pacific Railway and fortunately there is a Canadian federal government in place that will make it happen.
For all of you canadians out there:
Is it possible I could move up there and away from the politics of our vile and stupid community organizer AKA President?
I believe in drilling and using the resources of this planet in a responsible way, and by also being responsible with the environment, but I never would want to shut down industrialized society. I owe my life and my work to living in an industrialized society and I give thanks to this everyday.
If you Canadians are becoming sensible, maybe that is a better place to move.
Here in the US, we have the EPA out of control and stupid RINOS with dem’s trying to shove “energy independence” down our throats which is cap and trade with a different name. They just rename everything once it fails….that is how politics works here in the states.
Or maybe I will watch Australia too. If the entire escapades turns out well, that might be a good place to live too…the US just seems so head-bent on throwing itself down the drain economically.
Anyone know if Bill McKibben’s main residence is in Ripton, Vermont off Wagon Wheel Rd? Check out the estate on Google map. You would think what was done to the forrest to build this house might evoke protest from a few tree huggers.
I’ve really had ENOUGH of the eco-loons and the entire corrupt climate science industry. It’s time to shut down all of their infrastructure that is in any way tied to “dirty oil”! Shut down their computer servers, shut down the buildings, take away their cars and trucks, ban all flying, and accept nothing (food, office supplies, cleaning products) that hasn’t been produced or transported by non-petroleum energy sources.
In fact, if you’d like to see a counter-protest, I would love to see all of the truckers in the country simply stop ALL deliveries for a week. No deliveries of food, medicine, products, raw materials – anywhere. When the empty shelves started appearing in the stores, people would then finally begin to understand how much we should thank our lucky stars for the modern petroleum-based infrastructure we have, and how we are ALL going to be impacted if these climate maniacs get their way…
If you want a good read on the Oil Sands, read Ezra Levant’s “Ethical Oil”
http://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Oil-Case-Canadas-Sands/dp/077104643X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310493609&sr=8-1
Lots of the arguments expressed here and more, clearly summed up in the book.
Mike
Look! Actual Shovel Ready Jobs!
Suzuki, Klein, Barlow: Do as we say, not as we do
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/06/24/arresting-development
I’m sure Hansen and many other eco-nuts can hardly wait to jump in cars or fly to Washington to protest the use of oil. I wonder if any of them will walk?
If you want to read about US Environmental Activities in British Columbia, follow Vivian Krause
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/
Obama babbled a bit about “transparency,” too. But Obama lies, as everyone should know by now.
pat says:
July 12, 2011 at 2:53 am
Financial Post: U.S. foundations against the oil sands
The Tides Foundation has spent $6-million to fund green lobbies
By Vivian Krause
Just put these three story lines together.
1.Talking Points Memo & Top Story – Buying political power: Investigating Soros
Guests: Author Phil Kent & radio host Monica Crowley
“The Factor has been investigating far-left billionaire George Soros, a man who wants to impose a radical left agenda on America. Soros has set up a complicated political operation designed to do two things – buy influence among some liberal politicians and smear people with whom he disagrees. Most of Soros’ political money flows through his ‘Open Society Institute,’ which has given nearly $20 million to the ‘Tides Foundation.’
http://billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=1310
2Soros’s Oil Spill Payoff
Could this be merely a happy coincidence for George Soros, the major financial backer of Obama’s presidential campaign who also has $811 million invested in the Brazilian oil company, Petrobras? Wasn’t it enough of a payback to Soros when the Obama Administration loaned up to $10 billion to Petrobras? Soros, with his far left-wing organization, MoveOn, is called the Godfather of world socialism. But most relevant currently is that he has been an enthusiastic proponent of global warming and environmental liberalism. He has urged adoption of a global carbon tax. Could it be more than coincidence that his position is strikingly similar to what Obama called for in his June 14 Oval Office speech on the Gulf oil spill and future energy actions?
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/22/soros-oil-spill-payoff/
3China, Brazil Sign Oil Deal – Stephanie Ho | Beijing
China has agreed to lend $10 billion to Brazil’s Petrobras, in return for guaranteed oil supply over the next decade.
Follow the money.
I hope they are all planning to walk there.
TATS says:
July 12, 2011 at 9:25 am
“It is not the goal of worldwide socialism, it is totalitarianism”
How can a socialist system avoid the descent into totalitarianism? As it cannot offer its people positive incentives, but only punishment for the productive ones, it must wither, and as the population becomes aware of the decline, it must either make way for a different system or become totalitarian.
Man, I really wish you were joking. Unfortunately….
Louis Hooffstetter says:
July 12, 2011 at 10:17 am
“Bill McKibben’s intentions may be pure, but this makes him an official Saudi tool. In effect, he is lobbying on their behalf for free (we hope). If his efforts are successful, only they will benefit. I’m sure they are secretly cheering him on.”
And channeling some money through Tides to the Canadian enviro-tools.