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No ‘duck porn’ in Stelmach’s political pond
News Articles | Edmonton Journal | Graham Thompson | March 09, 2010
Read the full article on the originating site
There are moments watching the goings on at the Alberta legislature you have to give your head a shake
One of them happened Monday afternoon when a reporter asked Premier Ed Stelmach if he had seen the photos and video of the oil-soaked ducks dying on Syncrude’s tailings lagoon from 2008.
“No, I haven’t,” he replied.
For a moment, the usually gabby press gallery was stunned into silence.
How could he not have seen them?
The pictures — at the heart of the ongoing court case against Syncrude — have been widely published in newspapers, led TV newscasts and have gone viral on the Internet. Critics of the pictures have dismissed them as exploitative ‘duck porn’ — but like most of the regular porn on the Internet, the pictures are everywhere. So, how could Stelmach not have seen the photos?
Perhaps he has a software filter on his computer that filters out bad news about the oilsands — a Net Nanny for duck porn. Stelmach wouldn’t say.
When reporters asked him why he hadn’t seen the ubiquitous photos, he avoided the question: “You asked me if I saw them, I haven’t seen them.”
When asked if he was at least curious about the front page pictures that have many Albertans talking, Stelmach continued to bob and weave: “You asked me a question, I’m telling you the truth. It’s in trial, the trial is proceeding and it doesn’t matter if it’s 500 ducks, 1,500 ducks, 1,600 or five. There are still ducks that landed in the pond, it’s unacceptable, it’s not the way we do things in Alberta.”
If Stelmach didn’t want to comment on the pictures for fear of being seen to influence the trial, that’s one thing — but to say he hadn’t even seen the pictures is a bit of a head scratcher.
But then, I suppose, it really isn’t.
As New Democrat leader Brian Mason said, Stelmach’s ignorance of the pictures gives him “plausible deniability.” He can avoid answering awkward questions about the disturbing pictures if he hasn’t seen them.
For Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman, Stelmach’s position is a reinforcement of the government’s unofficial motto of the oilsands’ impact on the environment: “deny, deny, deny.”
Lending credence to the opposition’s claims is the fact Stelmach is usually well-informed and well-briefed on just about any topic.
On Monday, he talked in detail about the Heritage Savings Trust Fund, the health care file, details of international trade with China, and he was curious about how Alberta was doing in curling. But he hadn’t bothered to look at pictures of the latest black eye to hit the province’s fastest growing source of energy income.
It’s not your head you want to shake; it’s his.
By being wilfully blind to images that are helping shape how the world sees the oilsands, Stelmach runs the risk of undermining his government’s defence of the industry. And there is a defence to be made other than jobs and money. Or, at the very least, there are things about the oilsands that aren’t as bad as you might think.
The oilsands, for one, are not the largest source of greenhouse gases in Canada. They are the fastest growing source of emissions but they are not the largest source. Of the 750 million tonnes of greenhouse gases released in 2007, fewer than 30 million came from the oilsands. A larger source was our gasoline-burning cars at 41 million tonnes and our light-duty trucks at 45 million. The largest source of carbon dioxide emissions are power stations, particularly coal-burning power stations, that accounted for 126 million tonnes in 2007, according to Environment Canada statistics.
I raise this not to excuse the oilsands but to put things in perspective — and to once again raise the warning flag on how governments are making unproven assurances about how they will reduce emissions from industrial plants through carbon capture and sequestration.
Last week, Quest — a Shell Canada-led consortium — held four open houses in the Fort Saskatchewan area to explain its plan to start pumping one million tonnes of carbon dioxide underground beginning in 2015.
An estimated 250 people turned up over four nights to listen to the friendliest group of scientists and experts you could ever hope to meeting talking about things like sandstone saline aquifer storage formations. The experts are no doubt sincere in their enthusiasm for the project that, if it goes ahead, will receive $745 million in provincial funding but the technology is still unproven on an industrial scale. At this point, it is a public relations campaign designed as a pre-emptive strike against any NUMBY (Not Under My Backyard) opposition.
One local resident who turned up Wednesday night discovered that his acreage is next door to a proposed test well. “I hope it (carbon dioxide) doesn’t come up and haunt us. I’m very concerned because the well is right next door to my place.” He didn’t want to give me his name, saying only that he was a welder from the Thorhild area and a member of the local volunteer fire department. “I hope it’s safe and cleans up the air. I hope it’s a good thing because I work in the oilfield.”
His concerns are justified and his hopes might be, too. At this point, we don’t know enough about the technology.
But at least he had the courage and curiosity to seek out information to help him make informed decisions, even if the information was unsettling.
Premier Stelmach should take notes.
Tagged with: syncrude, ducks, tailings ponds, ed stelmach, edmonton journal
