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Our pitch to Pelosi
Opinion | The Ottawa Citizen | Rick Smith and Marlo Raynolds | September 10, 2010
Read the full article on the originating site
As our neighbour and customer, the United States has the responsibility to help shape what happens in Canada’s oilsands while we transition to a clean energy economy. This was the message we gave to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others during our meeting in Ottawa Thursday.
Given the U.S. is the largest purchaser of Canada’s oil, the U.S. is tantamount to the preferred customer.
It is in that position that America should help define the environmental performance of the product it is buying.
This can be achieved by ensuring that Canada sets and enforces hard caps on environmental impacts, something lacking so far.
Pelosi, a champion of clean energy and green jobs, was joined in the meeting by U.S. Congressman and chair of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming Edward Markey, a person committed to action on climate change. Both made it clear that getting off fossil fuels is a moral imperative.
In the meeting, we focused on the lack of regulations in Canada to reverse the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and the release of toxic chemicals into the air and water. We talked about the growing health concerns in communities downstream from oil sands facilities. We explained that the industry is Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas pollution, and that government action to fix this is absent federally and mere tokenism in Alberta.
We talked about a web of new oil pipelines proposed to criss-cross the U.S. and Canada — new infrastructure that would lock us into 50 more years of oil dependence and undermine initiatives to transform our transportation infrastructure. And we explained how the oil sands industry’s much trumpeted technological solutions — mostly unproven and not required by regulations — will not solve the growing environmental problems.
Although some companies have reduced certain impacts on a per barrel basis, rapid expansion means the overall impact continues to get worse. With more than a doubling of current oil sands production already on the books, our wildlife and forests, fresh water, airsheds and climate system simply can’t sustain the projected levels of damage.
Pelosi asked what we wanted to see happen. We explained the best thing for our countries and the security of our children is to ultimately chart a course off the oil sands. This is the solution that would help both the U.S. and Canada transition away from oil to an economy powered by clean energy while providing millions of new clean energy jobs — a commitment President Barack Obama has made publicly.
The best strategy in the short term is to stop building new oilsands projects. The U.S. can contribute by shelving TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would carry an additional 900,000 barrels a day from the oilsands, crossing through five states rich in agricultural land and sensitive wetlands, and ending at the Gulf.
There is growing pipeline opposition in the U.S.
In July, the Environmental Protection Agency said that the draft environmental impact study for the pipeline was inadequate because it assumed the U.S. needs more oil instead of considering alternatives such as improved fuel economy standards, more widespread use of fuel-efficient technologies, advanced biofuels and electric vehicles.
Being the third most powerful politician in the U.S., and one with direct influence over the House agenda and the Department of State, where approval for the Keystone XL pipeline rests, Pelosi is a major force in the future of Canada’s oil sands. The fact she came to us and asked many smart probing questions about our concerns over the oil sands left us with hope, a feeling we’ve yet to encounter after exiting any similar meeting with our own government.
Rick Smith and Marlo Raynolds are executive directors of Environmental Defence and the Pembina Institute, respectively.
Tagged with: keystone xl, clean energy, tarsands, pelosi
