Bitumen: Boon or Blight?

There are few subjects as divisive in this country as the tar sands. For some they are an economic miracle, generating billions of dollars of tax revenue and thousands of jobs. For others they are an environmental disaster, a blight on the physical and political landscape. But nearly all agree that the tar sands are the most important development project in the country. Love them or loathe them, the tar sands will define Canada like nothing else.

Two recently released books, Andrew Nikiforuk’s Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent and Tony Clarke’s Tar Sands Showdown: Canada and the New Politics of Oil in an Age of Climate Change, take aim at the tar sands. (1) But only one hits its mark. Nikiforuk’s book is a tightly focused condemnation of the tar sands industry and the governments that have supported its unsustainable growth. On one level it is a cogent and clearly argued critique; on another level it is a sustained howl of rage against an industry that has lost its bearings and its values.

Tar Sands tells a well-known story in a new way. We see not only the large-scale environmental destruction that we have come to associate with this mega-project, but also the local social problems that result: the violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and failing infrastructure that are some of the project’s most surprising legacies. Indeed, Nikiforuk is able to reframe this as a global environmental disaster as well as a disaster for the local inhabitants of Fort McMurray and Alberta. He does so by introducing us to the people on the ground, people such as Karl Clark, the indomitable scientist who figured out how to separate bitumen and then was appalled when he realized how his technology was to be used; or John O’Connor, the whistle-blowing doctor from Fort Chipewyan who began noticing high rates of cancer in this Native community and was virtually run out of town by Health Canada and Alberta Health; or Melissa Blake, Fort McMurray’s “spunky” mayor, who has fought an uphill battle to secure the resources and infrastructure sufficient for the exploding population of her boomtown. The book is sprinkled with local personalities who add narrative colour and also remind us that when Nikiforuk talks about one million gallons of toxins seeping into the Athabasca River a day, for example, this is not a victimless crime.

The book’s greatest strength is this ability to show the impacts of the tar sands on real people. We all know by now, of course, that the tar sands are a massive project with profound environmental impacts on a truly global scale. Covering 140,000 square kilometres, with 175 billion barrels in proven reserves, this project is awesome in scope. With more than $200 billion in capital investment, it is, according to Nikiforuk, the “world’s largest capital project.” And its impact on the environment is equally amazing, using up 2.3 billion barrels of freshwater a year and projected by 2020 to be responsible for as much as 16 percent of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions. And yet the impacts feel far removed, as if it were all happening in another country where you might expect these kinds of environmental abuses to happen. Nikiforuk is able to connect us back to the project through the people who are on the front lines. In so doing, he dodges a false dichotomy between the environment and the economy, where any environmental concerns are characterized as being in conflict with economic self-interest. Nikiforuk is able to show how local communities—who should be the principle beneficiaries of this project—are in many respects economic losers, as most of the wealth seeps out of the region, leaving local taxpayers with the costs. This has led, amongst other things, to the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo becoming the most indebted municipality in Canada.

Nikiforuk’s even-handedness serves his message well. He is careful, for example, to give due credit to certain companies—such as Suncor for its innovations regarding the use of water in the tar sands—and individuals such as Syncrude’s founding CEO, Eric Newell, whom he credits for investing in aboriginal education and local infrastructure. These concessions allow the book to rise above being simply a rant, and give it seriousness and resonance. Even advocates will have a hard time dismissing Tar Sands.

If Nikiforuk’s book succeeds through focused storytelling, Tony Clarke’s Tar Sands Showdown takes a different approach, with poorer results. The first half of the book provides a general historical background to the tar sands and the energy industry writ large. While some of this I found informative—for example, the story of the National Energy Program, which seems to provide the backdrop to so much of the political reality of the tar sands projects today—much of it is a reformulation or regurgitation of facts and information about energy that most readers will already know.

But it is mainly the tone that separates these books. Whereas Nikiforuk’s approach is for the most part fair-minded, Clarke instead strikes an openly polemical and caustic tone. For example, he writes of the “sudden massacre of ducks that occurred in late April 2008.” Not to belittle that terrible event, which was covered by media worldwide and drew attention to the problems of the tar sands’ tailing ponds, but to refer to it as a massacre is to overstate the case and undermine the point. This is but one small example of an attitude I detected throughout Tar Sands Showdown.

This stylistic tendency is symptomatic of Clarke’s highly politicized approach to the subject. In his second-last chapter, “Resistance Movement,” Clarke relishes an imagined David and Goliath battle between massive corporations and their political servants on one hand, and “the movement,” a ragtag bunch of environmental and citizen groups, on the other. And in the final chapter, “Dream Change,” we see that his ultimate goal in writing a book about the tar sands may be less about this project and more a fantasy about a “great turning” in society in which Canada will discard its old capitalist cloak and discover a new socialist persona.

For Clarke, the tar sands symbolize a final battle-ground between the narrow interests of a military-capitalist society and a new socialism that the author imagines taking its place. Much of the latter part of the book is given over to advancing what the author calls “energy socialism.” But this highly politicized approach to the subject crowds out other possibilities. Citing a study by the Canadian Boreal Initiative, Clarke steers toward an interesting discussion when he claims that “the value of all benefits from the Mackenzie boreal system is estimated to be 93.2 billion dollars per year, two-and-a-half times the net value that would be realized from the extraction of the natural resources of the region.” This insight points in the direction of properly valuing natural capital that is lost through the development of the tar sands. But, unfortunately, Clarke too quickly abandons this line of inquiry, returning instead to an anti-capitalist refrain that is less compelling.

Despite Clarke’s obvious concern about the tar sands, the book is short on practical solutions. On one page Clarke comes close to supporting carbon taxes as the best answer to the greenhouse gas emissions problem, but then seems to discredit them a few pages later, saying “it is not at all clear that carbon trading, carbon intensity targets and carbon taxes are sufficient to bring about changes in patterns of consumption and models of production necessary.” This unfortunate sentence equates carbon taxes with carbon-intensity targets, as if they were virtually interchangeable concepts, when the author must know that they are very different, and in a sense almost antithetical: intensity targets are designed to stall any significant change in tar sands production, while a carbon tax is the dreaded scourge of the industry—and often cast as a new national energy program—which would have the effect of factoring the price of greenhouse gas emissions into our energy. To mention them in the same breath is to show a shocking blindness to the difference between these very different ideas.

In the end, Tar Sands Showdown is, in my opinion, almost perfectly wrong. The problems associated with the tar sands are arguably not a result of too much capitalism, but rather not enough. The problems of pollution and greenhouse gasses are not a product of markets, but examples of market failures indicative of a tragedy of the commons. By not factoring in the cost to our atmosphere and our wetlands and our forests that result from the development of the tar sands, we are left with a false accounting of the net benefits. If synthetic crude from the tar sands was priced properly—considering the costs to the commons that resulted from its development—there can be little doubt that energy consumers would react to the price signal by reducing consumption, and by looking to other low-or no-carbon alternatives.

All that said, and despite serious misgivings with the approach of this book, I have to give Clarke credit for seeing the opportunity to engage in a discussion about political alternatives that might result from a heightened awareness of the tar sands. His desire to spark discussion, debate and dialogue about these projects is a good thing. But his solutions are not convincing. The practical answers to the tar sands do not lie in a socialized energy system, but rather in perfecting the market economy through greater regulatory oversight and solving a market failure by putting a price on green-house gas emissions.

How will Canada and Alberta come to terms with the tar sands? The first step is to understand there is a problem. For this, both Nikiforuk’s and Clarke’s books make a contribution. The former, though, will do more to convince people of the importance of dealing with this project. By keeping his argument focused on the issue at hand and resisting the urge to use the tar sands as a spring-board for a larger series of issues, in Tar Sands Nikiforuk packs an emotional punch that will leave a mark on any reader.

It seems likely that the collapsing price of oil may do what environmental groups have failed to do, and what regulators and governments have resisted doing, which is to put a break in tar sands production. Since last fall, a number of projects have been delayed on account of the new economic situation. I have to think, though, that this is only a pause, for today’s delayed production gives rise to tomorrow’s supply shortages and price increases. On this count, I agree with both authors: the price of energy will eventually rise again, and this country will have to grapple with how we manage this vast resource.

Notes