Marginal Notes

Alberta Citizens Caught in the Tempest of Big Oil

The Parkland Institute has released a new report which confirms what the average Albertan already knows first hand: middle class Albertans are no better off as a result of the current boom, and Alberta’s poor are actually worse off than before.

The Spoils of the Boom: Incomes, profits, and poverty in Alberta provides a close look at a cross-section of the Alberta economy to determine how the province’s dramatic economic growth is being distributed. The study finds that, disproportionately, the benefits of the boom are being reaped by corporations and Alberta’s wealthy, while the poor and middle class are, quite literally in many cases, being left out in the cold.

Also from the Parkland Institute, Taming the Tempest: An Alternate Development Strategy for Alberta, by Diana Gibson, argues for a development strategy that manages Alberta's resources to forward social goals.

With over $169 billion in large scale construction projects on the horizon, Alberta’s already overheated economy is only going to get worse. Alberta’s inflation rate has reached national highs. Housing prices have increased at rates as high as 50% per year in Edmonton and Calgary. Public infrastructure is being built at enormous premiums. Meanwhile,homeless rates are rising across the province, climate change emissions are increasing dramatically, conventional fuels like natural gas are being depleted, and the government is even considering using nuclear power to fuel tar sands development.

There is no question the bulk of this boom is being driven by fossil fuels and specifically investment in the province’s tar sands-over $100 billion of the $169 billion in projects slated for development is for the tar sands alone. The desirability of this level of private investment is not being questioned by the Alberta government; it is being seen as an end in itself. However, investment is not a goal; it should be considered a tool to be harnessed towards achieving social goals. Unlike Alberta, many oil rich regions have a framework to guide their resource development and this report shows that the Alberta government is under-selling the people’s resources.

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This reports lays out the framework for a development strategy that would slow the pace of investment to minimize the boom and bust cycle, and put into place policies to maximize returns from Alberta’s fossil fuels, fuels, maximize the processing and upgrading of those resources into higher value products, and put into place a long term plan for using the resource revenues to guarantee future for the province.

Imagine development led by the needs of people and not profit mania!

Links:

The Spoils of the Boom: Income, Profits and Poverty in Alberta, Parkland Institute

Taming the Tempest: An Alternate Development Strategy for Alberta by Diana Gibson of the Parkland Institute

View a clip of Diana Gibson speaking about Alberta's Tar Sands on CBC's On the Map with Avi Lewis

'Lets Share It', photo taken at Kyoto Rally in Calgary, by local activist and photographer Tavis Ford

Pitiful Power Plays Undermine Critical Discussions

From the Ottawa Citizen via The Parkland Institute's website:

OTTAWA - Amid heated charges of a coverup, Tory MPs on Thursday abruptly shut down parliamentary hearings on a controversial plan to further integrate Canada and the U.S.

The firestorm erupted within minutes of testimony by University of Alberta professor Gordon Laxer that Canadians will be left "to freeze in the dark" if the government forges ahead with plans to integrate energy supplies across North America.

He was testifying on behalf of the Alberta-based Parkland Institute  about concerns with the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a 2005 accord by the U.S., Canada and Mexico to streamline economic and security rules across the continent.

The deal, which calls North American "energy security" a priority, commits Canada to ensuring American energy supplies even though Canada itself -- unlike most industrialized nations -- has no national plan or reserves to protect its own supplies, he argued.

At that point, Tory MP Leon Benoit, chair of the Commons Standing Committee on International Trade which was holding the SPP hearings, ordered Laxer to halt his testimony, saying it was not relevant.

Opposition MPs called for, and won, a vote to overrule Benoit's ruling.

Benoit then threw down his pen, declaring, "This meeting is adjourned," and stormed out, followed by three of the panel's four Conservative members.

The remaining members voted to finish the meeting, with the Liberal  vice-chair presiding.

Benoit's actions are virtually unprecedented, observers say; at press time, parliamentary procedure experts still hadn't figured out whether he had the right to adjourn the meeting unilaterally. Benoit did not respond to calls for comment.

It's "reckless and irresponsible" of the government not to discuss protecting Canada's energy supply, says Laxer.

Atlantic Canada and Quebec already have to import 90 per cent of their supply -- 45 per cent of it from potentially unstable sources such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Algeria, Laxer said.

Meanwhile, Canada is exporting 63 per cent of its oil and 56 per cent of its gas production, mostly to the U.S., he says.

It's shocking the extent to which the Conservative party will go to cover up information about the SPP," says NDP MP Peter Julian, who also sits on the committee.

Other MPs raised concerns about recently revealed plans under the SPP to raise Canadian limits on pesticide residues to match American rules.

Questions were also raised about whether the effort will open the door to bulk water exports.

Representatives from the departments of Industry and International Trade defended the SPP as an effort to protect Canadian jobs in a competitive global market, without sacrificing standards. They denied charges SPP negotiations have been secretive, saying civil-society groups are welcome to offer their input, and referred MPs to the  government website.

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Sound familiar? The neoliberals can pull their tantrums, but we will be heard. 

Link:

'Tory MPs Storm Out of Meeting on Energy Sharing' via The Parkland Institute

The Ugly Underbelly of The Kyoto Protocol

The ugly underbelly of the Kyoto Protocol lies with "debt for nature" swaps. In exchange for preserving forests, or 'oxygen generators', a small portion of the nations foreign 'debt' may be 'forgiven'.

In an article titled 'The Kyoto Protocol: A War on Subsistence", Ana Isla explains:

With the Kyoto Protocol, neoliberals have redefined forests as 'oxygen generators', a concept that indebted countries have embraced. This worldview destroys sustainable ways of living and creates destitution and real misery because it is used to justify the expulsion of local communities from the bounty of their forests, thereby undermining their basic support systems.

At the 1997 negotiations on the Kyoto Climate Change Convention, industrial countries agreed to create mechanisms to reduce emissions of gases responsible for the greenhouse effect...The major emitting corporations, with the backing of their governments, proposed a self-interested 'solution:' create a global market in carbon dioxide and oxygen, focused on the forests of indebted countries. According to the scheme of the Climate Change Convention, countries or industries that manage to reduce carbon emissions to levels below their designated limits will be able to sell their 'credits' to other countries or industries that exceed their emission levels.

This type of 'solution' allows the industrial world to continue polluting as long as it can purchase carbon credits from indebted rainforest-dense countries. Meanwhile, emissions produced by an increase in coal and oil burned - mainly in the industrial world - proceed unimpeded. The carbon trade is a colonial relationship with marked class and gender biases that affect the nature of indebted countries, along with subsistence production, and the lives of women.

Isla goes on to describe how, in Costa Rica, this process has involved the cutting of native trees and vegetation to create 'monoculture' tree farms. The government has also bought up land, pushing local communities out and leaving them landless. Many of the women then migrate to tourist areas to earn income for their dispossessed families often finding prostitution as a sole source of employment. This has led to a flourishing sex tourism industry catering to men from the industrial world - the U.S., Canada, Spain, and others. Isla explains that as Costa Rica slides into an increasingly subordinate position on the global scene, Costa Rican governments do no want to stop the sex trade industry as it is virtually the only way left for women and children to earn a living. Moreover, the industry generates hundreds of millions of dollars per year for the state to pay its debt to the IMF and the World Bank.

Isla concludes her article calling for the international women's movement to join their Costa Rican sisters in their struggle to expose the fallacy of 'sustainable development' and the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol must be supported only if it is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by imposing limits on the gases produced by the factories and lifestyles of the north world.

Links:

Excerpt from "The Kyoto Protocol: A War on Subsistence" by Ana Isla available from Women and Environments magazine

"No Debt for Nature" via the Multinational Monitor