Tar Sands again, with transcript
Aug. 31st, 2010 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susanreadsYou know how the oil industry's determination to get at every last barrel leads to disaster? No, not that one; I'm thinking of a situation that's been going for some time with less mainstream publicity, and where the "developers" have no intention of stopping, and with environmental racism written all over it - oh wait, that would be the Niger Delta.
The one I'm thinking of is in Canada, encroaching on indigenous land, and an "unconventional" source of such diffuseness that it wasn't worth exploiting until comparatively recently. We seem to be approaching Peak Oil, and unfortunately, the companies' reaction is not to diversify into less harmful technologies, but to exploit sources that are even more damaging.
Here (if it works) is an embedded version of the video I linked to previously.
Transcript of video follows. There's a detailed visual transcript byterajk in this thread at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
transcripts, which I've incorporated parts of. There's a lot of information in the video, and the audio, captions and other visuals overlap and cross-cut one another much of the time, so the sequence is approximate. Most of the video is narrated in voice-over by a woman who isn't identified.
Visual: You and I films logo
Audio: musical sting
Visual: parody of BT logo, web address: www.no-tar-sands.org
Visual: a series of aerial views of tar sands workings
Caption: Petrol companies have been aware for a century of the vast quantities of oil rich bitumen lying beneath the boreal forests of Alberta.
However as the oil sources available to Western oil majors became scarcer, the relative commercial attractiveness of tar sands improved and significant investments in their extraction began.
Audio: people singing at protest (we'll see them later)
We don't need no devastation
We don't need no dirty oil
No hydrocarbons in Alberta ...
Caption: Canada is the international oil industry's test site — if it becomes acceptable to finance the tar sands of Alberta, then the global finance sector will have normalised a disastrously high-carbon development path.
It is for this reason that the Canadian tar sands have become a frontline in the struggle against the destruction of the climate through the extraction of hydrocarbons.
Visual: banners on the ground at the tar sands workings read "TAR SANDS" and "CLIMATE CRIME", surrounded by people in orange suits.
Visual: a series of industrial views
Narrator:
Tar sands in Alberta are one of the most destructive projects on the planet. This project alone can push us over into catastrophic climate change.
Caption: Tar sands extraction in Canada is devastating Indigenous communities, wildlife and vast areas of boreal forests, as well as being many times more carbon-intensive to produce than 'conventional' oil.
Narrator:
What we're seeing is that this project is bigger than anything that's ever happened before; you can think of the Three Gorges Dam, the pyramids - the Great Pyramid - there's more earth been moved in this project than ever before.
Visual: shots of the threatened landscape and water
Caption: Open pit mining strips away the trees from the top layers of the earth to expose the bitumen beneath it. This process destroys the local environment and ecosystems, leaving gaping open pit mines up to 75 meters deep as scars on the landscape.
Narrator:
And the Alberta Tar Sands threaten the Boreal forest, which is the key carbon sink for the planet. It also threatens other ecosystems and the water systems of North America. The area that we're talking about is the size of England.
Visual: a map of part of Canada, with an outline of Great Britain to show the scale of the threatened area.
Narrator:
Although the oil isn't coming to the UK, what is happening is that money is flowing from UK taxpayers to the Tar Sands.
Visual: another aerial shot of the landscape, then the RBS building
Caption: RBS led underwriting for over $7.5 billion in loans to tar sands related companies, over five times more than Barclays and over eleven times more than HSBC.
Visual: the RBS building; long-distance industrial shots; the tar sands workings.
Narrator:
The Royal Bank of Scotland, which is now 84% publicly owned, is a huge investor in the tar sands, and so that is an opportunity for the UK public to say we don't want our money invested in the tar sands, that we want banks to be investing in renewable and sustainable energies.
Visual: an animated advert for BP
Narrator:
And the other connection with the UK is that British Petroleum, which up until now hadn't been a big player in the tar sands, is about to go in, just bought the Sunrise Husky project.
Visual: a protest against BP; a woman of First Nations origin (apparently) is addressing the protestors. (She's not identified in the video.)
Woman speaking at demo:
We wanted to bring some of the arts into this action today, and just remind BP that we're humans, we're beautiful people and we have the moral high ground by being here today, doing this public protest to remind BP of their responsibilities to quit drilling in indigenous lands across the world, to quit drilling in Canada, to pull out and make the right choice and get out of Canada's tar sands.
Visual: more shots of tar sands workings
Caption: Investment decisions taken now will have a major impact on current and future global greenhouse gas emissions and hence, on the world's climate.
Narrator:
We've got a small window of opportunity here to send a very clear message, as the UK public, to British Petroleum that we don't want to go into the tar sands, that we don't think tar sands is part of our energy future. It's not sustainable; it's not green; there's no way you can green the tar sands.
Caption: Companies from all over the world own huge chunks of tar sands real estate.
Visual: a series of oil company logos; the Barclays and HSBC logos.
Narrator:
Pretty much every major oil company has a stake in the tar sands. Shell have been in the tar sands for a long time. They have one of the largest projects, the Suncore(?) project ... and so, there are numerous oil companies in there and also other UK banks too: Barclays, HSBC, those banks are invested.
Visual: Back to the tar sands workings.
Caption: Thick crude oil is extracted from the tar sands in one of the most destructive industrial processes on earth.
Narrator:
The thing about the tar sands is that 20% of the development is open pit mining.
Caption: Open cast mines and drills destroy forests.
Caption: Millions of gallons of hot water melt the thick bitumen, and oil is refined in sprawling industrial plants.
Narrator:
The rest of the project, 80% of it, is in situ: it's steam-assisted gravity drainage, which involves pumping large amounts of hot steamed water underground in order to get the bitumen out.
Visual: the extraction process
Caption: As bitumen is extracted and separated from unwanted material, many production sites leave behind 'tailings,' a mix of sand, water, silt, clay, hydrocarbons and toxic chemicals that cannot be discharged into the river and so are left to accumulate in giant toxic lakes.
Narrator:
Now this is very damaging to under ... ground water systems, aquifers, and sometimes there are huge eruptions that happen spontaneously in other parts of the land.
Caption: A report published in 2008 calculated that the tailings lakes are already leaking over 11 million litres a day of contaminated water into the environment.
Narrator:
And what this also does is fragment the forest. There are lines that are cut through the forest, you know when they were testing, seismic testing, and the boreal forest is already under threat, by the pine beetle because of climate change.
Visual: shots of the boreal forest (with tar sands workings in the background) and a pine beetle with larvae on someone's hand.
Narrator:
And what is happening is that these lines are creating corridors for the pine beetles to move through, so they're actually decimating the boreal forest faster. And the boreal forest as you know is one of the most important carbon sinks on the planet, you know, it's vital to the health of the ecosystem for Canada and also for the entire planet.
Visual: Dr. Carroll, a white man, standing in the forest.
Caption: Dr. Allan Carroll, Research Scientist, Canadian Forest Service.
Dr. Carroll:
The question is, how can something so small kill an organism so big? And especially given that this organism here, this tree, is capable of producing a whole bunch of toxic resins when it's actually attacked.
Visual: animation of how the beetle and fungus attack the tree
Dr. Carroll:
That is, the beetle carries with it spores of a blue stain fungus and what it does is, as it's boring through the bark of a tree, it inoculates at the point of penetration these spores, and the spores grow very quickly, and what they do is they actually shut down the resin production by the tree. So, with that the pine beetle has interrupted one of the most important vascular systems of the tree.
Visual: aerial views of the forest and Athabasca River
Narrator:
Canada is set to be the next largest supplier of oil. The amount of oil to be extracted from the tar sands is second only to Saudi Arabia. So you can see Canada is heavily invested in the tar sands.
Caption:
"The Wet'suwet'en want to protect our land, we want to protect it from any type of pollution, any type of industrial development, because we need to make sure the lands are available for our children and our unborn children."
--Toghestiy (Warner Naziel), hereditary chief of the Fireweed Clan for the Wet'suwet'en Nation who are fighting the Enbridge pipeline.
Visual: the living environment of the Wet'suwet'en First Nations people
Narrator:
Canada hasn't signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and most of the land where the tar sands extraction is happening is on First Nations land. So there hasn't been, you know, quite a public momentum around stopping the tar sands because the main people who are impacted by it are a minority.
Visual: a group of First Nations people
Narrator:
The indigenous land rights have not been upheld; indigenous peoples have not been consulted from new leases on their land. The Canadian Government has not consulted with the First Nations.
Visual:
The river, then the tar sands workings.
Narrator:
Instead they've sent industry in to consult with the First Nations, which violates their treaties. The First Nations are a sovereign nation, therefore when Canada is giving out new leases, new permits for land, that consultation needs to happen with the First Nations, not with industry and First Nations.
Visual: industrial workings, then protestors against BP.
Caption: Highly intensive greenhouse gas process like tar sands must stop.
Narrator:
BP represents a real window of opportunity for the UK public.
Visual: at the protest, a man climbs a ladder outside a Shell building. The sign "SHELL CENTRE" has been changed to "HELL CENTRE". There is a picture of an airplane on the window, and a sign reading "SAVE THE HUMANS".
Visual: more shots of the protest, including a procession led by a man beating a hand drum.
Narrator:
BP has an AGM coming up on the 15th of April and NGOs, Ethical Pension have asked for shareholders and pension fund providers to think about their investments in the tar sands, and they actually have an online tour(?) where you can write to your pension fund provider and say, you know, ring the alarm bells, that you're not quite sure if you want your pension funds to invested in the tar sands.
Caption: For further info about the tar sands resolutions and Fair Pensions' plans to mobilise pension fund members nationwide contact: catherine.howarth@fairpensions.org.uk
Visual: No Tar Sands logo (parody of BP logo), with the web address: www.no-tar-sands.org; more shots of the demonstration.
Narrator:
And they can visit the website, www.no-tar-sands.org, and that's a site that's been put together by Camp for Climate Action, Rising Tide and the UK Tar Sands Network. And there you can get information about the Fortnight of Shame, and can download stickers and posters to raise awareness in your community. There's also lots of information there about the tar sands and how BP's involved, and that's, for now that's the best way to get involved. And there's a Facebook group as well, then you can ask your friends to join in, have a party at the pump.
Visual: aerial view of tar sands workings with "CLIMATE CRIME" banner
Visual: More images from the protest, including the man leading the singing (with guitar), the man on the ladder, and the procession we saw earlier.
People singing at demo:
We don't need no devastation
We don't need no dirty oil
No hydrocarbons in Alberta
BP leave tar sands alone
Hey! You! BP! Leave tar sands alone!
All in all you're just a...nother brick in the wall
Caption:
With special thanks to BB for the Audio Production
Visual: You and I films logo
Audio: musical sting
Further reading ...
More about tar sands:
No Tar Sands
Support for BP tar sands resolution at Ethical Consumer blog: 15% of shareholders either supported the resolution or abstained (strong for a resolution of this type) on a resolution asking BP to report on the financial, social and environmental risks associated with tar sands extraction.
Tar Sands threaten caribou extinction at Ethical Consumer blog
BP, the Deepwater Horizon spill and environmental racism:
Crude Violations by s.e. smith at FWD/Forward
More about RBS' funding of the oil industry, and action against them by Climate Camp:
How RBS funds ‘dirty oil’ at The Herald Scotland, via Liberal Conspiracy
(I meant to post this yesterday but had problems with my computer. I'm sure there was something relevant happening then that I meant to link to, but if I don't post this now it might never get done.)
The one I'm thinking of is in Canada, encroaching on indigenous land, and an "unconventional" source of such diffuseness that it wasn't worth exploiting until comparatively recently. We seem to be approaching Peak Oil, and unfortunately, the companies' reaction is not to diversify into less harmful technologies, but to exploit sources that are even more damaging.
Here (if it works) is an embedded version of the video I linked to previously.
Transcript of video follows. There's a detailed visual transcript by
terajk in this thread at transcripts, which I've incorporated parts of. There's a lot of information in the video, and the audio, captions and other visuals overlap and cross-cut one another much of the time, so the sequence is approximate. Most of the video is narrated in voice-over by a woman who isn't identified.Visual: You and I films logo
Audio: musical sting
Visual: parody of BT logo, web address: www.no-tar-sands.org
Visual: a series of aerial views of tar sands workings
Caption: Petrol companies have been aware for a century of the vast quantities of oil rich bitumen lying beneath the boreal forests of Alberta.
However as the oil sources available to Western oil majors became scarcer, the relative commercial attractiveness of tar sands improved and significant investments in their extraction began.
Audio: people singing at protest (we'll see them later)
We don't need no devastation
We don't need no dirty oil
No hydrocarbons in Alberta ...
Caption: Canada is the international oil industry's test site — if it becomes acceptable to finance the tar sands of Alberta, then the global finance sector will have normalised a disastrously high-carbon development path.
It is for this reason that the Canadian tar sands have become a frontline in the struggle against the destruction of the climate through the extraction of hydrocarbons.
Visual: banners on the ground at the tar sands workings read "TAR SANDS" and "CLIMATE CRIME", surrounded by people in orange suits.
Visual: a series of industrial views
Narrator:
Tar sands in Alberta are one of the most destructive projects on the planet. This project alone can push us over into catastrophic climate change.
Caption: Tar sands extraction in Canada is devastating Indigenous communities, wildlife and vast areas of boreal forests, as well as being many times more carbon-intensive to produce than 'conventional' oil.
Narrator:
What we're seeing is that this project is bigger than anything that's ever happened before; you can think of the Three Gorges Dam, the pyramids - the Great Pyramid - there's more earth been moved in this project than ever before.
Visual: shots of the threatened landscape and water
Caption: Open pit mining strips away the trees from the top layers of the earth to expose the bitumen beneath it. This process destroys the local environment and ecosystems, leaving gaping open pit mines up to 75 meters deep as scars on the landscape.
Narrator:
And the Alberta Tar Sands threaten the Boreal forest, which is the key carbon sink for the planet. It also threatens other ecosystems and the water systems of North America. The area that we're talking about is the size of England.
Visual: a map of part of Canada, with an outline of Great Britain to show the scale of the threatened area.
Narrator:
Although the oil isn't coming to the UK, what is happening is that money is flowing from UK taxpayers to the Tar Sands.
Visual: another aerial shot of the landscape, then the RBS building
Caption: RBS led underwriting for over $7.5 billion in loans to tar sands related companies, over five times more than Barclays and over eleven times more than HSBC.
Visual: the RBS building; long-distance industrial shots; the tar sands workings.
Narrator:
The Royal Bank of Scotland, which is now 84% publicly owned, is a huge investor in the tar sands, and so that is an opportunity for the UK public to say we don't want our money invested in the tar sands, that we want banks to be investing in renewable and sustainable energies.
Visual: an animated advert for BP
Narrator:
And the other connection with the UK is that British Petroleum, which up until now hadn't been a big player in the tar sands, is about to go in, just bought the Sunrise Husky project.
Visual: a protest against BP; a woman of First Nations origin (apparently) is addressing the protestors. (She's not identified in the video.)
Woman speaking at demo:
We wanted to bring some of the arts into this action today, and just remind BP that we're humans, we're beautiful people and we have the moral high ground by being here today, doing this public protest to remind BP of their responsibilities to quit drilling in indigenous lands across the world, to quit drilling in Canada, to pull out and make the right choice and get out of Canada's tar sands.
Visual: more shots of tar sands workings
Caption: Investment decisions taken now will have a major impact on current and future global greenhouse gas emissions and hence, on the world's climate.
Narrator:
We've got a small window of opportunity here to send a very clear message, as the UK public, to British Petroleum that we don't want to go into the tar sands, that we don't think tar sands is part of our energy future. It's not sustainable; it's not green; there's no way you can green the tar sands.
Caption: Companies from all over the world own huge chunks of tar sands real estate.
Visual: a series of oil company logos; the Barclays and HSBC logos.
Narrator:
Pretty much every major oil company has a stake in the tar sands. Shell have been in the tar sands for a long time. They have one of the largest projects, the Suncore(?) project ... and so, there are numerous oil companies in there and also other UK banks too: Barclays, HSBC, those banks are invested.
Visual: Back to the tar sands workings.
Caption: Thick crude oil is extracted from the tar sands in one of the most destructive industrial processes on earth.
Narrator:
The thing about the tar sands is that 20% of the development is open pit mining.
Caption: Open cast mines and drills destroy forests.
Caption: Millions of gallons of hot water melt the thick bitumen, and oil is refined in sprawling industrial plants.
Narrator:
The rest of the project, 80% of it, is in situ: it's steam-assisted gravity drainage, which involves pumping large amounts of hot steamed water underground in order to get the bitumen out.
Visual: the extraction process
Caption: As bitumen is extracted and separated from unwanted material, many production sites leave behind 'tailings,' a mix of sand, water, silt, clay, hydrocarbons and toxic chemicals that cannot be discharged into the river and so are left to accumulate in giant toxic lakes.
Narrator:
Now this is very damaging to under ... ground water systems, aquifers, and sometimes there are huge eruptions that happen spontaneously in other parts of the land.
Caption: A report published in 2008 calculated that the tailings lakes are already leaking over 11 million litres a day of contaminated water into the environment.
Narrator:
And what this also does is fragment the forest. There are lines that are cut through the forest, you know when they were testing, seismic testing, and the boreal forest is already under threat, by the pine beetle because of climate change.
Visual: shots of the boreal forest (with tar sands workings in the background) and a pine beetle with larvae on someone's hand.
Narrator:
And what is happening is that these lines are creating corridors for the pine beetles to move through, so they're actually decimating the boreal forest faster. And the boreal forest as you know is one of the most important carbon sinks on the planet, you know, it's vital to the health of the ecosystem for Canada and also for the entire planet.
Visual: Dr. Carroll, a white man, standing in the forest.
Caption: Dr. Allan Carroll, Research Scientist, Canadian Forest Service.
Dr. Carroll:
The question is, how can something so small kill an organism so big? And especially given that this organism here, this tree, is capable of producing a whole bunch of toxic resins when it's actually attacked.
Visual: animation of how the beetle and fungus attack the tree
Dr. Carroll:
That is, the beetle carries with it spores of a blue stain fungus and what it does is, as it's boring through the bark of a tree, it inoculates at the point of penetration these spores, and the spores grow very quickly, and what they do is they actually shut down the resin production by the tree. So, with that the pine beetle has interrupted one of the most important vascular systems of the tree.
Visual: aerial views of the forest and Athabasca River
Narrator:
Canada is set to be the next largest supplier of oil. The amount of oil to be extracted from the tar sands is second only to Saudi Arabia. So you can see Canada is heavily invested in the tar sands.
Caption:
"The Wet'suwet'en want to protect our land, we want to protect it from any type of pollution, any type of industrial development, because we need to make sure the lands are available for our children and our unborn children."
--Toghestiy (Warner Naziel), hereditary chief of the Fireweed Clan for the Wet'suwet'en Nation who are fighting the Enbridge pipeline.
Visual: the living environment of the Wet'suwet'en First Nations people
Narrator:
Canada hasn't signed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and most of the land where the tar sands extraction is happening is on First Nations land. So there hasn't been, you know, quite a public momentum around stopping the tar sands because the main people who are impacted by it are a minority.
Visual: a group of First Nations people
Narrator:
The indigenous land rights have not been upheld; indigenous peoples have not been consulted from new leases on their land. The Canadian Government has not consulted with the First Nations.
Visual:
The river, then the tar sands workings.
Narrator:
Instead they've sent industry in to consult with the First Nations, which violates their treaties. The First Nations are a sovereign nation, therefore when Canada is giving out new leases, new permits for land, that consultation needs to happen with the First Nations, not with industry and First Nations.
Visual: industrial workings, then protestors against BP.
Caption: Highly intensive greenhouse gas process like tar sands must stop.
Narrator:
BP represents a real window of opportunity for the UK public.
Visual: at the protest, a man climbs a ladder outside a Shell building. The sign "SHELL CENTRE" has been changed to "HELL CENTRE". There is a picture of an airplane on the window, and a sign reading "SAVE THE HUMANS".
Visual: more shots of the protest, including a procession led by a man beating a hand drum.
Narrator:
BP has an AGM coming up on the 15th of April and NGOs, Ethical Pension have asked for shareholders and pension fund providers to think about their investments in the tar sands, and they actually have an online tour(?) where you can write to your pension fund provider and say, you know, ring the alarm bells, that you're not quite sure if you want your pension funds to invested in the tar sands.
Caption: For further info about the tar sands resolutions and Fair Pensions' plans to mobilise pension fund members nationwide contact: catherine.howarth@fairpensions.org.uk
Visual: No Tar Sands logo (parody of BP logo), with the web address: www.no-tar-sands.org; more shots of the demonstration.
Narrator:
And they can visit the website, www.no-tar-sands.org, and that's a site that's been put together by Camp for Climate Action, Rising Tide and the UK Tar Sands Network. And there you can get information about the Fortnight of Shame, and can download stickers and posters to raise awareness in your community. There's also lots of information there about the tar sands and how BP's involved, and that's, for now that's the best way to get involved. And there's a Facebook group as well, then you can ask your friends to join in, have a party at the pump.
Visual: aerial view of tar sands workings with "CLIMATE CRIME" banner
Visual: More images from the protest, including the man leading the singing (with guitar), the man on the ladder, and the procession we saw earlier.
People singing at demo:
We don't need no devastation
We don't need no dirty oil
No hydrocarbons in Alberta
BP leave tar sands alone
Hey! You! BP! Leave tar sands alone!
All in all you're just a...nother brick in the wall
Caption:
With special thanks to BB for the Audio Production
Visual: You and I films logo
Audio: musical sting
Further reading ...
More about tar sands:
No Tar Sands
Support for BP tar sands resolution at Ethical Consumer blog: 15% of shareholders either supported the resolution or abstained (strong for a resolution of this type) on a resolution asking BP to report on the financial, social and environmental risks associated with tar sands extraction.
Tar Sands threaten caribou extinction at Ethical Consumer blog
BP, the Deepwater Horizon spill and environmental racism:
Crude Violations by s.e. smith at FWD/Forward
More about RBS' funding of the oil industry, and action against them by Climate Camp:
How RBS funds ‘dirty oil’ at The Herald Scotland, via Liberal Conspiracy
(I meant to post this yesterday but had problems with my computer. I'm sure there was something relevant happening then that I meant to link to, but if I don't post this now it might never get done.)