Views from the Reading Room

This week, President Obama decided to order an in-depth review of the Keystone XL pipeline. Campaigners, assuming the review will be honest, reckon this means the pipeline will never be built. More detail at the currently-top blog post on the Tar Sands Action site. Meanwhile, I was directed to the pledge page, where there's an embedded video. ( Transcript under the cut. )

I've written before about the Alberta Tar Sands (Stop the Oil Sands and some other posts with the same tag). Now 350.org tells me about the Keystone XL pipeline, a dangerous and destructive project that would pump over one million barrels of dirty "tar sands" oil from Canada to the USA every day. The oil in the Keystone pipeline could poison drinking water, threaten the communities it runs through, and wreck the climate. The building of the pipeline depends on a presidential permit, and 350.org are petitioning President Obama to reject it. The petition page also has a link for people who can get to Washington DC this summer to do something more practical than signing petitions.

Via Amnesty International: On 28 September 2011 women's organisations and Nicaraguan men, women and children will be marching to demand the repeal of the country's total abortion ban and an end to widespread violence against women and girls. Amnesty is organising to send thousands of symbolic butterflies for a display of solidarity. La Mariposa: Send a butterfly to Nicaragua has more and a link to create butterfiles online. (Access notes: page auto-plays video. Further down there are details about the background to the campaign which could be triggering. The butterfly creator depends on mouse interaction.)

You 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.

( Video and transcript below cut )

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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.)

BP’s Annual General Meeting in London today (15th April) is set to be the focus of debate on the company’s controversial plans for Canadian tar sands projects. Special Resolution 25, filed by over 140 investors from around the world including major global institutional investors, calls on BP to report on the financial, environmental and human rights risks of tar sands. - Ethical Consumer blog

Tar Sands video: Hey BP, leave those sands alone! video on YouTube which I might at some point do a transcript of - it'd take a lot of pausing and typing, but it's one of the few things where I can make out most of the words (not at the same time as reading the words on the screen, which are like footnotes/documentation/further commentary; which is why I think it particularly needs a transcript). It begins with people filking Another Brick in the Wall, which you get more of at the end:
We don't need no devastation
We don't need no dirty oil
No hydrocarbons in Alberta
BP leave tar sands alone
Hey! BP! Leave tar sands alone!
All in all you're just a...nother brick in the wall

No Tar Sands campaign site
(the "More details" on the YouTube page also has info on the issues)

Another thing I've been reading about recently:

Ever hear of "unconventional oil"? It's like regular oil, only worse. As conventional oil supplies start to run out, the oil industry gets more interested in anywhere else it can get the same fix, and at the moment the big development frontier is in the oil sands (or tar sands; it's the same thing) of Alberta, Canada. This is a mixture of sand (or clay) and bitumen, and getting the oil out of it takes several times the energy input of conventional oil, plus huge amounts of other chemicals and water. The toxic waste products, held in massive tailings ponds, kill migratory birds that land on them and do lots of other environmental damage. The extraction industry also destroys whatever was on the surface (eg: boreal forest), like open-cast mining does.

This is an environmental justice issue for First Nations Canadians, whose hunting and fishing rights are effectively removed by the toxic effects on wildlife. The Beaver Lake Cree Nation are mounting a legal challenge, represented by Woodward and Company; see also Tar Sands Watch for other First Nations involvement.

Greenpeace Canada are campaigning against the oil sands industry, and have links to take action if you're Canadian. Campaigns in Britain are being run by People and Planet, focussing on the (ir)responsibility of the banking sector which is financing the industry, and Ethical Consumer, with a boycott of brands owned by the major companies involved. You can check whether your MP has signed the relevant Early Day Motions: EDM 880, Royal Bank of Scotland and Climate Change, concentrates on RBS which is majority-owned by the British Government after the bailout, and EDM 1250, Reporting on Carbon Liabilities, asks for the financial sector in general to be made to report on the environmental and therefore financial risks involved.