The tar sands must be quickly phased out. But how many political figures will commit to a two or five-year timeline?
Forest fires have once again displaced many, disproportionately indigenous, people in this country. Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common and record-breaking drought has 90 million facing extreme hunger in eastern and southern Africa.
The current level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is above 425 parts per million (ppm). This is nearly 150 ppm above the pre-industrial age.
Earth’s average temperature has also climbed to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. And signs point towards ever more apocalyptic temperature increases as the world will likely reaching 2°C or 2.5 °C by the 2030s.
Simultaneously, extraction of Canada’s heavy greenhouse gas emitting tar sands is steadily expanding. According to the Alberta Energy Regulator, the province’s oil production is projected to reach 4.7 million barrels per day by 2034.
Already Canada is the world’s fourth largest oil producer. It’s also the fifth biggest producer of natural gas. Despite its outsized contribution to the climate crisis, Mark Carney has suggested he wants the country to become an even greater climate villain. The prime minister recently declared, “the imperative of making Canada an energy superpower.”
Canada has already helped itself to a disproportionate share of humanity’s global carbon budget. Between 1850 and 2021 Canada had the highest per capita GHG emissions in the world, according to Carbon Brief. According to a 2009 study in The Guardian, Canada released 23,669 million metric tons of carbon dioxide between 1900 and 2004 while Afghanistan released 77 million metric tons, Chad 7 million metric tons, Morocco 812 million metric tons and Egypt 3,079 million metric tons. Canada’s contribution to global warming over this period was more than the combined total of every sub-Saharan African country. Even today per capita emissions in many African countries amount to barely a few per cent of Canada’s rate.
A sense of ‘carbon equity’ demands a rapid cut in Canada’s GHG emissions. So does economic justice. The wealthiest countries should be the first to leave fossil fuel wealth in the ground. It’s wildly immoral to argue Congo, Haiti or Bangladesh stop extracting fossil fuels before Canada with its greater footprint and economic ability to transition away from carbon-emitting fuels.
Yet Alberta premier Danielle Smith recently told CBC that producing more from Canadian tar sands is better than buying Venezuelan oil, an example of capitalism’s inversion of morality.
As part of significantly reducing Canada’s ecological footprint and raising the notion of degrowth, I’m calling to immediately phase out Alberta’s tar sands as part of my bid to lead the NDP. Over the years I’ve written about the subject in A Line in the Tar Sands: Struggles for Environmental Justice and Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay. I’ve attended many protests opposing ecocide and in 2022 I interrupted Steven Guilbeault’s press conference to challenge his approval of the Baie du Nord offshore oil project. I asked the minister of environment and climate change how he could justify okaying the extraction of up to 1 billion new barrels of oil amidst a deepening climate crisis. I yelled “climate criminal” and, with the cameras in mind, held a sign next to the minister with the words “Criminel Climatique”. The interruption was mentioned in New York Times and Washington Post profiles of Guilbeault.
Most of the world’s fossil fuels need to be left untouched to mitigate the spiralling climate crisis and Canadian oil ought to be at the front of a ‘keep it in the ground’ line for a combination of ecological and equity reasons. Yet, the front runner for NDP leadership is not simply unwilling to call for shuttering the tar sands, Heather McPherson backed the $35 billion public subsidy of the Trans Mountain pipeline to enable bigger profits for giant oil corporations, damn the ecological damage.
It’s time for at least one party leader to promote ecosocialism.
