USED WITH PERMISSION
British Columbia’s distinctive left-coast
culture was a gold mine of material for satirist Allan Fotheringham. In his
heyday, the columnist coined the term Lotusland to describe the navel-gazing
tendencies of the province that lies beyond what he termed the Granite Curtain,
i.e., the Rocky Mountains.
Some cultural analysts have attributed this
distinctive trait to the absence of a harsh climate, with the struggle for mere
existence as experienced in the chilly parts of Canada replaced by different
questions, such as: “What will it be today, Peloton or stand-up paddleboard
yoga?”
Others have looked back to the colonial era
to see strong dependence on capital intensive industries like coal mining and
fish canning that required large hierarchical workforces, setting up a deeper
capitalist versus worker dynamic than found elsewhere in Canada, leading to the
proliferation of labour unions and a bargaining-table culture.
Personally, I prefer the tectonic theory,
that my home province is on the fault line of powerful converging forces that
generate heat and the occasional earthquake.
Whatever the cultural origins of Lotusland,
another observation one could make is that it has spawned a particular strain
of ideologue-environmentalist, small in number yet disproportionately
influential in the way Typhoid Mary was influential.
David Suzuki in his crepuscular
phase is perhaps the most familiar example. I was a fan of his for many years,
until he renounced evidence and collaboration as the price to pay for stardom.
A second example will be more obscure to
most, but to coastal aquaculturists the name Alexandra Morton conjures one-part
mirth and seven parts dread. For decades an enemy of salmon farming, Morton has
almost single handedly stoked public belief in scientifically unprovable
linkages between aquaculture and a host of ills in wild salmon. Shameless
enough to allow herself to be called Doctor on the strength of an honorary
doctorate, Morton makes sure vials and a microscope are in the shot when the
cameras arrive to record her latest gibberish about fish viruses, while real
scientists puzzle from the sidelines at the phenomenon.
In fairness, it has to be stated that B.C.
also stands out for the many bona fide thinkers and practitioners who continue
to make the place a bastion of scientific and conservationist leadership. I’ve
met and admire many of them, and remain amazed that as they toil, quietly for
the most part, they are at times overshadowed by a handful of kooky
pseudo-academics whose ideas are engineered to reach the moral judgment
receptors in the public mind that release a warm, pleasurable surge of
serotonin.
Just as the oilsands struggles with
perceptions of the industry that might have been valid at one time but no
longer apply, opponents know that triggering anachronistic prejudice is the key
to winning public approval for one’s ideas, never mind the enormous advances in
applied technology that have led to the emergence of a safe and beneficial
industry.
Whether by design or not, it works by
exploiting the news media’s basic need to always tell “both sides” of
the story. What sounds great in the journalism school classroom is not so easy
to put into practice in the real world. With the underlying assumption that
self-interested parties can never be trusted to make true statements, a natural
tendency is to seek out an “independent” perspective that reliably
contradicts anything that may emanate from crass commerce, resulting in the
appearance of balance.
This is how the evidence-free propagandists
gain a foothold. Many fine journalists figure out their own ways to deal with
it, yet hardly a day passes without fresh evidence of the phenomenon.
If Morton is the queen of maritime
misinformation, her terrestrial counterpart is surely to be found in one of the
few industries that has unfettered growth conditions: that of anti-pipeline
activism.
A persistent myth on the west coast is that
the existing Trans Mountain pipeline is underused, and that this is because of
scheming by a dishonest oil industry which, for reasons of its own, wants to
invest billions of dollars to serve an overseas oil market that doesn’t even
exist.
Beyond a handful of political figures, the
person who has most energetically set out to shape and grow this kookiness is
Whistler-based pipeline opponent and trade skeptic Robyn Allan, a possessor of
championship-grade Lotusland credentials that revolve largely around making
academic-sounding claims about the nefarious oil industry.
Served up via regulatory submissions as well
as to mass market media and via niche audiences, the theories of shifty
industry doings cater to those who want to believe that the hydrocarbons they
rely on for every act of modern life are inherently evil.
Years ago, Allan set out, unsuccessfully, to
convince the National Energy Board that the Northern Gateway pipeline would
have “negative and prolonged impact on the Canadian economy by reducing
output, employment, labour income and government revenues.”
It was a preposterous line of argument that
flies in the face of everything we know about the economy and trade. Yet there
was probably a significant segment of the population that found the claim just
believable enough.
Not surprisingly, both Morton and Allan are
closely associated with those who have enjoyed the largesse of wealthy American
eco-interventionists. Allan is a popular return guest on local CBC radio and a
prolific producer of articles that attempt to turn every accepted fact on its
head, always leading back to the conclusion that if Trans Mountain’s existing
pipeline is running below capacity (it isn’t), why the heck should a new one be
built?
Occasionally, some visually stimulating piece
of evidence comes along that causes confidence in these theories to crumble.
For example, last year when Greenpeace protestors strung themselves under a
Vancouver bridge, their target was the oil tanker Serene Sea, loaded with
“dirty, unwanted” Alberta oilsands crude.
As I was the first to point out at the time,
climb organizers had overlooked one small but crucial detail: Serene Sea was
bound for China, a market that trade skeptics had long insisted did not exist
for dreaded Canuck bitumen.
In a Lotusland twist worthy of Fotheringham,
the fact was that $1.4 billion worth of Alberta heavy crude was exported by oil
tanker out of Vancouver that year, with China accounting for nearly one third
of the sales. Nor was the oil being given away at bargain-basement prices, as
some had carped: according to Statistics Canada data, it fetched an average of
$70 Cdn a barrel.
Though the bridge exercise may have yielded a
satisfying helping of media coverage for the anti-pipeline brigade, the
unintended brush with truth was an emperor-has-no-clothes moment for the energy
disinformation movement generally. As a result, a whole strand of anti-pipeline
argumentation has withered away since that time.
Last week, another slip occurred that further
debunks the “oilsands has no market” thesis.
The British Columbia Utilities Commission,
tasked with finding out why Vancouver-area gasoline prices are so high, released
a report showing that despite strident claims of gouging made by Allan and
echoed by B.C. Premier John Horgan, in reality there was no price fixing or
rigging, no game playing on the supply side, no exploitation of market power by
dominant companies, and no deceptive business practices of any kind.
As an intervenor in the inquiry, Allan
partnered with a former BC Hydro executive turned pipeline opponent who
previously made a splash by showily walking out of National Energy Board
hearings on Trans Mountain, calling it a sham process.
Together, Allan and Marc Eliesen attempted to
convince the BCUC inquiry that the existing pipeline from Edmonton to Vancouver
runs below capacity, and that this allows pump prices to be held artificially
high.
If true, this would be a very serious claim,
one that might attract strong action by the Competition Bureau. If true, it
would also reinforce Allan’s favourite thesis, that Trans Mountain expansion is
unnecessary.
However, abundant evidence from multiple sources
proved that, in fact, the opposite is true.
The BCUC panel accepted that the pipeline is
indeed running full, thus confirming that the $9.3 billion expansion is as
badly needed as its proponents say. Stated the BCUC final report: “no weight
can be given to Allan and Eliesen’s assertions with regard to the pipeline not
operating at full capacity.”
It was another Fotheringham-esque moment –
the spectacle of real policy experts blandly exposing a screwball theory,
leaving the pseudo-wonks skewered on their own petard. The authoritative
debunking represented a small but real victory for facts and common sense.
In the long game of developing Canadian
energy sovereignty, it’s unlikely that Lotusland’s anti-hydrocarbon
mythologists will come around to supporting initiatives like TMX that are both
good for the economy and ensure more sustainable oil products can be part of
the global energy mix.
At least we’re seeing some positive steps
that might cause others to think more critically about energy issues.
That’s a good thing for British Columbians
and all Canadians.
Stewart Muir is the founder and executive director
of the Resource Works Society based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Resource Works is building awareness of the importance of natural resources – energy,
mining, forestry – to personal well-being. Stewart is a co-author of The Sea
Among Us: The Amazing Strait of Georgia that won several distinctions including
the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize from the BC-Washington chapters of the
American Fisheries society.
A Vancouver native, he has worked as a journalist
and media executive in Hong Kong, Australia, Toronto, Ottawa and western Canada
Comments
Post a Comment