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Ottawa Action Kills Notion of Ethical Oil
Ever feel like you aren’t where you should be? It’s okay, we all do. Yet, sometimes, we feel, without a single doubt, we are in precisely the right place at precisely the right moment.
One of the organizers of the event, President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, Dave Coles, is the first to climb the fence and be arrested. Maude Barlow (far left) was in the first wave over the fence and was led away by police.
A meticulously-planned civil disobedience uprising demanding climate justice and the honoring of the rights of indigenous people, felt just like that. Even before the drums.
The right place is a hill which belonged to the Algonquin First Nation for centuries, yet is currently occupied by Canada’s capitol buildings and is known as Parliament Hill.
The right time is the blue sky morning of Monday, September 26th. Clayton Thomas-Muller, of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation and organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, opens a solidarity rally by thanking the Algonquin First Nation for use of their land.
Elder Terry McKay, of the Tsimshian Nation, leads the rally in prayer.
Speakers filled with passion and conviction against tar sands development and pipelines include First Nation Elders, climate activist leaders, and others. Unlike any other day on the hill, the air was thick with sounds of courage, respect, solidarity, strength, and hope. Seagulls circled overhead.
The first participant to cross over a 3-foot fence marked with a yellow ribbon that read “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS,” was David Coles, the President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union. “What blooming idiot came up with the idea of ‘ethical oil’?” Coles had rhetorically asked the crowd minutes before.
“Ethical oil” is a notion that first originated in mid-2010 from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s administration, whereby reliance on oil from Saudi Arabia is intrinsically unethical, due to the oppression of their women. And tar sands or “oil sands” as Harper prefers, is ethical, because Canadian women are less oppressed. Whether the carbon dioxide emissions from Saudi oil is more or less ethical than the carbon dioxide emissions from the dirtier-burning tar sands oil is left to the imagination.
Coles is followed over the fence by Cree Nation Elder Roland Woodward, a community organizer born in a small town located on the banks of the Alberta’s Athabasca River called Fort McMurray.
The water from his hometown’s river is considered essential for tar sands production. As a result, tailings ponds holding the toxic waste created by production are scattered alongside and often within hundreds of feet of the Athabasca. Before the outbreak of high cancer rates, the Cree would drink water directly from their river as they canoed.
Third over the fence was Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians.
“I’m doing it cause I love my grandkids,” Barlow had told the crowd earlier. “In my opinion, those crossing the line today are not breaking the law. The people breaking the law is the Harper government in that building behind us.”
Next across was Julie Burke, Chairperson of the Keepers of the Athabasca. Five years ago, Keepers of the Athabasca and its parent organization, Keepers of the Water, were formed by the Deh Cho First Nation Declaration, recognizing water as sacred and essential to life, with the duty to protect it an obligation shared by all people. Naively, the previous day, I had asked Burke how long the First Nations had been fighting to keep the the Athabasca River clean?
“Since forever,” she had replied.
While the initial wave of participants to cross over the fence were arrested immediately, subsequent waves were respectfully instructed by police to sit down until officers were available to arrest them.
The arrests and crossings continued for hours, as did the solidarity rally. Drum sounds, battle cries, indigenous song and dance, became the new pulse of the hill.
According to Article 32 of the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Harper is required to cooperate in good faith to obtain:
free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.
“We’ve been informed and we do not consent.” said Chief Jackie Thomas of the Saik’uz First Nation, to the crowd during the rally. Her Nation is one of five nations making up the Yinka Dene Alliance. Enbridge Pipeline offered to give the Alliance a 10-per-cent ownership stake in the proposed $5.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline, and the Alliance declined.
After hours in the full sun on a warm day, police simply quit arresting participants, effectively ending the action.
Up until that point, no matter how many were arrested, the number awaiting arrest continued to grow. Were participants extremely fast procreators, or was Earth itself experiencing a Darwinian adaptation allowing for the spontaneous generation of climate activists? Neither.
With each wave of participants climbing over the fence, the legal table set up by the Centennial Flame had received new enlistees wanting to also be on the “right” side of the fence.
The day before, Thomas-Muller said, “You can’t buy into tar sands oil, without buying into ecocide.”
Likewise, you can’t buy into “ethical oil,” without buying into the oppression of indigenous rights.
The drum beat sounds of the Ottawa Action were powerful, but the heartbeats of the warriors climbing that 3-foot fence were thunderous.
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6 Comments so far
Show AllEthical oil was never really alive. It, like the idea of "clean coal," was like one of those people lookalike movie monsters who infiltrate to perpetrate atrocities with impunity, so it can't be killed so long as the mad PR scientists who created them have funding (come to think of it, corporations with corporate personhood are a lot like that too).
Ethical oil, safe nuclear power, clean coal, personable oil companies who do ads assuring us that they're on "our" side, "working day and night to supply America's energy needs," and all the rest of the movie human impersonating horrors . . . they'll be back!
We need opposing propaganda that exposes how these "special effects" are made along with money to air them. It's easy to do: things along the signs of the political hit pieces that expose contradictions in candidates' positions. If the polls that the beltway media take only to ignore say the public is edging toward the progressive side of these arguments.
They probably can't be stopped but one can keep oneself from buying in and keep an eye open for ways to facilitate counterpropaganda.
Great reporting by Curtis Morrison! There was also this short video report from The Real News Network yesterday, here on CD:
Canadian Native Leaders and Activists Oppose Tar Sands Pipeline
www.commondreams.org/video/2011/09/29
And I repost my comment on that video report:
Great little compilation, only about 7-minutes long. I hope a lot of CD readers watched this video. There's also this unbelievable episode mentioned in the video:
>>"A northern Alberta physician who publicly aired concerns over carcinogenic pollution from the massive oilsands development is being investigated by the province's College of Physicians and Surgeons. The complaint against him comes from none other than Health Canada, which claims the physician caused "undue alarm."<<
www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/issue/2007/03_30/4_policy_politics1_6.html
And you hear Maude Barlow's passionate speech, though she seems to have a sore throat. My thanks to CD for continued coverage of this extremely important fight.
Photo of tar sands tailings (and other environmental disasters):
http://lightbox.time.com/2011/04/20/terribly-beautiful-industrial-pollution-seen-from-above/#2
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Support Fee and Dividend, Oppose TransCanada's Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline
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Excerpt from "Ottawa Action Kills Notion of Ethical Oil", by Curtis Morrison, Waging Nonviolence, September 30, 2011:
According to Article 32 of the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Harper is required to cooperate in good faith to obtain:
free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.
“We’ve been informed and we do not consent.” said Chief Jackie Thomas of the Saik’uz First Nation, to the crowd during the rally. Her Nation is one of five nations making up the Yinka Dene Alliance. Enbridge Pipeline offered to give the Alliance a 10-per-cent ownership stake in the proposed $5.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline, and the Alliance declined.
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Canadians and USans need to force their governments to enact Fee and Dividend legislation.
Support Fee and Dividend, Oppose TransCanada's Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline
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It would be great if the Barack Obama administration or the Stephen Harper government would put a stop to the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline or the pipeline was somehow blocked by other means.
The Yinka Dene Alliance has rejected Enbridge Pipeline’s offer to give the Alliance a 10-per-cent ownership stake in the proposed North Gateway pipeline project from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat, British Columbia. But that is unlikely to deter Enbridge.
When the Arctic Ocean becomes largely free of sea ice year round, there will also be an incentive to build a tars sands pipeline from Alberta to Port Churchill, Manitoba on the Hudson Bay.
On August 20, 2009, the U.S. State Department issued a presidential permit for an Alberta Clipper Pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin. The pipeline will be capable of carrying up to 450,000 barrels of crude oil a day to refineries in the U.S.
Clearly, a more comprehensive approach to preventing extensive exploitation of the Alberta tar sands, as well as reducing our dependence on other fossil fuels energy sources, is needed.
How about getting nasty and forcing the U.S. Congress to pass Fee and Dividend legislation that puts an economy wide premium on the cost of fossil carbon products collected at the point of importation or extraction, where the proceeds from the fee are periodically returned to the people throughout the year?
Placing a premium on the cost of fossil carbon products through a Fee and Dividend system is the best approach to reducing fossil carbon emissions.
Fee and Dividend is specifically designed to protect the poor and the middle class (what's left of it) from the rising cost of fossil carbon and to enable them more directly to participate in the choice of alternatives to fossil carbon consumption, including their own efforts to manage their consumption through conservation and lifestyle changes, by adding a large premium to the cost of fossil carbon through the payment of a fee by corporations that import or extract fossil carbon, and then distributing the proceeds of that fee as a dividend to the people in the form of periodic payments during the year.
Sure, corporations may still obtain windfall profits on steeply rising oil prices as the market price changes due to fluctuations in "available" supply, speculation, and the dynamics of peak oil; but the large premium added to the cost of fossil carbon products as a result of the fee is transferred from corporations to the people as a dividend. Corporate windfall profits on fossil carbon based energy should be taxed separately.
The fee adds a stable and predictable premium to the cost of fossil carbon. Usually, Fee and Dividend proposals include provisions for the steady increase in the amount of the fee on fossil carbon importation and extraction with the passage of time. Presumably, the increase in the fee per unit of fossil carbon will correspond with reductions in fossil carbon consumption as more alternatives are developed. The initial fee should be large enough to make current alternatives economically attractive and to encourage the development of new alternatives.
Rather than simply letting large corporations manage the increase in fossil carbon costs and the development of alternatives for consumers in ways which perpetuate corporate control, Fee and Dividend puts money in the hands of the people, who can then more easily make their own choices regarding alternatives to fossil carbon consumption including conservation and lifestyle changes.
Instead of a "trickle down" approach Fee and Dividend transfers money from corporations to people; giving people the "carrot" that works with the fee based premium on the cost of fossil carbon "stick" to generate market incentives for the development of innovative alternatives.
Given what was once a consumer driven economy, the great disparities in wealth and income in the United States, and the fact that large corporations are essentially withholding $2 trillion in liquid assets from the real economy, just about any transfer of the ill gotten gains of wealthy people and wealthy corporations to the middle class and the poor is more likely to stimulate the economy and generate jobs than another tax break for the rich and for large wealthy corporations. When that transfer of funds also puts a premium on the price of fossil carbon, then there is an additional incentive favoring the development of a healthy economy.
Fee and Dividend in a Nutshell
1. Corporations and other types of businesses that import or
extract fossil carbon pay a fossil carbon fee per unit of fossil
carbon and choose whether or not to pass on the increased
cost to consumers or possibly develop a new line of business.
2. Corporations and other types of businesses choose whether
or not to pay the increased cost of fossil carbon and
other products and pass on the increased cost to consumers or
find more suitable alternatives.
3. People periodically receive the proceeds from the fossil carbon
fee as dividend payments, which buffer the impact on them of
the increase in fossil carbon prices due to the fossil carbon
fee and enable them more easily to purchase alternatives.
4. People choose whether or not to pay the increased cost of fossil
carbon and other products or find more suitable alternatives
using what funds they have available including funds from fossil
carbon dividend payments as they see fit.
By the way, Fee and Dividend is the approach to putting a premium on the price of fossil carbon that is favored by NASA climatologist James Hansen and many economists.
If Canadians get nasty too, maybe they can get their government to enact Fee and Dividend legislation.
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Stop TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline!
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"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters"
- - - Frederick Douglas
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Thank you Ottawa protesters!