As Canadian prime minister Harper and US President Obama held their meeting in Washington yesterday, 20 Greenpeace activists from Canada, France, and the US continued to blockade Shell’s Albian Sands open-pit mine in Canada's tar sands.

Harper is eager to protect the oil sands industry, which has spurred a booming economy in western Canada in recent years. At the meeting Harper also noted the oil sands are a huge source of jobs in Canada and said they are working with the Obama administration on a clean energy dialogue.

But Brant Olson, director of Rainforest Action Network’s tar sands campaign commented: “There can be no meaningful clean energy plan between the two countries while Prime Minister Harper continues to expand tar sands oil development, the leading cause of climate change in Canada. We hope that President Obama sees past Prime Minister Harper’s efforts to lock up the U.S. market for tar sands oil, and makes good on his commitments to clean energy and green jobs.”

Because of the Greenpeace blockade, Shell shut down the entire operation of the mine. The activists have been in place for over 18 hours and are sending a message to Harper and Obama telling them “climate leaders don’t buy tar sands”.

“Tar sands are a climate crime and will likely be a big part of the discussion between Obama and Harper. Obama needs to reject any further development of tar sands, and commit to weaning the US off of its dangerous addiction to oil. Only then can he become a true leader on climate change” said Mike Hudema, Greenpeace Canada climate and energy campaigner from inside the blockade.

Canada's tar sands cover an area larger than England. Greenpeace state that developing the tar sands has created the biggest industrial development project, and one of the biggest climate crimes on the planet. Plans for further development, driven largely by European companies producing for US markets, mean that the tar sands could emit between 127 and 140 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year by 2020, more than the annual emissions of Denmark.

In open pit mining operations like Shell’s Albian Sands, vast swaths of forest are cut down and the land stripped for mining, to be replaced by a landscape of toxic lakes and massive mines. In in situ operations like those of Norway’s Statoil and others, super-heated steam is injected deep into the earth to melt out the oil, burning enough natural gas to heat four million North American homes every day.

While Shell has the biggest operations in the tar sands, companies including BP, Suncor, Syncrude, ExxonMobil, Total and StatoilHydro are all heavily investing in the tar sands, which Greenpeace claim is driving one of the biggest climate crimes on the planet.

The environmental campaign organisation state that in December the world has an historic opportunity to step back from the brink of catastrophic climate change. At the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, Greenpeace say world leaders must agree urgent measures to save the climate - and this means quitting the tar sands.

The Harper-Obama meeting took place the same week that a Canadian company pleaded not guilty to charges relating to the deaths of 1,600 ducks on its toxic waste pond last year.

Syncrude on Monday told a Canadian court that it did everything it could to prevent the incident and has since installed better technology to ensure it doesn't happen again. At the time of the incident, Syncrude said it was having problems with its electronic cannons, which were used to scare the birds away from the oily waters. The cannons were not operational at the time but have now been fixed.

UK's CO-OP BACK INDIAN LEGAL TAR SANDS FIGHT 

The Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) wants people to support the Beaver Lake Cree Nation in their legal battle to stop energy companies extracting further oil from tar sands within their ancestral lands in Alberta, Canada.

The major UK company states that tar sands extraction is energy and resource intensive, creating an average of three times as many emissions as conventional oil production, and scientists have predicted that the carbon emissions from shale oil and tar sands would initiate a continual unfolding of climate disasters over the course of this century.

The CFS also point out that in addition, the exploitation of tar sands also risks local ecological disaster as pristine boreal forest is cleared and watercourses are polluted, making impossible the traditional way of life of indigenous communities.

The Beaver Lake Cree’s legal challenge seeks to enforce recognition of their constitutionally protected treaty rights to hunt, fish and gather plants and medicines within their ancestral lands. In order for these rights to have meaning, they want the ecological integrity of their traditional territories and the boreal forest upon which they depend to be protected. The case cites over 17,000 infringements of their rights and will ultimately seek to halt new developments.

A charitable trust was launched in July to help raise funds for the legal case with CFS making the first donation of C$100,000 (£53,000). The Co-operative Financial Services' donation to the Beaver Lake Cree legal case will contribute to wildlife impact assessments, human disturbance mapping, and scientific studies on the impacts of tar sands developments on the boreal forest and the local watershed. More information on the charitable trust can be found at www.raventrust.com

In February 2009, The Co-operative Financial Services also provided £50,000 funding for the filming of elder depositions, which will document the Beaver Lake Cree Nation’s folklore and traditional way of life, and the threats to this way of life by tar sand developments. Some of the videos will be used in court and some in campaigning, and they will also act as a historical record documenting a culture and a community under threat.

Paul Monaghan, Head of Social Goals and Sustainability at CFS said: “The Beaver Lake Cree’s legal case maybe one of the last and best hopes to stop new tar sands developments. This small group of 900 indigenous people are taking on not just the Governments of Canada and Alberta but some of the biggest companies in the world.

They have the support of Canada’s leading lawyer on aboriginal law, who has a track record of winning such cases. But they are going to need financial support – and lots of it. Forget the lawsuits against ‘big tobacco’, forget Erin Brockovich, this is the big one.”

Chief of the Beaver Lake Cree Al Lameman said: “It is an enormous source of strength to receive the goodwill and support of people in the UK. We are facing powerful and wealthy opposition, but we remain firm in our resolve to protect these lands from destruction. Our fight is your fight.”

Shells, BP, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Total all have existing or planned tar sands projects that CFS claim could be impacted if the Cree Nation’s legal action is successful.

The public can donate to the legal case via CFS’ Toxic Fuels campaign website: www.co-operativecampaigns.co.uk/beaverlakecree

BEAVERLAKE FACTFILE
When the ancestors of the Beaver Lake Cree signed a treaty with Canada in 1876, they ceded vast tracts of land in exchange for guaranteed treaty rights to hunt and fish within those territories. In order for the Beaver Lake Cree Nation’s rights to have meaning, they claim the habitats of the fish and wildlife they depend on must be protected throughout their ancient homeland. The large-scale deforestation, wildlife disturbance and pollution resulting from tar sand developments threaten these treaty rights. Asserting their role as caretakers of their traditional territories, The Beaver Lake Cree Nation have brought a legal challenge to force Alberta and Canada to keep their promises and to protect the ecological integrity of these lands.

The Beaver Lake Cree Nation’s legal counsel is Jack Woodward, author of Native Law, Canada’s principal legal text on aboriginal law. Jack has been working in this field for 30 years and has been the lead lawyer on some of the most groundbreaking First Nation’s rights cases in the Canada. Including the Meares Island case where the British Columbia court granted an injunction stopping the logging of old growth forest on the basis of an aboriginal right. More recently, he won the Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia and Canada suit. This case laid the groundwork for the Beaver Lake Cree Nation case. It says that lands and forests must be developed in a way that gives primacy to the sustainability of First Nation’s rights.

CANADIAN TAR SANDS FACTFILE
Shell’s Orion Hilda Lake tar sands project is within the area potentially affected by the Beaver Lake Cree legal case and currently produces 10,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd), with approval for growth to 20,000 barrels this year and potential to produce 40,000 bpd. BP announced in the summer that it has started evaluating its Kirby tar sands leases in the area, which could support production of up to 70,000 bpd. Other affected tar sand developments include: ExxonMobil’s Cold Lake project currently producing 150,000 bpd, with plans to increase production to 180,000 bpd; the Christina Lake and Foster Creek projects in which ConocoPhillips has a fifty per cent stake and currently produce 50,000 bpd, with plans to increase this to 400,000 by 2015; and ConocoPhillips and Total’s joint Surmont project which currently produces 27,000 bpd and has plans to expand to 193,000 bpd.

Canada is thought to have probable tar sand reserves of 315 billion barrels and proven currently accessible reserves of 175 billion barrels; this is second only to Saudi Arabia’s proven conventional reserves. More than US$125 billion of tar sand projects have been announced for development by 2015. Shell has announced an intention to produce 670,000 barrels of oil daily from Canadian tar sands by 2020, while ExxonMobil, BP and ConocoPhillips are also hoping to produce several hundred thousand barrels each per day.

If all 1.1 trillion barrels of probable North American unconventional oil reserves (both tar sands and shale oil) were exploited within the next century, it would result in emissions of 980 Gt CO2, equating to an estimated increase in atmospheric CO2 levels of between 49 and 65 parts per million. The consequences of these additional emissions could be catastrophic given that global atmospheric levels are already at 430ppm CO2e and exceeding 450ppm CO2e significantly increases the risk of dangerous climate change.

Dangerous climate change is defined as warming of more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels, whereby stresses upon the world’s water resources, food production capacity and ecosystems increase significantly. To stand a reasonable chance of avoiding this, atmospheric concentrations of key greenhouse gasses must not exceed 450ppm CO2e. Achieving this will require global emissions to peak by around 2015 and at least halve by 2050, with developed nations making more substantial cuts of around 80%.

More information on The Co-operative Financial Services ‘Toxic Fuels’ campaign and a pdf version of WWF-UK and CFS’ high profile report ‘Unconventional Oil: Scraping the bottom of the barrel?’ can be found at: www.goodwithmoney.co.uk/toxicfuels

Posted on Environment Times online on 16th September 2009.