Hello Green fellow travellers:
This is a recent post by me to the left bio discussion group which may be
of interest to some on our list.
For the Earth,
David
********
I read the Globe and Mail each day, which is Canada's main bourgeois
newspaper with a center-right political orientation. This includes reading
the business section for stories which interest me. I wanted to give some
energy data (see below my personal comment) which made an impact on me,
which should also concern electoral Greens who need an appropriate energy
policy for Canada. This would seem a tough job given our existing energy
integration with the United States but not something to be ignored.
Securing fossil fuel supplies is considered a national security issue in
the States and this carries over to Canada, as any examination of North
American energy literature shows. We have seen that the States is prepared
to intervene around the world, right up to military intervention, to secure
long-term (until they run out!) energy supplies to support its industrial
lifestyle, and to place restrictions and controls on countries like China
and Japan who also need an ever growing oil and gas fix. (According to a
Globe and Mail November 29th article, by the year 2020, China expects to
depend on imported oil for 60 percent of its supply, which would be quite
an increase from the already substantial 36 percent today.) One can also
see in the 'host' exporting countries, like Canada to the States, a
potential for an increasing militarization of the oil and gas exporting
structures (including electricity and coal). Such structures will come
under attack by those more ecological aware who see the ecological death
path being taken, for the US and the rest of the world, and who decide to
do something about it.

The statement by Bush senior at the Rio conference in 1992, something to
the effect that "the American lifestyle is not up for negotiations", made a
big impact on my thinking. What it meant of course is that this industrial
oil-based capitalist consumer economy is not up for any fundamental
lifestyle change. As we all know, the US economy draws in "resources" from
the rest of the world, including Canada, and discharges internally but also
to the rest of the world, its industrial detritus, including greenhouse
gases. The figure of five percent is usually used for the US population, as
a percentage of the world's population.

After Rio, some of our work here in the Maritimes consisted of trying to
oppose the Sable Gas Project, the exploiting of offshore natural gas on the
East Coast to mainly feed the US economy. I became eventually aware that in
1987 the Canadian federal agency, the National Energy Board (a good example
of "regulatory capture" by the oil and gas industry) put foreign and
domestic customers on an equal footing, thus abandoning the previous policy
of national self-sufficiency in energy in Canada. Apparently, article 605a
of the NAFTA agreement states Canada cannot reduce the amount of energy
going to the States without also reducing its own consumption. This export
ratio continues to escalate and it currently "guarantees" about 60 percent
of our national output to the US. The so-called North American Free Trade
Agreement between the US and Canada locks our country into supplying energy
to the States.

Residents of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick found out that the National
Energy Board Act functions also as a land expropriating document for the
oil and gas industry, where rights-of-way are needed for pipelines which
made up about 560 kilometers of mainline pipe in the two provinces carrying
gas to the States. (The conclusion of all the corporate/government
environmental impact studies for the vast Sable Gas Project, with a
projected 25-year life, was that both its marine and terrestrial
manifestations would have "no significant adverse environmental or
socio-economic impact." This was called "sustainable development" in the
Environmental Management Manual for the Project. This is one example of why
clinging to the use of this term by some Greens shows a low level of
political awareness.) Methane (CH4), promoted as a "clean" fuel by the oil
and gas industry, makes up approximately ninety percent of the natural gas
that is shipped to consumers. It is many times more potent than carbon
dioxide as a greenhouse gas. The US is the largest emitter of greenhouse
gases, followed by China.

For deeper Greens the future is not ours to sell, so some serious thinking
needs to be done if electoral Greens and the rest of us here in Canada are
to offer any real energy alternative in the short term, rather than
ever-increasing supplicancy to the US. Calling for the abrogation of the
NAFTA agreement would be one way of curtailing fossil fuel exports to the
US but, given the truculence of the US, this would not be without
consequences, which we need to ideologically and otherwise prepare for. We
are running out of oil and gas. Greens should know that in the long term
there isn't any fundamental solution to the existing energy situation
except a de-industrialization policy and a transformation to ecocentric
sustainability.

Best, David

"Canada is the No. 1 exporter of crude oil and petroleum products to the
United States, which is the world's biggest importer and consumes a quarter
of the planet's daily production. China recently became the No. 2 importer,
moving past Japan. In 2003, Canada produced 2.39 million barrels of crude a
day, exporting almost two-thirds of that - 1.56 million barrels - to the
United States."

"The oil sands - whose reserves of 174 million barrels rank No. 2 in the
world behind Saudi Arabia's - have the attention of the White House. In
2001, U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney's National Energy Policy report said
'their continued development can be a pillar of sustained North American
energy and economic security.'"
(Both quotes taken from an article by Dave Ebner, "China's oil sands role
tests U.S." in the Globe and Mail, December 20, 2004.)

Russia is in a controlling fossil fuel situation for some countries, as the
following quote makes clear about the energy giant Gazprom:

"By any standards, Gazprom is already gigantic. It holds nearly a third of
the world's proven natural gas reserves and is the sole supplier of gas to
Slovakia and the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. It
provides 91 per cent of Hungary's gas imports and 75 per cent of the Czech
Republic's. Now it's aiming further afield to Western Europe - where it
already supplies a quarter of the region's natural gas - and Britain, where
it has a stated goal of supplying 10 per cent of that country's gas by
2010...Russia is the world's No. 2 producer of oil after Saudi Arabia."
(Quote taken from an article by Mark MacKinnon, "Gazprom strengthens power
grip" in the Globe and Mail, December 21, 2004.)



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