Is It True, Or Did You Read That in The Australian?

Duty Calls

Having been exposed to it for a while now, I thought that by now I have gotten used to the, um, let’s say outlandish or cobbled together coverage of climate change and climate policy related topics in The Australian. But… I was wrong. Geoffrey Lehmann, Peter Farrell, and Dick Warburton (LFW) have taken it upon themselves to, um, again, what word to use… interpret climate science and climate policy their way in a magazine extract (Quadrant magazine, March 2011, 3(3)) printed in The Australian’s Inquirer (April 9-10, 2011, pp. 1 & 6). Of course The Australian did not waste any time supporting the misrepresentation of climate change-related facts.

Duty calls! Let’s go on a fact-finding mission.

Fact #1: None of them has a proven track-record in anything climate change-related, but they have read and build most of their arguments on the Hartwell Paper.

LFW begin their authorial “masterpiece” by declaring that Dr David Viner’s statement – or as they call it “millenarian prediction” -  about snowfall becoming a rarity was “a dud”. They move on to claim that in 2000, there was a “pause” in global warming and that it has not “resumed” since then. They base their statement on a NASA satellite image showing dated January 7, 2010, showing Great Britain entirely covered in snow.

Fact #2: They should have read the entire article instead of just taking a convenience sample out of context. At the end of the article (to which they are referring to), one can read the following: Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said. If anything, he got the time “wrong”, but then again, it is still in line with recent climate science suggesting a stronger-than-expected and sooner-than-expected climate forcing (e.g., UNEP Science Compendium 2009: 8).

Fact #3: Global warming has not paused since 2000. Different reports (e.g., Murphy et al., 2009) show that, overall, 2005 was one of the hottest years. Globally, the hottest 12-month period ever recorded was from June 2009 to May 2010.

Fact #4: Unfortunately, the authors’ chain of causalitydoes not extend beyond two links: snow + eyes = science and no global warming. Well, unfortunately for the authors, it is a little bit more complicated than that. Again I would like to refer to a nice summary of the climate science on skepticalscience.com: Warming causes more moisture in the air which leads to more extreme precipitation events. This includes more heavy snowstorms in regions where snowfall conditions are favourable. Far from contradicting global warming, record snowfall is predicted by climate models and consistent with our expectation of more extreme precipitation events.

LFW then actually get the explanation of an emissions trading almost right – although emissions trading scheme is not necessarily the same as a cap-and-trade systemNSW’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Scheme, for example, is an emissions trading scheme, but one that is based on baseline-and-credit approach. Anyways, they move on to criticise the effectiveness of Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) and claim that it is “perverse to create a reward for otherwise uneconomic activities”. One problem with this statement is their definition of a CDM: “Credits are awarded only if a certifier hypothesises before an emissions-reducing activity is undertaken, that it would not occur unless the credits were awarded: the creditable activity must be uneconomic without the credits”. This is simply too inaccurate.

Fact #5: Firstly, let’s get the definition right. Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol defines the clean development mechanism: The purpose of the clean development mechanism shall be to assist Parties not included in Annex I in achieving sustainable development and in contributing to the ultimate objective of the Convention, and to assist Parties included in Annex I in achieving compliance with their quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments under article 3. In layman’s terms, it allows developed countries to satisfy their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol by helping developing countries to reduce their emissions.

Moving on to the issue of “uneconomic activity”. Again, the authors are not sufficiently accurate. What they meant to say (Right, guys? Guys?) is that CDM projects must be “additional”, i.e., emission reduction projects creating those credits must be shown to be “in addition to” reductions that would have otherwise occurred. The proposed CDM project must be able to demonstrate that CDM funding played a central role in determining whether to realise the project or not. The CDM project must be unattractive due to some financial, legal, or institutional barrier without the additional economic incentive provided by, e.g., an emissions trading scheme. Given that the authors speak of rich and poor countries, this may make the functioning of the CDM even easier to understand. Ideally, this links to other UNFCCC activities related to cooperation and support, such as technology transfer to and capacity building in developing countries – which may lack the governance and/or financial structure to see through emission-reducing activities on their own. In addition, a CDM must be measurable, independently verified, address leakage and permanence, and the overall project quality.

As for the “hypothesising” part, CDM projects have to go through a set of defined milestones from the conceptual idea through to actual project realisation, and be approved by the CDM Executive Board. An overview of the entire CDM process can be found on the UNFCCC’s CDM website.

Is the system perfect? Certainly not. But LFW compare apples with oranges when  they link emissions trading to the causes of the Global Financial Crisis and the collapse of Enron and Lehman Brothers. They claim that the market is not the best mechanism for setting a carbon price because Enron and Lehman Brothers were active participants in the international carbon market.

Fact #6: While it is true that both companies have been involved in emissions trading, it seems highly unlikely that emissions trading alone led to the demise of those two companies. Enron’s collapse had to do with recorded assets and profits being inflated or even nonexistent. The company established numerous limited liability special purpose entities, allowing Enron to place liability so that it would not appear in its accounts. Lehman on the other had faced significant losses subprime mortgage crisis, holding on to large positions in subprime and other lower-rated mortgage tranches when securitising the underlying mortgages. And of course, some ‘creative accounting’ was also involved towards its end.

Have financial services firms been dissolved since then, given the risk of fraudulent behaviour? Have the accounting scandals around the big consulting companies stopped? The E&Y’s, pwc’s, etc., are all still around. Insurance policies are still being sold, despite cases of insurance fraud. What then is the argument? That because there have been cases of fraudulent or wrongful behaviour, this does not permit a generalising statement about the entire market/system? Hmm…

The authors also fail to mention that despite incidents in the EU, such as the phishing scam last year, or the suspension of the spot market early this year as the result of allowances theft, the EU is improving its registries and their security. One would wish for the same level of transparency in other markets. Emissions trading is an emerging marking, and thus more likely to be at risk to fraud as rules and regulations for operating those markets are – for now – less developed or standardised. And despite all the criminal activity, US$118.5 billion worth of emissions permits were still traded across the EU ETS in 2009.

What is more, emissions trading was never really intended to be a money-making market, but a finite market to ensure an environmental outcome.

Furthermore, according to LFW, the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme market crashed three times since 2005.

Fact #7: Setting the cap for an ETS right, the maximum number of allowances available, requires good knowledge of historical emissions of the entities covered by the scheme. This was not the case in the first phase of the EU ETS (2005  -  2007). As a result, the EU’s ETS market crashed once. In 2007 – after the release of verified emissions data in March 2006 for 2005. Actual emissions were much lower than expected, meaning that the EU ETS was in fact over-allocated. There were fewer emissions than allowances, the price for permits dropped to nearly zero. This problem has been rectified in the second phase of the EU ETS 2008 – 2012) with actual emissions data being available, National Allocation Plans being carefully assessed by the European Commission, and allowances not allowed to be banked between phases I and II.

The risk of an over-allocation of permits in Australia seems rather low, given the existence of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System, which was introduced in 2007 to underpin the the introduction of an emissions trading scheme. Wait, 2007? Wasn’t that the Howard government? Yup. The issue in Australia is going to be about industry and household support.

LFW also put forward that businesses need certainty, and that neither emissions trading nor a carbon tax can provide that certainty.

Fact #8: In December 2009, Mr Wharburton has actually expressed his preference for the introduction of a carbon tax, claiming it provides the certainty businesses need/want.

Businesses already know that a price on carbon is very likely to come in the near future, be it in form of a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme. But rather than coming to grips with the two different approaches and working proactively towards reducing any potential liabilities, any opportunity to randomly rant about the impacts of a “big bad tax on everything” on the poor Australian families is being used.

The selection and implementation of either emissions trading or a carbon tax depends on what is to be controlled: emissions or costs. Under an emissions trading scheme, companies will have to decide whether it is more economical to reduce their emissions or buy additional allowances from elsewhere. Thus, emissions trading provides companies with an incentive to reduce their emissions and to improve and invest in low-carbon technology to reduce emissions and costs.A carbon tax might provide certainty in the cost of compliance and lower administrative costs, making it possibly easier to plan long-term investments, that is, if the tax rate remains fixed or known for the period of the investment. However, under a carbon tax, there is no limit on the amount of emissions. In other words, there is no connection between released emissions and the degree of the tax because there is no cap on emissions. This potentially sacrifices environmental certainty for price certainty.

The problem is that when implementing a carbon tax, the government must decide on the level at which the tax should be set, particularly in the case of pre-existing taxes, or other potential distortions such subsidies to certain industries, fuels, or technologies. How will the tax be used? Should the tax income go directly into Greg Combet’s coffers? Should it be used to offset other taxes (i.e., the double-dividend effect)? Maybe it should be transferred across national boundaries to an international body and allocated to those most adversely impacted by either the costs of emission reduction or damage from climate change (i.e., adaptation and mitigation funding – yes, I know, that’s a good one)? Or should it be invested in specific abatement projects, such as renewable energy? Or as Mr Tony Abbott suggests, planting millions of trees?  And if the tax is intended to achieve a given overall emissions limit, the tax rate will need to be increased to offset the impact of inflation, new technological progress, and new emission sources. Furthermore, it is unlikely that political gamesmanship in the form of debates on industry support or exemption would be eliminated. There would still be the temptation to change taxes or push through (politically motivated) manipulations designed to benefit certain companies or industry sectors, undermining any long-term certainty and hindering necessary investments in low-carbon technologies.

As mentioned above, many opinions are actually based on the London School of Economics and Political Science Hartwell Paper, a report demanding a radical change of approach to international climate policy. Of course, the authors conveniently chose to conceal the fact that principal Funding was provided by the Japan Iron and Steel Federation and Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and the Foundation Hoffmann. I leave it to you to closer investigate the two latter foundations, but the first two should be interesting. Especially given Japan’s reluctance to extend the Kyoto Protocol and ambition to develop an “alternative” to the Kyoto Protocol.

I will not go into too much detail here, but in my opinion, the Hartwell Paper offers little insight into how this alleged needed change is to be achieved, let alone how it is going to be financed. It focuses on criticising the sobering outcome of the COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009 (we conveniently ignore events in 2010), stating that the Kyoto Protocol has failed – influenced by Japanese interest much? Instead, they call for credible long-term global commitments and methods to invest in energy innovation (Hartwell Paperp.34). Energy innovation in this context refers to an article by Galiana and Green published in Nature, in which they argue that a fostering technology revolution, not setting emission targets is the key to addressing climate change. How is this different to the Kyoto Protocol and UNFCCC? How is replacing one global agreement with another one be the better option? You still would have to deal with 195+ countries (195 parties to the UNFCCC plus any other countries that would want to join the credible commitment). And don’t the Kyoto Protocol and UNFCCC have mechanisms that are intended to trigger that technological revolution?

A discussion of the technological and commercial viability of renewable energy will not be part of this little post, but I am surprised to see LFW taking a critical stance towards carbon capture and storage technology – and rightfully so.

LFW also mention Bjorn Lomberg, author of “The Skeptical Scientist”, saying that there are many worthwhile cause to fund with our taxes and philanthropic dollars that rank ahead of global warming, such as ensuring safe drinking water and educating both sexes in poor countries, eliminating malaria and other tropical diseases, maintaining biodiversity and cleaning up real pollutants. That, by the way, is the same Bjorn Lomberg who is now is urging world leaders to invest heavily in clean energy.

Fact #9: Many of these worthy causes have to deal with challenges of climate change. according to the Climate Change Synthesis Report by the University of Copenhagen, the observed temperature rise to date, about 0.7oC, is already affecting health in many societies. Beyond the direct impacts on health, climate change also affects the underlying determinants of health – quantity and quality of food, water resources, and ecological control of disease vectors. The risks arise from direct stresses (e.g. heat-waves, weather disasters, workplace dehydration), from ecological disturbance (e.g.altered infectious disease patterns), and disruptions of ecosystems on which humanity depends (e.g. health consequences of reduced food yields), from population displacement and conflict overdepleted resources (water, fertile land, fisheries). Biodiversity is at risk because of changed weather and climate patterns  (see, e.g., UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium 2009). And “real” pollutants? seriously?

What do they think we are trying to achieve? Just trying to adapt because adaptation to adverse climate change, if and when it does occur, may be the best and only viable strategy? Having to adapt to climate change may mean that it is already to late, while mitigation may provide us with the opportunity to alleviate some of the worst effects, to prevent a runaway effect of dangerous climate change.

Energy Is Ugly – Tar Sands Make Their Mark, By Ellen Cantarow | TomDispatch.com

This essay was originally published on TomDispatch.

For years, “not in my backyard” has been the battle cry of residents in Cape Cod who stand opposed to an offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound.  The giant turbines will forever mar the beauty of the landscape, they say.

Energy is ugly.  Some forms more so than others, as nuclear near-meltdowns in Japan, the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and deaths in a West Virginia Coal Mine explosion have driven home in the last year.  Energy kills plants, plankton, and people.  It imperils the environment, poisons the oceans, and is threatening to turn part of Japan, one of the most advanced nations on the planet, into a contaminated zone for decades to come.

David Daniel knows this all too well.  He built his dream home on 20 acres of lush wilderness, alive with panthers, wild boar, and deer, in Winnsboro, East Texas.  Then a nightmare called tar sands appeared on his doorstep.

Tar sands are sandy soils laden with a tar-like substance called bitumen. Getting oil out of them is a dirty, dangerous, and deadly process. Daniel knew none of this when a neighbor phoned in the fall of 2008 to say that he’d seen trespassers on the property. “I went back [from work] and I found survey stakes that cut my property in half,” he recalls. Several months later, an eminent domain letter arrived, telling him that a pipeline carrying oil from Canada’s “oil sands” would cut through his pristine property. When he complained to TransCanada, the company in charge, its lawyer responded with a veiled threat: “Should I put the letter in the ‘cooperative’ or the ‘uncooperative pile?’”

So began the Daniel family’s struggles with TransCanada, whose powerful US backers include Koch Industries (best known for its stealth attacks on the federal government, and big spending on climate-change-denial campaigns). By the time TransCanada’s surveyors entered the Daniels’ lives, the corporation was already hard at work pushing a pipeline that would run from the Canadian border to Texas’s Gulf Coast, along the way slicing through the Daniels’ land and the properties of countless other Americans.

At no time did TransCanada’s representatives volunteer information about tar sands, leaving Daniel to do his own research. When he asked how tar sands oil would affect the pipeline, TransCanada responded only that the effects would be determined after the pipeline was put in place. “They made us feel like lab rats on our own property,” he says.

Behind his painful schooling in corporate arrogance lies a startling fact: Canada is the leading oil-supplier of the United States. Let me repeat that: the U.S. imports more oil from Canada than (yes) Mexico, which ranks second, and (believe it or not) Saudi Arabia, which ranks only third. Tar sands are largely responsible for Canada’s new petro-status. Nearly a million barrels of tar sands oil arrive in the U.S. every day. By 2025, Canada is expected to be producing 3.5 million barrels of tar sands oil daily. Most of that, says Ryan Salmon of the National Wildlife Federation, will be imported to the U.S. And believe me, when it comes to energy ugly, tar sands could take the cake.

 

Not Tar, Not Oil

In fact, “tar sands” is a colloquialism for 54,000 square miles of bitumen that veins sand and clay beneath the boreal forests of Alberta, one of Canada’s western provinces. Black as it is, bitumen isn’t actually tar, though it looks and smells like tar, and has its consistency on a very cold day — hence, that term “tar sands.” (The corporations that produce the stuff prefer “oil sands.”)

Unlike oil, bitumen does not flow. Gouged and steamed out from under the forest, it is wrenched from the soil, barreled, and then refined into synthetic crude oil — at shattering environmental costs. The tar sands industry has ravaged Alberta’s forests, poisoned its air and water, and wrecked the livelihoods of its indigenous peoples. Moreover, producing synthetic crude from a barrel of bitumen generates at least twice as much greenhouse gas as producing a barrel of normal crude oil. At 1.5 million barrels of tar sands oil a day, that’s a lot of global warming.

But for corporations intent on profits in a world rocked by Middle East and North African uprisings that might threaten global oil supplies, and by declining reserves of normal crude, environmental catastrophe is trivial collateral damage. The tar sands’ great selling point in the U.S. is that it comes from a friendly neighbor. Russ Girling, president and CEO of TransCanada, typically touts tar sands as improving “U.S. energy security and reduc[ing] dependence on foreign oil from the Middle East and Venezuela,” At a White House meeting in early February, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper assured President Obama that “Canada is the largest, the most secure, the most stable, and the friendliest supplier of that most vital of all America’s purchases: energy.”

A complex alchemy turns bitumen into synthetic crude.  Canadian journalist and tar sands expert Andrew Nikiforuk calls this final product “the world’s dirtiest hydrocarbon oil.” Canada used to transform bitumen from its rawest into its ultimate form, sending synthetic crude through pipelines to the U.S. Now, however, with Canada’s refineries maxing out, U.S. refineries are increasingly taking up the task of turning bitumen into the mock crude that makes even my Prius environmentally unfriendly. That means what’s coming to Americans in ever increasing quantities is a very raw form of diluted bitumen called DilBit, whose transport will make lab rats of us all.

Under jaunty names like “Lakehead,” “Alberta Clipper,” and “Keystone,” a vast pipeline network is already pumping this diluted bitumen to the Midwest and into the American heartland. The 1,900-mile-long Lakehead pipeline, owned by Canada’s Enbridge Inc., skirts one of the world’s largest stretches of fresh water, the Great Lakes.

Last June, Enbridge’s main competitor, TransCanada, opened a $5 billion, 2,147-mile pipeline it dubbed Keystone I, which plunges from Canada straight through the eastern parts of the Dakotas and Kansas to the Gulf Coast. Now, TransCanada is pushing hard for an extension, the Keystone XL, the one that will run through David Daniel’s land on its way to the Gulf coast.

In February, a landmark report by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that diluted bitumen is “the primary product” carried by the Keystone I. The proposed Keystone XL, write the report’s authors, will be dedicated only to DilBit whose “combination of chemical corrosion and physical abrasion can dramatically increase the rate of pipeline deterioration.” So imagine this recipe for pipelines from hell: take thick, raw, corrosive, acid-ridden bitumen and add volatile natural gas to propel it since the bitumen doesn’t flow by itself; next, crank up the temperatures and pressures far higher than those needed to move ordinary crude oil (again, to help the stuff on its way). It doesnʼt take a rocket scientist to understand some of the possible dangers of moving tar sands oil in this state through our communities.

 

The Tar Sands Come to Kellogg’s

Last July, as BP’s catastrophe in the Gulf was making news around the clock, the U.S. experienced its first big DilBit moment. Part of Enbridge’s Lakehead line broke, oozing black gunk into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River near Battle Creek, Michigan, iconic home to cereal-maker Kellogg’s. Twelve hours passed before workers responded to the surge of sludge, which by then had passed from the tributary into the river itself. The dark slop could be seen from bank to bank in the Kalamazoo, making its way to Lake Michigan.

High levels of benzene filled the air and local residents had to be evacuated from their homes. When the sludge passed through Battle Creek, the Kellogg’s factory even stopped making cornflakes. The spill was arrested before it could reach Lake Michigan, but not before a million gallons of DilBit had fouled a 30-mile-long stretch of the Kalamazoo, one of the biggest spills in Midwest history.

This was, however, no “ordinary” oil spill, as DilBit spills are much harder to clean up. Once DilBit hits water, the bitumen in it doesn’t float; it quickly sinks into river sediment. Exposed to sunlight, it forms a dense, sticky substance hard to remove from rock and soil.

Special dredging and other equipment is needed for any effective cleanup. The booms you saw skimming the Gulf last summer are inadequate, and the U.S. doesn’t yet have DilBit cleanup technology. So while cleanup crews worked on the Kalamazoo and its banks after the spill was discovered, they left a whole lot of DilBit behind. Adequate cleanup isn’t expected until at least late 2011, according to the NRDC’s Susan Casey-Lefkowitz.

At the time of the Kalamazoo spill, Enbridge’s CEO, Patrick Daniels, claimed that there had never been a leak “of this consequence” in the company’s history. According to Enbridge’s own reports, however, between 2000 and 2009 the company was responsible for 610 pipeline spills in Canada, totaling 5.5 million gallons. (Not all were DilBit, which makes the picture worse, not better, since ordinary crude is less corrosive and volatile than DilBit.) In Michigan, 12 spills from Enbridge’s pipelines preceded the larger one in the Kalamazoo. Two months after that spill, another part of Enbridge’s Lakehead pipeline leaked 256,000 gallons of DilBit into Romeoville, a suburb of Chicago.

Keystone’s underground pipeline to the Gulf Coast, which opened only nine months ago, has already leaked seven times. They have been small leaks, but significant nonetheless as they point to larger, more distressing problems.  “It seems odd to us that a brand-new pipeline would have these little spills throughout,” says Casey-Lefkowitz. “It raises questions about the quality of construction.”

“TransCanada is building its pipelines according to strength regulations designed for conventional pipelines decades ago,” adds Anthony Swift, co-author of the NRDC report. Swift says the company “has not yet provided a meaningful strategy for dealing with some of the characteristics of diluted bitumen.”

The proposed Keystone XL, also underground, would carry up to 900,000 barrels of DilBit (37,800,000 gallons) south every day, passing through some of the most sensitive ecosystems in the U.S., including rivers, wildlife preserves, and wide expanses of prairie. In addition, it would run through the Ogallala aquifer, a 174,000-square-mile expanse of water that lies under eight states from the Dakotas to Texas and provides 30% of the nation’s irrigation for agriculture, as well as drinking water for 82% of the people within its vast boundaries.

The pipeline would pass through areas where landslides and earthquakes are known threats. Part of Keystone I already traverses an area of seismic activity in Nebraska, where a recent tremor — 3.5 on the Richter scale — shook the ground throughout the southeast part of the state. It also runs through the easternmost part of the Ogallala. Before Keystone I was built, a National Wildlife Federation report warned, “Some portions of the aquifer are so close to the surface that any pipeline leak would almost immediately contaminate a large portion of the water.”

TransCanada cannot begin constructing Keystone XL without both presidential permission and a State Department environmental impact statement (EIS), made necessary because the project crosses international borders.  The State Department issued that EIS in April 2010 in the wake of public hearings in towns along the pipeline route. Environmental organizations, landowners, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were sharply critical of the EIS. Among other things, says the NRDC’s Anthony Swift, the statement failed to demonstrate “the need for the pipeline, its safety, and its greenhouse gas impacts.” Especially troubling, according to Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, was the failure to consider an alternate pipeline route that would not slash through the Ogallala aquifer.

Last month, under pressure from mounting opposition to the pipeline by a coalition of grassroots groups, the State Department held further meetings in Washington to hear their grievances. (The EPA also met with coalition leaders.) Ben Gotschall, a fifth generation Nebraska organic rancher, called the State Department’s environmental statement “insulting.” It suggested, he said, neither that stronger than normal pipeline materials should be used, nor that there might be alternative routes to the one currently proposed. TransCanada’s only concern, he insisted, was cost, while at stake was the “life and livelihood of millions of people.”

“My family has been producing grass-fed beef for five generations,” said Gotschall.  “We do this organically, without chemicals and with minimum fossil fuel inputs… Nebraska farmers and ranchers were producing food long before we had the benefit of fossil fuels and we can and will find a way to produce food long after fossil fuels are gone.  But we will never be able to produce food without clean water.  To me, this pipeline is an issue of national security that threatens our domestic food and water supply.”

If the pipeline goes through, a handful of giant corporations will profit, among them Koch Industries which handles about 25% of tar sands imports to the U.S., and is among the biggest of U.S. tar sands refiners. Meanwhile, the grassroots opposition uniting farmers and ranchers, environmentalists and scientists is growing in the heartland states.

Last month, the coalition demanded that the State Department issue a supplemental environmental impact statement. On March 16th, Ben Gotschall e-mailed: “If you haven’t heard already, the State Department has called for a supplemental draft EIS… This is a victory for all of us who have been fighting this from the beginning.”  On March 24th, 25 mayors sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “We are concerned,” they wrote, “that expansion of high carbon projects such as the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will undermine the good work being done in local communities across the country to fight climate change and reduce our dependence on oil.”

Yet in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, domestic fears over nuclear energy are spiking, while months of turmoil in the Muslim world have highlighted a growing U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil.  As a result, it will surely become harder to derail the efforts of TransCanada and Koch Industries to ram a pipeline filled with toxic tar sands oil right through David Daniel’s property.

Will a pipeline leak one day kill off his old growth hardwood trees, foul his three natural springs, and poison the deer now roaming his land? If TransCanada’s checkered history is any guide, it’s a real possibility.  Energy kills.  In Japan.  In the Gulf.  In Appalachian mines.  And in the Corn Flake capital of the world.  If Winnsboro, East Texas, is added to the list, it won’t be a surprise, not to David Daniel anyway.  He knows what we all know now: in the hands of corporations whose only concern is profit, energy is ugly.

Ellen Cantarow is a journalist whose work on Israel/Palestine has been widely published for 30 years, including at TomDispatch. Her long-time concern about climate change, related to both political and environmental disaster in the Middle East, has recently led her to explore big oil territory.

[Note on sources: Thanks to both Michael Klare, who suggested the tar sands topic, and Andrew Nikiforuk, who shared information by e-mail. Nikiforuk’s book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent should be required reading on this topic. Thanks also to Anthony Swift and Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of The National Resources Defense Council for supplying additional information about the differences between DilBit and crude oil spills. NRDC’s crucial report, “Tar Sands Pipelines Safety Risks,” can be read in .pdf format by clicking here.]

Copyright 2011 Ellen Cantarow