Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore has referred to Canada鈥檚 oil and gas riches as a 鈥渞esource curse鈥� and said the Alberta oilsands add 鈥渢o the reckless spewing of pollution into the Earth鈥檚 atmosphere as if it鈥檚 an open sewer.鈥�
Gore speaks as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his efforts to educate the world on climate change.
This would be the same Al Gore who recently sold his cable-TV network, Current, to Al-Jazeera for $500 million. Al-Jazeera would be the same network owned by Qatar, where they produce and export oil.
As an environmentalist, Gore is undoubtedly aware that the greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired electricity stations in the U.S. are 40 times those from the oilsands.
As for Europe, according to Natural Resources Canada, emissions from electrical installations are nearly 30 times those of the oilsands. This is, for Gore, an inconvenient truth.
According to Energy Alberta, the oilsands are responsible for only 6.8 per cent of emissions in Canada and only 0.15 per cent of emissions worldwide.
There鈥檚 no doubt that extracting bitumen takes an environmental toll, but it鈥檚 also true that industry is doing a better job on issues like water and land reclamation.
Alberta also monitors the intensity of emissions, and industry is doing a better job there, too, through research and development and new technology.
As Alberta Premier Alison Redford notes in an interview to be published by Policy magazine: 鈥淲hen you鈥檙e having a climate-change discussion and you鈥檙e talking about emissions, we know that what industry is doing right now is reducing the intensity of emissions with respect to production on a per-barrel basis.鈥�
But as she notes, while intensity is decreasing, production is increasing to meet demand, 鈥渢herefore you don鈥檛 always see a net reduction in the emissions, even though, based on intensity, there is a reduction.鈥�
And as Joe Nocera observed in his New York Times column: 鈥淓xtraction technology has improved to the point where there is almost no difference, in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions between sands oil and old-fashioned oil drilling.
鈥淭he government insists that companies extracting the oil return the land to its original state when the mining is completed. Indeed, for all the hysteria over the environmental consequences of the oilsands, there is oil in California that is actually dirtier than the oil from the sands.鈥�
In all, the U.S. accounts for 22 per cent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, according to Natural Resources Canada, while Canada is responsible for two per cent.
The U.S. population is nine times that of Canada, while its greenhouse-gas emissions are 11 times higher than ours. And Canada is a much colder country, with higher home-heating requirements.
Everyone understands that the environmental movement in the U.S. is using the oilsands and the Keystone XL pipeline project as leverage for a larger conversation on climate change.
And in politics, you have to make the usual allowances for hypocrisy. But there are limits, especially from advocates like Gore, who has been on this file since before he invented the Internet and should know better than to accuse Canada of treating the atmosphere like 鈥渁n open sewer.鈥�
Not only is it insulting, it鈥檚 untrue.
Nor do these activists take account of the importance of energy exports to the 91原创 economy, the importance of 91原创 energy imports to the U.S. economy, and the political importance of Keystone to the relationship between the two principals on the file 鈥� President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Energy is now far and away the largest segment of 91原创 exports, and the U.S. accounts for more than 99 per cent of our exports of oil and gas. Canada supplies the U.S. with 100 per cent of its imported electricity, 85 per cent of its natural-gas imports, and 27 per cent of its oil imports 鈥� more than twice as much as the 12 per cent of U.S. oil imports supplied by Saudi Arabia.
Moreover, in the energy chapter of the North American Free Trade Agreement, we guaranteed the Americans security of supply in return for security of access. It鈥檚 the considered view of Brian Mulroney, the father of free trade, and Derek Burney, who negotiated it, that the U.S. is violating the agreement in delaying approval of Keystone.
Or as Redford puts it in her forthcoming magazine interview: 鈥淚t鈥檚 quite clear that we promised to be good suppliers if they promised to be good customers.鈥�
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L. Ian MacDonald is editor of Policy magazine.
