A Repudiation of Treehugger's Fort Mac article: What's really going on up there?

Fort Mac, aerial view

I've known Treehugger has been going downhill for awhile.  Like most on-line venues, as it has become successful, its voracious appetite for content has relaxed its criteria for journalism to near vaporous levels and has embraced a more mainstream outlook.  Shopping green and personal choices has become more of a focus than global change or activism.  Only to be expected, really, though I still looked forward to perusing its pages, since I assumed there was some degree of quality control.

That has all changed this week.  Hidden in the Design and "Green Architecture" section was an article about which I have some degree of knowledge, and this didn't agree with any of it.  In a curious piece on the construction of the Fort Mac airport lay a entire plethora of completely mistaken or misleading embeds on the Albertan and Canadian economy, labour, governance, and environmental standards.  It is rather subversive in its bizarrely unprovable statements presented as fact, which seemed to be designed to present a completely fictitious picture of Western Canada.  Why?  Well, the image they paint is far more in line with the Harper propaganda machine that it is with the reality on the ground, down to using identical language, in fact.  Think this appalling greenwash is a coincidence?  Think again.  The key words for the search on this 'article' are Alberta | Green Building | Tar Sands.  On an article about designing an airport with wood?  They apparently remembered to use the term 'tarsands' for searches...

Article is here: Fort McMurray Airport Is The Largest Cross Laminated Timber Building In North America

My comment was still there as of this writing, but no one has cared to refute it yet.  Though some voted it down...  If anyone can find anything inaccurate in what I wrote, please let me know!  I, at least, prefer to present the truth, rather than live in ignorance...

(Don't just take my word for it.  Here's a Rolling Stone article from someone who went deep into the tar sands culture in Fort Mac.)

I'll reprint most of my comments I left on Treehugger here.  I'll leave out some of the sarcasm.  You're welcome.

There are no such thing as oil sands. It's a greenwash, or at least a neocon framing, and is of very recent origin. Before mining, the correct terms are bituminous sands or bituminous earth (some of it isn't sand), though using those can be tiresome, so tarsands is acceptable, though slightly less accurate. (As to what's in those pipelines, it's here.) Oilsands as a term isn't even close. NPO's who use "oilsands" are in the clear. Those that don't have their funding removed and are labeled eco-terrorists. Just by putting that in your opening, you prove the article's bias and lack of accuracy.

The Mountain Pine Beetle is indeed working it's way through the trees, but it isn't the forests. Because it grows so quickly, the areas that are clear cut and then replanted by the timber companies companies choose the Lodgepole Pine almost exclusively, to the tune of 95%. It is the Lodgepole Pine that is particularly vulnerable to the Beetle, so the forests themselves aren't being nearly as hard hit as these tree farms.  It is these 'replanted' areas are the most devastated, not living healthy forests. It's much harder for the bugs to jump trees from different species, doncha know... Explain to me why they *still* keep planting Lodgepole Pine and devastating our remaining areas? Maybe they want the dead beetle wood for this "stronger than steel" product...

I guarantee you that workers do not fly home to the Maritimes after their "shifts". Unless you mean after months on the job.  Then it's more of a much needed vacation. It costs more to fly to Newfoundland from Edmonton than it does to fly to Europe, even though airplanes that travel to Europe stop at the Gander, NF airport to refuel - a point that makes my Newfie husband's blood boil, actually. The standard joke is that Fort Mac is the third largest city in Newfoundland, but the image of rig pigs leading the high life and jet setting over to the Rock for the weekend is more than laughable. The real need for that airport was for the executives, consultants, and other 1%ers who fly in to make their monthly contribution and inspection, and then fly out again as fast as they can. People are dying of horrible cancers up there. Wouldn't want to stay too long.. Oh, and they ship up foreign indentured workers, too, so they really had to lobby for the behemoth of an airport. Otherwise, they'd all have to drive up the Highway of Death to get there..

Fort Mac isn't really a town, either. It's a city of over 60,000 people, without counting the camps. And no one does. In fact, the facilities in the city specifically do not take into account the hundreds of work camps surrounding the area, which are then built with the bare minimums in mind. Estimates, and that's really all there are, suggest up to 30,000 men and women are working in these compounds in the woods. When they come into town on the weekends, exhausted and bored, there is utter chaos. And don't get me started on the tales of one of the greatest drug trades in Western Canada, and its subsequent addiction problems.  I mean, what else are you going to do in a cramped hole in the bush?

One of the best belly laughs is this phrase. "Ninety-three percent of the timberland in BC and Alberta is Crown land, and almost all of it is certified sustainably managed. " I would love to know how this is even credible, given that forestry management is almost entirely the purveyance of the companies now that Harper has slashed the government positions to mere fantasy. It was bad before, but now many of those departments have literally ceased to exist. Some have suggested it is a deliberate Harper ploy to facilitate Chinese ownership of Canadian forests. Yes, it's Crown land, but all that means is that the government has the right to lease out the land for a few dollars on the acre and let a company have it's way with it. The companies almost own the land, but don't have to pay any real taxes or many royalties, and they can order people off it or have them arrested, even if they are activists or native and claim the land in historical documents. Especially then. That wasn't the way Crown land was originally designed, of course. It was supposed to be held in trust by the government for the people, with no one owning it, everyone welcome, and managed for future generations. There is still a homestead law in effect that allows an individual to claim a certain amount of Crown land if they meet certain criteria. Clearly, it's not supposed to be given wholesale to transnationals for their own use, for a mere pittance...

There is also no mention of exactly what toxic material this magical glue is made of. One can only assume that something that can create "strong panels of almost any size, and is fire resistant as it is designed to char, which acts as a fireproofing. It can replace concrete and steel in apartment buildings, offices and now, airports" is certainly a petrochemical miracle, and not of the traditional starch or hoof variety...

I used to refer many articles from Treehugger to my audience, but this is one of the most eye-popping, glaring propaganda masquerading as journalism I have ever seen. If your contributor got paid for this, assuming he isn't just a agent of the Harper Resource management office, I'd ask for my money back.

For further reading on what's really going on, instead of the greenwashing propaganda:

"But in addition to simply destroying natural habitat, oil companies may now be involved in directly killing off wildlife in the area, according to a new report."

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/sustainability/2012/02/14/killing-fields-oil-sands-developments-casualties-fort-mcmurray-alberta

A treaty signed in 1899 enshrined First Nations' right to practice traditional life, and is now being used for a legal challenge to Shell Oil’s mining of tar sands.

http://www.alternet.org/world/big-oil-vs-native-community-canadas-first-nations-challenges-shells-plan-mine-tar-sands

This is the pattern for most resource "boom" areas, but esp. the oil sector.
"Trafficking of Native women begins after influx of oil workers"
http://fatalsincerity.com/2013/04/09/trafficking-of-native-women-begins-in-fracking-towns-after-influx-of-oil-workers/

Peak Oil and Climate Change: VIDEOS

Some of the most useful docs on the topics. (In english, or subtitles)



CLIMATE 101 from The Climate Reality Project on Vimeo.
A nice, easy to understand, entertaining, under 5 min. doc explaining climate change.  With experiments!  Even my 10 year old gets this one... 

300 Years of FOSSIL FUELS in 300 Seconds:

The Denial Machine (WATCH Video) investigates the roots of the campaign to negate the science and the threat of global warming. It tracks the activities of a group of scientists, some of whom previously consulted for Big Tobacco, and who are now receiving donations from major coal and oil companies. A short version of similar material is called DOUBT, shown here.


   

The Denial Machine shows how fossil fuel corporations have kept the global warming debate alive long after most scientists believed that global warming was real and had potentially catastrophic consequences. It shows that companies such as Exxon Mobil are working with top public relations firms and using many of the same tactics and personnel as those employed by Phillip Morris and RJ Reynolds to dispute the cigarette-cancer link in the 1990s. Exxon Mobil sought out those willing to question the science behind climate change, providing funding for some of them, their organizations and their studies.

The Denial Machine also explores how the arguments supported by oil companies were adopted by policymakers in both Canada and the US and helped form government policy.

The Ingenious Ways We Avoid Believing in Climate Change: In this highly entertaining and accessible presentation at the University of the West of England, George Marshall, founder of the Climate Outreach Information Network summarises some of our current understanding of the psychology of climate change- why it is so hard to accept and how can we help people to accept it?

In Part Three, the final Part he looks in details and the mechanisms by which we reject information on climate change and the images that express collective denial.

In this second part of three he looks at the story lines and imagery around climate change formed, how environmentalists and the imagery of polar bears have dominated the discourse, and asks why human rights organisations talk more about ice cream than climate change.

And now, the actual science!  How it works, what's behind the data, and what non-scientists need to know if they want to help understand and not hinder the process.

Andrew Nikiforuk's speech at IdeaCity, 2007

And the video of his speech THE COST OF OIL on MAY 10, 2011 IN TERRACE, BC

Statistics and pics specifically relating to the Alberta Tarsands, the environment surrounding it, the pollution, the method. Very useful for activists in BC, Alberta, and around the world.

Witness: To The Last Drop - The effects of the Alberta Tar sands on the earth, the political climate, and the citizens of Fort Chip.  Very first independant non-government assessments. Gov't still claiming toxins are naturally occuring.

Richard Heinberg's Peak Oil - Quick version and Peak Everything Part One.  Energy profits for humans and how that is essential to our civilizations.  What's happening now and predictions for the future.



The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil:
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba's economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call "The Special Period." The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope.

Resilience (English) from LifeMosaic on Vimeo.

How aboriginal peoples around the world can use their traditional laws and culture to be more resilient to climate change.