Canada's Oil Spill

We're putting out a report tomorrow that we put together not knowing that the BP oil spill would be happening when we released it.

Major catastrophes like the one now unfolding in the U.S. Gulf have a way of crystallizing the thinking of the day. The Exxon Valdez spill had both the legacy of polluting Prince William Sound but also of reinforcing for the wider public the fragility of wilderness in the face of reckless humans.

The context of the spill now unfolding in the Gulf is different. We now know we must end our use of fossil fuels or endanger our children by cooking the planet, yet we still resist changing due to inertia. We now realize that the easy-to-get fossil fuels are almost gone and so seem prepared to take ever bigger risks to get the hard stuff. Finally, we know there's a new economic race out there to be the company or the country best positioned to profit in the clean energy economy when fossil fuels are gone.

So, I suspect that this time out the longer term legacy of the BP spill will be to move the U.S. public to a new place on the urgency and benefits of transitioning to a clean energy economy.

Whether this new understanding reaches Canada is harder to say. Our government in Ottawa seems to have hardened itself against any challenges to its strategy of doubling down on tar sands promotion. Likewise, Canadian industry seems tone deaf - with Enbridge CEO Pat Daniel pitching his new tar sands pipeline to the fragile BC coast (just below where the Valdez spill happened) right at the time of the BP spill.

Tomorrow we'll release a report that quantifies for the first time how many jobs Canada is missing out on in the clean energy economy due to Ottawa's love affair with dirty oil. It's hard to see whether it will take a Canadian oil spill to change our politics too - let's hope not.

Matt Price
Policy Director
Environmental Defence