Why do I feel so strongly? In a nutshell, the API is mounting an unethical astroturfing campaign — costing $45 million — that seeks to torpedo the Waxman-Markey bill. They’re organizing rallies in Blue Dog Democratic states to put the pressure on vulnerable senators. Their plan is to fool the media and everyday folks into thinking that energy prices are about to go through the roof, even though Waxman-Markey is expected to cost most American families less than a cup of coffee per day — according to the Congressional Budget Office. The API preying on false fears and vulnerabilities during a very vulnerable time.

They’re also flat out-lying about global warming and what it will do to our economy and our global productivity. The American Petroleum Institute, and its members, are acting like the Spawn of Satan where the ends always justify the means.

Now I’m not thrilled with Waxman-Markey — it doesn’t go far enough — but I’m not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. If we are to have any hope of making progress on the Road to Copenhagen, we need to have America on board, and we need to have a climate bill passed by the US Senate in 2009 or 2010.

And we need to get the API to stop acting like spoiled crybabies. I mean, really. I thought that CEOs were supposed to be tough, disciplined businessmen and women, but as soon as the going gets tough, they throw temper tantrums and wet their pants. And pay to promote complete fabrications.

It’s time to challenge them.

It’s also time for PROGRESSIVE companies like GE and Det Norske Veritas to leave the API, and publically denounce this shameful, dishonest, deceitful, immoral campaign.

See if you see anyone you know. Anyone notice C2HMHILL and Halliburton from the Darth VaderDick Cheney years?

ASHLAND, INC.

BP AMERICA

C2HMHILL

CONOCOPHILLIPS

DOW CHEMICAL

DET NORSKE VERITAS

ENCANA

EXXONMOBIL

GE ENERGY

HONEYWELL

HALLIBURTON

SCHLUMBERGER

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC CANADA

SHELL

I think it’s time to boycott companies like Shell and ExxonMobil.

What do readers think?

UPDATE: The New York Times has a terrific story on the API’s work. It seems that oil company employees are being given time off, and provided with signs and buses, to take them to the Energy Citizens rallies.

In May, after Canada yet again failed to meet its international obligations on climate change, I sent this letter to the Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister for Industry the Environment asking him to convene a press conference to better inform Canadians on the dangers of climate change. At the very least, I want our Environment Minister to take the muzzle off Environment Canada scientists who are no longer allowed to speak to the media without approval from the minister. In effect, that gag orders means that EC scientists aren’t allowed to speak to the media, period.

I received the following reply from David McGovern, Deputy Minister at Environment Canada. Perhaps he’s hoping that I won’t notice as as he dipsy-doodles his way around the truth.

I’ve parsed his comments below. It’s good to have a blog at times like this.

Letter from David McGovern, Deputy Minister, Environment Canada

On behalf of the Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister of the Environment, I am pleased to respond to your email regarding the matter of Dr. Don MacIver not having attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland, as well as your concerns on Canada’s GHG emissions.

I appreciate your interest in ensuring that Canada supports its scientific and technical experts when they have a significant role to play in the international community. (1)

Dr. MacIver was not a member of the official delegation to the conference in Poznan. (2) He was scheduled to make a brief presentation at a three-hour side meeting (3) aimed at providing the delegates in Poznan on an upcoming World Climate Conference. After reviewing the purpose of the meeting and Dr. MacIver’s proposed role, as well as considering that this matter was not related to the climate change negotiations, it was decided that we could not responsibly justify the expense to the public at a time when many Canadians are experiencing serious economic hardship. (4)

I would also like to point out that this decision was not a special case involving only Dr. MacIver. Before the conference, the proposed role of each member of the Canadian delegation (2) was carefully reviewed, and only the essential members of the negotiating team were approved for travel to Poznan at public expense. (5)

In 2009, as Canada continues its efforts to work actively and constructively (6) through the United Nations Climate Change Convention to help develop an effective international agreement to address climate change, we will continue to carefully review all the proposed international travel by federal officials and to make decisions in the spirit of financial restraint during these difficult economic times. (7)

However, this will not diminish the Government’s commitment to reducing Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent from 2006 (8) levels on the way to a 60-70 percent reduction from 2006 levels by 2050 (9). The Government will accomplish this through concrete actions to reduce emissions from the industrial, transportation, and commercial and residential sectors. (10) We will work with provincial governments and with our partners to develop and implement a North America-wide cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases. In addition, the government has set an objective that 90 percent of Canada’s electricity needs should be provided by non-emitting sources, such as hydro, nuclear, clean coal or wind power, by 2020. (11)

For more information on federal actions to address climate change and the clean air we breathe, please visit www.ecoaction.gc.ca.

Sincerely,
David McGovern,
Assistant Deputy Minister
International Affairs Branch
Environment Canada

1) McGovern says that the government will support its scientific and technical experts when they have a significant role to play in the international community. That’s just one facet of the letter I sent. My primary concern is that Environment Canada scientists have a major role to play in every community in Canada. If Canadians had a clearer idea of what’s coming down the pike, the pressure on this government to enact meaningful climate legislation would increase exponentially.

I can see where the current government wouldn’t want that.

2) Was Dr. MacIver on the team, or wasn’t he? In the third paragraph, McGovern suggests that he wasn’t. But if that is so, why does he state in the fourth paragraph that all members of the negotiating team ― including Dr. MacIver ― needed to have a solid reason for being in Poland?

It sounds like MacIver was a member of the negotiating team, at least until he wasn’t.

3) McGovern belittles the role that MacIver was to play, describing it as a “brief presentation” in a “side meeting” at the climate talks. He neglects to mention that MacIver was acting as chair of the World Meteorological Organization, and that he was forced to resign his position after the government’s refusal to let him speak.

4) McGovern suggests that the reason that MacIver was dropped from the Poznan team ― while on his way to the airport, I might add ― because “we could not responsibly justify the expense to the public at a time when many Canadians are experiencing serious economic hardship.”

Now that’s straight bullshit. First of all, MacIver’s traveling expenses were actually covered by the WMO. When this came to light, government PR flacks suggested that it wasn’t his plane fare that was at issue, it was his salary, and the vital work he was leaving behind to attend Poznan.

Do bureaucrats think that climate scientists go to climate conferences hoist a few mugs of mead while casting the 20-sided die in Dungeons and Dragons?

Stephen Harper Thinks Kyoto is a Socialist Scheme

5) Some recent history would not go amiss. Canada suffered through a federal election in October, and Jim Prentice was appointed to his new post as environment minister on October 30, 2008, five weeks before the conference. So you’d expect that he might want to have a few experts on his team at Poznan ― that is, unless the government had no intention of listening to the experts.

When it comes to climate change, Harper hasn’t listened to any experts since he became Prime Minister. In 2004, he described climate change as junk science, and the Kyoto Accord as a socialist plot.

6) McGovern suggests that Canada will “continue to work actively and constructively” at climate talks.

That would be a huge step forward! Perhaps he doesn’t know what others have been saying about our recent role in climate talks. To wit:

Embassy Magazine

At the most recent round of international climate change negotiations, Canada once again emerged as a leading “spoiler,” attracting scorn and condemnation from both environmentalists and foreign delegations alike.

Graham Saul, Climate Action Network

“I think Canada is seen as a spoiler role in the negotiations,” said Graham Saul. “They’ve been blocking progress in a number key areas and have been called out for it.”

Mr. Saul said Canadians would be appalled to know what their government was doing.

“In our opinion there is a real disconnect between where Canadians are at on these issues and what the government is doing at this conference,” he said. “I think a lot of Canadians would be would be deeply ashamed to learn about the role Canada is playing.”

Sierra Club

Well it’s over. I began COP 14 with high hopes for progress towards Copenhagen and a post-Kyoto climate plan, but this did not happen. COP 14 failed to produce any significant progress. There were a few outcomes (an Adaptation Fund Board was created) but hardly the kind and number we had hoped for. It was not only Canadian NGOs and youth who left disappointed, but international delegates and NGOs as well. The world really was watching Canada actions at the negotiations to see if they would finally take meaningful action to fight climate change. But sadly for Canadians— and tragically for those whose nations will be underwater as a result of sea level rise― Canada did nothing.

Canada named Colossal Fossil

As it has at past international climate change negotiations, Canada collected a number of “awards” drawing attention to its climate change delinquency.

The “Fossil Awards” are given out by the Climate Action Network, a global network of more than 400 environmental organizations. Each day, representatives from these organizations voted on which country they think most blocked progress at the talks.

At the 2008 summit, Canada received 17 fossil awards, often more than one per day, for a variety of reasons. As a result, Canada was named the world’s Colossal Fossil as the worst climate bandit on the planet.

7) Was MacIver’s trip cancelled because money was so tight? Well, perhaps, but it’s worth noting that this example of fiscal prudence was made while Stephen Harper was telling Canadians that our economy was in good shape, that job losses would be minimal, that our budget was balanced.

8. Canada is promising to cut its GHG emissions by 20 percent by 2020, McGovern says. But he’s using 2006 as a baseline even though the most developed countries world have agreed to use 1990 as the baseline. Viewed through that prism, Canada is promising to cut emissions by 2 percent over 1990 levels. That’s pitiful; virtually every other developed nation has pledged to do better.

9) As point 8 suggests, our promise to cut emissions by 60 percent by 2050 is also fudged because we’re still trying to use 2006 as the baseline. In fact, we’re pledging to cut emissions by about 40 percent. We’re promising to do even less than many of the world’s poorest countries.

Just as a comparison, Scotland is pledging to cut its emissions by 42% by 2020! Germany will cut emissions by 40 percent, and the UK by 34 percent.

10) McGovern says that Canada is taking concrete steps to cut emissions, but he’s talking through his hat. In 2007, for example, Canada’s emissions rose dramatically. Most analysts, including the government’s own watchdog, say we have almost no hope in hell in meeting those targets given the inaction by the Harper government (and, to be fair, the Chretien and Martin governments, too).

The difference is that the science now is frightening.

11) Canada is promising to use renewables for 90 percent of our electricity by 2020. That’s good, but it might hide the fact that fully 60 percent of our power is already generated by hydro, and another 12 percent by nuclear. Similarly, the provincial governments of both Ontario and BC are currently enacting environmental policies that will dramatically increase the percentage of renewable energy that powers Canada. (Ontario, for example, is phasing out coal).

The federal government has nothing to do with it.

In fact, Prentice and McGovern seem to be making all the wrong decisions, in my opinion. In the last two budgets, the government has invested heavily in carbon capture and biofuels, and ignored more promising technologies like wind power and energy efficiency. Carbon capture, for example, is at least 15 years away from implementation, and it won’t work on the fastest growing source of Canada’s GHG emissions: the Alberta Tar Sands.

McGovern’s letter makes one thing clear: Prentice is trying to lock us into a fossil fuel economy to protect Alberta jobs, and his party’s power base.

With men like Jim Prentice and Stephen Harper in power, Canada will diminish.

Oil and coal companies — the most vocal opponents of US cap-and-trade climate legislation — have spent more than $76 million over the last four months on public relations and mass advertising trying to to defeat the climate bill now before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. When you combine that incredible sum with money spent by gas producers and heavy industries, it’s safe to claim that many of America’s leading companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in 2009 to discredit climate change legislation and, by extension, the science of global warming. One environmentalist suggested that the final tally will be in excess of $1 billion.

Which isn’t to suggest that cap-and-trade legislation supporters haven’t opened their pockets, too: it’s just that their bank accounts aren’t nearly so deep. The Campaign Media Analysis Group suggests that cap-and-trade proponents have spent $28.6 million to convince us that a low-carbon economy is vitally important to the US, and the planet.

The cap-and-trade spoiler campaign is multifaceted, and it includes industry front groups and lobbying firms which have been buying television, print, and radio advertising in important markets and across the US. These same industries have also made donations to key members of Congress. As many as 12 pivotal House Democrats come from coal- or oil-producing states, and nine of that number have accepted donations greater than $90,000 from the fossil fuel industries and utility companies during the last US last election.

It’s a well-honed plan of attack. Democrats accepting fossil fuel money hold key positions on Chairman Henry Waxman’s House Energy and Commerce Committee, and the suggestion is obvious that they could be swayed by parochial interests. That’s why many environmentalists are suggesting that this is ground zero for cap-and-trade legislation. Analysts believe that the real danger isn’t getting a cap-and-trade vote in the House, it’s getting strong legislation out of committee.

Recent pronouncements from Beltway insiders suggest that the Waxman-Markey bill has been watered down over the last week, and that House Democrats have seen enough movement in favor of industry to bring the package to a vote. We’ll be watching closely to see what measures are included — and which have fallen by the wayside — after the dust settles.

_______

Cross-posted at Triple Pundit

Although many countries are setting ambitious carbon reduction targets, a few are still struggling to find ways to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Among G8 economies, Canada has the worst GHG record, and Environment Canada attributes Canada’s poor showing to large increases in oil and gas production.

Environment Canada says that carbon dioxide emissions rose to 747 million tons in 2007, up dramatically by 4 percent from 718 million tons a year earlier, and up 26 percent above their 1990 levels. Canada has violated the country’s Kyoto commitment to cut emissions by 6 percent; Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said that he never had any intention of honoring the agreement.*

The federal government blamed a cold winter and petroleum production for the rise in emissions, the fastest rise ever recorded in the Great White North. In fact, GHG from the mining, oil and gas extraction sector have risen by 57 percent over the period from 2004 to 2007. A Pembina Institute spokesman says that Canada’s emissions are likely to continue to rise, as the government has not announced any policies to confront the issue.

Canada’s poor performance could become a trade issue. The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy recently suggested that Canada faces possible US trade sanctions if it doesn’t agree to a cap-and-trade program similar to that proposed by the Obama administration.

________________

* In fact, Prime Minister Harper has described Kyoto as a socialist plot to suck money from rich countries.

Harper and Environment Minister Jim Prentice have muzzled Environment Canada scientists to keep our international failings quiet.

OK, here’s the basic story.

Canada’s Environment Minister Jim Prentice says that his government will not allow any new coal plants to be built in Canada without carbon capture and sequestration technology, a sure sign that the US position on GHG emissions is even affecting policies north of the border. Prentice’s new position has already angered power generators in Alberta — which is the Conservative government’s power base, and home to the Tar Sands and 27 coal-fired power plants. Judging by editorials in Calgary and Edmonton newspapers, it appears that Prentice hadn’t spoken to any industry stakeholders before floating his trial balloon.

TransAlta CEO Steve Snyder, whose company runs Canada’s largest fleet of coal-fired generation plants, claims that Prentice’s comments took him completely by surprise. “Does this impact Alberta? Of course it does. We have the largest percentage of coal-fired generation in Canada… We have it because we have this huge carbon resource, which is very valuable… [But it] is a very tough challenge to solve CO2 and not bankrupt the province and meet all of our commitments.”

Snyder also criticized the government’s commitment to CCS and to the province; after all, he says, the Alberta government has placed $2 billion in the CSS pot, and that figure dwarfs federal government funding.

“I’m not quite sure why we seem to want to put billions of dollars into the automotive industry, an industry which seems not to produce a good product and hasn’t been particularly well-run. But we don’t want to put a fraction of that to solve carbon from coal plants.”

______________

OK, a handful comments.

1) So far, Prentice isn’t promising much. While I’m happy to see him actually doing something as environment minister — until now, he seemed to think his job was to trash it — his announcement was remarkably short of details. He also talked about a cap-and-trade plan that will be announced in the fall, but it’s likely to be a weak one because he can’t risk pissing off his friends in Calgary and Edmonton.

2) During the last Canadian election, the Conservative government fought tooth and nail against pricing carbon in any way, shape, or form. What has changed? Is cap-and-trade suddenly a good thing?

3) Canada doesn’t generate that much electricity from coal; only 18 percent of Canadian emissions come from coal-fired power, compared to 30 percent of GHG emissions in the US.

4) Prentice and his Conservative cronies haven’t spent any money to support renewable energy sources in Canada. The stimulus package offered pocket change. Energy efficiency would do far more to cut Canadian emissions, but Prentice and Harper are MIA. (I recently saw a graph suggesting that Canada is the world’s most inefficient nation. I’ll investigate more and write about it).

5) Prentice is touting carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) as the solution to all our coal-fired power problems. This is mostly smoke and mirrors. CCS may work, but it will need to be tested at demonstration plants costing hundreds of millions, and then implemented on new plants at the cost of billions. We’re at least 15 — and probably 25 — years away before we sequester any significant carbon from this unproven technology.

Why don’t we just cut right to the chase and invest all that money in renewables. Wind, wave and solar power from BC is a far better bet to replace Alberta’s death-dealing coal-fired plants. And Atlantic Canada has even more potential.

6) How much of the coal burnt in coal-fired plants could be replaced with low-carbon biomass. Joe Romm at Climate Progress says quite a bit.

7) These proposals for CCS and cap-and-trade probably won’t kick in for several years, allowing coal-fired power plants to do what they do now: pollute with impunity. And the CCS requirements only affect new power generation… There’s little incentive for current facilities to change the way they do business without a serious price on carbon, and that’s because, right now, it’s much cheaper to pay to pollute than to cut emissions. That’s what the Conservatives want… for us to use as much oil and coal as we can because that helps Alberta.

8 ) Cripes all mighty, capitalists are such bloody whiners! The TransAlta CEO sounds like a four-year-old who wants to take his toys and go home. The Captains of Industry in Alberta are completely unwilling to accept responsibility for their actions. The facts are these: Alberta is the country’s worst GHG polluter. 2) Alberta’s pollution is set to rise dramatically. 3) Our federal government already supports Alberta’s industries by allowing them to use our air for free. Its time they grow a set and pay for the privilege.

9) Read this cheerleading editorial by Deborah Yedlin at The Calgary Herald.

While the strong winds blowing through the southern part of the province have potential as a renewable source of energy, storing electricity generated by turbines remains an abstract concept, as well as the issue that turbines are on the unsightly side. All this, cast against the fact that thermal coal is plentiful and, therefore, cheap.

Let me get this right? Wind turbines are unsightly, but the Alberta Tar Sands and coal-fired power polluters are… attractive.

This editorial is so wrong-headed, I don’t know where to begin. Even the newspapers columnists in Alberta are wusses.

I often write that the science supporting global warming is every bit as strong as the science that proves smoking causes cancer. But I then go even further by linking the fossil fuel and tobacco industries, suggesting deeper sins, claiming that oil companies actually stole a page from the tobacco industry by hiring right-wing and libertarian think tanks to confuse the uninitiated. On anti-science web sites, such an argument is called emotional and scientifically dubious.

Well, it is an emotional argument. But it’s also true. I make the link because the two industries are intimately connected, and they’ve made the connection.

Tobacco Ethics

In the 1990s, concerns over secondhand smoke were informing tough new anti-smoking regulations. So the tobacco industry boldly established a number of bogus and phony institutes comprised of sock puppets and tobacco industry public relations experts whose sole job was to convince as many people as they could that the science on secondhand smoke wasn’t conclusive. These groups were in the business of manufacturing doubt.

Even then, the medical evidence that dangerous carcinogens are present in sidestream smoke was overwhelming. As one expert epidemiologist noted at the time, the only way to make the smoking evidence stronger would be to conduct repeated and prolonged forced smoking experiments on human subjects, and measure how many illnesses they suffered as a result.

It’s obvious that tobacco companies don’t give a rat’s ass for the lives they destroyed. Even in 2009, these purveyors of doom and misery are still trying to hook generation after generation both here and in the developing world — they have always preyed upon the poor.

But here’s something so many poorly-informed climate deniers don’t seem to understand. When many of these sock puppets were creating their anything-for-a-buck institutes, they planned for the future. Perhaps knowing that the tobacco fight would soon be lost, they solicited second and third industries to replace the first. They knew that Exxon-Mobil would be happy to work alongside Philip Morris and that both would pay to keep the lights on.

And so when they drew up their tobacco disinformation campaigns, their argument held that second-hand smoke was junk science, no more to be believed than the junk science suggesting that heavy pesticides use is harmful to humans, or the junk science proving that CO2 emissions were warming the planet.

Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means for establishing controversy.

• Smoking & Health Proposal • Brown and Williamson

A dozen years later, right-wing think tanks with consequential names like the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, and the Heartland Institute still run these sophisticated PR campaigns, using a practice now known as astroturfing. The whole point of their tactics are to run interference, and convince enough people that climate scientists are still debating the science of global warming, just as they did 15 years ago with secondhand smoke.

Big Oil and Big Tobacco: Marriage Made in PR Heaven

Every single one of these institutes takes has taken serious money from oil companies, as the Union of Concerned Scientists and Exxon Secrets relate. It should go without saying that in the world of scientific endeavor, this fact alone should marginalize their debating points. If your bills were being paid by ExxonMobil and Shell, are you really likely to write a treatise entitled Goodbye Amsterdam, Mumbai, and Miami?

Yet deniers still hold to discredited orthodoxy, suggesting that the money isn’t the issue, it’s the quality of their research that matters — a courtesy they refuse to extend to other scientists. This position is hopelessly naive. Let’s forget for the moment that these institutes don’t conduct ANY scientific research at all. Let’s judge them by the company they keep, and by the things that they say, and understand that that they’d sell their own mothers to line their pockets.

The Heartland Institute runs the annual International Conference on Climate Change — a skeptics conference in New York — but they’re also the go-to think tank for the tobacco industry. They currently list five tobacco policy experts on their web site, and they are noted repeatedly in Philip Morris documents as playing a crucial role in disinformation campaigns. The Heartland Institute is run by Joseph Bast who has written (in a self-published book) that secondhand smoke isn’t a health issue.

Anti-smoking activists give smokers a stark choice: Stop smoking or die! In fact, there is a third path: Reduce the harm by shifting to less-hazardous kinds of tobacco products. For example, moving from unfiltered to filtered cigarettes, and from regular to “low tar” cigarettes, both appear to reduce the risk of lung cancer….

And later in the same book:

No victim of cancer, heart disease, etc. can “prove” his or her cancer or heart disease was caused by exposure to secondhand smoke.

The Cato Institute is also notable for its ties to big tobacco and big oil. RJ Reynolds documents indicate that the group’s executive have been drafted to support the tobacco industry by writing pro-tobacco editorials, and appearing on television and radio as tobacco experts. The group insists that the cigarettes are unfairly taxed, and that the reported death rate attributed to smoking is wildly inflated. The Cato Institute has also argued that smoking bans infringe on personal liberty, and that health risks from secondhand smoke are debatable.

The Cato Institute employs Steve Milloy, who runs the web site Junk Science, and who moonlights as a pundit on Fox News, so although he’s not a scientist, he does pretend to be one on TV. He equates environmentalism with Nazism, he has worked as a lobbyist for Philip Morris, and for a Morris front group — now defunct — called the The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, so at least we know he has a sense of humor. He also claims that dioxin, pesticides in foods, environmental lead, asbestos, secondhand tobacco smoke and global warming can be categorized as scares and scams, and that all climate scientists at the IPCC are lying in order to attract more funding for their research. Since he has just published a book called Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin your life and What You Can Do to Stop Them, it seems Milloy does know a thing or two about lying to attract more funding.

The American Enterprise Institute charged the tobacco industry $25,000 to write a report supporting their position, and they’ve frequently taken money from major tobacco and oil companies. In 2007, they AEI offered scientists $10,000 to write articles that would “undermine a major climate change report” written by the IPCC. Lee Raymond, former Exxon CEO, is a vice-chairman at the AEI, and several of the policy makers at the AEI have worked for Philip Morris, or for the oil industry.

Over the last few years, new astroturfing sites devoted to climate change have emerged, including the Friends of Science, The Fraser Institute, and the Science and Public Policy Institute. They do not accept money from the likes of Philip Morris, but they are waist-deep in big oil money, and not surprisingly, do everything they can to the support industries that are driving climate change.

If you think global warming is a scam, then this is the company you keep. And I’m not really sure how you sleep at night.

_______________

You’ll notice an absence of links. Every link that blogs give to a right-wing think tank would boost their web traffic, and I’m not going to help them lie to North Americans.

You’ll also note the many links to Sourcewatch. Might I suggest a donation to support the work they do?

Reason #2 to Boycott Shell*

The Pembina Institute — a sustainable energy think tank — has accused Royal Dutch Shell of abandoning written agreements to reduce GHG emissions at two Canadian tar sands projects. Before the Candian government had approved the projects at Jackpine Mine and Muskeg River Mine, Shell had committed to setting pollution reduction targets in 2007 “to reduce emissions to better than the most likely commercial alternative on a full-cycle basis.” The agreement was made with the Oil Sands Environmental Coalition (OSEC), a group that counts Pembina among its members.

Shell has since told Pembina that the company will not be bound by those commitments. According to Pembina’s figures, green house gas emissions from the projects will increase by 900,000 metric tons annually — which is just like putting 200,000 additional cars on the road.

In partnershp with Ecojustice, Pembina has filed an affidavit to reopen the project’s approval process.**

“Shell’s decision to break these binding agreements calls into question its claims of environmental leadership,” says Marlo Raynolds, Pembina’s Executive Director. “Shell seems to believe it can break promises to Canadians with impunity.”

Simon Dyer, the institute’s oil sands program director, says that “Shell has built its reputation in Canada by promising to address the environmental and social concerns of stakeholders and communities. Dropping its commitment raises the question of whether these types of promises are driven by ethics or tactics.”

John Abbott, Shell Canada’s Executive VP, suggests that the company has taken early action to cut GHG emissions, and that it couldn’t do more until a regulatory framework levels the playing field.

I call bullshit. Just as George Monbiot has done on multiple occasions in 2009. Shell has only paid lip service to sustainability for years.

Write to them now and tell them that you’re boycotting their service stations.

Shell Canada Limited
P.O. Box 100 Station M
Calgary, Alberta
T2P 2H5
Email

* Reason#1 to Boycott Shell would be their scandalous betrayal of the people of Nigeria. Read about it here and more recently here.

** I think the Pembina Institute and Ecojustice are just bloody brilliant!