One week ago, the price American refineries will pay for a barrel of Alberta bitumen fell to just below US$30. A seismic jolt raced through the tar sands/oil sands industry, because that price would barely allow even the biggest, most profitable operators to recover operating costs.
[Webside editor: Watch Tzeporah Berman's speach to the Alberta Teachers Conference here.]
To invest in Alberta’s oil industry, or back away slowly, was the question at the crux of a rift between Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and environmentalist and policy adviser Tzeporah Berman last weekend.
[Editor: And on the theme of what could be done with $4.5 billion and counting!]
The United Nations definition of genocide includes "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" and "causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group."
In explaining Canada's decision to nationalise the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5bn, Bill Morneau went hard on the economic argument. “Make no mistake,” the finance minister said. “This is an investment in Canada’s future.”
In fact, since 1999, more than $200bn has been invested into the Alberta oil sands for that future. But what if that cash had gone into wind energy instead?
In a stunning ruling that came just minutes after the jury was seated in the so-called valve turners trial in Clearfield County, Minn., the judge ruled that prosecutors had failed to meet their burden of proof that a group of activists had damaged a tar sands pipeline when they trespassed on private property to shut down the pipeline.
Last August 29 was not just a ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ moment for federal and Alberta politicians pushing to accelerate future tar sands/oil sands expansion plans.
It was a morning where the coffee urn figuratively tipped over and bestowed third-degree burns.
