As of today it’s official: every province and territory across Canada is on board with the 350.org climate movement. This Sunday, 350.org events will be held throughout Canada and around the world.

Last year, we saw the beginning of this movement. On Oct. 24th, 2009, several thousand youth took over Parliament Hill in Ottawa to give our leader a strong message: that we want action now.

But the politicians on the Hill haven’t given us that. If anything, the Canadian government has done the opposite, subsidizing $1.5 billion to the fossil fuel industry and cutting investments in renewable energy. Even worse, as we all know too well, the Copenhagen Climate Summit was a complete failure. It took us years, if not a decade, backward in negotiations.

So what do we do now? Is there any point to fighting or should we just give in to this suicidal path we seem to be on? These are the questions that have plagued me since I left the summit last December. It’s fair to tell you that I haven’t written much about this recently because I’ve been in a kind of “eco-coma.” I felt so pessimistic about our future, as I’m sure a lot of us have, that I found it difficult to have even the slightest bit of hope any more.

But maybe that was my mistake. I placed too much hope on some political leaders changing it all. I realize now that we’ve got to get to work ourselves for the change we want. We can’t leave it up to the top-tier powers that are so obviously controlled by the fossil fuel lobby. Throughout history, this has always been the way. It takes strong movements of millions to make change. This year is no exception. Despite our corrupt government, Canadians and people around the world are not backing down. Our movement is only getting stronger.

On Oct. 10th, there will be events happening across the country. In the Yukon Territories, people will weatherize low-income homes. In Nunavut they will take the day to walk instead of drive. While in Prince Edward Island, they will cycle on hybrid electric bikes across the coastal shorelines to promote alternative energies.

In Pakistan, women are learning how to use solar ovens, students in Zimbabwe are installing solar panels on a rural hospital, and sumo wrestlers in Japan are riding their bicycles to practice.

Sure, solving climate change won’t come one bike path at a time. But as Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, wrote, “It’s a key step in continuing to build the movement to safeguard the climate.”

This is probably the most important year yet to preserver in our fight. We’ve seen devastating floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia, and a heat-wave around the world.

But with this movement growing globally, today I am proud to write that I have hope again.

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK — It is our lives being decided here in Copenhagen, and we are being shut out or brutally silenced from the negotiations. This is not an international negotiation, but a climate dictatorship in the making.

Wednesday, thousands of activists who attempted to hold a “people’s assembly” in front of the conference centre were beaten with batons, pepper-sprayed in the eyes, and tear gassed by the Danish police. It was abundantly clear that the protesters were peaceful, giving the peace sign and asking the police to use non-violent tactics. Yet both the activists on the streets and the activists on the inside of the conference, who were attempting to join the protest, were silenced by the brutality (the Guardian has video of the day here).

“Why is it that we have these world meetings that involve the future of people throughout the world that has limits to participation?” said Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environment Network, in an interview with the Guardian. “They could plan to have larger facilities and people’s assemblies so people can have a more democratic and transparent process to take part in these climate talks.”

Meanwhile, the doors are closing to this conference, turning it essentially into a secret meeting. The 8,000 civil society participants have now turned into 1,000 with second passes only allotted to a select few. Tomorrow, on the final and most important day of the negotiations, there will only be 90 allowed inside. Of course, security measures are expected with the world leaders now attending. However, it is not just civil society being shut out of the talks, but journalists too. “Red zones” were established yesterday, restricting reporters on where, what, and who they can cover.

“The people who are left are the professional negotiators, everyone else is excluded. This essentially strips the process of its passion and grounding,” said Clive Tesar, WWF Arctic Program, head of communications in an interview.

While the deal inside is becoming increasingly questionable. A new leaked UN document shows that the climate deal currently on the table would mean a 3°C temperature rise and 550 ppm of carbon in the atmosphere— a far cry away from the 2°C politicians say is safe and the 350 ppm environmental groups say is needed for survival.

Suicide or survival: that has been the rhetoric of this deal. Many said it would be suicide if there is no deal, survival if there was. It now looks like this could be the other way around. The process of the UN summit here in Copenhagen has been deeply flawed and the deal has many holes.

It’s become increasingly clear that Copenhagen is a beginning—not the final chapter.

Naomi Klein giving the opening keynote at KlimaForum09, the alternative climate change conference underway in Copenhagen. Photo courtesy KlimaForum.

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK — The thread is being pulled on the climate talks here in Copenhagen, and the whole show is beginning to unravel. There are really several different conferences happening, and the cracks are showing.

The developing world has been so outraged by the proceedings in Copenhagen that the G77 leader, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, walked out of the conference last Friday in protest. “Things are not going well,” he said in the Politiken newspaper. “This conference will probably be wrecked by the bad intentions of some people.”

The eruption and divisions began last Tuesday when the Guardian leaked a document, called the “Danish Text,” that virtually back-rooms the climate summit to the rich and powerful. The document, that is perceived to have been a draft floated strictly to G8 countries by the Danish government, takes two steps backwards on the industrialized nations’ obligations to the developing world, and sidelines the entire UN climate negotiation process.

In response to this, The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) also on Friday protested inside the conference demanding their own draft treaty—a survival pact instead of what they called a “suicide pact.” They say that the 2°C being agreed upon by the Industrialized world would submerge many of the world’s Small Island States this century, and that instead 1.5°C needs to be the target.

“We are facing an emergency, a planetary emergency that affects everyone but first and foremost affects AOSIS,” said Dessima Williams, Chair of the AOSIS from Grenada.

Even if the Danish Text were ignored, there is an underlining sense in the conference halls that the summit is behaving more like a G8 meeting than an international negotiation.

Reasonability is the core of this issue: Responsibility to include the marginalized, responsibility to lower our emissions, responsibility to the people who will be most affected and who have contributed the least, the responsibility of politicians to recognize scientific realities.

But lack of responsibility is hindering this Copenhagen deal, potentially sabotaging the entire negotiation. Naomi Klein says that we are facing is a “climate debt,” a debt the Industrialized world needs to pay up to the developing world, as the Western World has created most of the problem with our climate and needs to take responsibility for it.

“It is after all Industrialized countries that have emitted 75% of the world’s greenhouse gases, yet 75% of the affects will be faced by the developing world,” said Klein in her opening statement at the alternative people’s conference in Copenhagen, KlimaForum09.

Some argue that the West is beginning to take responsibility. The announcement just before the climate conference began by the Obama administration gave some life to this debate, as the States offered a $10 billion dollar annual aid fund between the rich nations to the ones in need as of 2012. But is this really enough?

The World Bank says that developing states are facing costs of US$100 billion a year just to adapt to the current climate change situation we have created, while Climate Action Network US argues for $600 billion.

Somehow we found the money to bail banks out of a crisis they created, with the US mustering $700 billion and Canada $75 billion. So the question must be asked: where are our priorities? Averting the greatest man-made crisis? Or propping up the elites in a “disaster-capitalist” system?

No, the Developing world is not blameless. Many, like China and India, do not want to be restricted in the climate treaty with absolute reduction targets nor to curb emissions by 2020, which is part of the hindrance to these negotiations. But you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Though the west must be accountable to the countries that will face the brunt of the pains of climate change, it is now all of our problem so we all need to take responsibility for it. Until we do, we will not be ready to make a real climate treaty.

Emily Hunter is an environmental journalist and This Magazine’s resident eco-blogger. She is currently working on a book about young environmental activism, The Next Eco-Warriors, and is the eco-correspondent to MTV News Canada.

Emily Hunter with one of the huge earth-movers that's instrumental to Alberta Tar Sands development. Watch her documentary tonight on MTV.

Emily Hunter, This Magazine‘s resident environmental blogger, took an MTV Canada documentary crew to Alberta’s Tar Sands over the summer to see the devastation that’s unfolding there for herself. She’s currently working on a feature story for the magazine, but the documentary she made is airing tonight on MTV Canada, at 8:30 PM EST. The show is part of MTV’s new “Impact” series of half-hour special documentaries by young journalists and activists. Tonight, Emily visits Fort Chipewyan, one of the most heavily affected and polluted downstream sites from the epic, landscape-scarring development happening around Fort McMurray. It’s an up-close look at one of the most important public issues in Canada, and is definitely worth checking out.

The doc also has a Facebook group; you can follow Emily Hunter on Twitter for more information about her upcoming projects, with This Magazine and elsewhere.

A member of an environmentalist group pretends to be dead during a protest demanding a real climate deal during the first day of United Nations Climate Change Conference on December 7, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. (Photo by Miguel Villagran/Getty Images)

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK — The negotiations have begun over our climate future here in Copenhagen. Global leaders may decide in the next two weeks the most important choice to be made in our lifetime—even, arguably, in the history of the human race: will we change course?

“This is an extremely important moment in history,” said May Boeve from 350.org. For the first time in history all the major world leaders are trying to tackle the issue of climate change. Each of them is offering targets to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions and planning to finance developing nations who will be the most impacted.

Even more importantly in some ways, never before in history has the world paid so much attention to our climate crisis. Here in Copenhagen, thousands have descended on the Danish capital this week to attempt to make change from inside the conference halls—and outside on the streets.

Yet with so many people affected by the decisions made here—all of us in fact—why is it that so few get a say? Despite it being everyone’s issue (nearly seven billion of us) it is essentially eight men and a woman (the G8 and China) who get to deicide. That seems rather risky, especially when it’s questionable whether they truly have our best interests at heart.

There are so many that are voiceless here in the conference and so many that these decisions affect beyond the G8 and China. Like the Maldives, which is losing land to sea level rises every year: at the current rate, the country is in serious danger of disappearing altogether. The Maldives’ President, Mohammad Nasheed, said himself this week that the decision in Copenhagen will either be heroism or suicide: “The choice is that stark.”

In Copenhagen myself, there is an uneasy feeling of powerlessness in the most terrifying and important challenge we face. As a young person, it is my future that is being decided here and now, and I feel muted, despite all my best efforts at trying to make my voice heard.

The reason I care is because by the time I am in my 60s, in the year 2050, I will be living in a vastly reshaped world due to our lack of response to climate change. If nothing happens in Copenhagen, it will be a new geo-political world I will be living in with 150 million climate refugees. The arctic sea ice at the North Pole and much of Greenland will be gone. And we will be well on our way to passing the crucial 2ºC warming threshold.

Even if the deal does happen during the next two weeks, the world will still never be the same as we know it, as a deal in Copenhagen doesn’t mean success. The deal that is likely amounts to a suicide pact for many countries, since the targets aren’t ambitious enough and the funding for mitigation is well below what we need. The U.S. is only offering a 3 percent reduction by 2020 relative to 1990 levels, when scientists now argue that it should be well over 40 percent. The Obama administration said last week that nations will likely offer US$10 billion for a climate aid fund. Meanwhile, the World Bank (hardly a radical source of information), says that Industralized nations need to offer US$75 to US$100 billion annually.

So is this summit Hopenhagen or Flopenhagen? I’m not sure if I see much hope other than greeenwashed hope here on the conference grounds. But I do see hope from the movement that is trying despertly to make the voiceless—young people, Indigenous people, the Global South—heard.

For example, the students that organized the 350 event last October are here in big numbers, working on the inside to get the voiceless heard and holding a global vigil for survival that all of us can take part of. KlimaForum09, the Danish anti-conference, is writing an alternative climate declaration, made by the people, to let the public be heard. They’ve called the COP15 negotiations a “fraud” and are planning civil disobedience actions in the city and around the world to let their displeasure be known.

This deal may be settled in two weeks time, but the battle for a choice that needs to be all of ours is just beginning.

Emily Hunter is an environmental journalist and This Magazine’s resident eco-blogger. She is currently working on a book about young environmental activism, The Next Eco-Warriors, and is the eco-correspondent to MTV News Canada.

We can read the signs, but can we stop from falling off the edge? Photo by Panoramio user jk1812.

It’s as if we’re in a car that is blazing along. We are on cruise control as we hit a crossroads. We desperately need to make a turn. But instead of slowing down or making shifts in the wheel, we’re full-speed ahead. It’s a diverse group of us in the car but all we’re doing is talking, arguing and fighting amongst ourselves — no one is making the turn. And what lies ahead of us is the edge of a cliff.

This is the situation in which we find ourselves as the Copenhagen climate conference approaches, the next global climate-pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. The recent talk in Barcelona, the last climate talk before Copenhagen, seems to have locked us into this failed course for the cliff’s edge. Instead of meaningful progress, world leaders are backtracking, all the way to the failed Kyoto.

Copenhagen already seems like a repeat of the Kyoto debacle, before it has even started: weak emissions targets, divisions between the Global North and the Global South and false solutions once again.

Where there was once hope for the December summit, with the United States showing strong climate leadership (finally, after the 8 year Bush inaction), there is now cynicism. Domestically, the U.S. is thus far politically gridlocked on the issue. Despite any efforts by Obama, the U.S. climate bill is inching its way through the Senate, now likely to be debated after Copenhagen.

Internationally, diplomats at Barcelona now believe it will be politically impossible to have a legally binding agreement at the end of Copenhagen because of disputes by world leaders in the preceding talks, disputes including emission targets and finance to developing nations. Which makes it increasingly likely that we will have to settle for a “politically binding” — not legally binding — agreement in December.

“I don’t think we can get a legally binding agreement by Copenhagen,” said Yvo de Boer, the UN director of the talks, in a conference in Barcelona. “I think that we can get that within a year after Copenhagen.”

But will a 2010 pact really make any difference?

World leaders have had two years, since Bali 2008, to finalize this agreement and still we are not any closer. What will more time provide, other than more talk?

As Jasmeet Sidhu, the Toronto Star climate blogger points out: “A ‘politically binding deal’ is the equivalent to a politician’s promise,” it means nothing. So it seems like it will be just more talk.

Even if the political disputes can be worked out by the end of the Copenhagen summit and it’s a step in the right direction towards climate progress (despite being only politically binding), it now looks like it will take 6 months to a year for an agreement to become legally binding, and several more years to be ratified. Meanwhile, we are running out of time.

Conservative science tells us we have 10 to 15 years to peak and curb emissions if we want to stabilize the climate. Every year we waste, we are getting closer to that cliff.

And let’s not forgot what many are too polite to mention: even “legally binding,” internationally, means squat. Sure, it looks good on paper, but there are no climate cops to punish those who ignore their obligations (i.e., Canada, which did just that with Kyoto). Politically or legally binding, it’s toothless.

Not to mention, many argue that even the most ambitious targets being discussed by world leaders are outdated, some calling for reductions to 60-80% of our current emissions by 2020 (instead of 20-40% of current emissions).

Does this mean that international climate agreements are becoming obsolete? Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, argues Yes.

“We should not rely on these agreements to save civilization,” he says in the Guardian. Instead, he advocates for “Plan B,” a swift civil global mobilization to create a green economy.

“The answer is a wartime mobilization, not unlike the US effort on the country’s entry into the second world war, when it restructured its industrial economy not in a matter of decades or years, but in a matter of months.”

Politicians follow what the public wants. It is our will — a united, strong and organized movement — that can create, essentially, a “World War Three” to save the planet.

Thousands of protesters convened on Parliament hill last Sunday as part of the 350.org International Day of Action on climate change. Photo via Paul Dewar's Flickr feed.

It was the largest lobbying event on climate change in Canadian history: thousands of Canadians from across the country united on Parliament Hill last Saturday as part of the 350 International Day of Climate Action to demand leadership on the issue. Yet our government will hold off on making its decision to prevent catastrophic global warming until after the Copenhagen Climate negotiations has already started.

“We’re going to Copenhagen with nothing,” said Hannah McKinnon of the Climate Action Network.

Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, could be Canada’s most significant bill this decade. It is a private member’s bill that would ensure that Canada assumes its responsibility in preventing dangerous climate change. And instead of striking a strong position on climate change, we are sitting on the fence waiting for others to lead first. Until mid-Copenhagen where world leaders decide the next UN climate pact that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

But some say the bill has little chance of passing in Canada during Copenhagen. Partly this is because private members’ bills bear little weight in parliament. But more importantly it’s because Canada is not leading on the issue.  If anything, in global climate talks, we are increasingly gaining a reputation for sabotage and delay. Most recently, Canada publicly mulled the idea of scrapping the whole Kyoto-Protocol in Bangkok earlier this month and subsequently motivating the Group of 77 developing nations to walk out in protest.

Canada’s inaction is embarrassing, activist Lauryn Drainie says:

“Maybe Harper should just stay home for Copenhagen. It’s not our voice he is representing. We don’t need him there.” (To be clear: while Prime Minister Harper declared he is not attending Copenhagen, representatives from his government will be there, affecting the outcome of the negotiations.)

Currently, Canada’s plan on battling climate change falls short on what basic climate science calls for and the commitments made by some of the G8 countries in Italy last July: a peak in emissions by 2020 and 50-80 per cent emissions reductions by 2050. Our plan would actually put us above 2 per cent in GHG by the year 2020 and below 38-48 per cent by 2050, when compared to the 1990 levels needed (the time in history of stable carbon in the atmosphere). And somehow Canada will do this while increasing emissions with the carbon-intensive tar sands project. Which makes us a laggard, not a leader.

Despite Canada, there are signs of climate leadership: the Obama administration has spent US$75 billion to build a clean-energy economy – that’s six times more than Canada. The European Union is joining forces to reduce the most by 2020. Even China, who has been constantly tagged as a barrier to climate progress, announced policy measures to curb emissions at the New York climate talk last September.

Beyond the political arenas, strong global mobilization is taking place in civic life demanding a different direction for our planet. Last Saturday, the 350 campaign took place as a global demonstration in 181 countries with 5,200 events to unite the world around a solution — lowering our carbon emissions to 350 parts per million (that is 1990 levels, while currently we are near 390 ppm).

“[It was] the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet’s history. People gathered to call for strong action and bold leadership on the climate crisis,” a 350 statement said.

In Canada, despite media downplaying the numbers, there were nearly 3,000 Canadians united in Ottawa for the 350 event. Bringing together a diversity of people, faith-based groups, and numerous environmental campaigns including Power Shift Canada, the largest youth gathering on climate change in Canadian history.

But while many call for action, our government hides behind our relatively well-to-do economy and geographic size as a reason for holding Canada back in the most important issue of our time.

“The Canadian approach [to battling climate change] has to reflect the diversity of the country and the sheer size of the country, and the very different economic characteristics and industrial structure across the country,” Environmental Minister Jim Prentice, told the Globe and Mail.

“I have to take a realistic view that, given the amount of work that remains to be done, we’re running out of time,” he said, arguing that their should be climate commitments later, post-Copenhagen, by national leaders.

It is true, we are running out of time, possibly because of Canada’s shameful blocking in international climate affairs. But does this mean that we need more talking?. It’s time for less talk and more strides away from “thermageddon.”

“It’s not to late to seal the deal at Copenhagen for Canada,” said Geoff Green, a speakers at Power Shift Canada, who has seen the polar ice caps melting firsthand with his expedition group Students on Ice.

The House will reconvene on Bill C-311 on December 12, seven days before Copenhagen ends. There is still time for change.

Emily Hunter is an environmental journalist and This Magazine’s resident eco-blogger. She is currently working on a book about young environmental activism, The Next Eco-Warriors, and is the eco-correspondent to MTV News Canada.

Last week, our Prime Minister skipped a day at the UN Climate Summit in New York for a photo-op at a donut shop in Oakville. Outraged by his obvious sense of priorities—a double double at Tim’s over our global climate crisis—two youth activists founded a Facebook campaign called “Donuts Over Planet,” with thousands of Canadians demanding an apology, and the chirps have been busy on Twitter.

One Tweeter, OldScot, said Harper is the new “Donut King.” While Greenpeace tweeted that perhaps there were “more important donut innovations to address.”

Donuts over Planet founder, 26-year-old Jamie Biggar said: “I think for the majority of Canadians, especially the young, this was hugely offensive. I can’t remember ever seeing so many young Canadians so angry about what’s being done to their future, so sad about what’s being done in their name, and so determined to tell the world that Harper does not represent them.”

Harper said the visit to the Tim Hortons’ Innovation Centre was his chance to welcome the return of the company to Canadian soil, after running as an American operation for over a decade, reported the Toronto Star.

Critics say it is because Harper is not very found of the UN, or multinational organizations, having bailed out on other UN talks in the past.

But there is more to it than that. The Copenhagen Climate Conference is 69 days away and our Prime Minister is not even at the drawing board, choosing dough over tough talks we need. This is not apathy, but denial over climate change.

Critics say he has known climate denier friends, including John Weissenberger. He has appointed ‘climate critics’ to federal scientific institutes. He is a man who believes tar sands expansion is conducive to the fight against climate change. And let’s not forget how the Canadian government has obstructed global climate progress before, such as last year’s Bali climate talks.

With 69 days to go for the global climate negotiation, if Harper is going to be absent for preliminary talks or just obstruct them, then “maybe he should just stay home for Copenhagen,” says Lauryn Drainie, a youth activist. “It’s not our voice he is representing. We don’t need him there.”

"Celebrities have power, and with it comes responsibility": EcoSanity founder Glenn MacIntosh. Photo courtesy EcoSanity.

[Editor’s note: EcoChamber is back after a short break while Emily Hunter was on assignment in the Alberta Tar Sands to see the devastation first hand. Her observations will appear at This.org and in the print edition soon.]

The show must not go on. That is what activists are saying about the Toronto International Film Festival. Not for a lack of money or the worldwide attention it provides—but for its connections to environmental crimes like the tar sands.

The celebrity-filled Toronto festival closed on Saturday. But some environmentalists want it shut down for good, claiming the event is unsustainable. Protesters from EcoSanity and the Rainforest Action Network staged a “die-in” at the opening gala, pretending to die after sipping (fake) dirty oil from Champagne glasses a stone’s throw away from celebrities like George Clooney signing autographs on the red carpet.

“Celebrities have power, and with power comes responsibility,” says EcoSanity founder Glenn MacIntosh. “They need to know what they are promoting when they attend festivals like TIFF, because currently they are being irresponsible.”

MacIntosh says TIFF—and celebrities through association—help to further dirty oil’s cause. TIFF’s second-largest sponsor is the Royal Bank of Canada, Canada’s largest financier of tar sands development. Critics say TIFF’s acceptance of RBC’s sponsorship is an endorsement of its policy on furthering climate change for black gold.

George Clooney’s people say there is no association between him and his new film launched at TIFF, The Men Who Stare at Goats, and the tar sands.

MacIntosh retorts: “Appearing to have no knowledge of the second-largest sponsor of an event’s dealings with the largest industrial project on the planet is simply offensive. If celebrities like George Clooney are not aware, they need to become aware and fast—they have a moral responsibility to do so.”

EcoSanity activists claim the Royal Bank of Canada has spent $8.9 billion over the last four years on companies that operate in or develop the Canadian oil sands. The oil sands are soon to become Canadians’ single largest source of greenhouse gases. It will prevent us from meeting our future climate commitments at Copenhagen and has numerous environmental and social costs to Canada. Furthering the tar sands signals a fossil fuel business-as-usual mandate instead of a switch to a renewable and sustainable path in the 21st century.

There have been numerous protests across Canada this summer against the RBC getting in bed, with what many call, the greatest eco-crime on earth. Such protests include RAN activist, Eriel Deranger, scaling a pole last July at the RBC’s headquarters to drop a banner that would embarrass the bank.

Deranger says: “The RBC is the ATM to the tar sands. This needs to be stopped, we need to hold our banks accountable.”

But never before had this message been taken to the Toronto film fest until the “die-in” protest at the George Clooney gala. While some onlookers called the stunt “out of place” at the festival, MacIntosh says the protest served a purpose. For him, a former assistant director in the Toronto film industry, he believes festivals like TIFF are the root problem to many wrongs in our society and need to be stopped.

“TIFF represents an imbalance of power, the inequality in the world, our reverence and investment in all the wrong things financially and morally.” He also says that TIFF has no environmental policy, promotes a culture of excess and uses thousands of SUV’s, limos and private jets to truck in the film industry top dogs from around the world. “This is not an environmentally sound festival.”

In an age of climate change where we are supposed to be reducing our polluting ways and moving towards a path of sustainability—do festivals like TIFF really have a place with us any longer? All in name of watching a few more movies and gawking at a few more people—is it really worth the oil it uses?

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger climbs the flagpole in front of RBC on July 28, 2009. Photos courtesy Rainforest Action Network.

[This post has been updated yet again, see below]

Imagine being afraid of the air your daughter breathes, watching your family burying their friends from rare cancers connected to toxic leakage, being unable to eat the plants or animals around you because they are sick, and swimming in your local lake has become dangerous to your health. This is not the picture of a future world gone ecologically mad. This is reality right now for Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, a 30-year-old Dene native living downstream from the tar sands of Alberta.

For Eriel and many other First Nations communities living in Fort Chipewyan, ground zero of the tar-sands fallout, this eco-nightmare is everyday life. But Eriel, coming from a long line of activists, is, as she says, “standing up to the madness.” Deranger is the Tar Sands Campaigner for the Rainforest Action Network.

Uncomfortable calling herself an eco-activist, much less an “eco-warrior,” Deranger considers her work with RAN more to be defending indigenous rights. She argues that what is happening with the tar sands is just a continuation in North America of the same old genocidal tactics: trampling on the basic needs of First Nations people in the name of economic prosperity. But whose prosperity is it? In the past, it was colonialists appropriating land and resources. Today, it is the air, water, food and livelihoods of Canada’s aboriginal communities that are being poisoned because of governments’ and corporations’ get-rich-quick scheme in dirty oil.

“Whether it be environmental activism, Indigenous rights activism or any kind of activism — it all comes down to fighting for our survival,” says Deranger.

And survival is what is at stake, she says. Because what has been touted as the world’s largest energy project is also the world’s most destructive engineering project. Andrew Nikiforuk, the crusading journalist who has been exhaustively chronicling the destructive effects of this project writes in his book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent:

A business-as-usual case for the tar sands will change Canada forever. It will enrich a few powerful companies, hollow out the economy, destroy the world’s third-largest watershed, industrialize nearly one-quarter of Alberta’s landscape, consume the last of the nation’s natural gas supplies, and erode Canadian sovereignty.

Not to mention carve into the boreal forest (a larger carbon sink than the Amazon rainforest); inject toxins into the Athabasca River through tailing-pond leakage (the same chemicals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH, that are associated with the rare cancers found in First Nations communities); make Canada one of the only countries to use nuclear power to increase fossil fuel development; and blacken the sky with increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

“We need a moratorium on new tar sands development. We can’t continue to expand. It’s absurd and idiotic to push forward,” says Deranger.

Deranger is willing to achieve that moratorium with any and all kinds of non-violent means that she can. From demonstrations, rallies, days of action, and her most recent protest: scaling to the top of a Canadian flagpole at the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC) Toronto headquarters , dropping a banner reading “Please Help Us Mrs. Nixon.com.” This appeal, by RAN and the Ruckus Society, was directed at Janet Nixon, wife of RBC CEO Gordon Nixon, asking her to lend her strong and influential voice with her husband to pull the bank’s massive investments in Alberta tar sands projects.

For Deranger, information is power and it is her hope that more Canadians, including influential Canadians like Nixon, will get the message through acts such as these.

“All of the little things slowly add up and it is my hope that more eyes will open and more people will stand up for what is right,” says Deranger.

All of us, as Canadians, have our hands in dirty oil development, whether we realize it or not. When we pump up for gas at Shell, we are funneling money to the largest stakeholder in the oil sands.By doing our banking at RBC, our money is being invested into the largest banker of the oil sands. Not to mention how much of our taxes are being diverted into our governments’ support for the tar sands.

UPDATE: A Government of Alberta spokesperson contacted This about EcoChamber #15, requesting corrections to this blog post. Specifically, the Alberta government denies any link between polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH, and cancer incidence in the Athabasca watershed; it also says there is no evidence of seepage from the Athabasca tailings ponds. With respect, we disagree with the government’s response and have not altered this post. However, in the interest of airing all perspectives, here is the text of the email we received:

Dear Emily Hunter and This Magazine:

We request a correction to incorrect information published by you today. In the story “EcoChamber #15: Meet the woman at Ground Zero of the tar-sands fight,” you make the statement that oil sands developments “inject toxins into the Athabasca River through tailing-pond leakage (the same chemicals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH, that are associated with the rare cancers found in First Nations communities).”

Regarding PAHs and your claimed linkage to cancer downstream of oil sands, I refer you to the report “Cancer Incidence in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, 1995-2006,” for the Alberta Cancer Board. Specifically relating to PAHs, please see page 35. In brief: PAHs are not linked to cancer cases downstream of oil sands and PAHs do occur naturally in the environment and yet cannot be found at levels higher downstream from oil sands than at areas undisturbed by oil sands development.

Regarding tailings ponds leakage into the Athabasca River, the river has been monitored since the 1970s and neither the Government nor any independent agency has detected increased contamination of the river. Furthermore, tailings ponds are constructed with groundwater monitoring and seepage capture facilities, and seepage is pumped back into the pond. If there is leakage, it would be into deep saline aquifers below the ponds, which would naturally contain the same contaminants as the tailings in the first place. Finally, given the characteristics of the soils, even at the very highest rate imaginable, it would take 50 years for tailings to move just two metres through the earth.

In short, no cancers attributable to PAHs have been found downstream of oil sands, and there is no evidence of tailings ponds seepage into the Athabasca River. Please correct your story.

Here is a link to the cancer report: http://www.albertahealthservices.ca/files/News/rls-2009-02-06-fort-chipewyan -study.pdf

David Sands, for the Government of Alberta.

We sought comment from environmental groups about the government’s request for changes to this blog post. A staff lawyer for Ecojustice provided this response:

I have read with interest the response from David Sands with the Government of Alberta to Emily’s blog.

In summary, Mr. Sands concludes his e-mail as follows:

“In short, no cancers attributable to PAHs have been found downstream of oil sands, and there is no evidence of tailings ponds seepage into the Athabasca River. Please correct your story.”

On the first point, Mr. Sands may be technically correct. I am not aware of any study that directly links a cancer case downstream from the oil sands to increased PAH’s. However, in making this statement, Mr. Sands relies on the 1995-2006 cancer incidence study recently completed by Alberta Health Services.

However, we should be clear about what that study did and did not find, and what it does say about PAH’s. The cancer incidence study did not directly link any cancer case in Fort Chipewyan to PAH’s. However, the study did find a higher than average overall cancer rate, higher than expected rates of cancers of the blood and lymphatic system, bilary cancers as a group and soft tissue cancers. The study specifically states that, “The study was not designed to determine the cause of the cancers experienced in Fort Chipewyan.” Mr. Sands cannot rely on this study to state that no cancers in Fort Chipewyan are attributable to elevated PAH’s. The study did not determine that.

Further, the study states, in Appendix 5:

“In November 2007, a report, funded by the Nunee Health Board Society and written by Kevin P. Timoney, evaluated environmental contaminants in the area surrounding Fort Chipewyan. From 2001 to 2005, concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) rose within the sediment around Lake Athabasca. The report indicated that the treated drinking water in Fort Chipewyan was safe, but described high levels of arsenic, mercury and PAHs in fish, which is the main diet of many people in Fort Chipewyan, especially members of its Aboriginal communities.”

It is clear that PAH’s in Lake Athabasca sediments and fish are elevated and increasing. The only thing that is not clear is the source of the elevated PAH’s.

Further, the study states in Appendix 5:

“The long-term impacts of oil sands in its early stages of the development since 1968 are not clear. A previous publication in 1980s indicated that Suncor permitted effluent discharge of oil and grease to the Athabasca River at 420 kg per day. Sometimes, operation problems resulted in excessive effluent discharge into the river. In addition to water-born effluents, the two oil sands extraction plants (Suncor and Syncrude) emitted massive amounts of particulates in the atmosphere.”

Therefore, it is possible that elevated PAH levels in sediments and fish downstream of the oil sands are attributable to oil sands operations, both current and historical.

Mr. Sands’ second statement that “there is no evidence of tailings pond seepage into the Athabasca River” is simply incorrect. The long-term seepage from the Suncor Tar Island Pond directly into the Athabasca River is well documented. In fact, in response, Suncor has undertaken over the past two years to drain and relocate that pond. In addition, Syncrude’s 2007 Groundwater Monitoring Report, submitted to the Alberta Government, documents tailings pond seepage into Beaver Creek and Bridge Creek, both tributaries of the Athabasca River.

I hope that this information is of some help to you.

Barry Robinson
Staff Lawyer
Ecojustice, Alberta Office

We’ll post here about any further developments related to this matter.

UPDATE 2: Friday, August 7 — We’ve had another letter in reponse to this blog post and the updates to it. Dr. John O’Connor, formerly of Fort Chipewyan, has spoken out about the tar sands before; we suggest reading this in-depth CBC Edmonton feature about Dr. O’Connor and his experience as a critic of tar sands development to find out more about him. He writes:

The response from the Alberta Government is no surprise.

Of course the Tailings Ponds leak–they have been for years, and the documentation comes from FOIP-ed material. The largest pond is estimated to leak at the rate of 5.7 million litres a day. Toxins such as PAHs, Arsenic, and Mercury, with an industrial origin, have been detected in appaling levels in the environment in and around Chip [Fort Chepewyan]. Fish are so affected that Health Canada issued  advisories in Nov 2007 that pregnant women and children stop eating fish from Lake Athabasca, and that kids should no longer play in the Lake, which had served for years as their playground. The advisories still stand. At exactly the same time, the AB govt was criticising Dr Kevin Timoney’s report that had found the toxins, claiming it was faulty science–when they were admitting they had not even read the report!! Try to reconcile that!

Neither the water nor the air are credibly monitored at all, and industry polices itself.

We also know that the above-named toxins can be directly linked with the health problems in Fort Chip. The Cancer Board does not state anywhere in its report that there is no link with cancer in Chip and the PAHs–the lead on the report, Dr Tony Fields, was careful to point out that the mandate of the Cancer Board was not to elucidate the origin of the cancers. PAHs, along with the other toxins, may well be the origin of cancer, and other health issues in Fort Chip. In other jurisdictions, the Precautionary Principle at least would have this industry being closely analysed, if not halted, on grounds of it being a possible or probable health hazard.

In Alberta, the sacred cow that is the Tarsands cannot be touched.

Alberta has been advised more than once to do a Baseline Health Study of peoples in the Chip area, and have ignored this advice. It is as if they are scared to do so. Maybe there is no connection between the Tarsands and health problems downstream! All I know is I was slammed in my quest to advocate for my patients in Chip, asking if the health issues there could be due to genetics, lifestyle, bad luck, or to the environmental changes seen in the community for years.

For Mr Sands to state that “no cancers attributable to PAHs have been found downstream of oil sands”, is at best a misrepresentation of the situation–there has never been any study to find the causes of cancer in Chip, and top of the list now must surely be industrial toxin exposure. For him to state that “there is no evidence of tailing ponds seepage into the Athabasca River”, flies in the face of evidence to the contrary. Even industry admits that the ponds were not built to last as long as they have–and they by their nature leak!

Alberta, do the right thing, and treat your downstream inhabitants fairly.

Dr. John O’Connor

UPDATE 3: Thursday, August 27 — We received another response to this blog entry, this one from Kevin Timoney. Dr. Timoney is the scientist who did the study in 2007 that found PAHs and other toxins in the Lake Athabasca sediments, water and fish. He requested that we preserve the colour formatting of the letter in order to clearly differentiate the sources of information. He writes:

Dear Ms. Hunter:

I have read your blog and the Alberta Government response to the blog. I offer some comments. The government’s statements are in red font and my response is in green font.

Dr. Kevin Timoney

Regarding PAHs and your claimed linkage to cancer downstream of oil sands, I refer you to the report “Cancer Incidence in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, 1995-2006,” for the Alberta Cancer Board. Specifically relating to PAHs, please see page 35. In brief: PAHs are not linked to cancer cases downstream of oil sands and PAHs do occur naturally in the environment and yet cannot be found at levels higher downstream from oil sands than at areas undisturbed by oil sands development.

The Alberta Government’s objection to the link between PAHs and cancer is unscientific. The science is clear. Exposure to PAHs is linked to increased rates of cancer in humans and to a number of detrimental effects on fishes, including hatching alterations, cardiac dysfunction, edema, spinal curvature, and reduction in the size of the jaw and other craniofacial structures. Detrimental effects on birds have also been documented. Secondly, the government misrepresents the information on page 35 in the cancer incidence report (by Chen 2009). That report does not state that “PAHs are not linked to cancer cases downstream of oil sands”. Rather, that section of the report reviews various routes of PAH exposure from the literature. Thirdly, the statement “PAHs do occur naturally in the environment and yet cannot be found at levels higher downstream from oil sands than at areas undisturbed by oil sands development” is a half-truth at best. PAHs do occur naturally in the environment, that much is true. But it is false to state that PAHs do not increase in concentration downstream of development. They do and an upcoming scientific paper (in press) documents this fact. Fourthly, PAHs do not occur alone in the food supply of people downstream but rather as a suite of contaminants. Co-exposure to arsenic and PAHs, e.g., has been shown to increase rates of genotoxicity by 8 to 18 times. Fifthly, arsenic exposure is associated with human bile duct, liver, urinary tract, and skin cancers, vascular diseases, and Type II diabetes. Sixthly, the government neglected to note that the Chen report concluded that the number of cancer cases overall was 30% higher than expected in Fort Chipewyan. That same report found elevated rates of bile duct cancers, cancers of the blood and lymphatic system, leukemia, and soft tissue sarcomas. An earlier government report found elevated rates of type II diabetes, lupus, renal failure, and hypertension in Fort Chipewyan. Why the people of Fort Chipewyan appear to suffer increased rates of diseases may involve a variety of risk factors, but it is premature to state that contaminant exposure is not one of those factors.

Regarding tailings ponds leakage into the Athabasca River, the river has been monitored since the 1970s and neither the Government nor any independent agency has detected increased contamination of the river. Furthermore, tailings ponds are constructed with groundwater monitoring and seepage capture facilities, and seepage is pumped back into the pond. If there is leakage, it would be into deep saline aquifers below the ponds, which would naturally contain the same contaminants as the tailings in the first place. Finally, given the characteristics of the soils, even at the very highest rate imaginable, it would take 50 years for tailings to move just two metres through the earth.

The previous paragraph contains so many false statements that it is difficult to know where to begin. Contamination of river water, sediment, and wildlife have been documented numerous times by many authors from a variety of disciplines. Tailings ponds do leak. It is fairly well known how much they leak, what they leak, and where they leak. The government is aware that the ponds leak, has stated this fact in written correspondence, and has been aware for years. Escaped seepage is not into “deep aquifers” but rather into groundwater hydraulically connected with the Athabasca River. Seepage migration rates through the sands and silts are not slow. Tailings seepage has been detected in increased concentrations of salts and naphthenic acids in groundwater monitoring wells, in the Muskeg River as increased PAHs, and as increased concentrations of a number of metals in porewater of the Athabasca River.
In short, no cancers attributable to PAHs have been found downstream of oil sands, and there is no evidence of tailings ponds seepage into the Athabasca River. Please correct your story.

In short, the Alberta Government’s response to the blog is a denial of facts.

Emily Hunter is an environmental journalist and This Magazine’s resident eco-blogger. She is currently working on a book about young environmental activism, The Next Eco-Warriors, and is the eco-correspondent to MTV News Canada.