Apparently the good folks at “Corporate Ethics” would like to destroy as many Alberta industries as they can. Now they want not only the hundreds of thousands of people employed by the energy industry to lose their jobs, but those who support the tourism industry as well.
That’ll learn those Albertans. How dare they produce oil?
Corporate Ethics today launched a campaign in the United States and next in the U.K. urging potential tourists to “take the pledge not to visit Alberta and tell your friends to do the same.” That is, until the expansion of the tar sands is halted.
The campaign, “Rethink Alberta” is punctuated by a 1:39 minute video in which images of Alberta’s beautiful tourist destinations are interspersed with photos of ducks drowning in tailings, and, tailings and, you guessed it, tailings–because that is what the industry is all about. The usual misinformation is touted, including the assertion that oilsands development is destroying an area twice the size of England. That would be 260,000 square kilometres.
“Today we have 550 square kilometres [of land] impacted, and 65 square kilometres reclaimed,” says Travis Davies, media spokesman for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, adding that the organizations behind the Rethink Alberta campaign are the same people who “confused science fiction with reality” with anti-oilsands ads in Variety magazine earlier this year.
“What does the oilsands have to do with Banff or any other tourist destination?” Davies asks.
And that is exactly the point, and why the argument is so flawed and irresponsible. The fact that Alberta has the second largest oil deposit in the world (God forbid developers seek to extract its potential for a thirsty world) does not for one moment change the fact that the province also has some of the most beautiful tourist destinations on the planet.
Arguably, the oilsands industry itself is one of those destinations, a marvel of engineering in a small pocket of the vast and stunning boreal forest.
The industry is not without its problems, and the biggest one is definitely tailings. But instead of simply calling for a halt to development, work should continue to progress in making it less impactful on the environment while the benefits still flow to Canada and North America–and hopefully soon, Asia.
I’m happy to see that a similar message has been expressed over and over again in the comments section of the Rethink Alberta page. Hear hear for constructive discussion.
UPDATE: Very interesting blog post by Jeremy Dietz about the shift in user comments.
