If the pipeline giant Enbridge Inc. is content to cower behind a 20-something blog manager rather than acknowledge its role in the recent attack on the patriotism of Canadian environmentalists, what hope have we that the company would ever stand accountable for the accidents that will occur – inevitably – if Northern Gateway ever gets built?

That’s a rhetorical question, but a pressing one, given the environmental time-bomb that Enbridge proposes to lay out between the Canadian tar sands and the pristine B.C. coastline.

We actually don’t know for sure that Enbridge is behind the so-called Ethical Oil Institute, a phony grassroots organization that was established by Ezra Levant and run for most of its first year by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s current Director of Planning, Alykhan Velshi. But you might come to your own conclusions by watching this clip or reading the transcript below.

It comes from an interview on the CBC show Power and Politics, in which the host, Evan Solomon, asks current EthicalOil.org manager Kathryn Marshall a question she just can’t bring herself to answer:

Yesterday the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) announced their investigative series on fracking in British Columbia. The feature report will cover the rise of the shale boom in the province’s remote northeast corner. The CBC radio report, called Cornering Gas, presents an opportunity for people to voice their concerns about the controversial fracking process and take part in the growing debate over BC’s role in the country’s energy future.

As the CBC reports, shale gas in BC has ballooned into a multi-billion-dollar industry and is expected to transform the province’s remote regions into bustling boom towns. CBC host Robert Boane and reporter Betsy Trumpener traveled to Fort Nelson to conduct interviews within a 'boom no bust' atmosphere. Fort Nelson, a town of 4000, is expected to triple in size. 

Two of Canada’s most plentiful shale gas deposits are in the area where some of the largest fracking operations in the world are taking place. Kerry Guy, speaking on behalf of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), told the CBC they currently estimate more than a century’s worth of shale gas in the region.

But the shale gas boom in BC has brought a lot more in its wake than just short-term economic opportunity.

 

British Columbia is providing the gas industry with 78 million cubic meters of free water each year, according to a recent CBC article. That water, the equivalent to 31,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, is used to hydraulically fracture, or frack, the Northeast portion of the province which is undergirded by a vast reservoir of unconventional gas. 

The B.C. government has recently added another 3.65 million cubic meters of water per year to that total by issuing an additional permit to Talisman Energy. The permit grants Talisman permission to withdrawal water from the Williston Reservoir, B.C.’s largest freshwater body, for 20 years. 

Historically, the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission (BCOGC) has granted short-term, temporary water withdrawal permits to the oil and gas industry, a process critics argued circumvented the environmental evaluation necessary for long-term permits. In this instance, Talisman has received one of the largest water withdrawal permits of its kind. 

As if Canada’s performance on climate were not already the second worst among all countries surveyed by GermanWatch for the Global Climate Change Performance Index (we were aced for last place by Saudi Arabia), new documents discovered by the CBC show the Conservative government actually looking to WEAKEN the pathetic greenhouse gas emission limits that barely restrain the Alberta oil and gas sector.

The government, which has presented no plan to meet its humiliating target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by three per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, is now leaning toward giving the oil and gas sector even more room to pollute, leaving the responsibility for reducing emissions (should the country ever decide to do so) on individuals and businesses outside the industry that is primarily responsible.

As long as Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s oil patch buddies are making money, though, what can go wrong?

There are few Canadian journalists as resolutely stupid about climate change as CBC editorialist and Globe and Mail columnist Rex Murphy. Rising above science, soaring over the petty limitations of facts and logic, Rex regularly delivers us from the threat of global warming - if only in figurative flourish.

His most recent outing is a spectacular example. In it, he announces that because it has snowed in Vancouver, we no longer need to take seriously the scientific warnings about future climate change.

The countries most determined to do nothing about climate change brought the G8 process to an effective standstill in Japan this week - and somehow convinced mainstream media to celebrate the day.

In Canada, the two "national" newspapers posted laudatory headlines, with the Globe and Mail congratulating the government with "Harper Welcomes Bush Back into the Fold," and the National Post announcing, "G8 Takes Next Step on Climate Change."

Closer reading shows that the "next step" constitutes setting a 2050 greenhouse-gas-reduction target with no agreed start date and no demand for any signatory to take immediate action. No wonder the United States and Russia were happy to get back "on board." They get to smile for the international cameras without actually lifting a finger at home.