There is no doubt the history of First Nations in Canada is one of near genocide. To this day, it’s the single worst treated group in Canada. I’ve been to dozens of reserves and it is basically like going to a third world country. You can literally see it instantly when you enter many reserves and all infrastructure degrades right at the border.
That being said, I don’t understand how the failures of Indian Act are the fault of a oil and gas company.
If that was the issue they should be protesting the Feds (which they should).
Bottom line I’m tired of the lazy part of the left and their bogeyman politics.
There are certainly lots of bad actors in oil and gas but the vast majority of them want to develop in the most environmentally friendly way possible. They understand they require social license and work everyday to secure it.
Attacking this pipeline, after it did EVERYTHING right, is announcing to the world your movement is not serious and borders on simple minded anarchism.
Climate change is the single biggest threat to humanity. Thank god some of these people are not in charge of finding solutions. They are simply not sophisticated enough to do so. They want to live is a fantasy world of black and white.
I think you are making some good points but the reality is that people have feelings. Most people will have a tendency to sympathize with disadvantaged indigenous communities and climate change activists, and will have a tendency to disbelieve oil and gas companies claiming that they are actually good stewards of the environment. You’re going to drive yourself absolutely nuts if you try to advance the interests of oil and gas companies in the current political environment.
Bottom line is I still believe ours is the side of reason and fact. A such, I hold us to a high standard of being able to look at issues with nuance and depth which is why I hate the bogeyman stuff like the “all rich people are evil” thread.
These types of generalizations are our version of “all poor people are lazy” or “all black people are criminals”
No oil and gas company is a “good steward of the environment”. Almost all development is harmful to the environment. This is true of oil and gas and roads, dams, solar farms etc.
The goal is to mitigate effects, reclaim and to make ROI calculations to decide if the negative effects are outweighed by other positive effects, like jobs etc.
That is the hard part where the rubber meets the road.
How many have you met? How many projects have you been involved with? How many hearings have you sat on the panel for?
I’ve met hundreds of people who work in oil gas and been involved in hundreds of projects. I’ve yet to meet a single person who wants to destroy the environment or purposely harm First Nations.
Not one.
I’ve met some really dumb climate change deniers (although becoming rarer) and people who don’t have their incentives aligned properly.
But most of the people I know, and projects I’ve worked on, are honestly trying to balance a difficult equation between impacts and benefits.
It is much more common for the companies I work with to want to exceed regulatory requirements than to just meet them.
I’ve fired a couple clients for wanting to do the minimum.
This is the bottom line. There are only three positions in this debate.
All oil and gas is bad and should be stopped.
This is position of a part of the left. It’s just not serious. Let’s says we stopped all oil and gas production tomorrow. Then what?
All oil and gas development should proceed unhindered by regulation.
Literally nobody on earth holds this position.
Oil and gas is our main source of energy, and will remain so for some time. Therefore we need social structures and regulations to manage it. If companies follow them they are GOOD actors, not bad.
This is the only defensible position in my opinion.
Yeah you’re conflating “wants to destroy the environment and purposely harm First Nations” with reckless disregard for the environment, willful disregard for the environment, negligence…
Nobody thinks of oil + gas as moustache-twirling super villains. They just dgaf about your grandkids or some salmon beds because they’re beholden to profits and shareholders.
Yeah it’s hard to complain to the regulators and politicians that have been in bed with the oil and gas industry since their inception. Despite the decades of immoral and often criminal headstart the industry has been given it’s now being crushed by new alternatives. The transition away from oil and gas is inevitable (especially in this country) and those “jobs” you’re worried about represent votes trying their hardest to slow down our evolution away from this crap.
Criticizing the time, place and manner of protests is your right (altho something tells me the organizers don’t need or want your advice on how to get attention for their cause, evidently). Painting the oil and gas industry as some sort of “aw, shucks” amoral good-boy just trying to play by the rules is laughable.
What if you get to be ruler by making bold assertions that you will fight climate change and fossil fuels, and then write regulations that are favorable to oil and gas companies? You are willfully ignoring a lot of context here.
I don’t think people are in the wrong if they try to see through “but we followed the letter of the law” claims of innocence. It’s a good sign that people are complaining about perceived to be regulatory failures. And I think it’s pretty disingenuous to assert that regulations that allow companies (oil and gas or not) to do what they want to do just have nothing to do with lobbying by those companies.