On August 4th, 2014 a huge tailing pond full of toxic mining waste burst open in Northern British Columbia (BC). The Mount Polley Mine disaster spilled an estimated 25 billion litres of slurry filled with led, arsenic, nickel and copper into Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake, a source of drinking water and important spawning grounds for sockeye salmon.
An investigation into the cause of the spill revealed major engineering errors. Even so, no charges or fines have been laid, and the BC provincial government let a 3 year deadline to file criminal charges come and go last August. Meanwhile, Imperial Mines reported an increase in revenue to $453 million in 2017, which included a 30 million increase specifically from the Mount Polley Mine it continues to operate.
Mount Polley is just one example. A new study from the United Nations Environment Programme found that Canada has had seven known mine tailings spills in the last decade, only one less than China, which tops the list. Higher than even the U.S.
When we take a look at the way big business has been exploiting the environment – we see that the Mount Polley catastrophe is not expectational. It's a spike in a constant trend towards environmental degradation at the hands of corporations, and of governments which in the end make sure we are the ones who foot the bill and suffer the consequences.
Even just in British Columbia, you can look at the amount of obliterated forests, missing fish stocks, mining degradation, oil spills and pollution. You don't need to be a scientist to understand that something it not right.
Overall Trend
Canada has missed every single greenhouse gas target set at a national level since the 1990s and our greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. A new audit by Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand found that, “Canada is not expected to meet its 2020 target for reducing emissions” and “meeting Canada’s 2030 target will require substantial effort and actions beyond those currently planned or in place.”
These are even just the lacklustre emissions targets put in place by the Harper Conservatives and kept by the Trudeau Liberals. Did you also know that a big part of Trudeau's climate plan assumes Canada can subtract a huge chunk of its emissions and pay to add them to the U.S. ledger through carbon credits? Something the U.S. hasn't even agreed to do!
Same but Different in the B.C
As if Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, hadn't disappointed enough people, the B.C. NDP Premier John Horgan seems to be doing his best to outdo him. Horgan approved the massive Site C Dam against the urging of indigenous nations whose territories it would flood, as well as environment and energy experts who pointed out it would ruin prime agricultural land which could feed a million people for electrical power which is not required. Even if the electricity was required, there are also many renewable options at a similar or lower price point.
Horgan also recently announced a plan to develop a $40 billion LNG facility in Kitimat. Like Trudeau, he promised to do that while meeting climate targets and obligations to indigenous peoples...without any plan or details regarding how this would be possible. The NDP’s new framework offers LNG companies tax breaks and a cheaper electricity rate than even the previous B.C. Liberal government.
LNG is currently BC's single largest carbon polluter. The Pembina Institute has pointed out that if both phases of the LNG Canada Kitimat are built it would emit 8.6 megatons of carbon per year in 2030, rising to 9.6 megatons in 2050.
BC Green Party leader Andrew Weaver has been decidedly toothless when it comes to the NDP's decisions to approve the Site C Dam and expand LNG in BC. However, he was able to point out that that the cheap electricity rate the NDP is offering the LNG industry is a “ratepayer subsidy” of the Site C Dam power that would go to LNG corporations “at less than half of what it would cost to produce.”
To add insult to insult to injury, when the B.C. government announced its promised review of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) which is used to extract LNG, they decided that the review wouldn’t examine human health impacts. This was at the same time as the most authoritative study of fracking’s impacts to human health ever published found “no evidence that fracking can be practised in a manner that does not threaten human health.” So why ignore it?
Industry is Not Planning on Slowing Down
Since 2010, the B.C. government has authorized the drilling of 4,772 new LNG wells. There are approximately 25,000 wells in B.C., 12,771 of which are reported as active.
A Sierra Club BC study showed that Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests are declining by 30%, three times faster than primary forest loss in tropical rainforests. Only about 10 per cent of the biggest trees remain standing. On Eastern Vancouver Island it's down to one percent.
Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier like to point to their success in establishing a “hard cap” on Tar Sands emissions, but Alberta’s official energy plan is to increase Tar Sands emissions from 70 to 100 megatons per year by 2030.
They are also trying to move ahead with the largest-ever open pit tar sands mine in the world. The $20-billion Teck Frontier Mine would create a gaping hole in the boreal forest in Northern Alberta and pollute sensitive watersheds that flow into Canada’s largest World Heritage Park. Teck Resources has also signed contracts to ship oil through Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline.
Meanwhile, the mining industry celebrated a 20% increase in mining exploration B.C in 2017.
They Lie, We Foot the Bill
These corporations are constantly trying to expand and a rush to profit from a shrinking amount of natural resources, but they do so with little regard for the consequences.
Mining Watch Canada, published a study showing that BC has the largest unsecured environmental liability in Canada for mine site clean-up costs – over 1.5 billion dollars. “At the current rate to which BC collects revenues from mining royalties, it would take 40 years to cover this liability,” said Ugo Lapointe, Canadian program coordinator for Mining Watch Canada.
In Alberta 1.3 trillion litres of fluid tailings has accumulated in Tar Sands open tailing ponds. There is nothing else like it in the world. The U.S. Department of the Interior even classifies the Mildred Lake Settling Basin as the world's largest dam by volume of construction material.
An article in DeSmog Canada found, “less than 8 per cent of these costs is held as security by the province, leaving Albertan taxpayers exposed to a significant financial risk for tens of billions of dollars if major companies are no longer around when it's finally time to reclaim these sites.”
A peer-reviewed study by the David Suzuki Foundation and St. Francis Xavier University found methane emissions from BC’s oil and gas industry are two-and-a-half times higher than reported.
Wonder how they get away with all this? Under the current regulatory system in BC, oversight of both the logging and mining industries is done primarily by professionals hired by the same corporations they are supposedly overseeing – rather than independent government staff. They call this “professional reliance”. We call it “highway robbery”.
When it comes to oil and gas, you can just follow the money trail. Dogwood Initiative found that Texas-based Kinder Morgan and associated firms of its Trans Mountain Expansion Project donated $771,168 to the BC Liberals prior to their approval of the controversial pipeline.
Their World or Our World
So, the status quo does not good – or even livable. These corporations and politicians act like pirates frantically trying to stuff gold into their pockets while their ship is sinking. Imagine what BC and the world would look like if we left it up to them? The good news is that there's still time to turn this around, and people have shown some exciting potential when they organize together. Both the Kinder Morgan pipeline and the Site C Dam are way behind schedule due to persistent opposition which shows no sign of going away. It's important to fight and to win these individual battles against destructive projects, and then move forward together to confront the capitalist system which prioritizes profit at the expense of people and the planet.
System Change Not Climate Change!
No Kinder Morgan Pipeline!
Stop Site C Dam!
Follow Thomas Davies on Twitter: @thomasdavies59
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