The Alberta Oil Pipelines

The BCSEA’s Response

The BC Sustainable Energy Association’s goal is to help British Columbia become a world leader in the use of sustainable, renewable energy. Our vision is a province that is flourishing following an orderly transition away from the use of fossil fuels, and we have confidence that this is achievable.

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We oppose the construction of new pipelines and the expansion of existing pipelines across BC to support the export of oil from Alberta’s oil sands. We also oppose any expansion in the shipping of oil across BC’s waters.

 

Our Reasoning:

1. Oil has brought our civilization many benefits, but the age of cheap oil is almost over, and at the current rate of use the known oil reserves will soon be depleted.[2] Our dependence on oil for transportation and farming is such that any nation that does not actively prepare for a future without oil runs a serious risk of economic and agricultural collapse.

 2.     Burning oil is a primary cause of global climate change, which is one of humanity’s most urgent crises. Climate change is bringing us rising temperatures, rising sea levels, acidification of the world’s oceans, an increase in extreme droughts, floods and forest fires, and huge economic costs if we do not reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

The carbon in Alberta’s economically recoverable oil sands reserve would release 69 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide if it was all extracted and burnt - the equivalent of a hundred years of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions.[3] British Columbia has adopted a leadership role and it is essential that Canada do the same, to accept our moral responsibility and demonstrate leadership to the rest of the world.

3.     Burning oil causes air pollution, resulting in many negative health impacts. Oil well accidents, pipeline accidents and other oil spillages pollute the world’s rivers and lakes, while oil tanker accidents pollute the world’s oceans.

4.     Knowing that our use of oil is causing this harm, and that the extraction of the remaining oil will be increasingly difficult, expensive, ecologically dangerous and politically controversial, and that it will require ever larger inputs of energy to extract the oil from the oil sands[4], the only rational and intelligent path forward must be the development of sustainable forms of energy which permit an orderly transition to a world without oil.

5.     The BCSEA celebrates our ability to achieve such a transition. Humanity’s long history of discovery and innovation in science and technology gives us confidence that the innovation needed for our civilization to prosper without fossil fuels will continue long after the last oil well has been capped and the last coal mine has been closed down. We have confidence that the world will be able to meet its future transportation, asphalt and plastics needs, and we have begun to spell this out in Transportation without Oil: 23 Steps to a Sustainable Energy Future, on the BCSEA’s website at www.bcsea.org.

BCSEA members and Chapters are encouraged to participate in actions and initiatives that emphasize the benefits of phasing out the use of oil, and to oppose the proposed pipelines and pipeline extensions. For Taking Action on the Oil Sands, the Pipelines and Oil Tankers, see http://www.bcsea.org/blog/guy-dauncey/2012/06/13/taking-action-on-tar-sands-pipelines-and-oil-tankers

 

Footnotes