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James Hansen: " If the tar sands are exploited as planned, it will be 'game over' for the climate."
Leaked
Papers Show UK Government Will Backtrack on Tar Sands Extraction
Being Classified As Highly Polluting
Allowing
tar sands oil into Europe would be a victory for
‘profit-before-planet’ politics warns Lorna Howarth
17
May 2013
The
UK government has come under fire this week from both NGOs and
scientists for rejecting an EU proposal to classify tar sands under
the European Fuel Quality Directive (FQD) as ‘highly polluting’ –
despite the fact research has shown that oil produced from the
Canadian tar sands emits 3-4 times more greenhouse gases than does
conventional oil
It
follows the week’s visit of high profile Canadian Ministers Joe
Oliver and Peter Kent who flew to London as part of a pan-European
mission to promote the Canadian tar sands industry and lobby against
the FQD.
Kent,
who is the Canadian Environment Minister, is on record as saying
“Climate change is a very real and present danger and we need to
address it.”
Extracting
oil from the Canadian tar sands – the biggest industrial project on
earth – is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions
in Canada and indeed, is the primary reason why Canada will fail to
meet its own greenhouse gas reduction targets.
So
it must be disconcerting for Canadians to see this major disconnect
in their Environment Minister’s thinking. Likewise, it is equally
disconcerting for UK citizens to see their own Under Secretary of
State for Transport, Norman Baker, displaying the same inability to
connect the dots.
As
Jess Worth, from the UK Tar Sands Network points out: “Norman Baker
says he supports a Fuel Quality Directive that takes emissions from
tar sands into account. But if this is the case, why does the
recently-leaked document clearly state that the UK government says it
'prefers' to lump tar sands in with all other sources of oil? At the
moment it looks like Baker is toeing the oil industry line on this
matter.”
The
leaked document referred to by Jess Worth was published on the
Greenpeace ‘EnergyDesk’ website earlier this week. It showed that
the UK government is set to change its position and push the EU to
allow the import of carbon-intensive oils from the Tar Sands despite
it being 23% more polluting than conventional fuels, thus making a
mockery of the EU FQD. There will be another vote on the FQD later in
2013.
However,
all is not lost: prominent former NASA climate scientist Dr James
Hansen, and respected Canadian economist Professor Mark Jaccard are
bringing the opposite message to the UK: that tar sands extraction
has no place in the world's future energy mix; that the process
should be accurately labelled in the FQD as highly polluting and that
it should be kept out of Europe.
As
part of their own pan-European tour, Hansen and Jaccard's visit to
London will include a meeting with the Department for Transport,
which is ultimately responsible for the UK's position on the FQD and
they will also be giving evidence to the Environmental Audit
Committee.
Emily
Coats, from the UK Tar Sands Network, said, “We are thrilled to see
these world-renowned scientists crashing the oil peddlers'
transatlantic travelling circus. The UK needs to hear the cold hard
truth about the tar sands industry, rather than Canada's fanciful
spin.
As
James Hansen himself has said, if the tar sands are exploited as
planned, it will be 'game over' for the climate. But labeling tar
sands as a highly polluting fuel would be a long overdue step towards
reining in this reckless industry, and the UK government – if it is
to retain any semblance of green credibility – should throw its
weight behind it.”
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