[R-G] George Monbiot: "Shut down the tar sands, as quickly as possible"

[Anthony Fenton]

Truncated link; this one works:

http://www.straight.com/article-165166/george-monbiot-stirs-debate-over-fate-tar-sands

On 9-Oct-08, at 9:25 AM, Macdonald Stainsby wrote:

> George Monbiot stirs debate over fate of tar sands
> By Matthew Burrows
>
> George Monbiot wants the Alberta tar-sands industry shut down “as
> quickly as possible”.
>
> The best-selling author, Guardian columnist, and environmentalist told
> the Georgia Straight he would like to see “large-scale direct actions”
> to make that happen.
>
> When Monbiot granted the Straight an interview in late August, in a
> small restaurant in the Welsh town of Maccynleth, where he resides, an
> election had not yet been called. Canadians are now officially  
> headed to
> the polls on October 14, and Monbiot—who penned the 2006 book Heat, to
> high acclaim—said Canada must step up on the environmental front.
>
> “There is a huge gulf, it seems, in Canada between people’s awareness
> and their determination to do something to protect the environment and
> the actual results of Canadian policy,” Monbiot said on August 21.  
> “That
> gap has to be closed, and it has to be closed very quickly. One of the
> first actions that needs to be taken is to shut down the tar sands. I
> would like to see large-scale direct actions aimed at the tar sands,
> with the objective of ending that industry as quickly as possible.”
>
> Read a complete transcript of the Georgia Straight's interview with
> Guardian columnist Georgia Monbiot here.
>
> Michael Byers, NDP candidate in Vancouver Centre, told the Straight  
> that
> climate change is the “principal reason” he entered politics. He said
> his wife gave him the go-ahead to run after she read Heat, and he  
> noted
> that he is a “big fan” of Monbiot. On September 25, a CBC news clip
> played up Byers’s statement that the tar sands should be shut down.
> However, Byers said the clip took his comments out of context.
>
> “What I should have said, had I known I was going to be clipped, was
> that the tar sands should be wound down,” Byers explained by phone.
>
> Byers noted that NDP leader Jack Layton successfully steered the  
> Climate
> Change Accountability Act through the House of Commons on June 4,  
> and in
> doing so secured agreement from the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois  
> that
> any future Canadian government is bound to an 80-percent reduction in
> Canadian greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050.
>
> “That is an 80-percent reduction over 1990 levels,” Byers said. “If  
> you
> do the mathematics on that, it entails the shutting-down of the tar
> sands or the sequestering of the CO2 produced by them. When you add  
> that
> to the NDP climate-change policy, which is to withdraw all of the
> massive tax cuts to the tar sands as well as [placing] firm caps on  
> all
> of the large emitters—which will be ratcheted down fairly quickly— 
> and a
> massive investment in alternative-energy technologies, you are going  
> to
> see a winding-down of the tar sands. It is rapidly becoming the single
> largest point source for carbon dioxide on the planet.”
>
> However, Byers added that he “would not” support the direct action
> advocated by Monbiot.
>
> “I believe in the rule of law, and I believe in using peaceful
> mechanisms of political change, which is why I am running for  
> political
> office,” he said. “I would put my decision to run for office as an
> example of how I believe that existing political structures need to be
> engaged by those who are fully aware of the climate-change crisis and
> committed to doing something serious about it.”
>
> Vancouver Centre Conservative candidate and former two-term MLA Lorne
> Mayencourt disagreed with Monbiot’s analysis.
>
> “I think that the economic devastation that would follow a shutdown of
> the tar sands would rival the Great Depression,” Mayencourt told the
> Straight in a phone interview. “The reality of it is that the tar  
> sands
> employ in the neighbourhood of 65,000 employees, and having them all  
> of
> a sudden not be able to work would be a huge problem. Canadians know
> that they need to buy gasoline to drive their cars, to get to work, to
> get their kids to school or sporting events or what have you. So we  
> are
> going to be using fuel as we go forward in the next little while.
> Shutting down the tar sands would be a pretty bad thing to happen in  
> the
> Canadian economy.”
>
> Monbiot said he was involved in recent direct action to oppose open- 
> pit
> coal mining in Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales.
>
> “I’d never come across it, but it was a huge, huge mine,” Monbiot said
> of the Ffos-y-Fran mine. “I mean, not huge by Albertan standards,  
> but by
> British standards this is a very big mine for a very small country.…So
> these people said, ‘Look, we’ve tried everything. We need some direct
> action here.’ So I came back here and spoke to some friends, and they
> assembled the best group of activists ever assembled. It was  
> fantastic.
> There were only about 25 of us, but we shut down the mine completely  
> on
> two days and managed to give it much more profile than it had before.
> Suddenly, now open-cast [pit] mining is back on the agenda.”
>
> Within Wales, the protest has helped to create pressure for much
> stricter conditions for mining, including a 500-metre buffer zone
> between a mine and the nearest home, Monbiot added.
>
> “What we didn’t know—and we have since found out, thanks to a lobby
> group called the Coal Forum—[is] that would sterilize all the  
> remaining
> useful coal reserves in Wales,” he said. “Of course, the mining
> communities were built right on the coal. That would effectively wipe
> out open-cast mining in Wales. And then, the Coal Forum points out, if
> this spreads to England, there would be none there either. So we have
> found a way of stopping them.”
>
> In a 2006 foreword to the Canadian edition of Heat, Monbiot called  
> Prime
> Minister Stephen Harper an “irresolute wimp” for claiming Canada could
> no longer meet its Kyoto targets.
>
> “It strikes me that Harper is now greatly improving his rhetoric but
> doing as little as he can get away with,” Monbiot said in the
> restaurant. “That’s my impression. It’s a question of creating  
> enough of
> an impression of action to prevent this from becoming a major  
> political
> liability. Of course, Canada’s projected emissions are catastrophic,
> thanks largely to the tar-sands operations in Alberta.”
>
> http://www.straight.com/article-165166/george-monbiot-stirs-debate-over- 
> ...
>
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