[R-G] Rhetoric and Reality Clash on Obama's First Foreign Visit

[Anthony Fenton]

POLITICS:  Rhetoric and Reality Clash on Obama's First Foreign Visit
By Chris Arsenault
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45830

President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper give a  
joint press conference on Feb. 19 before rows of alternating U.S. and  
Canadian flags.

Credit:White House photo by Pete Souza

VANCOUVER, Feb 20 (IPS) - On his first foreign visit as U.S.  
president, Barack Obama's rhetoric of "hope" and "change" came face to  
face with the hard, divisive policy realities of climate change from  
Canada's tar sands, a growing insurgency in Afghanistan and the  
sputtering world economy.

Some 2,500 spectators lined the streets of Ottawa to watch the  
president's motorcade make its way to Parliament Hill, a marked  
contrast to the thousands of protestors who greeted former President  
George W. Bush during his last Canadian visit. While the Canadian  
public catches Obama fever, environmentalists and some aboriginal  
groups say they've been left in the cold by his energy policies.

"Obama must ask Canada to clean up its tar sands and to respect the  
rights of our aboriginal First Nations," said Chief Allan Adam of the  
Athabasca Chipweyan First Nation, a community near the Alberta tar  
sands, the world's largest energy project.

While promising to press ahead with "carbon reduction technologies,"  
Obama did not mention the tar sands directly during his visit.  
Extracting oil from the tar sands creates three times more greenhouse  
gas emissions than conventional crude.

At the press conference following closed door meetings between  
President Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and their  
aides, the two leaders promised a "clean energy dialogue" focusing on  
plans to trap carbon dioxide underground and improvements to North  
America's electricity grid.

Standing in front of Canadian and U.S. flags, as the pomp and  
circumstance of international diplomacy dictates, Obama called climate  
change and the need to develop clean energy sources "the most pressing  
challenges of our time."

The Natural Resources Defence Council dubs tar sands crude, "the  
world's dirtiest oil." Canada is the largest foreign supplier of oil  
to the U.S., sending more than 1.2 million barrels per day to its  
southern neighbour.

Trade between the two countries is worth more than 1.6 billion dollars  
per day, making it the world's largest trading relationship. In  
addition to energy and the environment, the two leaders discussed  
bailsouts for North America's auto industry and the general economic  
downturn.

"How we produce and use energy is fundamental for our economic  
recovery and also for our security and our planet," said Obama at the  
press conference.

Prior to Obama's Canadian visit, aboriginal and environmental groups  
placed a full-page add in the newspaper USA Today, stating that the  
tar sands "stands in the way of a new energy economy." The day before  
the presidential visit, activists from Greenpeace scaled a bridge in  
Ottawa to hang a banner reading: "Climate Leaders Don't Buy Tar Sands."

During his election campaign, Obama vowed to end the U.S.'s addiction  
to "dirty, dwindling, and dangerously expensive" oil. His campaign's  
energy guru, Jason Grumet, said greenhouse gas emissions from Canada's  
tar sands were "unacceptably high."

In an apparent about-face from his campaign promises, Obama refused to  
characterise tar sands crude as "dirty oil" in a pre-summit interview  
with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. While acknowledging that  
the sands creates "a big carbon footprint," Obama argued that  
technologies, including a plan from Alberta's provincial government to  
store carbon dioxide underground, could solve the problem.

The idea of sequestering and storing greenhouse gases underground,  
known as carbon capture, has yet to be implemented at any tar sands  
operations and critics are sceptical that it can work. The tar sands  
are Canada's fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.  
Presently, tar sands oil extraction pumps 29.5 million tons of  
greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere every year, equivalent to the  
exhaust from more than 5 million cars.

Even if carbon capture technology does prove to be effective, the  
sands create a host of other environmental challenges, water depletion  
being the most significant. Producing one barrel of tar sands oil  
requires at least three barrels of water; there is enough toxic water  
in tar sands tailings ponds to fill 2.2 million Olympic sized swimming  
pools.

"The devastation of our homelands in this short period of time is  
perplexing to my people since it is only a fraction of the time that  
these impacts have occurred compared to the thousands of years we have  
inhabited these lands," said George Poitras, former chief of the  
Mikisew Cree, another aboriginal community close to the tar sands.

In addition to energy and the economy, Obama and Harper also discussed  
the increasing violence in Afghanistan, where Obama has pledged to  
send 17,000 more U.S. troops as part of a "surge." Canada currently  
has 2,500 combat troops stationed around Kandahar who are set to leave  
in 2011.

Obama stated explicitly that he was not requesting more troops or  
money from Canada for the Afghan occupation.

A chorus of military leaders, including a top German general and  
Britain's ambassador in Kabul, have stated that the war cannot be won.

(END/2009)