by MARYAM ADRANGI & SK HAUSSAN
PHOTO/Jesse Purcell
TORONTO—Over half of Alberta’s tar sands oil goes to the US, making Canada the single largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States. As popular uprisings unfold across the Middle East, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is trying to facilitate oil exports to the US by making them tax-free, arguing that the US needs “secure” oil from its stable northern allies. Over the past forty years, exploration and production of crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands have spiked in tandem with various wars and occupations involving Canadian and US military.
“[Former US Vice-President Dick] Cheney’s National Energy Policy identified expanding Canadian tar sands production as critical to US security,” says Ricardo Acuna of the Parkland Institute, an Edmonton-based progressive think tank. “Reduced tar sands production would force the US to reduce growth in energy consumption, including for their military.”
Acuna has chronicled spikes in Alberta’s oil production in 1973 and throughout the last decade, which correlate to US (and in some cases Canadian) military involvement in the Yom Kippur war, the Iraqi oil embargo and the ongoing occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Pressure from the US has prevented Canada from developing any type of climate change policy, says Acuna, because an ever-expanding imperial military force in turn requires an expanding source of fossil fuels.
According to the World Watch Institute, emissions from military operations cause six to 10 per cent of global air pollution and contribute significantly to global warming. The Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products in the world, burning through 395,000 barrels of oil a day. Emissions from fighter jets and planes cause disproportionately high impacts on the climate because of the way they mix with atmospheric gasses at high altitudes. Much of this fuel comes from tar sands oil.
The US Air Force consumes about 2.5 billion gallons of aviation fuel per year and accounts for more than half of the Pentagon’s energy use. “Only about 20 per cent of tar sands crude can be refined into oil for a conventional car,” says Macdonald Stainsby of Oil Sands Truth, “but it is almost identical to jet fuel.” This helps explain the demand for tar sands oil, which is costly to extract and refine.
…
The expansion of Canada’s military operations abroad parallels increased domestic militarization.
For example, the Innu people of Nitassinan have long opposed low-level flights near the NATO air force base at Goose Bay in Newfoundland and Labrador. Their resistance began in 1979, when the government moved to expand the low-level flights from 8,000 to 100,000 per year. For the Innu people, resisting NATO’s air force base was a fight for environmental justice, including the protection of caribou and other species on which the Innu people depend, as well as a fight for their traditional ways of life.
In 1989, several women were arrested for occupying the base’s runways. The women served 19 days in a provincial jail before being acquitted of charges. The provincial court ruled that they were not trespassing, as they were occupying their own land.
By the summer of that year, 250 people had been arrested while opposing the NATO proposal. The opposition ultimately forced the military base to be shut down in 2008, according to the International Campaign for the Innu and the Earth.
The Dominion for more