U.S. oilfield workers are facing a big problem, and it’s not just the depressed prices in the worldwide oil markets.

Those who have jobs, especially the lowest level and dangerous jobs in the oilfields, are at high risk of being stiffed in a variety of ways. And they’ve started to fight back.

Five years ago, when the price of oil was high and fracking operations were ramping up throughout Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Colorado and other states, there were plentiful stories about oilfield workers, many with minimal experience, pulling down six figure incomes. But even though the industry is known for paying high wages, the big paydays are more often due to the total number of hours worked, sometimes with workweeks exceeding 100 hours.

And these workers are very likely to be victims of “wage theft,” a denial of wages by employers wrongly classifying them as exempt from overtime, or paying them flat salaries regardless of the number of hours worked, or reneging on production bonuses.

Still, the money was rolling in, and industry watchers say that workers, if they even knew they were being cheated, were likely to turn a blind eye to the practices.

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Now that many of those workers are idle, they’re speaking up and demanding the pay that they should have received.

The U.S. Department of Labor is on the case. Since 2012, more than 1,100 investigations of industry employers have recovered more than $40 million for more than 29,000 workers nationally according to the DOL.

In 2015, the DOL settled a case against oilfield services giant Halliburton for $18 million dollars. The Department found that the company cheated more than 1,000 workers –field service representatives, pipe recovery specialists, drilling tech advisors, perforating specialists and reliability tech specialists – by not paying them the required overtime.

In March the DOL announced that it found violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime provisions affecting more than 2,500 employees at four companies: Jet Specialties, Frank's International, Viking Onshore Drilling and Stream-Flo USA. The Department said employees at these companies were owed $1.6 million in back wages.

The Way It’s Always Been Done?

The Department of Labor began investigating claims of wage theft in the northeast region in 2012, at the height of the Marcellus Shale boom. Within a year, investigations spread west when it became clearer that wage violations were widespread throughout the industry, says Robin Mallett, a DOL Wage and Hour Division district director in Houston.

Mallett tells DeSmog she’s seen wage violations in the oil and gas industry across all companies —large and small. She stopped short of saying that workers in oil and gas are stiffed more than other industries, but she did say that oil and gas has a very large number of vulnerable workers.

“What we see in oil and gas is a lot of contingent workers, moving from job site to job site. We look at the industry and pay practices and how industry may be set up. The pay structure in oil and gas is fissured, and there’s a lot of subcontracting, with one big company paying another who pays another who pays another until you get to the oilfield workers. The lower you go, the more likely there will be violations, because the money flows through a chain.”

Mallet said the investigations show a pattern of industry violations. These include  classifying employees exempt overtime requirements and then failing to pay an overtime premium regardless of how many hours they work, and failing to include bonus payments workers have received as part of their regular rates of pay when calculating how much overtime is due.

Mallet tells DeSmog she saw deliberate and inadvertent misclassification of oilfield laborers as managers, even though DOL regulations say job titles do not indicate exempt status in order to deny workers overtime pay.  

“We see a lot of explanations from employers we’ve investigated saying ‘this is just how things have always been done in the industry.’” Mallet said. “But it’s not clear when the practices started, or why.”

Mallet admitted that with a small number of DOL investigators, “we’re just making a ripple in changing industry practices.”

#Oil industry cheating its workers in creative ways, now facing lawsuits https://t.co/Io0rCfDgc6 #ableg #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/AzGCltdLz3

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 21, 2016

An increasing number of oilfield workers aren’t waiting for the government to act, and instead are suing their employers for back wages.

Chris Burks, an attorney with the Sanford Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, is currently working on 85 Fair Labor Standards lawsuits. He tells DeSmog there’s been a spike in oil and gas workers suing for back wages now that the boom has gone bust.

“During the boom the money is so good that many of these workers, if they knew they were being cheated, didn’t care,” Burks says.

“They were making upwards of sixty grand a year, but working 120 hours a week, but they were thinking, ‘what’s the alternative?’ When things go south in the industry, that’s when they start to realize they need to act (to get the money they’re owed).”

Burks says the wage violation problems at bigger energy companies usually involve employee misclassification. He adds that a variety of wage violations, including nonpayment or miscalculation of bonuses and not paying overtime, are extremely common in small startups.

“These wildcatters spring up fast and they don’t pay attention to wage and hour laws,” Burks says.

Brian Gonzales, a Colorado attorney representing oil field workers’ wage theft claims, says many of these companies are also cheating the government.

“When they misclassify workers as independent contractors, or don’t pay them the overtime they’re due, that cheats the state out of payroll taxes and unemployment insurance that a company is supposed to pay,” Gonzales says.

Gonzales says the problem is often not a company’s deliberate avoidance of labor and wage laws, but an ignorance of them. 

“Many practices, like paying a worker a flat day rate no matter how many hours they work, have been common in the industry for decades,” Gonzales says, adding that the problems became worse with the fracking boom and the proliferation of startups in the past five years.

Tough Jobs

Laborers in oil and gas don’t don’t get to keep a 9-5 schedule — not in a business that runs 24-7. And many jobs in oil and gas production, in addition to being volatile, are arduous and dangerous.

In 2012, the job search site CareerCast ranked oil rig worker as one of the worst professions, based on work environment, stress, and hiring outlook, just behind journalist.

Workers in the industry are starting to speak out, cautiously and sometimes anonymously, due to the fear of retaliation.

Jack, a retired oilfield worker in the Rocky Mountain region, spoke to DeSmog about decades of wage abuse.  He refused to be identified by his real name due to fear of retaliation on a family member who still works in the oilfields.

“The petroleum industry has the most creative and profitable wage thieves in the world, and they also do it with absolute impunity with a healthy dose of retaliation if you ever even try to get your money,” Jack tells DeSmog.

Working as a production hand and driller on drilling rigs for thirty-five years until he was disabled in 2010 with a work-related injury, Jack claims many “creative” ways his employers cheated him.

“Clear into the 1970's if you were working on a drilling rig you made sure who you were working for to make sure they could and would pay you and then the first time a paycheck was even late you quit and got another job because it was very common for companies to start going broke, steal their workers' wages, and then just go out of business.”

Jack recounts countless promised bonuses that were never paid.

One type is called a "bottom hole bonus,” which is a promise to pay workers anywhere from $5 to say $25 per day for every day they worked at the end of the well or the job.

“But if you quit or got fired before the job was completed the worker did not receive any bottom hole bonus. Sounds simple enough except it was a common practice to ride workers until they quit. Or the company fired them before the end of the job so they didn't have to pay the bonus,” Jack tells DeSmog.

And the lowest level jobs in the oilfield don’t have written contracts, something that companies can knowingly exploit when it comes to paying their employees.

Jack says the most common form of wage violation is being paid a monthly salary instead of being paid for the actual hours worked. “The oilfield runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year, and once you start, you have have to keep drilling and or casing the well because if you stop you lose everything you drilled and maybe even the entire drill string. And there is no telling what might befall the operation so there is no telling how many hours you might have to work.”

Jack and his crew were once forced to work 24 hours straight but were not paid overtime because of the creative way the company split up the week and the pay period. “You can work 12 hours a day for 7 days in a row and only have 4 hours of overtime. And it might seem impossible but I personally watched one man work 72 hours straight.”

Jack and industry watchers say oilfield workers are not guaranteed breaks, even for lunch.

Changes Coming?

Attorneys Burks and Gonzales say with increased scrutiny by the DOL and the spike in wage theft lawsuits, large and small oil and gas companies will end long-held industry practices of skirting wage and hour laws.

“The wave of oilfield wage theft claims is cresting,” Gonzales says. “Within a few years I think we’re going to see significant industry reform.”

Image: Oilfield workers in Colorado. Credit: Wikimedia/National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

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The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

I wrote my last book, Climate Cover-Up, because I wanted to take a deeper look at the science propaganda and media echo chambers that muddied the waters around climate change, fuelled denial of facts and stalled action. The book was a Canadian best seller, was reprinted in Spanish and Mandarin and became the basis of many lectures, panel discussions and presentations I have given around the world since it was published in 2009.

I continued to be perplexed and frustrated by the spin doctoring swirling around the global warming issue, making it easy for people to refute the reality of what’s going on and ignore this critical collective problem. But as time went by I became even more concerned and alarmed by the crazy state of debate today in general — the toxic rhetoric that seems to permeate virtually all of the important issues we face, whether it’s a discussion about vaccinations, refugee immigration, gun control or environmental degradation.

I decided to write another book that would take a deep look at our resistance to change, the human relations and ingrained psychology causing it and the gridlock, inaction and despair that result. 

My new book, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot, is a provocative examination of this growing trend: the sorry state of pollution, polarization and propaganda in the public square. Sometimes it’s intentional, sometimes it’s inadvertent, but the troublesome fact is this toxic mix is coming from all sides and stifling discussion and critical debate.

I wanted to find out how misinformation campaigns work, how we came to a time when facts don’t matter and how we can start having real public conversations again. So I began to explore how these tendencies arise, what spurs us to become close-minded, aggressively vitriolic and most importantly, what we can do about it. I also began to analyze how we can become highly effective communicators, deflect over-the-top advocacy and make our arguments more convincing.

Writing this book has been a fascinating journey, even though I have years of experience in tough issues and crisis management. What surprised and pleased me was the discovery that the intellectual environment is ripe for this discussion, which enabled me to present the collective wisdom of an outstanding set of thinkers who were all eager to share their knowledge.

I distilled more than 60 interviews conducted with everyone from a NASA scientist to a deep-sea oceanographer, from cognitive researchers to authorities on systems thinking. I sat down with an expert on public trust in the House of Lords lunchroom, spent a week with Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh and travelled to the Himalayas to speak with the Dalai Lama. Insights of political pundits, philosophers, moral psychologists, brain scientists, scholars, media gurus and corporate analysts are all included.

I’m Right and You’re an Idiot explains why facts alone don’t lead people to the right decisions; how language is manipulated; how people’s voices are “stolen” or silenced and what that means for democracy. It explains why modern messaging fails, why we are susceptible to misinformation and how trust networks are destroyed.

And it outlines real solutions, because we need to open up space for healthy conversations again, frame our arguments more convincingly and become better communicators by tapping into deeply held values.

Hear James Hoggan speak about his new book May 25th in Vancouver. Tickets here.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

An ugly thread of misspent taxpayer dollars, environmental destruction and conflict-of-interest — backed by a government beholden to the mining industry — runs along the recently completed Northwest Transmission Line, charges acclaimed explorer and scholar Wade Davis.

The $716-million transmission line, budgeted in 2010 at $404-million, snakes 344 kilometres into B.C.’s wilderness, from north of Terrace to Bob Quinn Lake, and, to the alarm of downstream Southeast Alaska residents, the line is opening the area to mining in the headwaters of vital salmon-bearing rivers.

Those concerns have grown exponentially since the Mount Polley tailings dam collapsed in August 2014, sending 24-million cubic metres of toxic debris flowing into Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake, and groups in B.C. and Alaska are warning that a Mount Polley-type disaster in the area known as the Sacred Headwaters, where acidity is likely to be high, would wipe out the multi-billion dollar fishing and tourism industries on both sides of the border.

Davis, a writer, former explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, anthropology professor and B.C. Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of B.C., is appalled at the B.C. government’s decision to encourage mining in the ecologically rich northwest corner of the province and at the lack of government oversight as the pricey Northwest Transmission Line was carved through the wilderness.[view:in_this_series=block_1]

“It’s industrialization of the wilderness. It’s the story of politicians more concerned about the next election than the next generation,” he said.

Davis, who sometimes visits 30 countries a year, loves the wild beauty of B.C.’s northwest corner, which has the world’s largest population of stone sheep, grizzly bears, caribou and wolves.

“It’s not for nothing that it is called the Serengeti of Canada,” he said.

A Sweet Deal for Imperial Metals

All of which makes it inexplicable that the government would forego future high-end tourism opportunities by encouraging mining on a site such as Todagin Mountain where the Red Chris mine, owned by Imperial Metals — the same company that owns the Mount Polley mine— opened in February, he said.

An Energy and Mines Ministry spokesman, responding to questions by e-mail, said the province, Imperial Metals and Tahltan Nation — which approved a co-management agreement with the company in April — have been working to develop wildlife management strategies “to take care of this resource for future generations.”

That does not satisfy Davis, who owns the closest private property to the $650-million Red Chris copper and gold mine and believes the Liberal government has bulldozed ahead with the power line without a proper review and despite public concerns.

“The government was 100 per cent engaged in an effort to make this happen to the point of deceiving the Canadian people and certainly squandering their tax revenue,” he said, questioning the influence of party fundraisers.

Murray Edwards, controlling shareholder of Imperial Metals Corp. — a major donor to the B.C. Liberals — organized a $1-million fundraiser at the Calgary Petroleum Club for Premier Christy Clark shortly before the last election.

B.C. Government Committed to Mining Expansion

It is expected that mining companies will push for concessions, but it is also expected that the government will ask the important questions to minimize environmental damage, said Davis, who has frequently worked with industry and says he has no objection to responsible mining.

“But, here we have a government that is ideologically committed to making (Red Chris) go ahead,” said Davis, who speculates that Imperial Metals was given an easy ride to avoid the perception of a power line to nowhere.

Financial experts believe it was essential for Imperial Metals to get cash flow from Red Chris as soon as possible because Mount Polley remained closed for nearly one year and cleanup costs are estimated at between $67-million and $100-million. In May, the company reported a loss of $33.4 million during the first three months of the year.

The Northwest Transmission Line was billed by government as the engine that would drive economic development in the province’s northwest by powering up revenue-generating mining operations in the richly mineralized area.

So far, Red Chris is the only mine drawing power from the line. After a provincial review, the mine received provincial approval in June to operate the tailings storage pond, which has the same unlined earth and rock dam design as Mount Polley.

Red Chris is likely to be followed by Seabridge Gold’s Kerr-Sulpherets-Mitchell (KSM) mine, in the Unuk River headwaters, which will be one of the world’s largest open-pit copper and gold mines. KSM has received federal and provincial approval and is tying up funding for the $5.3-billion project while obtaining permits. The mine is expected to employ more than 1,000 people for 50 years.

The transmission line is also bringing power to the Tahltan community of Iskut, whose 350 residents previously relied on diesel, and to the $725-million, 195-megawatt AltaGas Forrest Kerr run-of-river independent power project.

AltaGas contributed $180-million of the cost and Imperial Metals contributed $69 million of the $209 million cost to build the Iskut extension. BC Hydro then purchased the extension for about $52 million.

Davis charges that the environmental insensitivities of Imperial Metals were revealed during the extension’s construction when the company clearcut to the edge of the scenic Stewart-Cassiar Highway, instead of leaving a buffer zone of trees as shown in the original plans.

Cutting trees adjacent to the highway is allowed and the company had all necessary permits, according to the ministry.

“As much as possible, the cutting is contained within the right-of-way of the highway to reduce impact to the visual quality of the surrounding landscape. In some instances, due to geotechnical and safety concerns (i.e. slope stability,) the power lines are located away from the highway,” said the ministry spokesman.

Taxpayers on the Hook?

The Iskut project enabled the province to obtain $130 million from the federal Green Infrastructure Fund. But, according to Davis, that is something that should make taxpayers uneasy when they look at the bill of almost $400,000 per resident and he questions labelling the project as green when, during construction, the equivalent of 14,000 logging truckloads of wood were burned.

BC Hydro has said the timber was burned because it was marginal and the long distance to roads and markets made selling it uneconomical.

 A Mining Association of B.C. study estimates the transmission line will attract $15-billion in mining investment, 10,000 jobs and $300 million in annual tax revenue.

However, energy economics expert Marvin Shaffer, adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, would like British Columbians to look carefully at those figures, especially as the province decided to go ahead with the project without a B.C. Utilities Commission review.

“The rate policy in B.C. effectively subsidizes new mines and this was a line that was heavily subsidized,” he said.

Metal mines require large amounts of electricity. The standard industrial rate charged in B.C. is $40 to $50 per megawatt hour, but the draw on power means more power sources are needed and producing electricity from new sources, such as the Site C dam, will cost about $90 per megawatt hour, Shaffer said.

“An individual mine will consume up to 10 per cent of the output of Site C and the price doesn’t cover even half the cost of a new supply,” he said.

“The government argues that it is economic development, so then you have to ask: what are the benefits in subsidizing mining developments?”

Many of the jobs are likely to go to people living outside the province, Shaffer said.

“There might be some stimulus, but it’s not as if it’s going to be employing a lot of British Columbians who would otherwise be unemployed,” he said.

Image Credit: BC Hydro

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The agriculture sector will rise in importance in coming decades as the world warms and moves away from fossil fuels.

That’s the most recent prediction from Jeff Rubin, former chief economist for CIBC World Markets, whose latest book, The Carbon Bubble, forecasts a not-so-distant future in which climate change will open up the possibility for cultivating crops, historically grown in places like Kansas and Iowa, much further north. At the same time, Rubin argues, global dependence on fossil fuels will drop, freeing up capital to migrate to crops like corn and soy.

“There could be some tremendous opportunity for Western Canada, in the same provinces that are likely to be victims of the carbon bubble,” Rubin told DeSmog Canada. “Food is the only real sector in the commodity field that has been resilient, that’s kept its pricing power. You could argue that just that alone is sufficient.”

Agriculture has always played a major role in Canada’s economy. Rod MacRae, associate professor of environmental studies at York University and national food policy expert, notes the food sector trails directly behind energy and automobile manufacturing, employing one in every eight Canadians.

Last year, farm cash receipts (the income from selling commodities combined with direct subsidies) totalled $57.4 billion. To put that in perspective, the auto industry sold $82.6 billion worth of products in 2012, with oil and gas contributing $133 billion to the country’s GDP in 2013.

But the energy industry is currently in trouble: projects in the Alberta’s oilsands are stalled out, with low prices and market access woes resulting in shoddy returns.

Rubin calculates that over the last seven years, the oilsands have lost 70 per cent of share value. Yet land in the prairies has seen double digit annual increases in the same window, he says, pointing to the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board’s 2013 acquisition of 115,000 acres of Saskatchewan farmland as an example of the changing economic terrain.

Droughts in California and British Columbia may further incentivize purchases of prairie lands.

“The strength of food prices themselves are going to make that land valuable,” Rubin says. “But once you start taking into effect the corn belt and a lot of food belts may be migrating to higher latitude regions, which is certainly what all the climate change models are suggesting, then that’s an even more compelling reason.”

Farming in a Hotter World

However, diseases, pests and weeds will also benefit from increased temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide, says York University’s MacRae.

Add in the inevitable rise in extreme weather events (like microburst rainfalls that drop several inches of precipitation in a very localized area) and climate change may have some seriously detrimental side effects on Canadian agriculture.

While MacRae likes Rubin’s argument that the food system should be a greater priority, he questions if current agricultural practices will survive such rapid and significant changes.

If Canada promotes local and organic farms, it might be a different story, he says.

“If we dramatically change the food system, we can create resilience and also mitigate emissions,” MacRae said. “Then, we’re in a much better place to deal with climate change. If we manage that properly, we can create a very viable food system economy.”

That requires government intervention — specifically, a national food strategy, he says.

Without one, MacRae says, “We can’t design anything around big pictures challenges and solutions, because it’s so fragmented and nobody wants to take the lead on it so there’s no way to marshal and coordinate resources.”

Rubin said the transition from an energy-centric to a food-centric economy is already being guided by market forces.

But for MacRae the right type of agricultural industry will require a heavy interventionist approach. He added there hasn’t been an adequate level of government participation in the food system since the Second World War.

A future of carbon taxes, biofuels and local power

But a shift to an agriculture-oriented economy may not just revolve around food, according to John Parkins, professor of rural and environmental sociology at the University of Alberta.

In coming years, oilsands majors like Suncor, Syncrude and Shell may be keenly looking for new opportunities to reinvent themselves, especially if a significant economy-wide carbon tax or another type of polluter-pay system is implemented, he said.

Parkins suggests such transformation may take the form of biofuels, which can range in origin from corn to potatoes to vegetable oils to wood chips. Oilsands companies, he says, are ultimately in the business of transportation: as alternative fuels become more viable, they could significantly reduce the need for fossil fuel-generated energy.

“In a big way, [agriculture] is related to questions about how we electrify the grid and how we put fuel in our vehicles,” he said. “If the solutions become more located within agriculture, then I could see a massive transition. That takes the question around agriculture beyond just the food question to a whole bunch of other sectors.”

Yet that shift will also require some power moves from various levels of government.

While a carbon tax may serve as a stick, capital (which Parkins describes as “agnostic about what sector it’s in”) may need more incentive to invest in socially beneficial areas.

Unfortunately, MacRae reiterates that food or agriculture is rarely a priority for the federal government, making such options significantly less probable. Based on the vague planks in the platform of the three major federal parties, he’s not optimistic that will change soon.

Image Credit: Israel Photo Gallery via Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Two professors of cognitive psychology – Stephan Lewandowsky, from the University of Bristol, and Klaus Oberauer, from the University of Zurich – did a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) this week.

The topic up for discussion was: “The conflict between our brains and our globe: How will we meet the challenges of the 21st century despite our cognitive limitations?”

Climate change was (unsurprisingly) brought up repeatedly. Here are 10 things we learnt about understanding climate change:

1. Climate change is a BIG problem

Let’s face it: even the most optimistic among us can be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of what it means to tackle climate change. How can we push past this barrier?

“I think [this is] a core problem about climate change: Even people who are willing to accept the scientific evidence are paralysed by the enormity of the task,” Lewandowsky said.

“If you scare people without offering a solution then they manage their fear by denying the problem. So, the most important thing is to reinforce that there are solutions and that little steps do add up to something in the end. The situation is serious, yes, but in my view it is not hopeless.”

But what about the notion that yes, climate change exists, but we don’t need to worry because we’ll find ways to 'live with it'?

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. There are certain aspects of climate change that will affect us all and “transcend boundaries,” Lewandowsky answered. This includes sea-level rise, extreme weather events such as flooding and drought, along with the spread of vector-borne diseases and mass migration.

But, as Lewandowsky explained: “There is evidence that if people construe climate change as something that affects them personally, they are more likely to take it seriously and act on the consequences.”

2. Trust the scientific consensus

Given many people may not have the time or scientific background to distinguish between misinformation and fact, one Reddit user asked: what’s the best way to have “a relatively logical opinion of things?”

Oberauer acknowledged that it can often be difficult to distinguish reliable information from propaganda, “given that the propagandists… are often very skilled at pretending to have all the features that characterise reliable information.”

So, what should we do? “On factual questions, I think by and large it is a good idea to trust scientists more than non-scientists,” Oberauer said, “and among the scientists, to trust the predominant consensus (if there is one) more than the maverick position.”

Why is this the best course of action? “That is because a broad consensus among scientists is most likely the result of converging opinions of very clever people who come from very different backgrounds (different personal interests, different biases and prejudices, different knowledge),” Oberauer explained. “It is extremely unlikely that the majority of scientists in a field could be biased or corrupted in the same direction.”

3. Talk about solutions and values

Many of us have been in the situation where a family member insists climate change isn’t real; that it’s just a silly hoax. What’s the best way to respond?

“It is an extremely difficult situation and there is no ‘one size fits all’ answer,” said Lewandowsky. “Chances are, though, that [they] have made up their mind and are committed to their motivated cognition–that is, taking on their beliefs head-on is unlikely to be successful and may just result in anguish and frustration all around.”

Christine Westerback via Creative Commons

So instead, Lewandowsky recommends talking about solutions and values. For example, clean energy helps reduce pollution and thus respiratory diseases, which improves health and the chance to live longer. “So talking about a clean-energy future is often possible without mention of climate change – and indeed I have met people who love their solar panels and are dreaming of electric cars but think climate change is a hoax.”

He adds that there is some evidence pointing to how “Conservatives (who are most likely to oppose the findings from climate science) have strong values relating to ‘purity’, which entails a responsibility to look after the environment.”

4. Cognitive limitations do exist

As Oberauer explained: “The limited capacity of our cognition becomes manifest in many ways. One is that we can remember only a limited amount of new information (for instance, try to remember the names of 10 people newly introduced to you), and that there is a limit on the amount of information that we can juggle with in solving a problem (e.g., solving a complicated algebra problem without external aid such as paper and pencil).”

He continued: “Our research points to interference between mental representations as one major cause: Trying to keep many ideas in mind at the same time we risk that they interfere with each other.”

5. But these limitations can be overcome

While probabilities, and weighing risks, can be difficult to understand, Lewandowsky argues that “it is going too far to say that the brain isn’t capable of understanding probabilities.”

“It is certainly true that people (sometimes) underestimate the probabilities of rare events,” he explained. “However, that does not need to prevent us from acting rationally: One of the great things about being human is that we can self-reflect and identify our own weaknesses and then take corrective action.”

(Recommended reading: Gigerenzer, G.; Gaissmaier, W.; Kurz-Milcke, E.; Schwartz, L. M. & Woloshin, S. Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2008, 8, 53–96.)

6. Politics is a barrier

One Reddit participant raised the issue that when it comes to climate science, many of us aren’t skilled at understanding statistical probabilities, risks and margins of error, and subsequently, climate deniers can then use this to their advantage to sow seeds of confusion.

Lewandowsky agreed this can be a problem: “the very nature of climate data makes them susceptible to misleading interpretation by bad-faith actors.”

But he argued the broader issue is one of politics rather than statistical knowledge.

As he put it: “People also don’t understand lung cancer statistics and yet we were able to legislate tobacco control measures. In the same way, there is no reason why we couldn't also deal with climate change without everybody understanding the statistics.”

Lewandowsky also added that when it comes to politics and climate change, a person’s world view (ideology) can be a “powerful predictor of attitudes towards science.”

“I can ask people 4–5 questions about the free market, and that tells me 66 per cent of the variance in their attitudes towards climate change. Nothing else that I know of comes even close.”

7. Understand personal bias

Are humans inherently biased towards personal gain? Well, sure. “If you want to motivate people, offering them a reward is usually a good idea!” Lewandowsky said. “However, that is far from the whole story.”

“There is a plethora of research that shows that people are far more altruistic than classic economic theory expects.” (Recommended reading: Fehr, E. & Fischbacher, U. The nature of human altruism, Nature, 2003, 425, 785-791)

But let’s take this one step farther. Let’s look at those who receive funding from fossil fuel companies to undermine action on climate change, or those whose profits rely on fossil fuel extraction: how does cognitive bias play into their understanding/acceptance of climate science?

And, how does the mind reconcile  the two opposing things (fossil fuel extraction must continue in order to earn money, but it can't continue if action on climate change is taken)?

Pete Markham via Flickr

“I think often those people appeal to ‘future wealth’ and ‘helping poor people in Africa’ to justify their actions,” Lewandowsky answered.

But politics aside, he argues this attitude is not a priori absurd or immoral. “It is indeed possible to construct economic scenarios that favour continued business as usual. In my view, those scenarios are flawed but they are not inherently absurd – they are, however, Trojan horses for moral travesties.

“Specifically, the issue is whether the benefits of not cutting emissions now (i.e. lower petrol prices) are directed to the same people who later on pay the cost (e.g., from sea level rise). Now, it's quite clear to me that this will not happen: Western countries currently benefit disproportionately from Business as Usual, but the future cost of climate change will be borne by other countries. Thus, even seemingly ‘rational’ economic considerations can become highly unethical if they do not consider this fact.”

(Recommended reading: Singer, P. Climate Change: A Commentary on MacCracken, Toman and Gardiner Environmental Values, 2006, 15, 415–422; Posner, E. A. & Sunstein, C. R. Climate change justice The Georgetown Law Journal, 2008, 96, 1565–1612.)

8. Technology can help debunk misinformation

The internet is a source of endless information – and, with that, comes an infinite source of myths and misinformation. Countering it may seem impossible; this is where technology might be able to help.

For example, Google’s idea to rank websites based on facts when you search is one option Lewandowsky supports “in principle”.

Technology can also be used, in combination with social science, to identify “sock puppets” (a fake internet persona created by an unknown person) and “people who seek to scam online fora via multiple identities." It can also be used to help keep trolls out of comment streams, Lewandowsky suggests.

As he explains: “There is evidence to suggest that comment streams are important and can unduly shape people's perception of an issue (i.e. not by the facts or arguments but by the emotive quality), and so this is a real challenge to deal with that’ll require both technology and clever social architectures.”

9. Nudge and inoculate

There have been many advances in understanding flaws in human rationality – one user asked: how do we prevent this from being exploited by propagandists?

“Psychological knowledge can be exploited for good and for bad goals, just like any other scientific knowledge,” acknowledged Lewandowsky.

“Concerning resistance to propaganda, we know from work on inoculation theory that warning people ahead of time can help them not be unduly swayed by propaganda”. (Recommended reading: Banas, J. A. & Rains, S. A. A Meta-Analysis of Research on Inoculation Theory Communication Monographs, 2010, 77, 281–311.)

He continued: “Another way in which we can ensure that psychological knowledge is used appropriately is by following the ‘nudge’ approach, which entails the design of choice architectures to nudge people's behaviour without removing their freedom of choice. Those architectures can be designed by free democratic debate (e.g., whether to opt in or opt out of organ donations).”

10. Dictatorships are not the answer

Do we need a more ‘totalitarian’ style government to enforce the policies needed to address climate change? Short answer: no.

Lewandowsky’s longer answer, however, turns the question on its head: “Concerning the future, I would be far more concerned about the totalitarianism that may threaten us if we do nothing about climate change.

“Imagine the current number of refugees in the Mediterranean multiplied by a factor of 10 or 100: How much stress would that put on our democracies? Indeed, there is evidence that climate change and violent conflict are strongly associated… and violent conflict and democracy don’t exactly go together well.” (Recommended reading: Hsiang, S. M. & Burke, M. Climate, conflict, and social stability: What does the evidence say? Climatic Change, 2014, 123, 39–55.)

He continued: “By contrast, pricing externalities (by putting a price on carbon) is a trivial stressor for a functioning democracy.

“So if we act before the problem becomes unmanageable then I see no conflict between climate mitigation and democracy – it is only if we leave it too late that we will have created a serious threat of totalitarianism by our inaction. Bottom line: to avoid totalitarianism, act on climate change now.”

“I personally believe that to master future challenges we need a lot more democracy than less of it,” Lewandowsky added. “Whether we will achieve that is an open question but it’s ours to address and answer by our actions.”

Photo: Peter via Flickr

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Just because TransCanada continually states that the Keystone XL pipeline will be the safest pipeline ever built, doesn’t mean it is true.

The company’s pipeline construction record is facing intense scrutiny in America’s heartland, where many see no justifiable rationale to risk their water and agricultural lands for a tar sands export pipeline.

New documents submitted as evidence in the Keystone XL permitting process in South Dakota — including one published here on DeSmog for the first time publicly — paint a troubling picture of the company’s shoddy construction mishaps. This document, produced by TransCanada and signed by two company executives, details the results of its investigation into the "root cause" of the corrosion problems discovered on the Keystone pipeline.

TransCanada Corporation is continuing its push to build the northern route of the Keystone XL pipeline. On July 27, the company appeared at a hearing in Pierre, South Dakota, to seek recertification of the Keystone XL construction permit that expired last year. 

The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission must decide if TransCanada can guarantee it can build the pipeline under the conditions set in 2010, which it must do in order to have the permit reapproved.

High-profile spills and other incidents already tar TransCanada’s safety record. The company faces at least two known ongoing investigations by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). The incident records of the southern route of the Keystone XL (renamed the Gulf Coast Pipeline) and the Keystone 1 Pipeline call into question TransCanada’s claim that its pipelines are among the safest ever built. 

Over the last couple of years TransCanada’s public relations team, with the help of friendly regulators, have kept critical evidence away from the public and quashed many media inquiries.

But evidence of TransCanada’s poor performance continues to emerge. Earlier this year, DeSmog obtained documents revealing extreme external corrosion in a section of the Keystone 1 pipeline that was only two years old.

This figure from TransCanada's "root cause analysis" report shows damage to the Keystone pipeline.   

Documents the group obtained during discovery show that the corrosion occurred dangerously close to the Mississippi River near St. Louis.

“Talk about a near miss,” Robin Martinez, a lawyer for the grassroots citizens group Dakota Rural Action fighting to stop the permit, told DeSmog.

"Had the pipeline failed, the drinking water supply for a significant number of people could have been destroyed,” Martinez said.

“The Commission is abrogating its responsibility by refusing to look at evidence we want to present,” Martinez told DeSmog.“ It is abundantly clear to us the Commission doesn't want to look at anything from any other agencies.”  

Although Dakota Rural Action was denied the opportunity to enter into evidence documents showing TransCanada failed to follow the federally mandated code of construction while building the southern route of the Keystone XL, Martinez still believes he can present a very strong case against TransCanada’s permit renewal request.

“Granting a permit would be a risky venture for South Dakota, putting the state’s land and water at risk,” he said.

According to Martinez, the witnesses the group will present, including Evan Vokes, former TransCanada employee turned whistleblower, will make it clear that TransCanada’s corporate culture put profits over safety.

A report by DeSmog earlier this year revealed an alarming rate of external corrosion to parts of TransCanada’s Keystone 1 pipeline. Documents obtained through a freedom of information act request indicated the pipeline was 95% corroded, leaving it paper-thin in one area (one-third the thickness of a dime) and dangerously thin in three other places, causing TransCanada to immediately shut it down.

In fact, TransCanada’s instrument readings state it was 96.8% corroded.

Due to PHMSA’s open investigation of the pipeline, regulators refused to turn over any documents that might explain the cause of the pipeline failure. 

But lawyers for the Dakota Rural Action group were able to compel TransCanada to turn over documents to which DeSmog and other media sources had been denied acess to — documents the group entered into evidence and is making public.

The documents include TransCanada’s root cause analysis explaining what caused the external corrosion incident in the Keystone 1 pipeline, where it took place and what the damaged pipeline looked like. The report shows how close to a catastrophic failure that pipeline was before a mandatory test exposed the problem. 

What caused such deep corrosion in Keystone 1 in a short period of time? Stray current interference, the company argues. A spokesperson for TransCanada told Politico the problems were linked to “low –voltage electric currents from the Keystone and a nearby pipeline interfering with one another.”

In laymen’s terms, that means “a bunch of professional engineers were behaving badly,” Vokes told DeSmog, “because there are adequate checks and balances in the regulations to avoid this.”

Vokes was not surprised when he reviewed the root cause analysis report, although it was the first time he saw photos of the pipeline’s coating that looked as if “it had been gnawed at by rats.”

When the line was shut down, Vokes advised reporters to look into what happened because he suspected that something very serious had gone wrong. “You don’t shut a pipe down that earns millions of dollars a day over a small anomaly,” he said. And that is how TransCanada described the incident to reporters in 2012.

Even with such damaging evidence, Vokes has doubts the Keystone XL permit will be denied.

“How are we supposed to have a fact-based hearing if the Commission won’t admit the documents into evidence?“ Vokes wonders.

TransCanada’s technical shortcomings are not the only hurdle the company has to overcome. The company is being challenged by Native American tribes. “Tribes have a trump card — the treaty rights,” Gary Dorr, of the Nez Perce Nation told DeSmog. “Treaty rights are the supreme law of the land.”

*The hearings will stream live on the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission site.

Image credit: Protest against the Keystone XL pipeline in Ft. Pierre, South Dakota on July 26, 2015.  © Doug Grandt

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There are no residents or buildings in the municipality of Jumbo, B.C. The only development proposal planned for the voterless town — the Jumbo Glacier Ski Resort — has been sent back to the drawing board by the province and a Supreme Court judge is considering an application to dissolve the municipality.

But, for now, activity in the Jumbo Glacier Mountain Resort Municipality will continue as usual, says Mayor Greg Deck.

The Kootenays municipality of Jumbo was created by the provincial government (some say undemocratically) in 2012 for the sole purpose of dealing with the controversial Jumbo Glacier Resort project, but in July the Environment Ministry allowed its environmental certificate to expire after ruling the project had not been substantially started in time to meet its permit deadline.

Read Democracy Interrupted: How Jumbo Glacier Resort Became a Municipality with No Residents

That means plans for a massive all-season, wilderness ski resort in the heart of the Jumbo Valley must either be scrapped or proponents must start from scratch and ask the province for a new environmental assessment.

“We want to finish the Official Community Plan by the end of the year. We don’t want it to be a problem because it was left undone. It’s a good insurance policy,” Deck told DeSmog Canada.

“We are doing business as usual with an eye on how the proponents will work out the differences with the province,” said Deck, former mayor of Radium Hot Springs and chair of the Columbia Basin Trust.

The project has a long, controversial history. In 1991, Oberto Oberti of Pheidias Project Management Corp. and Glacier Resorts first envisioned a massive all-season ski resort in the wilderness, about 55 kilometres west of Invermere, but the project was bitterly opposed by environmental groups, the Ktunaxa First Nation and many local residents.

Despite the opposition, the province granted an Environmental Assessment Certificate in 2004 and it was renewed in 2009. But progress on constructing the 6,300 bed resort before the October 2014 deadline was almost non-existent and Environment Minister Mary Polak pulled the certificate.

A spokeswoman for the Community, Sport and Cultural Development Ministry said the proponent’s choices now include seeking a judicial review of Polak’s decision or resubmitting the proposal.

“Regardless of the proponent’s decision the municipality will remain intact until a decision is made by government about its future,” she said.

Resort spokesman Tommaso Oberti could not be contacted by DeSmog Canada, but, after Polak’s decision, he told media outlets that directors are reviewing the decision and plan to speak to ministry officials about ways to move forward.

A hint of the next step came in a February 2014 letter from Oberto Oberti to Deck which said “If everything else failed, (which I really think is an impossible case), Glacier would simply re-apply for the [environmental assessment] certificate.”

Deck does not see any problem with the municipality continuing to do business.

“I wouldn’t rule out a development proposal yet…and I am optimistic the municipality will survive,” he said.

However, Jumbo council has decided to defer accepting the annual Small Community Grant of $200,000.

“We thought it prudent to say ‘hang on to it for now,’” Deck said.

“There is a notion that we would be profligate just because we are in favour of destination resorts, but we are very frugal with the funding we have and our previous funding allows us to continue for the rest of the year.”

The municipality initially received a $260,000 provincial grant and, since 2012, has received the grant of $200,000 a year, most of which has been spent on building a bridge into the municipality and legal fees. About $50,000 in federal gas tax money has also flowed to Jumbo.

Another threat to the municipality’s existence is an application to the B.C. Supreme Court by the West Kootenay EcoSociety to dissolve the municipality.

Lawyers for the EcoSociety argued in court last week that the province exceeded its discretionary powers by creating a municipality with no voters. Justice Grace Choi has reserved her decision.

EcoSociety executive director David Reid said he is not expecting a fast decision, as it is a complicated case that challenges the discretion of the cabinet and the use of public resources to support corporate interests.

Even though the environmental assessment certificate for the resort has been yanked, the Jumbo Valley remains at risk for as long as the municipality exists, Reid said.

“Does it sit there forever? Is there no deadline?” he asked.

Image Credit: Lynne Martel via Pique Magazine

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This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

On July 15, a state-of-the-art new pipeline near Fort McMurray, Alberta, ruptured, spilling five million litres of bitumen, sand and waste water over 16,000 square metres — one of the largest pipeline oil spills in Canadian history. Two days later, a train carrying crude oil from North Dakota derailed in Montana, spilling 160,000 litres and forcing evacuation of nearby homes.

At the same time, while forest fires raged across large swathes of Western Canada — thanks to hotter, dryer conditions and longer fire seasons driven in part by climate change — Canadian premiers met in St. John’s, Newfoundland, to release their national energy strategy.

The premiers’ Canadian Energy Strategy focuses on energy conservation and efficiency, clean energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. But details are vague and there’s no sense of urgency. We need a response like the U.S. reaction to Pearl Harbor or the Soviet Sputnik launch!

The premiers seemingly want it both ways. Despite its call to “Build on the ongoing efforts of individuals, businesses, governments and others to improve energy efficiency, lower the carbon footprint, and improve understanding of energy in Canada,” the strategy promotes fossil fuel business as usual, including expanded pipeline, oilsands and liquefied natural gas development, including more fracking.

The premiers’ plan is a non-binding framework, described as a “flexible, living document that will further enable provinces and territories to move forward and collaborate on common energy-related interests according to their unique strengths, challenges and priorities.” It doesn’t include specifics on how to revamp our energy production and distribution systems, but buys time until the next elections roll around.

Although the language about climate change and clean energy is important, the strategy remains stuck in the fossil fuel era. As Climate Action Network Canada executive director Louise Comeau said in a news release, “Governments discriminate against smoking and toxics in food and consumer products. What’s needed now is discriminatory policy against fossil fuels if we are going to drastically reduce the carbon pollution putting our health and well-being at risk.”

Fossil fuel development has spurred economic development, created jobs and provided many other benefits, but the risks now outweigh those benefits. The costs in dollars and lives of pollution, habitat and wildlife degradation, pipeline and railcar spills, and climate change — all getting worse as populations grow, energy needs increase and fossil fuel reserves become increasingly scarce and difficult to exploit — have become unsustainable.

Even job creation is no longer a reason to continue our mad rush to expand development and export of oil sands bitumen, fracked gas and coal. Many fossil fuel reserves are now seen as stranded assets that will continue to decline in value as the world shifts to clean energy and the scramble to exploit resources gluts the market. The Climate Action Network points out that Clean Energy Canada’s 2015 report on renewable energy trends showed that “global investors moved USD$295 billion in 2014 into renewable energy-generation projects — an increase of 17 percent over 2013.”

Yet, many of our leaders are still pinning their hopes on rapid oilsands expansion, massive increases in fracking for liquefied natural gas and new and expanded pipelines across the country — with benefits flowing more to industry than citizens.

It’s refreshing to see provincial premiers at least recognizing the threat of climate change and the need to address it through conservation, efficiency and clean technology, but we need a far greater shift to keep the problems we’ve created from getting worse. There are many benefits to doing so, including more and better jobs, a stronger economy, healthier citizens and reduced health-care costs, and greater preservation of our rich natural heritage.

The recent spate of pipeline and railcar oil spills, along with disasters like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, are the result of rapid expansion of fossil fuel development, as industry and governments race to get the dirty products to market before demand dries up.

Canada’s premiers should take these issues seriously and commit to a faster shift from fossil fuels as they continue to develop their energy strategy. They must also stress the importance of having similar, stronger action from the federal government — and so should we all.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image Credit: Two Island Films

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A pipeline at Nexen Energy’s Long Lake oilsands facility southeast of Fort McMurray, Alberta, spilled about five million liters (32,000 barrels or some 1.32 million gallons) of emulsion, a mixture of bitumen, sand and water, Wednesday afternoon — marking one of the largest spills in Alberta history.

According to reports, the spill covered as much as 16,000 square meters (almost 4 acres). The emulsion leaked from a “feeder” pipe that connects a wellhead to a processing plant.

At a press conference Thursday, Ron Bailey, Nexen vice president of Canadian operations, said the company "sincerely apologize[d] for the impact this has caused." He confirmed the double-layered pipeline is a part of Nexen's new system and that the line's emergency detection system failed to alert officials to the breach, which was discovered during a visual inspection. 

At this time, the company claims to have the leak under control, according to CBC News.  

Nexen's "failsafe" system didn't detect massive pipeline spill: http://t.co/ULEnxlmQEN pic.twitter.com/DmChECTUX7

— Anna Mehler Paperny (@amp6) July 17, 2015

The spill comes at a particularly bad time for Canada’s premiers, who are poised to sign an agreement three years in the making to fast-track the approval process for new oil sands pipelines while weakening commitments to fight climate change, according to Mike Hudema, a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace.

“As provincial premiers talk about ways to streamline the approval process for new tar sands pipelines, we have a stark reminder of how dangerous they can be,” Hudema said in a statement. “This leak is also a good reminder that Alberta has a long way to go to address its pipeline problems and that communities have good reasons to fear having more built.”

New pipelines would lead to more development of the tar sands, Canada’s fastest growing source of carbon emissions, Hudema said. “We need to stop new pipeline projects before they’re built and focus on building renewable sources of energy that are sustainable and won’t threaten communities, our environment, and the planet.”

Raw footage of the emulsion spill from CBC News.

Canada’s premiers aren’t alone in seeking to remove barriers to new pipeline construction in order to get more tar sands flowing out of Alberta. It recently came to light that Wisconsin officials worked with an attorney and lobbyist for Canadian pipeline company Enbridge to draft a controversial provision placed into the 2015 Wisconsin Budget that would fast-track expansion of the company's Line 61 pipeline, what’s been called a “Keystone XL clone.”

Nexen and Alberta regulators say it’s too soon to determine what caused the pipeline failure Wednesday, or how long it was leaking before it was shut off. The emulsion has so far not reached any bodies of water, according to reports, but did flow into muskeg or bog.

This is the biggest spill at least in recent Alberta history. Last March, 2.7 million liters of condensate (about 17,000 barrels, or 700,000 gallons), used to dilute heavy oil so it flows through pipelines, were spilled at Murphy Oil’s Seal oilfield in northwestern Alberta.

In 2011, 4.5 million litres of oil (over 28,000 barrels, or 1.2 million gallons) leaked from a Plains Midstream pipeline into marshlands near the northern Alberta community of Little Buffalo. A year later, about half a million litres of oil spilled from another Plains pipeline into the Red Deer River in central Alberta.

Plains Midstream is a subsidiary of Houston-based Plains All-American Pipeline, the company that owns the pipeline that spilled 105,000 gallons (2,500 barrels) of oil near Santa Barbara, California earlier this year.

Image Credit: CBC via Youtube.

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The B.C. government plans to subsidize Malaysian gas giant Petronas to the tune of $16 million, in part due to a promise to exclude a significant chunk of the greenhouse gas emissions from the Pacific Northwest LNG project from compliance penalties, DeSmog Canada has learned.

British Columbia’s politicians are in a special summer sitting at the legislature right now to debate Bill 30, the Liquefied Natural Gas Project Agreements Act, which will allow the government to enter into a $36 billion agreement with Petronas and pave the way for B.C.’s first major liquefied natural gas export plant, located near Prince Rupert.

Under the terms of the 140-page deal, the province would compensate the LNG consortium if future governments raise income tax rates for LNG operations, add carbon taxes that specifically target the industry or make changes to rules on greenhouse gas emissions. That could result in the province paying out $25 million a year or more.

While the compensation clause has commanded the lion’s share of attention, DeSmog Canada has learned that the B.C. government has quietly excluded two sources of Petronas’ emissions from compliance standards, which will result in the province paying out millions of dollars in subsidies.

The Loophole that Will Let Petronas Off the Hook for Emissions

In promising the world’s “cleanest LNG facilities,” Premier Christy Clark set benchmark requirements for the facilities’ emissions. If a company fails to meet the benchmark, they must pay compliance penalties into a climate offset or green technology fund.

However, the province has also created the “LNG Environmental Incentive Program,” which promises to pay a significant portion — between 50 and 100 per cent — of those compliance fees if companies come close to meeting the benchmark.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, now — as part of the agreement between the B.C. government and Petronas — the government has quietly excluded two types of emissions from the equation, which means Petronas will edge closer to the emissions benchmark, qualifying them for more money from the province.

According to Matt Horne, the Pembina Institute’s associate regional director for B.C., the altered environmental incentive agreement with Petronas —currently being considered in the B.C. legislature — “flew totally under the radar.”

Last-Minute Deal a Subsidy to Pollute

The altered environmental incentive agreement essentially acts as a subsidy that gives Petronas the right to pollute for free.

Chris Tollefson, lawyer with the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre, said the tweaked environmental incentive program doesn’t hold the LNG industry accountable for its emissions and reduces the incentive to have cleaner operations.

“Under this subsidy regime, if you are an LNG operator, why bother investing in state-of-the-art GHG reductions technology to meet the LNG benchmark target, when government must reimburse you each year for up to 100 per cent of the cost of buying ‘compliance units’ that bring you into deemed compliance with the target?” Tollefson said.

“I’m highly skeptical about subsidizing private companies so that it can be said they comply with government’s environmental targets.”

The Emissions the B.C. Government is Willing to Ignore

The issue centres around two types of emissions — “entrained” emissions and “emergency” emissions.

Horne said the exclusion of these emissions under the environmental incentive program is “inconsistent” with the province’s emissions reporting rules and “represents a big disconnect” from regulations.

Entrained emissions usually refer to the carbon dioxide that must be removed from natural gas before it can be transported by pipeline or liquefied for transport via tanker. These emissions are usually flared or vented directly into the atmosphere. Horne estimates the entrained emissions for the Pacific Northwest LNG project will count for just over six per cent of total emissions, based on information submitted in the project’s environment assessment.

Similarly, emergency emissions must be vented or flared as the result of an accident or to avoid one, and tend to be high in the first few years of a plant’s life as operations are stabilized.  

Emergency emissions are much more difficult to estimate as they vary from plant to plant and over time, but can add up to a huge portion of emissions in a project’s early years.

“What you definitely have with this arrangement is that, at a minimum, because of that exclusion of entrained emissions, Petronas and others would qualify for a bigger subsidy under the program than they would have initially,” Horne said.

“Essentially what they’re doing is saying Petronas gets a free pass on this entrained portion of their emissions. That moves them closer to the benchmark right off the bat and because of that, the closer they get, the bigger the proportional subsidy, the bigger the share of the compliance cost the province kicks in.”

For the Pacific Northwest LNG project, Petronas could pay as much as $12 million in penalties while receiving a subsidy of $16 million from the province, Horne said.

The weakened incentive program is likely to act as a template for future LNG projects in B.C., he added.

“I’m surprised the environmental incentive program is one of the features locked in to the [project agreement].”

The B.C. Ministry of Environment told DeSmog Canada both entrained and emergency emissions must still be reported under the Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act but were excluded from the environmental incentive program because they fell outside of a LNG facility operator's control.

"Entrained CO2 and emergency events may be outside of the ability of the facility to control or anticipate and it was felt a facility should not be excluded from the program…because of an infrequent event that is out of their control," a spokesperson with the Ministry of Environment said.

NDP environment critic Spencer Chandra Herbert said the change alters the agreement substantially “so that effectively Petronas can pollute scot-free and in the future if any government wants to stop them from polluting our climate and air we have to pay them.”

“It really shows the lie of the B.C. government’s clean LNG promise.”

Chandra Herbert said Petronas fought for emission exemptions, but that B.C. went above and beyond when locking in the exemptions for the long term.

“The government didn’t just give Petronas two or three years to release emergency emissions — they gave it to them for 25 years plus. They can pollute pedal to the metal and they don’t have to pay any penalties or any carbon tax,” he said.

B.C.’s LNG Climate Inconsistency

According to the project application, based on 2011 data, Pacific Northwest LNG will account for nearly a tenth (8.5 per cent) of all of B.C.’s annual emissions.

The project is expected to emit 5.28 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent each year. The target for the entire province’s carbon pollution by 2050 is 13 megatonnes per year.

In an analysis recently performed for the Pembina Institute, Horne estimated the carbon pollution from Pacific Northwest LNG could increase to up to 10.7 megatonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030 due to the climate impact of fracking for natural gas.

Chandra Herbert said it makes little sense to approve a project that will pollute at such dramatically high levels it will come close to blowing the province’s entire 2050 carbon budget.

“When you have a law that says we have to reduce emissions by 30 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050, but one plant comes close to polluting as much as we’ve allotted for the entire province, that’s a huge problem,” he said. “This is all spin. From the beginning, the government promised to deliver clean LNG, the cleanest in the world, but they can’t and they won’t.”

Kathryn Harrison, professor of political science at the University of British Columbia, recently told the New York Times that the B.C. government’s push to develop LNG (there are presently 20 LNG projects proposed) “will make it virtually impossible for British Columbia to meet its greenhouse gas targets.”

She said for a province that considers itself a climate leader, significant LNG development is “a huge change of direction.”

Photo: Christy Clark poses with Petronas CEO and chairman, Tan Sri Dato’ Sahmsul Azhar Abbas via Flickr.

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It's not necessarily a competition you should be particularly keen to win, but which country in the world has the most climate change “sceptics”?

Most people would probably hazard a guess at the United States, what with its preponderance of climate science denialist think tanks, conservative television and radio hosts and politicians who think it’s all a hoax.

But a new study that analysed identical surveys carried out across 14 industrialised nations has found that when it comes to climate science denial, Australia tops the pile.

Published in the journal Global Environmental Change, the study found that 17 per cent of Australians were “climate sceptics”. 

Norwegians come in second at 15 per cent, followed by New Zealanders at 13 per cent and then Americans at 12 per cent. The UK was ranked joint fifth, together with Sweden and Finland, where 10 per cent of people were sceptics. The lowest ranked country for climate scepticism was Spain, where only two per cent of people were classified as climate sceptics. The authors wrote: 

Climate scepticism persists despite overwhelming scientific evidence that anthropogenic climate change is occurring.

The study, authored by two scientists at the University of Tasmania, used data from surveys carried out in 14 countries in 2010 and 2011.

While the survey did not directly ask people if they accepted the science linking climate change to human activities, the respondents were asked how dangerous rising temperatures would be for the environment.

People who thought rising temperatures were “not very dangerous” or “not dangerous at all” and who also thought claims about environmental issues were exaggerated were classed as “climate sceptics”. While the authors accept in the paper that their approach was limited, they argue that the method enables them to do a valuable comparison of scepticism across countries.

Generally, the study found that climate scepticism tended to be associated with a lack of trust in governments and “positive attitudes” towards private enterprise.  Sceptics also tended to be male and tended to vote conservative.

The researchers also tried to test the idea that climate sceptics tended to also be generally unconcerned about environmental issues, but found those two measures were only modestly linked with each other.

Across all countries, the authors wrote that only three factors — “political orientations (conservative), gender (male) and being unconcerned about environmental issues” — were “relatively consistent predictors” climate change scepticism.

The findings tend to support other studies that have found that conservative ideologies and support for private enterprise are strong indicators of climate scepticism and denial. The authors of the Global Environmental Change study concluded:

Low levels of trust in ‘the people in government’ is associated with climate scepticism, as is valuing private enterprise to solve economic problems. Rejecting government intervention in the reduction of income inequality also reflects laissez-faire attitudes towards ‘big government’ among climate sceptics.

But the finding that Australians, Norwegians and New Zealanders are more sceptical the Americans is surprising.

Last year, a survey from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication found that only 66 per cent of US voters thought that climate change was happening. 

Only 51 per cent of registered voters thought that global warming was mostly caused by climate change. But like the Global Environmental Change study, the Yale survey also found that conservatives tended to reject the evidence of human caused climate change. Among the most conservative Republicans, only 22 per cent were willing to accept that climate change was mostly caused by human activities.  

Image credit: Flickr/Jo Christian Oterhals

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