This is a guest post by Torrance Coste, Vancouver Island campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, an organization working with local groups and individuals to stop the Raven Coal Mine.

Monday, March 2nd was a tense day for those of us monitoring the Raven Coal Mine proposal. After a 30-day screening period, the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) was set to announce whether or not the application to mine close to 30 million tonnes of coal and rock in the Comox Valley would advance to final environmental review.

Then, just hours before the announcement, proponent Compliance Energy abruptly withdrew its application.

Frankly, this took us by surprise. The company’s first proposal was rejected by the EAO in May 2013 because it was missing hundreds of pages of required information. When Compliance made its resubmission earlier this year, the company stated it was confident that all previous shortcomings had been addressed and the application was complete.

But as we’ve seen with other controversial, ecosystem-threatening proposals — from the Northern Gateway pipeline to the New Prosperity Mine in Tsilhqot’in Territory — projects don’t move ahead if they don’t have social licence.

And on that front, Compliance Energy isn’t even close.

From day one, Raven has seen a groundswell of opposition on Vancouver Island, perhaps most fiercely in Fanny Bay, the shellfish-producing community located less than five kilometres downhill from the mine site.

John Snyder — president of CoalWatch Comox Valley, the scrappy grassroots society that has done tremendous work raising the alarm and unifying opposition to Raven — lives in Fanny Bay. For residents there, it’s all about water. Unless Compliance can guarantee that the mine won’t impact local water, John says there’s no way it can proceed. He and many others agree that this guarantee is impossible, so the mine is a non-starter for them.

And Fanny Bay is just the tip of the iceberg. No Coal Mine signs dot lawns, windows and telephone poles all across the Comox Valley. All four municipal governments in the area have passed motions opposing the proposal, and the K’ómoks First Nation has expressed concern about the mine’s impact on its treaty negotiations and shellfish interests.

From the mine, coal would be transported in some of the biggest trucks the Island has ever seen, over highways 19 and 4 to the Alberni Valley. Many in Port Alberni, including the Mayor, have questioned whether the minimal benefits of the port justify this sacrifice.

In its letter to the EAO, Compliance said it was withdrawing its application due to concerns about public “misinformation.” To date, only EAO staff and members of the project working groups have seen the revised proposal. If the application was thorough and complete like Compliance has promised, why not move ahead with the review and get the information out in the open?

Calling the public misinformed and then terminating one of the processes that would provide them with information is like claiming you’ve made an award-winning wine and dumping it all on the ground before anyone can taste it.

Environmental threats aside, the Wilderness Committee opposes Raven because it is the sort of utterly unsustainable development we need to be shifting away from on Vancouver Island. We need economic activity and employment opportunities, but all jobs aren’t created equal. We should prioritize activities that can continue on an indefinite or at least a long-term basis. We’ll strengthen our communities by building careers, not offering a couple years of work to a lucky few.

I know shellfish growers in Fanny Bay whose families have been in this industry for three or four generations. There are other sectors, like agriculture, tourism, manufacturing and even forestry, that can provide income and stability on a potentially infinite basis (if they’re given a chance and properly managed).

Coal mining is simply not one of these industries. Mines rarely last the span of even a single career — Compliance’s president has switched continents three times during his own. The Raven mine would operate for a maximum of sixteen years, after which any economic benefit would disappear forever.

The Raven mine has been a dark cloud over the Island since 2009. Passionate citizens have spent thousands of hours meeting, organizing and working to protect their home. It’s hard to say how many hours (and taxpayer dollars) have been spent dealing with the proposal at the EAO.

We’ll be waiting should Compliance re-submit its proposal yet again, as it has vowed it will. However, the project has never been less popular, and this latest withdrawal only strengthens our view that the proponent isn’t committed to the Island’s communities or our shared environment.

Compliance Energy doesn’t have public trust, and frankly, it doesn’t deserve it.

Twitter @TorranceCoste

Image Credit: B.C. Shellfish Growers Association

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This is a guest post by sustainable energy economist Mark Jaccard, originally published in the Vancouver Sun and reposted with permission. More of his writing can be found at markjaccard.com.

George Orwell used parody and caricature to expose the propaganda lies of the fascists and communists who threatened humanity in the mid-20th century. Today, his talents are badly needed to counter the propaganda of corporate executives who seek self-enrichment by accelerating the burning of the coal, oil and gas here and abroad.

The world’s leading scientists agree that carbon pollution from burning these fuels is rapidly heating the planet, which will cause massive species extinction and great harm to humanity through increased droughts, storms, floods and ocean acidification. We should not be building new coal mines, oilsands plants, oil pipelines and coal ports unless the users of these fuels capture and store the carbon pollution (which is technically feasible).

The obvious necessity is to stop expanding carbon polluting infrastructure while using trade pressure and diplomacy to work with like-minded jurisdictions in preventing this expansion in all countries. We won’t convince the Chinese to burn less oil and coal if we’re trying to sell them more and burning more ourselves. Difficult as this global task is, there is no other way to prevent the harm scientists predict, some of which is already happening.

This scientific reality creates a challenge for people still bent on increasing carbon pollution for self-enrichment: they need to convince us that the bad they are perpetrating is somehow good. They need to apply the doublespeak that Orwell exposed so effectively in books like 1984 and Animal Farm.

Janet Holder is the senior executive at Enbridge responsible for the Northern Gateway pipeline that will expand oilsands production and carbon pollution — in other words that will harm our children. Her opinion piece on Aug. 7 makes sure to say the opposite: “we cherish our extraordinary natural environment and hold very strong convictions about protecting it for our kids and grandkids.” She then explains that her corporation is making sure no oil is spilled on land and sea. She avoids mentioning the devastation to that very land and sea that hers and similar projects would cause through increased carbon pollution and climate change.

Orwell would not be surprised. He would understand that the very person who might — if she succeeds — become the most responsible in B.C. for causing harm to our children and grandchildren would not present herself that way. As he observed, “we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue.”

He would also not be surprised by the litany of false rationalizations used by the promoters of carbon pollution. They tell us “we’re not going to stop using gasoline tomorrow.” In fact, we need to start phasing out the burning of gasoline today so that we won’t be using it in 30 years. Expanding oil infrastructure goes in the wrong direction. Instead, we should be regulating or pricing carbon pollution and using other vehicle and fuel policies to gradually convert our transportation system to some combination of zero-emission electricity and biofuels. And corporations like Enbridge, if they truly had our children’s interests in mind, would be leading the charge in calling for these policies and promoting non-polluting options.

Another false argument is that we need the jobs and tax revenue from oil pipelines and other carbon polluting projects. But should we accept the idea that we can only create a wealth-producing economy in the short-term by destroying our environment and economy in the long-term? Humans have an enormous capacity to generate economic well-being, some of it based on extraction of natural resources in ways that don’t lead to carbon pollution, much of it based on the non-extractive ingenuity unleashed by market economies.

For example, Denmark has the same standard of living as Norway, yet possesses none of its oil. Should we believe that if Norway had forgone exploitation of its oil resources (which it is now deliberately slowing) that its people would today be significantly less well off than their Danish neighbours?

And 10 years ago, BC Hydro believed that we needed to burn natural gas and coal to generate electricity. But in the mid-2000s, our government enacted a zero-emission electricity policy that led to the cancellation of gas and coal projects, and their replacement with generating plants using wood waste, hydropower and wind. These created more jobs and the lights are still on.

The carbon polluters have the self-interest motive and the resources to convince us, and perhaps themselves, that white is black and bad is good. We desperately need another George Orwell.

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This is a guest post by Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). It originally appeared on the UCS blog The Equation.

Asbestos can kill you. We’ve all been warned about the dangers of breathing it in. That is why we test buildings for it and have rules to protect construction workers from exposure to it. But how do we know asbestos is harmful? Because scientists have done studies of the dangers it poses to our health. And I’m glad they have so we can avoid these threats.

Tampering with science behind the health effects of asbestos

For decades, however, some companies have fought efforts to regulate asbestos, even tampering with the science behind our understanding of its health effects. And, sadly, a recent court ruling indicates that the tampering may have been more widespread than anyone previously knew.

Recently, a New York Appeals Court ruled unanimously that that Georgia Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, must hand over internal documents pertaining to the publication of 11 studies published in reputable scientific journals between 2008 and 2012. At issue in the case: whether the firm can be held accountable for engaging in a “crime-fraud” by planting misinformation in these journals intending to show that the so-called chrysotile asbestos in its widely used joint compound doesn’t cause cancer.

Science falsely presented as independent research—with lawyers suggesting revisions

Here’s what we know. The articles were published in the following scientific journals: Inhalation Toxicology, The Journal of Occupational & Environmental Hygiene, Annals of Occupational Hygiene, and Risk Analysis. The studies were authored by conflicted experts who were hired by Georgia Pacific; the company’s lawyers were involved throughout the process and, even more alarming, these conflicts of interest were not disclosed in the studies. As a result, the articles in question were untruthfully presented as independent, bona fide research.

The court noted that the studies were intended to cast doubt on the capability of chrysotile asbestos to cause cancer and that the authors did not disclose that Georgia Pacific’s lawyers participated in lengthy discussions of the manuscripts and suggested revisions. As Justice Richard Andrias wrote in the court ruling demanding the internal documents that will shed light on the extent of wrongdoing, “The public has an interest in resolving disputes on the basis of accurate information.”

The difference between funding for science and paying for specific scientific conclusions

Of course, there is no surprise that companies such as Georgia Pacific have scientists working on research. Private companies are a significant funder of science, especially as public funding options for scientists have decreased. But there is a bright line between the funding of science—whatever outcome it reaches—and paying scientists to reach a specific scientific conclusion. Such efforts to manufacture false scientific evidence as part of a legal or marketing strategy are reprehensible.

The process of science has both a logic and rhythm to it, from research and analysis, to peer review, comparison and publication for consideration by other scientists. It is about discovery, building knowledge and understanding of the natural and human world. Many in society— and many, many companies—have benefited from this open process of science. But everyone is threatened when companies manipulate the scientific process itself in the name of marketing and profit—and, most disturbingly, when the actions put people directly at risk as they did in this case.

Ghost-writing scientific papers undermines science and threatens public safety

Asbestos is but one case of “ghost-writing” of counterfeit science for academic publications in an effort to market or cast doubt on scientific results. Recently, the editors of the Public Library of Science (PloS) Medicine, a respected open-access scientific journal, published a series of articles highlighting how widespread the problem has become in the pharmaceutical field and the difficulties academic journals are facing as they try to combat the problem.

Perhaps the most telling article in the series was written by a former ghost-writer who detailed her company’s role in creating scientific papers and presentations solely as a marketing tool. According to her account, her company was unconcerned about discovery and expanding knowledge, but rather sought to push its drugs to new markets – effective or not, dangerous or not.

As a scientist, it goes against my teaching and experience to accept that ghost-writing of fraudulent scientific papers in the name of commerce should be allowed to continue unabated. Not only does it undermine the entire scientific enterprise, it poses an enormous potential threat to the public. Everyone, knowingly or not, is affected by scientific evidence about what is safe, what can help or hurt them, and how best to keep their families safe. Everyone makes choices, and should be free to do so, based on this information.

Deliberately falsifying science isn’t just a financial matter for shareholders and company managers. It has real impacts—potential life-and-death impacts in the case of asbestos. Companies: by all means, market your products; tell us why you think they are good choices. But keep your lawyers, public relations, and marketing people out of the science we depend on. There are lives at stake.

About the author: Andrew Rosenberg is the director of the UCS Center for Science and Democracy. He leads UCS's efforts to advance the essential role that science, evidence-based decision making, and constructive debate play in American policy making. Subscribe to Andrew's posts.

Image Credit: Asbestos Mine in Canada by jaharris1001 via The Photo Forum.

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Around the world scientists are not sleeping well. They toss and turn knowing humanity is destroying the Earth’s ability to support mankind. The science is crystal clear and all of us 'ought to shaking in our boots' Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme told me last year.

But hardly any of us are shaking in our boots. Why is that?

The most extensive survey about the scientific consensus that humanity is causing global warming was published Thursday May 16 in Environmental Research Letters (ERL). Researchers looked at 12,000 scientific scientific articles published between 1991 and 2011 on the subject and found 97.1% of the articles agreed global warming is primarily caused by human activities.

The fact there is a consensus on the causes of climate change is not new. Previous studies in 2011, 2009 and even back to 2004 had very similar results. Even during the early 1990s, there was a clear scientific consensus that global warming was underway and that burning fossil fuels was the main cause said John Cook of the University of Queensland and co-author of the peer-reviewed ERL study.

“However the public thinks there is a debate about this; that it's a 50-50 split amongst scientists,” Cook told DeSmog.

A 2012 poll from Pew Research found that less than half of Americans thought that scientists agreed humans were causing global warming. Cook said he's not aware of similar surveys in Canada but expects it might be higher in Canada – but no where close to 100% awareness – that there is a consensus amongst the more than 10,000 scientists from more than 70 countries surveyed in the study.

“The consensus is a global phenomena and it's been around for over 20 years. We should be talking about solutions,” he said.

Cook says he's hoping his study will help the public finally realize this and then they will push their governments to take action.

However, just recently Canada's Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver was widely reported casting doubt on climate change science saying “scientists have recently told us that our fears [about climate change] are exaggerated.”

Oliver cited as his expert source a newspaper columnist and well-known climate skeptic who has no expertise on the subject.

In recent years media rarely challenge false statements from politicians or even bother to fact-check their bland assurances that Canada does take the dangers of climate change very seriously. It is scientifically impossible for Canada to expand the tar sands and meet its climate protection commitments of working to keep global warming to less than 2C.

Nor are plans to dramatically expand the natural gas industry in BC to export LNG or to boost coal exports compatible with Canada's international commitments and moral obligations. Nor is drilling for oil or gas in the Arctic.

It's not just the Harper government's false statements and hypocritical policies that are misleading the public, there is an entire climate mis-information industry. Numerous think tanks, industry CEOs and associations and PR experts, some disguised as journalists, all claim we can burn and sell as much fossil fuel as we like.

And if climate change exists, it's not that big of a deal they say. Besides China is mostly to blame because they have a lot coal plants.

The avalanche of distortions and outright lies has become so bad and the public so confused that various groups have created fact-check websites such as the Oil Sands Reality Check launched today. On this site all facts are cited with sources and checked for their accuracy by a scientific advisory committee.

Expanding the tar sands and building pipelines are inconsistent with Canada's climate change commitments and government policy said Danny Harvey, a climate scientist at University of Toronto.

“There's no room in the atmosphere….we need to slowly phase out tar sands production or risk catastrophe,” Harvey said at a press conference today at the launch of the Oil Sands Reality Check website.

There cannot be a debate over the tar sands without having the real facts and that's what Oil Sands Reality Check site offers said Thomas Homer Dixon of the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ont.

“There are deep contradictions between tar sands production and the climate change reality,” said Homer Dixon, author of Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future.

“Canadians have not yet come to grips with this contradiction,” he said.

Image Credit: Harper's visit to NYC, May 16, 2013 by Erik McGregor via flickr.

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Sounding the alarm about climate change in 2007 got you a Nobel Peace Prize, but these days, not so much.

Today a journalist or academic writing about climate change often struggles to find an attentive audience. Why is that?

Social scientists around the world might be scratching their heads at this mystifying problem – but you don’t need a PhD to see that industry public relations plays a big role in public disinterest.

After Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth won an Academy Award the oil and gas industry doubled down with its attack on climate science. They poured even more money into the front groups and fake experts trying to convince us that climate change is a hoax. But polls show they failed to persuade us with that message. Most Canadians and Americans know climate change is happening.

But the oil gas industry and their friends on the far right succeeded in something even more mischievous than attempting to convince us climate change was something under debate. They nudged us into believing we really can’t make a difference.

When we look to industry and government for action we instead see PR and politics.  We see elected officials and business leaders saying one thing and doing another. We know we can’t trust them to do much, so why should we bother?

Cynics like me believe this was their intention all along. They knew they would eventually lose the fake debate they created  about climate science,. Their strategy was not intended to persuade us with their message but to kindle a ‘why bother’ public reaction.

As Deborah Tannen so eloquently wrote, “When there's a ruckus in the street outside your home, you fling open the window to see what's happening. But if there's a row outside every night, you shut the window and try to block it out.”

And that's what's happened to public discourse around climate change in Canada. We’ve turned away from the ruckus, and that’s a dangerous reaction.

The campaigns that create pubic disinterest, mistrust and despair continue. Ottawa and Calgary are pouring millions into advertising designed to misdirect our concern away from the very serious problem of climate change.

And we go along with the greenwashing and the misleading ad campaigns from government and industry because that’s what we expect from them.

That’s why it’s so encouraging to see Pete McMartin use his considerable talents as a journalist to explain why people like Mark Jaccard, William Rees and Tom Pederson are so concerned and publicly outspoken about the need for action on climate change.

The math on climate change is bleak. And the remedy for that isn’t denial. It’s time to face the facts.

Pete McMartin deserves our gratitude; his latest piece is what good journalism looks like.

Perhaps in a future column, McMartin might try to convince the Harper Government and the oil and gas industry that advertising doesn’t reduce greenhouse gas pollution.  

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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What is ethical public relations? Where do you draw the line and what should your boundaries be when influencing public perceptions and opinions? As president of a Canadian public relations firm my colleagues and I face this question all the time. Some days the answer is more obvious than others, so I asked Rutgers University philosopher Jason Stanley how to maintain a principled position.

It’s a question that floats to the surface like a greasy slick these days because during the last 12 to 18 months, Canadians have been subjected to one of the most expensive and extensive PR campaigns in history, in an attempt to nudge public attention away from the environmental impacts of tankers, pipelines and oil sands mining, and redirect it towards economic benefits.

Whether it has been Enbridge ads regarding the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline — “A path to prosperity … a path to thriving communities” — or Canada’s own federal government talking about creating “more than a million jobs from coast to coast to coast,” the tactic has been relentless.

Harper’s federal government spent more than $55 million on advertising last year and conducted hundreds of polls, to not just reflect public opinion but also shape it. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) featured greenwashing, pro oil-sands ads that showed scientists and workers standing in pristine wilderness expounding their concern for the environment.

I asked Stanley what the communication ground rules are: Should the touchstone be whether you are increasing people’s understanding, or decreasing it? Or is that too naïve a distinction?

That’s an excellent distinction, he told me, except it’s unworkable. That's an intuitive guideline that people use, but facts are difficult things to nail down. It isn't that someone wants to make obviously false statements but people are constantly negotiating with the “boundary" of truth.[view:in_this_series=block_1]

Stanley, who specializes in the philosophy of language and epistemology, believes such boundaries are disappearing because scientific objectivity is either being eroded, or left completely out of conversations in the public square.

People today express opinions, not facts.

“Everyone is under the grip of an ideology, so what we’re doing is comparing ideological frameworks now.” He adds the right-wing media adds to the turmoil by saying whenever anyone asserts something you cannot believe them because they’re just trying to manipulate you for their own interests.

“Fox News is saying you can’t believe anything you hear because everyone is just trying to get you to accept their own ideology.”

For instance, the National Academy of Science and the Royal Society, which comprise many of the world’s most distinguished scientists, agree climate change is a serious problem. The American Petroleum Institute and the Fraser Institute, however, are two non-scientific organizations that do not.

How do you participate in debates about climate change and science when you’re not a scientist? How does the public benefit from this lop-sided debate, or draw any usable and meaningful conclusions?

The issues started to come into focus for me when I was doing a book tour soon after writing Climate Cover-Up in 2009. I was invited to speak at Yale Universities’ debate society, the Yale Political Union. After a nearly three-hour debate I decided to leave students with this thought:

When I was in first year law school a lot of us asked how you justify defending a rapist or serial killer. We were told the legal system was set up to be adversarial. It is based on the prosecution arguing a case, the defence arguing a case, and then a judge or jury deciding.

Everybody has a job and everyone puts faith in the process. When I got involved in the PR business I heard a similar argument about getting a client’s information into the court of public opinion. It wasn’t up to the PR firm to pass judgment.

But I see two big flaws in that thinking. First, there are no rules of evidence in the court of public opinion. When you talk about climate change especially, the public can be misled because there are no charges for perjury, no one is held accountable for tampering with evidence. And second, there is little distinction between an expert witness and a charlatan.

So how does the public judge?

Stanley says it makes sense that a scientific debate should take place in a “scientific way” through journals and conferences. When the public is involved, we can choose to believe and listen to those who are reliable, and tune out those who are not.

We may not all be experts in climate change but we can educate ourselves to understand what they're talking about to a certain degree. To continually listen to a debate among scientific illiterates adds little to the public discourse. 


When trying to judge where the truth lies, he warns there are two important tactics to be aware of:  One is the undermining of sincerity by special interest groups who know how to exploit a strategy that throws into question the credibility of public figures, and the second is to suggest that no one has special access to the facts about any domain.

People who claim the mantle of science are trying to say: “We’re the experts, you have to believe us because we are scientists.” In certain respects this latter point is right, says Stanley. But “We don't want Milton Friedman telling us economics is a science, and he's an expert, and we're not and we have to listen to him because there's competing models.”

There's a significant difference between economics and climate science. For one thing, economics is more akin to history and is an interpretive discipline rather than a predictive one. But the critical gulf between the two is: In economics there are many different views among experts whereas in climate science there are not.

When there are “wildly” different views, he says it’s inappropriate to feature only one expert’s view and hold them up as the single person to believe, “and let them boss you around.”

That's a clearly illegitimate use of a scientific expert. There are areas of science where there is genuine controversy, and where experts disagree. When such scientific disputes are present, then no expert should be allowed to claim their view is unchallenged.


But when it comes to climate science, this is clearly not the case.

There is overwhelming agreement and that’s what must be conveyed to the public.

Among climate scientists, the debate was settled years ago after an overwhelming consensus emerged in the literature. A review of the published research by James Lawrence Powell found that out of 13,950 peer-reviewed articles, published between 1991 and 2012, only 24 reject human-caused global warming. 

So, in fact, all that remains is a political debate about what to do to address it. Of course, scientists remain involved in the discussion, so they remain targets for attack and obfuscation.

What's happening in the climate debate is similar to what's happening in the case of evolution with the Discovery Institute, an American public policy think tank. “You have a whole industry of fake science being created, to create the illusion of controversy,” Stanley told me.

He said this is exacerbated when PR firms and news media create a “din” — where the facts are unclear, there is no uniformity to facts, no one is believable and everyone has a different agenda. That’s when people stop listening.

The engine driving this din is the turbine of powerful moneyed interests, whether oil and coal companies, or the people whose livelihoods depend on those industries, whether or not the industries are good for their country, their community, or for their children and grandchildren. 

The prison industrial complex is a staggering example of this. Massively important in the United States and becoming more so in Canada, Stanley explains the system does not make sense since imprisoning huge portions of a population is not an economically sound way to run a country.

“We in the U.S. imprison 25% of the world's prisoners, and have by far the largest prison population in the world … We shouldn't have a prison industry, but there are so many prison guards and so many lawyers, so many people whose livelihood depends on a steady influx. That's their job.” 

Such policies are promoted because of financial self-interest.

People are employed in industries that are clearly bad for the country and the world, yet people align their views with whatever is going to keep their paychecks coming every month.

We live in a complicated world with confusing debates and motivations churning on all sides.

We started DeSmog Canada because we wanted to clean up the PR pollution that swirls around issues of the environment, social justice and the economy. My interview with Stanley helped me understand how we accomplish that, by not only telling the truth and increasing people’s understanding, but also by encouraging people to look at issues in a different way and rely on trustworthy experts.

Without being an expert it’s very challenging to get to the bottom of things, but we have an obligation to try. There is no way we can all become authorities on climate science —— I don’t personally know anyone who’s taken an ice core sample from Greenland lately —— but part of being a good citizen is informing ourselves, figuring out who to trust, seeking those with proper credentials and keeping the discussion healthy.

We need to ask the right questions, and encourage the media to do the same, so we can detect the difference between fake and real debate.

Post image from Enbridge's Northern Gateway "Safety & Environment" web page.

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